AI is moving fast — and the stack is being rebuilt.
In this edition of True North: Handshake AI’s scale, token spend as signal, software factories, SaaS rebuilt, and why human imperfection still matters.
If you’re building or investing in this shift, read more: trueventures.ai
Read the blog - www.servicenow.com/blogs/2026/e...
Long-term partnership means being first to believe — and showing up again.
We backed Tarun Thakur over a decade ago at Datos, and again at Veza. That trust compounds.
Today, as Veza joins ServiceNow, we’re proud to celebrate Tarun, Maohua Lu, Robert Whitcher, and the entire team.
Check out the full episode. It's a great weekend listen:
open.spotify.com/episode/5s1W...
Pendulum is redefining probiotics through rigorous science — not wellness trends, but real research into whole-body health.
Colleen, co-founder & CEO of Pendulum, joined Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard to share how this deeply personal moment became the reason Pendulum exists today.
Colleen Cutcliffe's daughter was born premature. The antibiotics that saved her life wiped out her gut microbiome. Colleen couldn't stop thinking about it. Nobody had the answer.
So she built a company to find it.
What happens to startup equity in an AI-native world?
#AIFounders #AIStartups #BuildingWithAI #AIInfrastructure #AppliedAI #EarlyStageAI #FounderLed #FrontierTech #AIBuilders #AIEntrepreneurs #GenZ
As brands shift to community-driven commerce, most still use tools built for broadcast — not real-time DMs. That’s the gap Misbah Uraizee and Farah Uraizee, founders of Nectar Social, saw early.
True Partner Tony Conrad shares how they’re rewriting the playbook: trueventures.com/blog/the-soc...
Get the full perspective from Jon Callaghan on the blog: trueventures.com/blog/the-tra...
For the past decade, capital was abundant and dilution normalized. AI is changing that. By lowering the cost to build and scale, founders can do more with less.
The result? As Jon Callaghan notes, ownership and leverage shift back to where they belong — with the builders.
Great to have Jon Callaghan, Founder and Managing Partner at True Ventures, back at his alma mater, Harvard Business School, for the HBS Venture Capital & Private Equity Conference.
True Partner @puneetagarwal.bsky.social began his career in middleware — the orchestration layer of the early internet. Two decades later, in a multimodel AI world, he’s seeing it disrupted again.
Read his 10 questions on building the next gen AI infrastructure:
trueventures.com/blog/the-gol...
Last week, we brought 40+ founders and builders together for True Founder Day.
No stage. No hype. Just people in the middle of building, sharing what’s actually working — and what isn’t.
We opened with one question: What would help you move faster right now?
www.linkedin.com/pulse/answer...
There’s a lot of noise right now about AI fortunes, fast money, and rocket ships. But most founders are scraping by, taking real risks, and betting years of their lives on problems they believe actually matter. That's why we believe in Usul founders Jarren Reid and Oliver Gomez.
One of Jon’s filters: Are you the kind of founder people want to build with—and back twice?
Tune into the full episode: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w...
@juliebornstein.bsky.social is one of them. Founder of The Yes, now founder of Daydream, and one of 70 repeat True founders.
Her advice: “Runway is your best friend and your biggest gift.” She estimated $8M, raised $11M, and built in buffer—because it always takes longer than you think.
“I never expect founders to have all the answers. I do expect high conviction and a really low ego.” – True's @jcal7.bsky.social on Fund/Build/Scale.
After 20 years, the pattern is clear: we back missionaries, not mercenaries. Founders building for the long game—people others want to follow.
High ownership. Low noise. First to believe.
True's @jcal7.bsky.social joins @connieloizos.bsky.social and Alex Gove on StrictlyVC Download to talk contrarian investing—building conviction in noisy markets, staying founder-first, and why duration is a feature (not a bug).
Below: a couple pics from @puneetagarwal.bsky.social — Tarun’s whiteboard drawing in our office (still there!) that led to our first seed check in Veza, and the napkin drawings that led to our first seed check into Datos.
Venture is ultimately about long-term partnership. Our work with Tarun Thakur began 11 years ago at Datos, continued into Veza, and today marks a remarkable milestone as Veza is acquired by @servicenow.bsky.social.
Congratulations to Tarun and the entire Veza team on the successful acquisition.
As AI agents evolve, one question keeps surfacing: Are we re-engineering our processes to make agents work better or to make humans work better?
Maybe, ultimately, those are the same thing.
At #ConnectedStack, @levie.bsky.social (CEO, Box) explored this with @puneetagarwal.bsky.social (True)
Day 1 of our release sprint 🚀
CascadeFlow shipped, open source AI cascading that cuts costs 30-65% in 3 lines of code.
Small models handle 80% of workflows. Python + TypeScript. MIT licensed.
Try it & leave a ⭐
github.com/lemony-ai/ca...
#OpenSource #AI
A new company called Sandbar has unveiled a smart wearable called Stream Ring, which uses a microphone to record your softly spoken thoughts. And it’s powered by—you guessed it—an AI chatbot. www.wired.com/story/sandba...
The True Ventures Fellowship is now accepting applications — but not for long!
We’re looking for rising and current college seniors who want to dive into the world of venture capital and entrepreneurship this summer.
Applications close November 10th.
Apply below.
“Agents are tapping into spend that software never could.”
At #ConnectedStack, @puneetagarwal.bsky.social + @levie.bsky.social unpack why AI shifts the economics of labor — and why the old “per seat” model doesn’t fit anymore. connectedstack.ai
In a world flooded with AI hype, trust might be the real moat.
At #ConnectedStack, Paul Smith (@anthropic.com) and Garrett Lord (@joinhandshake.bsky.social) unpacked why finance, healthcare, and other regulated sectors are leading enterprise adoption of Claude.
“We can’t ever, ever let them down.”
True's @jcal7.bsky.social on why this moment demands contrarian thinking: trueventures.com/blog/consens...
Consensus never built the future.
Larry and Sergey were outliers. So were Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Karp. Power-law returns come from contrarian capital backing remarkable talent.
Yet the VC industry is chasing "consensus founders" and mega-rounds—dangerous conformity we've seen fail before.
Hear directly from @julzwalk.bsky.social and @mikaelalipsky.bsky.social about the True Ventures Fellowship program. Applications are open now! Link in bio to apply.
