CRV

The Partnerships team at Vercel is HIRING! Having led partnership teams in the past, this is a function near and dear to my 🖤. This group sits at the intersection of strategy, product, and sales, working with our partner ecosystem to drive real business value on both sides. Partners are already a significant contributor to Vercel's revenue, so you don't have to worry about whether or not this GTM org is capable to being partner-oriented (just ask AWS to start!). You’ll get the opportunity to go deep into the world of AI innovation, and help shape the partner ecosystem that fuels Vercel’s next phase of growth and the future of the web! A few roles we’re particularly excited about:   • 𝗚𝗦𝗜 & 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗻𝗲𝗿 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱: you’ll turn potential energy into kinetic energy, building and expanding strategic relationships with top tier GSIs to drive joint business growth and revenue outcomes with Vercel’s agent infrastructure.   • 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗦𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿: the technical heartbeat of our partner motion. You’ll bridge internal technical teams and partner developers to drive interoperability, adoption, and mutual growth. We’re hiring exceptional partner talent across across teams led by Jen Shumann Chang, with Stu Jeffrey Lauryn Spence Alex Hawley and Shriya Hahn. Interested, or know someone great who would be? Send them our way and we’ll get you connected with the team! https://lnkd.in/gXMCeQE2

Founder FOMO - how to navigate becoming an AI-native company We are doing something about it here at CRV, bringing leading speakers from AI-native for our founders We have speakers from each of these orgs: Sales Marketing CS Finance EPD orgs No vendors, just hands on keyboard work, the ones who are building truly internal agents Everyone has built their SDR agent, many have made strides in engineering, but who is innovating in recruiting? (again no vendors) If anyone has suggestions of Recruiting orgs that have built homegrown agents please dm! This is a CRV EXCLUSIVE event for our founders in SF in May

Vercel signups are growing at 52% MoM (up from 23%, up from 17%)

I’m thrilled to announce that Fulcrum has acquired Megaphone! Albert Hu and Catherine Chang are joining as Founding Product Manager and Founding Product Designer. They previously co-founded a platform that powered key marketing workflows for companies like Coinbase and Forbes and picked us over much larger companies to build with next. Albert and Catherine bring what I'd call taste: a sharp instinct for how great product should look and feel, even in deeply complex domains. Three weeks in, Albert is already on calls with our largest customers pressure-testing our roadmap. Catherine is redesigning workflows that account managers have been doing by hand for thirty years. It's been a joy to watch. Revenue is skyrocketing. We're already powering the top firms in the world. But most remarkably, we’re watching in real time as Fulcrum transforms how brokerages think about talent planning and organizational design. And this is just the beginning. Join us, we’re hiring.

Delighted to lead this session at the VC Platform Global Summit this year! And even more excited about seeing some of my favorites in Platform - Liz Cherson, Nat Turner, Melissa Bezruchko, Hillary Tyree, Beck Bamberger, Krista Canfield McNish + hearing from Lauren Young, Kerry Bennett, Eva Pullano Who else is coming to sunny San Diego? PS - If you're in VC Platform Marketing or Events role, message me for an exclusive invitation to our pre-Summit event!

Mercury entered payroll with acquisition of Central. Here's why: I remember an ADP rep coming to my office with a literal binder to set up payroll. A binder. That was the best option available to us in 2009. I’ve been doing startups since 2006. Over the last 20 years, I’ve watched the tools founders use to build get completely reinvented. But the financial back office? Still frozen in time. Today, Mercury has acquired Central, an AI-native payroll, benefits, and compliance platform for startups. Central’s bet: don’t sell founders software and leave them to figure it out. Have AI agents and human experts do the work for them. Nearly 500 startup customers. $175M in payroll processed. Payroll has been a missing piece for Mercury. Central is how we close that gap. Welcome to the team, Josh Wymer, Pranav Kashyap, and Nilay Modi. Mercury customers can sign up for Central now: centralhq.com. We will integrate Mercury and Central fully over the next few months. Full blog in the comments.

The co-founder and CEO of Lotus Health AI, KJ Dhaliwal, discusses why primary care needs modernization and how Lotus Health AI approaches it differently in conversation with CRV general partner Saar Gur.

Last week at Intersure, I showed brokerage leaders exactly how they could 2x employee retention: (It sounds crazy I know) We are automating more than 12,000 hours of work per week for our customers. The results amaze even me: - Account Managers are saving 8+ hours each per week - We’re seeing 5x higher compliance in key processes - And customers are seeing 2x employee retention from a reduction in painful work I presented at Intersure: Commercial Lines to a room full of people who are in the nitty gritty every day. Here are a few of the workflows I walked through: Proposals: account managers spend hours rebuilding these from scratch every time. Copying data points from PDFs, formatting templates, making sure disclaimers and guidelines are right. -> Fulcrum generates a branded, completed proposal in ~5 minutes. Policy checking: Most brokerages say they check every policy, but the reality is that half the time people are not actually doing it because the process is so painful. -> Fulcrum automates the comparison in minutes, reducing E&O and eliminating bottlenecks during seasonal surges. Coverage comparisons: Manually comparing 200-page policies side by side is brutal. -> Fulcrum structures the whole thing and finds gaps. Brokerages using it are seeing 6-15% increases in deal size from cross sell and expansion. The brokerages moving fastest right now are the ones that are aggressive about giving their AMs every advantage possible. That means giving them the right tools. Thanks to the Intersure team for having me. It was great to meet everyone in Phoenix!

Enterprise 30 list is out! And 4 CRV portfolio companies are front and center! Browserbase Cursor Flock Vercel I'm continually impressed that in this market, the great companies just keep getting better and better. All 4 have seen growth accelerate in the past year Proud shareholders here at CRV! Thank you Eric Newcomer and Wing Venture Capital for including these great companies

Lots of VCs freaking out that the application layer is dead because Anthropic (and others) are moving up the stack. But I still think there's a ton of opportunity, specifically in vertical AI. 1. People want to buy a solution that has opinionated workflows, not a toolbox. The innovation isn’t just applying the tech, it’s rethinking the underlying problem all together. A general-purpose AI assistant is incredible, but it's not the same as buying a product from a team that has spent at least a year thinking about how to optimize procurement, compliance, etc. 2. In fragmented, long-tail SMB markets, there's still so much room to win on brand and GTM. Home services, healthcare, construction, property management, auto repair. I don’t believe these businesses are going to prompt-engineer their way to a solution. They want to buy something that gets them. The opportunity is still there, but product velocity and distribution has never mattered more.