Sunset Ventures

Few places are better than Mexico City in winter. Join AO Labs, Emerging LA and AWS Startups on December 11 for an intimate gathering of builders, investors, and leaders behind emerging technology coming out of CDMX and making its way to the US and the rest of the world. 💥 RSVP here https://lu.ma/EmergingMX So happy to cohost with Brandon Hoffman and Daniel Bedolla, an event in my hometown. Can’t wait to meet more of the amazing Latam tech ecosystem soon.

Signed 3 new Pre-Seed investments this week at Boost VC. All Deep Tech. All Female CEOs. LFG!

Big news for AI x entertainment: I'm excited to co-lead the new round for Promise AI, a film and tv studio (and eventually game studio!) powered by the world’s best GenAI artists and storytellers. The startup is founded by George, Jamie, and Dave and we're co-investing alongside Peter Chernin from The North Road Company. WSJ writeup: https://lnkd.in/gv8Gq9Pa As we’ve written before, Games and Entertainment are undergoing a profound transformation driven by rapid advancements in generative AI. At the forefront of this revolution is Promise, a new studio pioneering the use of generative AI to produce high-quality films, series, and to develop innovative new formats. Promise will produce new media in collaboration with leading Gen AI artists and storytellers using a reimagined production process enabled by proprietary workflow software. Today, we are thrilled to announce our investment in Promise, reflecting our confidence in their visionary approach to integrating technology with the craft of storytelling. Promise was founded by industry veterans George Strompolos, former CEO and founder of Fullscreen; Jamie Byrne, former YouTube content executive; and acclaimed generative AI innovator Dave Clark. Together, they bring decades of experience in discovering and elevating new voices, with a deep understanding of how technology can broaden opportunities for creators. George and Jamie were instrumental in helping creators harness platforms like YouTube to reach global audiences, while Dave’s groundbreaking work as an independent filmmaker has captivated us. Central to Promise’s mission is their development of MUSE, a first-of-its-kind generative AI production workflow software. MUSE seamlessly integrates the latest generative AI technology throughout the creative process. While there are many generative AI tools available, the challenge lies in making them work together cohesively. Without the know-how to integrate these tools seamlessly, the full potential of AI-driven filmmaking remains untapped. This innovative platform is set to change the game for filmmakers looking to harness generative AI, reinventing the creative process for the AI era. Promise is actively investing in top generative AI talent who blend traditional filmmaking skills and next generation AI creation ability. Behind Promise is a belief that generative AI filmmakers are a new and important class of creators looking to produce innovative new stories that’s only now possible with the advent of generative AI media tools. Promise is also engaging with leading Hollywood rights-holders, networks, and platforms to enable a multi-year lineup of category-defining films and series to be produced and seen by audiences everywhere. By doing so, they aim to set a new standard for high-quality storytelling enabled by AI.

We’re growing our Enterprise team at FirstMark! As proud investors in Shopify, Pinterest, Airbnb, Dataiku, Carta, Discord, Cockroach Labs, DraftKings Inc., Pendo.io, Synthesia, and many others, we are looking for an exceptional early-career Investor to help us find and partner with the next iconic technology companies. Ideal candidates have 1-4 years of experience in investing/operating or banking/consulting, have their finger on the pulse of emerging technology trends, have a high degree of emotional intelligence, and are capable of making a lasting impression with the FirstMark team and our portfolio companies. If this is you or someone you know, please feel free to reach out directly!

Great honor to speak at Stanford about the art of pivots. Thank you to Charles Hudson, Fern Mandelbaum, and Danae Sterental for inviting me, and to Megan Nunes for sharing about her pivot journey. Knowing when to pivot is one of the toughest calls a founder faces. As Charles succinctly put it, founders are constantly choosing between: • Persist • Pivot • Sell • Shut down For me, the decision boils down to two key considerations: 1. Founder energy: Do you still have the mental capacity to persist or pivot—the critical line between the Ps and the Ss if you will 🙃 2. Market signals: Is the market giving you reasons to keep persisting, reasons to pivot, or an opportunity to sell (especially if founder energy is running low)? In rare cases, an exceptional opportunity to sell might arise—even if you still have energy to pivot or persist. However, this is uncommon. With enough runway and determination, a founder that is ready to keep going *could* pivot toward a better outcome. Given the inherently low odds of startup success at any point in time, this isn’t your typical probabilistic equation. #Startups #Pivots #MBA

When you compare "hot" startup themes with which successful companies are *actually* being created at the time, they rarely match up. Check out the graphic here. This was inspired by a conversation we had at the Founder Collective offices earlier this month, about being contrarian in venture and not chasing heat. Not all of the data here is perfect. The themes stem from research and memory, and the companies stem from what I could find on PitchBook and Crunchbase. FC has a more extensive (and prettier!) graphic they may share at some point. But the concepts here are directionally right, and the table gets the point across: the biggest companies were often not the hot Seed round or flavor of the month. A good time to be investing in AI would’ve been a few years back, when the foundation model and infra layers were taking shape. See: OpenAI, Scale AI, Anthropic in the graphic. (The application layer, though, has a lag effect, so *now* may be the right time.) When everyone was talking about “The Future of Work” in 2020, meanwhile, it would’ve helped to invest in Canva and Notion five years prior. And defense tech is all the rage now, but most people were focused on crypto and DTC brands when Anduril Industries was being born back in 2017. And so on and so on. There's a lag effect to hype. So what should we paying attention to now? A good question to ask is: what will be the hot theme in three, four, five, years—a theme that few people are looking at today? This week's Digital Native attempts to answer those questions. We talk about broad sectors (e.g., healthcare, consumer) and we talk about more specific spaces (e.g., psychedelics, longevity, gaming). I'm sure I'm missing (many) overlooked themes, so curious what others think the under-the-radar themes are—things that we'll all be talking about as "hot" spaces in 2025, 2026, and 2027. Full Digital Native piece here and shoutout to FC for inspiring this — https://lnkd.in/ecfV2sQR

🚨 Upfront is hiring two associates! It doesn't happen often, but it's happening now. We're seeking ambitious people to join our team in two important investing roles in our early-stage partnership. More in the comments below!