[New] from a16z @speedrun: The Outsider founders are winning the AI B2B race we used to say founder x market fit was everything but in this AI wave, Outsider founders who are AI native are outmaneuvering their industry veteran competitors just look at @TennrOfficial (healthcare), @HebbiaAI (finance), @happyrobot_ai (logistics), @evelegalai (legal) & @DecagonAI (customer support)..... these are all Outsider founders w/ no prior experience in the verticals they now sell into so why is this? #1 - right now, AI technical excellency trumps industry expertise --> These founders combine AI fluency w/ exceptional problem solving skills to quickly map the inner workings of a vertical from an Outsiders perspective and how AI can automate that work --> many will bring on a "board of Insider advisors" early to help validate their approaches and leverage their rolodex #2 - new verticals w/out a scaled SaaS player are now in play --> Agentic AI products don’t just help workers become more efficient, they can take action and complete work autonomously --> Therefore companies can spend way more for these products as they don't just tap into IT budgets, they actually displace labor spend --> That means that offline verticals w/ historically small IT budgets and no vertical SaaS winners are now ripe for a venture scaled vertical AI disruptor = from food distribution to car dealerships to home services to agriculture, it will be Outsiders who will come in and automate the backoffice functions for these verticals #3 - the barriers for Outsiders to sell into the enterprise have dropped dramatically --> most companies have a tops-down mandate and dedicated budget to explore AI initiatives. They’re actively pulling new solutions into their organizations and open to experimenting with pilot partners --> for some products, where PLG and bottoms-up adoption makes sense, Outsiders can let their product and marketing strategies be their ticket into their buyer so, today, founder - market fit should be based on required skillsets to win in a space, not simply on tenure & domain expertise in a vertical here at @speedrun we’ve invested in teams of exceptional Outsiders such as @ArtifactOffcial (accounting), Anchr (food distribution), Bead (SOX compliance) + many more if you’re a team of Outsiders primed to disrupt a boring business, head to sr [dot] a16z [dot] com to apply for speedrun