Jake Saper of Emergence Capital joins Nick to discuss Mirage PMF, What LLMs Will Take On and What They Will Avoid, Why Outcomes Will Shift Models from Software to Services, and How Pricing Playbooks Are Being Rewritten. In this episode we cover:
- SaaS Market Sell-Off and Future of Software
- Impact of AI on Established Brands like Salesforce
- Mirage Product Market Fit and AI Native Services
- Business Models and Pricing in the AI Era
- Challenges for Incumbents and Innovator’s Dilemma
- Laggard Industries and AI Adoption
- Role of LLMs and Future of Technology Vendors
Guest Links:
The host of The Full Ratchet is Nick Moran of New Stack Ventures, a venture capital firm committed to investing in founders outside of the Bay Area.
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00:17–00:46
Speaker 2
Jake Saper joins us today from San Francisco. He’s a general partner at Emergence Capital, an early stage venture capital firm focused on B2B software and AI. They are investing out of their $1 billion fund seven, and have $3.3 billion in AUM. Before emergence, Jake was at Kleiner Perkins. He has backed standout companies including zoom, Mechanical Orchard, Hanover Park, Gusto Aerospace and Bedrock Robotics.
Jake, welcome to the show.
00:46–00:47
Speaker 3
Nick, I’m thrilled to be here.
00:48–00:51
Speaker 2
I’m glad you’re well hydrated. I’ve been excited for this interview.
00:52–00:57
Speaker 2
All right, sir. Um, tell us about maybe your two minute backstory and path to venture.
00:57–01:53
Speaker 3
Yeah, sure. Um, so I grew up in Austin, Texas in the 80s and 90s, sort of as the first wave of the Austin tech scene was happening. Um, and I was very lucky in the sense that my parents were co-founders. So my parents have started a bunch of companies together, uh, including a number of tech companies. Um, they started something called Saber Media Group in the 90s, which was an early web development agency that did, you know, some early websites for companies like Dell and Samsung, Austin and kind of that early Austin tech scene.
So I was sitting shotgun on early stage startups literally since I was a kid. Um, which I did not realize until years later was amazing preparation for being a venture capitalist. Uh, because that’s what I do now. You know, I have I have the same. Like, which market should I expand into? How do I think about the competitive threat here?
