August Thought Waves: Get an Inside Look at Building AI-First Products ▶️⚡

Businesses that use AI effectively are delivering unmatched value and gaining a strong competitive edge. We caught up with the founders from Flagship and LIFELENZ to discuss how their AI-first products are setting new standards for their respective industries in retail and quick-service restaurants.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

🌙 The market opportunity for Vertical AI will surpass Vertical SaaS: Vertical AI solutions are expanding market share by taking on new capabilities such as augmenting human labour and developing new business models. Vertical AI entrants are charging 80% of the annual contract value of their incumbents.

🛍 How Flagship is disrupting the retail industry: Founder Simon Molnar explains how Flagship’s new proprietary data, layered with AI, has provided physical retail stores with the insights to sell more.

📆 Lifelenz’s impact on the future of workforce management: Founder Dr Stephen Kirby breaks down how Lifelenz’s AI models are transforming staff scheduling and onboarding processes, and generating stronger profits for quick-service restaurants.

🛠 The potential of AI is evolving how software products are built: Engineering models, proprietary data and feature deliveries enhanced by AI have provided businesses with unprecedented defensibility.

Catch the highlights.

HOT OFF THE PRESS 🔥

WELLNESS WINS

Sonder Chief People Officer Raechel Gavin spoke to HR Leader about how employee wellbeing programs should be utilised as a strategic lever to drive financial performance.

SHIPPING STANDARDS

Shippit launches their State of Shipping Report, providing an exclusive view on how fulfilment and consumer delivery is evolving and how retailers are adapting their ecommerce and logistics strategies.

CX INSIGHTS

Operata releases new platform feature, ‘Impresario’. The feature includes real-time agent guidance and predictive recommendations to provide a granular view of call conditions.

TEAM’S READS 📚

ATTENTION IS KING

Fee Lal takes a similar stance on points raised by Rob May around the value of the consumer’s attention. This has become all the more important with AI narrowing the gap between the best and worst performers, irrespective of the industry.

SOLE SEARCHING

USV’s thesis on the fragmentation of search has caught the eye of Samadhi Pelenda , where Google's dominance is now being segmented across a number of LLMs. She finds it compelling to see how the space evolves as SEO and advertising dollars decrease.

VERTICAL AI DOMINANCE

Our Head of Distribution, Chris Brookman found this framework for picking real AI winners and agreed with Dom Rizzo’s view that the world is underestimating the true impact of artificial intelligence.

WELCOME PAUL SLADE TO #TEN 🌊

Paul Slade is the Co-Founder of Roev , a company at the intersection of EV transport and renewable energy. Having built successful cloud products like Jira and Confluence, Paul is a seasoned engineering leader who has scaled teams from 10 to 1000's.

What is TEN?

We’ve brought together global founders and senior executives to leverage their deep expertise and drive growth across our portfolio. Beyond aiding our portfolio companies, TEN is also a community of connected capital, that offers a compelling investment opportunity across a diversified portfolio of exceptional companies.

Know someone who’d be perfect for TEN? We’re always excited to grow our community!

PORTFOLIO POSITIONS 🏄🏾♂️

Operata is on hunt for a Product Marketing Manager to lead their messaging and positioning strategies for core Operata products, growth programs and experiments.

Asseti is after a Business Development Representative, based in Dallas, to help set the stage for sales conversations as part of their expansion into the USA.

FrankieOne is hiring a Product Owner who will be responsible for driving the product vision, product roadmap, defining user stories to meet customers’ needs, and launching the go-to-market for these products.

Checkbox is looking for Senior Software Engineer to design and implement new features to their AI-powered Matter Management product – the “JIRA for lawyers”.