Slow Ventures

Generalist early-stage investors backing bold ideas. PortCos: Solana, Airtable, Gusto, Creators and more since 2011.
@kevincolleran @lessin @wquist @yrechtman

[Slow Ventures @slow]

America invented drones. Then China took 70% of the market while we debated permits.

The airspace below 500 feet is the most valuable undeveloped real estate in the country, and we're not even allowed to use it.

New deep dive from @angelesahr on why the low-altitude economy is a $1T+ infrastructure layer hiding in plain sight.

See reply for full deck.

[Slow Ventures @slow]

We have been partners and supporters of @tjparker and @elliotcohen since their earliest days building Pillpack... and now a very small part of their newest venture with @ashwinkmurali. Big announcement today about @GeneralMedicine

[TJ Parker⚡�� @tjparker]

General Medicine has raised a $120M Series B led by @a16z. We're using it to build the healthcare store.

The only way healthcare will work is to make the customer the most powerful participant in the system. And the only way to do that is to let them shop.

Here’s why healthcare needs a store, and what we had to build to make it possible:

[sam lessin 🏴‍☠️ @lessin]

Always weigh in … hint - answer is just clarify liability properly and everything else falls into line (and Anthropic / OAI become insurance companies / wrappers vs open source)

https://t.co/PXN4XXVl3O

[sam lessin 🏴‍☠️ @lessin]

We are witnessing the third era of tech political stratey...

1st era -- bill gates, express indignation / denial, etc... that didn't work well.

2nd era - google, meta, etc. fight back... that worked better.

3rd era - AI leaders ... embrace and extend... don't change the narrative, use it to your advantage -

...and everyone will play along because too many loud voices are all aligned.

[Will Quist @wquist]

What would actually have to happen for the market to decide the frontier labs just aren’t that great of businesses?

Models converge and are commodities? That’s expected. Growth slows? That’s ok, huge installed base. Margins suck? Investing for the future. Capex explodes again and again? Moat. Delay the IPO? Too focused on the mission.

These might end up being incredible businesses. It’s just a little wild that every piece of bad news somehow becomes evidence for the bull case.

[sam lessin 🏴‍☠️ @lessin]

Nice chat on @slow creator fund with Mark Stenberg in Adweek yesterday

[sam lessin 🏴‍☠️ @lessin]

Very excited that Kepler is out of stealth … when we participated in the seed years ago we knew what they were working on was important … but man, no one had any idea AI would so dramatically up the stakes! 🤯

[Will Quist @wquist]

Worth noting, we've already invested against in Lumber, 3PL, and Maritime Defense. And want to do a lot more.

[Slow Ventures @slow]

So what wins?

You give the work away. Price it at zero before the market makes you, use single player as the wedge, and let the multiplayer compound behind it.

Most will sell agent labor at human prices instead.

https://t.co/LLYZ9vcuoT

[Slow Ventures @slow]

The standalone assistants lose.

The durable bet is that cognitive labor goes to zero. When it does, the scarce things are context, trust, and the network between people. Own those and the model layer stops mattering.

@yrechtman

[Harry Stebbings @HarryStebbings]

The hottest category in tech right now is AI assistants.

The question is; who is going to win?

Instinct raised at $2.5BN. Has Benchmark and Index behind them.

Grok Bot is ripping with Elon and has the distribution machine of X.

And then there is Town, one of the only ones that’s actually making real money from real businesses.

Don’t write Zuck off. This will be his next play and integrated into every WhatsApp user’s product.

I sat down with Town Founder, @jgreze to understand WTF is going on, who wins and who loses?

Condensed my notes below!

1. We Have Passed the Point Where Humans Look at Lines of Code

Software engineering has crossed a threshold where machines increasingly write and ship code into production under model-based guardrails. Outside critical security controls, humans will spend far less time reviewing raw code. The future belongs to systems that manage autonomous AI agents writing software, running tests, and validating their own work.

2. You Can Build at the Speed of Machines, but You Can Only Learn at the Speed of Humans

AI development tools allow competitors to clone features in weeks, erasing traditional software head starts. But deep user feedback cannot be automated. While machines accelerate execution, true competitive advantage comes from maximizing human learning cycles and understanding customers faster than anyone else.

3. Why None of the AI Assistants Have True Product-Market Fit Today

Despite immense market hype, no current AI assistant has achieved deep product-market fit with mainstream users. Most products still cater primarily to power users rather than everyday workers. Before worrying about moats, founders need to create frictionless experiences that resonate with the mass market.

4. Network Effects at the Agent Level Will Separate AI Winners

Sustainable moats in AI assistants will come from multi-user network effects at the agent level, not single-player productivity. When autonomous assistants collaborate across teams to resolve queries and execute work, switching becomes increasingly difficult. Multiplayer workflows create organizational lock-in that personal assistants cannot replicate.

5. How Much of the Workload Stays at the Frontier Versus Open Weight?

AI application margins depend heavily on how much work requires expensive frontier models versus cheaper open weights. Complex reasoning may still demand frontier intelligence, while routine tasks like scheduling and email tagging continue moving down the cost curve. Shifting 80% of workloads to open weights over time could create far more sustainable economics.

6. My R&D Is Just Spent Getting Product Parity With the Giants

Competing with giants like OpenAI requires massive investment simply to maintain feature parity. Startups cannot rely on unique distribution if their underlying harness falls behind on core capabilities. AI assistants must invest heavily to match the execution speed and product depth of frontier teams.

7. Why Instinct Is Not a Competitor to Town

Consumer assistants like Instinct focus on rapid acquisition through subsidized personal tools, while enterprise platforms build monetizable team workflows. Although their technical harnesses may overlap, their target ICPs and business models diverge sharply. Enterprise agents monetize by embedding collaboration directly into daily operations.

(links below)

[sam lessin 🏴‍☠️ @lessin]

If you are in New York next Wednesday & Thursday I will be hosting a Creator AI Bootcamp with the Slow Creator Fund team, teaching community leaders and creators how to really use AI when you are ready to graduate from ChatGPT and Claude Cowork. Link bellow, come ready to work.

[Jack Raines @Jack_Raines]

🚨ATTENTION, CREATORS🚨

We @slow are hosting a bootcamp next week in NYC to teach creators how to build all sorts of fun AI bots to automate all of the tedious parts of their businesses.

Sign up below:

https://t.co/gHJ13gzUlg

[sam lessin 🏴‍☠️ @lessin]

https://t.co/vJAIEaUlqQ

[MORE OR LESS @MoreorLessPod]

Meta is paying $17B over child safety, parents are officially outgunned by the algorithm, and Tim Cook's real legacy might be a chip.

Full quad tomorrow, 8am ET / 5am PT with @lessin poolside and @Jessicalessin in her agentic era.

Catch it wherever you get your podcasts.🎙️

Topics:
-Meta's $17B child safety settlement
-Should social media be illegal for kids? @brit posits.
-Should every platform play by the same rules?
-Is YouTube worse than Instagram? @davemorin says yes.
-Are parents completely outgunned?
-Is the settlement mostly policy theater?
-Could AI finally make parental controls useful?
-Tim Cook's Apple farewell
-Was the Tim Cook era just… boring?
-Apple Silicon might have been Cook's masterstroke
-Long or short Apple?

[Will Quist @wquist]

Founders, your narrative is not what you say.

It's what someone else says about you when you are not in the room.

[sam lessin 🏴‍☠️ @lessin]

1/5th the unicorns of sequoia .. 1/1000th the effort & capital. dead last but on the list.. chef's kiss 😘@slow .. jack sparrow is proud.

[MORE OR LESS @MoreorLessPod]

Stripe bought a router for billions, OpenAI is losing enterprise to Anthropic, and the data center backlash isn't really about data centers.

Full quad today. Catch it wherever you get your podcasts.

Topics:
-5:00 Stripe buys OpenRouter, critical infrastructure or expensive middleman?
-11:00 The agentic commerce bet and why Google may already have it won
-22:00 Anthropic vs. OpenAI is a company question, not a model question
-30:00 OpenAI's "greatest fundraising story in history"
-33:30 Is AI a great investment or just a great trade?
-37:30 Grok makes it a three-player race
-41:00 AI makes software increasingly disposable
-47:30 "The backlash is that AI sucks"
-48:30 Did we build trillions in infrastructure before finding the use cases?
-53:30 Josh Kushner, Thrive and the Lakers

[Slow Ventures @slow]

AI isn't just changing how engineers build. It's changing who gets to build at all.

We ran the first Creator AI Bootcamp in San Francisco earlier this year. Creators from all over flew in and walked away with custom agents, content workflows, and automations they were using the next day.

We're running it back in NYC, two days starting September 9 alongside our Creator Fund team including @lessin @mmlightcap @Jack_Raines and more.

See reply to learn more.

[Will Quist @wquist]

Dont just be unreasonable. Be reasonably unreasonable.

[MORE OR LESS @MoreorLessPod]

This week @lessin hosts a very special episode of More Or Less with a panel of @pxd, @wolfejosh, @RachelJHolt, @scottbelsky, and @SAStanford. It's every flavor of venture capital in one room!!

They argue about open vs. closed models, NVIDIA's massive compute financing strategy, why everyone keeps leaving OpenAI, who gets paid when AI eats work, and SO MUCH MORE.

Watch here on X or wherever you get your 'casts.

Timestamps:
-1:59 Meet the panel, every flavor of venture capital
-5:14 Consumer AI agents cross the Rubicon
-7:24 The end of websites, when agents talk to agents
-8:32 Which AI companies do you trust?
-11:41 Why Apple could win AI by doing nothing
-16:40 If models commoditize, unique data becomes the moat
-22:15 Open vs. closed AI, and who owns your data
-27:06 NVIDIA's balance sheet shenanigans
-31:26 NVIDIA gets the upside, who gets the risk?
-35:02 Who owns the wealth AI creates?
-42:23 Why OpenAI's best people keep leaving
-47:23 Why AI may look more like GPS than Facebook
-49:14 What actually happened with Airtable
-50:30 Lightning round: physical-world investing, watermarks, deepfakes, defense

[Will Quist @wquist]

This.