Horizontal AI is getting harder to sell. Vertical is getting easier. The reason isn't capital allocation. It's buyer paralysis.
Industry Analysis
Phil Bronner
I’ve written about the relentless push of model companies into the application tier. Traditional moats in enterprise software are weakening as models enable workflow automation, memory management, and multi-agent orchestration.
Engineers felt it first. A few years ago, the productivity conversation in software development centered on writing code faster. Developers used AI assistants to autocomplete functions, generate boilerplate, and debug errors. The promise was simple: better tools = faster work.
Three years ago, my biggest fear as an AI investor was funding a “thin wrapper” company. Apps that were a nice UI on top of a prompt. Easy to build, easy to copy, no moat.
This is Part 3 of our AI Teammates series, where we explore various topics in the lifecycle of an AI teammate through the lens of Emma, an AI customer support teammate at a fictional airline. Part 1 — covering foundational concepts and design choices for AI teammates — can be found here. Part 2 (hiring AI teammates) can be found here.
This is Part 2 of our AI Teammates series. Part 1, which covers foundational concepts and design choices for AI teammates, can be found here. In this series, we explore various topics in an AI teammate's life cycle through the lens of Emma, an AI customer support teammate at a fictional airline.
AI is no longer just in the background, meet the digital coworkers showing up with names, metrics, and Monday standups.
A rallying cry for CEOs to embrace AI, enable their teams, or risk becoming irrelevant.
After four years at the firm, Ardent is thrilled to announce Dan’s promotion from Principal to Partner.
We look forward to pushing the boundaries of innovation and progress in the new year!
We have three predictions for how the technology will be adopted across organizations.
Across Verticals, Trends Emerge.
While exciting, widespread adoption of agents in the short term is limited to targeted domains due to many technical challenges.
The era of closed SaaS ecosystems is ending. The future belongs to malleable, AI-powered software that adapts to businesses’ unique needs.
We are thrilled to announce Ardent’s participation in Roe AI’s $3M seed round led by Gradient Ventures!
In the future, nearly all service-based businesses will leverage AI, software, and human expertise to provide services at scale.
The question is no longer if AI will transform these industries, but how quickly and effectively.
by Phil Herget
The Disruption of Incumbent Enterprise Software Vendors is Imminent, Thanks to AI Agents.
…and it will have a profound impact on the SaaS industry.
As 2023 draws to a close, it’s an opportune time to reflect on our previous predictions and share what we think is in store for 2024.
A wholistic approach to governance should be taken that considers people, process, and technology.
Today, Rainforest announced its $11.75M seed led by Accel, including participation from Ardent, Infinity Ventures, Box Group, The Fintech Fund, Tech Square Ventures, and a number of strategic angels. The round also includes a $3.25M venture debt facility from Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), a division of First Citizens Bank.
In our last piece, we explored the growing adoption of Generative AI in enterprise settings, presenting two predictions for GAI adoption: traditional enterprise software firms will expand into AI to continue serving their customers and grow LTV, and AI-native startups will successfully target previously untapped industries. The latter of these will serve industries primarily dependent on unstructured data. Until now, enterprise software has been ill-equipped to automate the multifaceted workflows tied to unstructured data, a barrier that LLMs have now shattered.
Traditionally, enterprise software has automated business processes reliant on structured data. This data type is meticulously organized into formatted repositories, such as databases, making it easy to access and analyze. Examples like Salesforce, Workday, and ServiceNow illustrate how software can drive workflows based on structured data. The automation of structured data is now a $145 billion industry.
Key Points
One might easily overlook the significance of a simple plea on a local restaurant’s website: “Order directly to help us save on costly third-party fees.” Yet, this subtle call to action reflects a pervasive challenge. Though delivery platforms like Uber Eats and Doordash were vital lifelines during the COVID-19 pandemic, their high fees have further strained an industry already grappling with tight margins.
Ardent Venture Partners is excited to announce our participation in Crux Climate’s funding round in collaboration with Lowercarbon Capital, Overture VC, New System Ventures, Bolt by QED, and a select group of industry-focused strategic investors, who together generate billions annually in renewable energy tax credits.
In the hallowed halls of traditional higher education, institutions like Harvard and Yale have long been seen as the gold standard for intellectual achievement and ambition. But a new contender is emerging in the fast-paced world of tech entrepreneurship: Y Combinator. In less than two decades, the startup accelerator has positioned itself as the ultimate breeding ground for the next generation of tech visionaries. It has an alumni network that includes companies like Airbnb, Dropbox, and Reddit.
We’re delighted to announce our participation in Picklehead’s Pre-Seed fundraise, a move that might surprise some readers.
We are thrilled to announce that Dan Preiss has been promoted to Principal at Ardent.
We loved this quote from F1 driver Ayrton Senna. It speaks to our conviction in founders who see opportunity in downturns. In these times, the pretenders disappear, and only founders with true conviction and grit set out to launch new companies. “Fortune favors the bold,” after all.
Checks will soon be as archaic in B2B payments as they are in B2C.
Darren Murph is currently the Head of Remote at GitLab, the world’s largest all-remote company, with over 1,600 team members in 60+ countries and no company-owned offices. He has spent his career building world-class remote teams and continues to learn and share strategies powering the future of remote work.
We at Ardent believe the most significant opportunity within B2B fintech is embedded finance.
In January, we wrote about The Future of the Worker-Employer Relationship and the belief that the traditional bond between the employer and employee will grow weaker over time. As employees re-evaluate the role that work plays in their lives, we believe that they will increase their affinity with other aspects, including social causes and core values they hold. This shift has led to a rise in local “changemakers” that bring attention to their causes through fundraising and giving donations. Our newest portfolio company, Givebutter, empowers these small organizations via their fundraising platform, and we could not be more excited to invest in their $7 million seed round.
Everyone has felt the effects of the Consumer Fintech Revolution. For venture investors, the aim of the game was to get a piece of the next Stripe. For everyday consumers, we will never remember a time before instant payments with Venmo and Paypal. Anyone can buy or sell almost anything online, all thanks to Shopify — which we really ended up needing during the pandemic. The world will never be the same because of the innovations that occurred during this radical shift to financial technology to aid consumer transactions. Unfortunately, business-to-business (B2B) transactions have not benefited from the same modernization…yet.
Written by Phil Bronner
We are excited to announce Ardent’s follow-on participation in Gridline’s $9 million Seed Round alongside GC&H Investments, Tech Square Ventures, BLH Venture Partners, and a group of stellar Angel investors. Gridline is a wealth platform that democratizes private market investing by providing individual investors and RIAs access to top-performing alternative asset managers, enabling them to build diversified portfolios in minutes through a fully digital experience.
Ardent is thrilled to announce its participation in Method Financial’s $2.5 million seed round as a lead investor alongside Y Combinator, LiveOak Venture Partners, Runa Capital, Haroon Mokhtarzada (CEO & co-founder at Truebill), Val Gui (VP Product at Upstart), and others who share our same conviction. Led by two second-time founders and YC alumni, Jose Bethancourt and Marco del Carmen, Method is a mission-driven company set out to improve the financial lives and outcomes for millions of Americans.
We wrote last week about Ardent’s take on the future of the worker-employer relationship. In that piece, we hypothesized an overall shift to a more “authentic employee experience” and that companies shepherding this shift would help bring on the future of work. This post is the first in our series where we deep dive into Ardent’s four key areas of interest within the Future of Work, starting with The Re-Imagined Labor Marketplace.
At Ardent, we track the evolving nature of the worker-employer relationship.
