Scale Venture Partners

Over the past year, AI phone calling has leapt from Hayes Valley hackathon project to remarkable market traction. It's a thrill to work with Bland and Observe.AI who are each a driving force of this adoption, especially in the enterprise. Some thoughts on how this trend will disseminate downmarket and across a range of verticals, and how a next generation of vertical SaaS winners can leverage the lightning-in-a-bottle demand that exists for AI calling. https://lnkd.in/eXMgyxWq

Startups are at a crossroads —?do they chase rapid growth at the cost of efficiency or take a disciplined approach built for long-term sustainability? ?? As a guest author for Crunchbase News, Dale Chang of Scale Venture Partners explores the trade-offs between high growth and financial discipline, and why the best path forward might be somewhere in the middle. ? Read more: https://lnkd.in/gBUPKFYu

Foundational to prospecting motions, the Sales Development function is ever-evolving. As pipeline leaders look for ways to leverage AI to support greater efficiency in pipeline building, it's important to design with the entire system in mind. Craig Rosenberg and I published an updated Sales Development Framework to guide these conversations. Scale Venture Partners

Alexander Niehenke sat down with Nick Moran at New Stack Ventures to talk the state of venture. Some highlights from the conversation: ?? The "leapfrog" opportunities in vertical investing to skip the cloud migration and go straight to AI ?? Getting in on the ground floor of the customer journey ?? How to dominate a vertical niche over time ?? The non-obvious green and red flags to look for in founders ?? How to factor geopolitical and regulatory risk into building and investing And, of course, a few minutes on basketball. Listen at the link below ↓

I've never listened to any podcast I've done. Listening to myself is about as painful as it gets. So will you do it for me? Check this out and tell me what you liked, and what takes I got wrong? Really appreciated Nick Moran and how engaging his line of questioning was. Nothing more fun than someone thoughtful that does their research. #verticals

If I had to do it all again, I think I would study some form of engineering and get into a real world company like Dusty Robotics. Living in the digital world is quite fantastic, but touching real life things just has an incremental level of cool. Forbes just named them one of the top places to work at. They have a great office dog and cute robots. Check out their job postings if you're in the market, or reach out. https://lnkd.in/gV2mE4Nk

AI isn’t just responding anymore. It’s thinking, perceiving, and evolving. Tavus's evolution of their Conversational Video Interface is powered by a huge leap forward in AI research. The experience speaks for itself. Try talking to Charlie yourself. Find him at?www.tavus.io. Congratulations to the Tavus team on their launch!

Two paths diverge for startups in 2025: Efficiency or Acceleration. Each offers a different route to success — it's not about right or wrong, but about choosing the path that best fits you. It feels a bit like Robert Frost’s famous poem,?The Road Not Taken: two paths diverge in a wood, and startups are standing at the crossroads deciding which to follow. The decision today isn’t just about “growth” in the abstract; it’s about?how?to grow. On one path is the pursuit of higher growth forecasts at the cost of efficiency —previously the de facto mode for startup growth. On the other, a more measured approach is taking shape—slower growth but with airtight efficiency, sometimes even reaching the hallowed ground of cash-flow breakeven. Read my full perspective in my recent Crunchbase article (link in comments). I'd love to hear your experiences. Which approach resonates most with your journey?

We're excited to announce our investment in Freed! Freed frees clinicians from their number 1 source of burnout: clinical documentation. Freed’s AI scribe takes human-quality notes at the point of care, helping clinicians spend more time with their patients during the day and more time with their loved ones when they get home from the clinic. Freed has already impacted thousands. In less than two years, Freed has helped over 17,000 clinicians reclaim 2.7 million hours of their time. Read more from CNBC in the comments below.

The most important learning from what Erez Druk has built at Freed is when you build a product that is as loved by the user base as much as Freed is, anything becomes possible. Freed is a literal case study of how the AI platform shift creates outcomes that violate those old venture rules of thumb that turn out not to be quite right. There were many who told Erez that "PLG in healthcare is not a thing" but Freed's success says otherwise. Erez's brilliant insight is that 50% of clinicians do not work in large enterprise hospital systems and the tech stack of an independent practice is going to look much different than a large hospital and Freed will be the core system of engagement for these clinicians. Lots more to build and excited to be along for the ride!!