How to Invest When Everything Is Moving Too Fast
At TechCrunch's StrictlyVC evening in Los Angeles, two of the most candid AI investors shared their perspectives on navigating today's rapidly shifting investment landscape. The event was as entertaining as it was insightful, offering rare straight talk from the front lines of AI funding.
TechCrunch's StrictlyVC evening in Los Angeles last week brought together two of the most refreshingly candid voices in AI investment today. The intimate setting allowed for an unusually frank conversation about what it really takes to back the right companies when the technological ground shifts beneath your feet on a near-daily basis. The audience, packed with founders and fellow investors, was treated to rare behind-the-scenes honesty from people actively deploying capital in one of history's most volatile sectors.
Both investors agreed that the traditional venture playbook is being stress-tested like never before. When a model release or a new capability can instantly render a startup's core value proposition obsolete, the usual frameworks for evaluating product-market fit need serious rethinking. The message was clear: investors who cling too tightly to old mental models risk being left behind in a market that rewards adaptability above almost everything else.
One of the most compelling themes of the evening was the distinction between durable AI infrastructure and what one investor called 'layer cake risk' — the danger of building a business on top of capabilities that a foundation model provider could absorb or replicate overnight. The smartest bets, they argued, are in companies that build proprietary data moats or deeply embed themselves into workflows that are genuinely painful to change. That kind of stickiness, they suggested, is the new defensibility.
The conversation closed on a surprisingly optimistic note, despite the many risks discussed. Both investors expressed conviction that the sheer scale of transformation underway means there will be more genuinely large companies created in the next decade than in the previous three combined. The key, they said, is not to chase consensus — because by the time everyone agrees something is a good investment, the best entry points have already passed.