I’ve heard 100s of startup pitches this year. Here’s the good, the bad and the meh recurring trends from my experience: The good: - High raise amounts and valuations. More inflated for strong teams pre-revenue in hot areas (robotics, bio, personal agents) - Insane topline growth numbers, many growing >10x this year. By the time a round closes, a high valuation seems justified. - Tons of M&A It is what it is: - Revenue run rate = last month revenue x 12 - Small teams - Seat based < Platform fee < Usage based billing seems to be the trend for most products - Tranched rounds - Best teams have extremely fast product iteration speed - SaaS products positioning themselves as AI tools to seem appealing to investors The bad: - Low or negative gross margin if reselling tokens. Non-standard accounting - High “Contracted ARR” that’s not live yet - High revenue concentration - Expensive compute, limited availability, delays. Excess compute reselling - Many wrappers with very thin tech differentiation: “self improving harness”, “multi model / router”, “agent swarms”, “computer use” - Overworked employees. AI generated - All spaces seem very competitive - Areas can seem hot one moment before being not