Steven Walchek

Worth paying attention to... Anthropic vs. Cursor. While Cursor was paying Anthropic hundreds of millions in API fees to power its AI code editor, Anthropic seems to have studied exactly what developers wanted, then launched Claude Code to "eat" their biggest distribution partner. The result. Claude Code hit $1B ARR in just six months and has already surged past $2.5B, proving that when you're a "wrapper" startup, you're often just paying your provider to learn how to replace you. Keep an eye on Cursor layoffs...

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I’m thrilled to share Earthshot Ventures most recent investment, Unlimited Industries! Unlimited is an AI-native construction company that both designs and builds. Its platform can generate and evaluate hundreds of thousands of design configurations in parallel, automatically identifying optimal layouts for cost, safety, and performance before construction begins. Why did we invest? Solving a real need we know well: Over the last decade, we have worked with hundreds of companies that are ready to deploy their technology, but struggle with slow construction timelines and cost overruns. Unlimited makes it feasible for emerging infrastructure companies to bring projects to life reliably and efficiently. Massive market potential: The EPC market is ~$800B. While this entire market is not addressable from day one, early adopters will pave the way for the mass market, enabling massive possible scale over time. Exceptional team: The company is led by Alex Modon, a repeat founder and multidisciplinary engineer. To accelerate the company, Alex teamed up with Tara Viswanathan and Jordan Stern, who previously built and scaled Rupa Health as the founder/CEO and first teammate respectively, from zero to millions in revenue before its successful nine figure acquisition in 2024. Software is eating the world, and AI will eat engineering: Software engineering is increasingly being augmented and automated by AI, aided by large repositories of coding data like Github. Other engineering disciplines will be transformed over time as analogous data sets are compiled and software encodes the operating principles of the real world. Companies that can create proprietary datasets, like Unlimited’s burgeoning catalogue of projects, will gain defensibility through data moats. Lastly, since a good portion of my network here consists of founders who could be customers of Unlimited and their investors, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say - hit me up if you’d like to connect with Unlimited to deliver your next project on time, on budget! Welcome to the Earthshot portfolio, Unlimited!

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New startups today mostly don’t need VC money. Build costs collapsed...Distribution is accessible...AI turned small teams into highly leveraged operators. Reaching revenue no longer requires raising first. This creates a structural shift in venture itself. Mid-size VC funds ($100M–$1.5B funds) are the most exposed. Too large to write small experimental checks early. Too small to consistently lead or win competitive later rounds. They sit in the middle while the market moves around them. Meanwhile, two ends of the spectrum are strengthening. Large funds ($5B–$20B+ AUM) are the real winners. They provide scale, signaling, and the ability to deploy $50M–$300M checks once companies prove momentum. Micro VCs ($5M–$100M funds) will thrive for the opposite reason. Fast decisions. $50K–$1M first checks. Access before consensus forms. That said, venture math at the micro level gets tricky. In many cases, ownership, management fees, and outcome distributions make the economics challenging for GPs unless they consistently access outlier winners. The hardest place to be right now is the mid-tier. Too big for experimentation. Too small to dominate late-stage.

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You don't need funding, revenue, or a single paying customer to become a target. You just need "Founder" in your LinkedIn headline. Nick Goodman found that out building Everyday Security: fake invoices, fake trademark notices, "investors" who want your cap table before they've asked your name, and consulting pitches that read like a phishing kit with a Canva template. Scammers target founders because founders move fast, answer their own email, and are trained to say yes to anyone who might write a check. Not because founders have money -- most pre-seed founders don't. Nick is running a session on the specific scams hitting startups right now and how to spot them before they cost you time, data, or worse. I'll be there - hope you will be, too. Thursday, September 3, 10-11am PDT, over Google Meet. Register: https://luma.com/voi9aud9

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The hardest companies to build are often the ones the world needs most. Resilience Tech—spanning hardware, software, deep tech, and infrastructure—demands more than just great ideas. The real test isn’t proving the technology works—it’s building it into a company that can scale and last. At B Capital, Karly Wentz and I distilled what we’ve learned into a 10-factor framework for growth investing in this space. It’s how we separate promising pilots from companies that can scale into lasting platforms. Our conviction: the companies that matter most over the next decade will be those that fuse breakthrough science with business fundamentals—and deliver measurable resilience at scale. Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/gv8jaMPK

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This week's What's 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #465 newsletter is out! "It’s Still Early: $100M ARR Isn’t the Only Scoreboard" Plus...AI is stealing headlines, but robotics 🤖 is quietly becoming the other half of the autonomy story—factories, warehouses, healthcare, defense. These businesses won’t always sprint to $100M ARR overnight, but the combination of AI + robotics will build companies with staying power. full post in comments:

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Big milestone for Firmable. We’ve raised $14m Series A led by Airtree. Sales has moved through a few big waves: intuition-led, CRM-led, data-led. We’re now entering the next one – intelligence-led sales. The opportunity isn’t just better data. It’s turning that data into clear direction and action, without adding more work for sales teams. That’s what we’re building at Firmable: a foundation of trusted external data, layered with intelligence that helps sellers know who to focus on and when. Led by Airtree, this round supports our expansion across Asia and into the US – and accelerates the build-out of AI agents that take the admin work off sales teams so they can focus on what they do best. Proud of the team, grateful to our customers and investors. We’re just getting started. Read the exclusive in the AFR. https://lnkd.in/gr66uknb Leigh Jasper | Tara Salmon | Karthik Venkatasubramanian| Chester Thompson| Chath Widanapathirana

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