Sakib Jamal
@skbjml
a student of the craft | early-stage investor looking for complex ideas in ‘weird’ niches cracked open by AI or fintech/credit | 🇧🇩
The Young VC’s Handbook is now live! When I started in venture, I was overwhelmed with implicit rules and jargon And it looked like I wasn’t the only one - many who joined the industry before or after me also had the same set of questions (1/5)
Seeing a resurgence of credit-enabled fintech cos, fueled by AI unlocking new underwriting capabilities and origination channels. In case useful, sharing the framework we use internally for lending businesses: (1) Origination: - Have they carved out a defensible wedge into the…
Asked the Head of AI at a Fortune 500 how he decides buy vs build, and his framework feels widely applicable: “we buy what accelerates us, and build what differentiates us”
“Your [lack of] margin is my opportunity” Today’s companies building full stack services firm and owning the customer, instead of selling software, has flipped how I think about markets Low-margin incumbents are now *more* attractive if there’s a credible margin expansion story
A lot of media coverage on the tragic crash in Dhaka today But very few noted how the pilot had plenty of time to eject, but instead chose to stay and attempt a diversion away from populated areas… RIP Flight Lieutenant Towkir, a real Bengal Tiger
Breaking News: At least 19 people were killed and 50 injured in Bangladesh’s capital after a military aircraft crashed onto a school campus, an official said. nyti.ms/44Zi2ZQ
Two things top of mind: (1) It's not that SaaS is dead - only narrow, single player tools are. Multiple stakeholders / e2e workflows feel like table stakes, but still room for outperformance via novel use cases of AI (2) As per-seat / recurring pricing remain under pressure,…
Love to see real leadership play out with clear communication
It’s a privilege to welcome Windsurf to Cognition. Here are more details in the note I sent to our Cognition team this morning: Team, As discussed during our all-hands, we are acquiring Windsurf. We have now signed a definitive agreement and we couldn’t be more excited. Here’s…
EvenUp, once a fully remote AI startup, is opening a downtown SF office—because they know top talent is here. To all entrepreneurs: San Francisco is a global hub for innovation, and if you're building a business, this is where you need to be!
With the city’s AI industry bubbling and startups planting their flags in downtown, the remote company is pulling the trigger on a physical headquarters to ensure they don’t miss out on top talent. sfchronicle.com/realestate/art…
Go @tseides and go @MichaelOvitz !
Reinventing talent and building momentum at Treville Capital Group. My conversation with Michael Ovitz. capitalallocators.com/podcast/reinve… With thanks to WCM Investment Management and @AlphaSenseInc.
This can be the lovable / replit moment for building visual AI Initially built for developers at vertical saas cos, this latest iteration allows low-code devs to build custom solutions. Imagine supercharging your Zapier / n8n workflows with OCR, object detection, etc.
🤯 Building computer-vision applications is never going to be the same again. As @karpathy says, "English is going to be the new programming-language", and we just made that happen for programming visual AI. 👨💻 This past month, the @vlmrun team cooked up something magical that…
Counter-intuitively, people getting promoted fastest at our portcos are those ruthlessly automating away their own jobs They're seen as 'AI native' and are prized at the company, since they can claim they saved x amount of hours / costs, and are evidently high agency players
I’ve been spending (and will continue to spend) a lot of time searching for founders with venture-scale ambition to tackle the housing crisis in novel ways We looked closely at the ADU space; the promise is real, but the bottlenecks are stubborn: permitting remains slow and…
I think a lot of people fail to grasp that you can innovate all you want, society will never feel truly prosperous for the next generation until you solve the housing crisis People have music or movies at their fingertips with a cheap subscription. We can get burritos delivered…
The coolest thing David @FoundersPodcast has done is make ‘try hards’ cool I remember how it was a bit of a slur, but now being obsessed and dedicated is cool again Because alas, it turns out anyone who’s done work that mattered was exactly like that
Reflecting on this 2023 piece by @cpaik While founders don’t fit in buckets, they do lean one way vs other. And VCs should be able to adapt to each A top down founder may want more of a sparring partner as they can benefit from stress-testing diff paths along the way Bottoms…
Texting is great, but nothing beats picking up the phone and having a real (respectfully short) conversation
Everyone talks about having focus and being contrarian, but when doing both well, it’s actually supposed to be quite uncomfortable Inspired by this excerpt from @phokarlsson
This is what top tier GTM job postings look like in 2025
One of the FASTEST growing cos in my angel portfolio ($6m ARR in 18 mos) is looking to make a killer Growth hire. Extremely durable revenues (NOT experimental!) & 80%+ gross margins (AI works)! Targeting $20m ARR EOY You will not regret working with @Cyrushshirazi & @adhoc97.