Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 8, 2019

Which sectors see more startup company formation than others? AI or Machine Learning is a new technology that will benefit nearly every type of sector and we’re still in the very earliest innings. Eight years ago, there were nearly zero AI startups seeded. The answer has changed quite a bit over the last 8 years.

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Tom Tunguz

MARCH 6, 2023

As machine learning becomes core to every product, engineering teams will restructure. In the past, the core engineering team & the data science/machine learning teams worked separately. Machine-learning enablers - startups that sell ML toolkits - have shifted sales tactics to seize the day.

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Tom Tunguz

MARCH 30, 2023

As generative AI captivates Startupland, startups will do what they have always done: integrate new technology to build transformative businesses. In response, startups must develop moats to stake out their market. Machine learning systems, like any complex program, benefit from more use. What are these moats?

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Tom Tunguz

MAY 29, 2017

Consequently, here’s an opportunity for startups to lead, not just technologically, but more broadly. It’s one of undoubtedly many technologies which will use one machine learning model to detect another machine learning model. This idea is not new.

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Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 21, 2017

2016 was the year of machine learning. During last quarter of 2016, machine learning research has made huge strides. While some may groan that every pitch deck is littered with the words machine learning or artificial intelligence, I think each deck ought to be. Mobile-first. I don’t think so.

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SaaStr

JUNE 14, 2023

At SaaStr Europa, UiPath’s Dines shared five insights from growing a company from nothing, so other founders can learn what it takes to scale a SaaS startup to $1B+ ARR. Key Takeaways Scaling a SaaS startup to $1B+ is no easy feat. When you have the courage to be bold, people will take you seriously.”

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SaaStock

MARCH 26, 2019

We had a closer look at who the young upstarts of Latin America are in search of the most exciting Latin American SaaS startups. With them in mind, we have created our Startup Program , tailored especially for SaaS startups. Here are the most exciting Latin American SaaS startups that we cannot wait to meet in less than a month.

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Tom Tunguz

APRIL 18, 2017

At SaaStr earlier this year, I spoke about the huge potential of machine learning in SaaS. Only by nailing the workflow will a user grant you the time and permission to wow them with machine learning. Machine learning enables startups to inject a new type of magic to their product.

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Tom Tunguz

MAY 15, 2023

the company has no plan/interest to staff a team to manage AI infrastructure or develop deep machine learning experience / expertise in-house. the company has no plan/interest to staff a team to manage AI infrastructure or develop deep machine learning experience / expertise in-house. When to choose a small model?

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Tom Tunguz

JUNE 9, 2016

Which are the ripest areas for startups to disrupt using machine learning? At the core, machine learning/artificial intelligence relies on two key ingredients: advanced algorithms and data sets to train those algorithms. As a startup, it’s hard to compete with access to that kind of a data set.

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Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 19, 2023

The top two companies account for about one-third of that amount: WideOrbit (ad management for TV & radio) at $1.6b & Mosaic (machine learning platform) at $1.3b. Meanwhile, venture-backed software M&A in the US, Canada, & Europe during 2023 totaled about $10b, about 20% of take-privates.

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Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 25, 2019

Since that trip, when I visited RenRen, Autonavi and a few other blossoming startups, the Chinese startup ecosystem has grown tremendously. Chinese startups raise nearly half of all venture capital dollars and nearly 100 are valued at $1B. The first is his view of the influence of machine learning in the world.

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Tom Tunguz

APRIL 4, 2017

Machine learning SaaS startups face another trust risk – one introduced by probability. Many machine learning systems also rely on probability. A programmer encodes a threshold into machine learning models. Machine learning SaaS companies must find equilibrium on this Goldilocks slackline.

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SaaStr

APRIL 12, 2023

Even considering the more conservative fundraising market in 2023, there are opportunities for startups to get investor attention with AI. Why AI Matters to VCs Over the last decade, each type of machine learning has developed and grown, with generative AI becoming the most recent. Sign up for free.

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Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 1, 2023

Incumbents have lept onto advances in generative machine learning more aggressively than any trend in recent technology history. Mobile, cloud, social - startups led each of those waves. Over the past decade, the most advanced machine learning systems have often been built inside the largest technology companies.

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Andreessen Horowitz

MARCH 23, 2022

Over a decade after the idea of “big data” was first born, data continues to be one of the most important and furiously growing innovation drivers across both large enterprises and new startups. The post Data50: The World’s Top Data Startups appeared first on Future.

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Scytale

MARCH 12, 2025

As the UKs tech startup ecosystem continues to thrive, visionary founders are driving innovation across various industries, shaping the future of technology , finance , healthcare , and beyond. In this article, we highlight the top 10 tech startup founders in the UK for 2025 (who you should be following if you arent already!),

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Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 3, 2022

Some use machine learning to identify profile pictures across services to canonicalize user identities - no doubt clever. Messaging protocols are oxygen for startups & consumers alike. But these are sub-optimal because the underlying problems remain. Every new software era has its messaging protocol.

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Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 23, 2023

Machine Learning is a Secular Platform Change & a Growth Driver for Software The age of AI is upon us, and Microsoft is powering it. Yesterday’s call reinforces the cost-focused mindset of the buyer & the lower growth rates startups should expect. I don’t think we’re going to take two years to optimize.

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Tom Tunguz

JUNE 25, 2017

For example, to build a new ML focused microchip, a startup relies on the chip fabrication plant to develop 7nm equipment. A startup’s supply chain includes all the partners who supply essential components to a product. Execution risk is the obvious one. But the most interesting of the three is Adoption Chain Risk.

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SaaStr

OCTOBER 30, 2023

Startups only have a limited amount of resources with an unlimited amount of experiments they can try. For some context on the company, Weights & Biases is an AI developer platform to help train and deploy all Machine Learning models. So, how do growth teams discover and prioritize those resources most effectively?

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Tom Tunguz

MARCH 26, 2019

Second , in early markets, most of the buyers don’t understand the nuances of the technology, whether it’s IoT platforms, or machine learning infrastructures, or data lakes. Imagine you have just written machine learning model that prices stocks better than anything else in the market. Everything is brand-new.

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Tom Tunguz

JULY 21, 2024

As software startups begin to sell agentic systems, the procurement process will change. Startups - as they always do - will find ways to accelerate the evaluation. Within the most sophisticated security organizations, security labs exist to test machine learning-based security products and performance before deploying them.

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Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 17, 2022

Fueled by this capital, startup company formation rates touched fifteen-year highs in 2021. Machine learning has become table stakes for modern software companies - users expect apps to anticipate their needs & businesses rely on it for competitive advantage. I’ll share more on my plans soon.

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Tom Tunguz

JUNE 20, 2023

I saw this effect a few times for tomtunguz.com & then I saw the phenomenon replicated within startups. How do they differ from classic machine learning? It’s easy to deride the latest buzzword or trend. Big Data, DevOps, microservices, AI, data contracts. What are LLMs? How can I use them?

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Tom Tunguz

APRIL 14, 2019

Since writing The AI Agency: A Novel GTM for Machine Learning Startups , I’ve been meeting many companies who operate this way. These startups use machine learning to disrupt an industry traditionally dominated by agencies: law, accounting, recruiting, translation, debt collection, marketing…the list is long.

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Neil Patel

NOVEMBER 9, 2020

The problem with selling your startup is the long exit time. Who wants to wait almost a decade to buy a startup when the face of tech is evolving at such a rapid pace? Micro startup acquisitions. But before we dive into that, we need to look into what micro startup acquisitions are and why you need to sit up and take notice.

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Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 8, 2023

Whether it’s data being used inside applications, feeding machine learning models, or downstream analysis, companies are increasingly reliant on this data, and that’s not changing. Software startups are rising to meet the need. 80% of data is unstructured within organizations.

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Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 3, 2018

Below are 7 predictions about the startup software ecosystem. Machine learning fades as a buzzword. ” Just as those trends have become ubiquitous to be implicit, so will machine learning. How many of them do you agree with? The repatriation holiday is part of the new tax plan.

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Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 13, 2023

I’m watching public company earnings to identify early trends in the software market to inform startups’ plans for 2023. The surge in pipeline is notable given the uncertainty in the market but the close rates are low & sales cycles slow : another confirmatory data point for startups to plan cautiously in 2023.

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Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 7, 2025

The Startup Stage: Finding Product-Market Fit The startup stage is the foundation of any SaaS companys journey. At this stage, startups face significant uncertainty. It specializes in creating personalized shopping experiences for customers by leveraging machine learning and AI technologies.

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SaaStr

DECEMBER 8, 2023

At SaaStr Annual , he was joined by Jordan Tigani, Founder and CEO of Mother Duck Maggie Hott, GTM at OpenAI , and Sharon Zhou, Co-Founder and CEO of Lamini to discuss the new architecture for building Software-as-a-Service applications with data and machine learning at their core.

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Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 18, 2018

After all the hype and ICO-mania in 2017, the flurry of startups attempting to solve every startup with a distributed ledger and the collapse of currencies in 2018, one startup emerges in 2019 with the next killer use case; Bitcoin being the first. Machine learning fades as a buzzword. To an extent.

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Tom Tunguz

APRIL 3, 2023

I’ve spent my career as a student of startups. I study them, benchmark them, analyze them, interview their leaders to understand their mechanics & share what I’ve learned on this blog. I’m thrilled to announce the debut of Theory Ventures & our first fund of $230m.

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Tom Tunguz

JUNE 23, 2018

In other words, investors are concentrating capital in fewer startups. Consequently, this smaller number of startups has substantially longer runway, fueling a longer gestation period to series A. In 2011, the median startup raised a $0.5M Today, the median startup raises a $1.5M seed and a $3M Series A 9 months later.

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SaaStr

OCTOBER 26, 2023

Getting off the ground is one thing — an easy pitch of being an HR tech startup focused on improving hiring. In a year like this, SMB is doing worse, with a lot more churn and startups going out of business. The great part about having a couple of thousand startups using your product every day is there is so much innovation.

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Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 12, 2021

Startups are nothing if not chasers of exponential growth. When looking at startup data, shouldn’t I model data to test it for geometric growth? From back of the envelope calculations, Hamming waxes philosophical about humans and machines. He concludes with a debate on intelligent machines and machine learning.

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