Lak Ananth

A few weeks back, I watched Maggie Hott, GTM leader at OpenAI, confidently navigate her first board meeting at Unify. Having worked with her through Emergence Capital's Operator in Residence (OIR) program, seeing her immediately contribute valuable insights made me think about how most board members receive virtually no training for this critical role. At Emergence, we've built our firm around developing board excellence. We grow all our partners from within and have established a culture of mentorship focused on board service. Junior investors aren't thrown into the deep end—we pair them with senior GPs to observe effective board dynamics firsthand. My initial experience was at DroneDeploy alongside my partner Kevin Spain, where I got great mentorship before taking on independent board responsibilities. We extend this methodology to our OIR program, where operators learn how to be effective board members. Based on my experience mentoring directors, here are the fundamental principles I share with first-timers for how board members can best support founders: 1. Reframe the purpose: Problem-solving, not reporting If your board meeting is primarily reporting, you're wasting your management team's time. Information sharing should happen asynchronously, with board members engaging with materials before the meeting. This enables the live session to leverage collective intelligence on critical challenges. This rarely happens because many directors overextend themselves across too many boards—another reason we maintain a disciplined investment pace. 2. Master the Socratic approach The most valuable contribution often comes through thoughtful questions rather than declarative statements. Your objective is to enhance the decision-making capability of management. I enter each meeting with 1-3 specific areas where I know I can add value, focusing questions on these topics. 3. Follow-through separates professionals from amateurs Diligently document your commitments, establish clear action items, and execute them. It's crazy how just doing this proactively makes a board member stand out. 4. Understand your unique contribution to the board ecosystem A high-functioning board resembles a great basketball team—you need complementary skills, not redundant ones. In every meeting, I stay conscious of my distinct value relative to others in the room, whether that's SaaS expertise, AI knowledge, or a particular relationship dynamic with the CEO. I calibrate my role based on needs—sometimes assertively addressing areas where others have less experience, other times asking probing questions where fellow members have deeper expertise. -- To my knowledge, Emergence is the only VC firm with a formalized program dedicated to board excellence. It's an investment that yields returns where they matter most—in bending the odds of success for our founders. Founders, I'm curious: What board member behaviors have you found most valuable?

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Scale Venture Partners is deeply committed to investing in Verticals with portfolio companies such as Motive (supply chain & logistics), Viz.ai (healthcare), Root Inc. (insurance), BILL (fintech), and Dusty Robotics (AEC). Today we're publicly sharing our ongoing work to understand the Vertical markets via new site dedicated to the subject: https://lnkd.in/g6wGHKNc 1) The future of AI is vertical (https://lnkd.in/ggwGUxvm) as we see markets increase as well as domain-specific and fragmented knowledge finally captured by companies that can navigate complex regulatory environments. 2) As we lean into AI, it continues to hold true that the best companies innovate by combining disruption in product AND go-to-market. We think the past is the best teacher for the future, and are sharing our outlines on companies we admire such as CCC Intelligent Solutions Epic Esri FICO RMS and others. We'll continue to add more, and point out what we think is special about these companies to take forward to modern products. 3) We already have a deep repository of content that is now easier to find and access. This work benefits from contributions of many colleagues including Jeremy Kaufmann Rory O'Driscoll Stacey Bishop Noah Gross Jonas Ciplickas Omar Fidawi Damian Gardiner Sanjeev Kriplani Roger Arnemann and others. 4) I'm inspired by the work of many, including our peers in the venture industry. Our passion for Verticals is shared by others, and we hope to point to their work as well. Reach out and tell us your favorites, so far we are particularly in love with the writings from Euclid Ventures Tidemark Equal Ventures and Fractal Software. 5) As we look out, come back here, share your thoughts, and tell us where you'd like us to dig in.

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“Platform” might be the most over-used term in enterprise software. Platform companies trade at hefty premiums and have driven most of the software market cap appreciation over the past five years. Everyone wants to be one. Pitch after pitch, we hear companies talk about their “platform opportunity,” regardless of what the product is or how it’s built. The bottom line is: companies can call themselves platforms all they want, but ultimately, the proof is in the P&L. Justin Kahl and I broke down the anatomy of enterprise platforms to track if you're on the path to building one - link below: https://lnkd.in/gMdaFw7D

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VC generalists are becoming the dinosaurs of investing. The VC landscape is shifting toward vertical specialization. We want to see more funds focused on supply chain, deeptech, govtech, space and ethics. 🏭 Supply Chain Funds - While generalists were funding another food delivery app, these folks were quietly rebuilding global logistics infrastructure that could finally tell you why your package is actually "out for delivery" for 3 days 🔬 Deeptech Investors - They're not just funding another AI image generator, but backing the engineers creating home robots that might actually fold your laundry instead of just creating more 🏛️ Govtech Specialists - Brave souls navigating procurement cycles longer than most venture fund lifespans, saving taxpayers billions and countless headaches by building digital services that don't look like they were designed in 1997 🚀 Space-Focused VCs - Not deterred by the minor detail that their investments might literally explode on launch day, because they're funding the companies that will build the first Mars colony while the rest of us are still arguing about pizza toppings 🧠 Ethics-Centered Funds - Backing startups creating fair insurance models that don't punish you for your zip code and proving you can make money without causing societal collapse, a truly revolutionary concept in some venture circles Turns out actually understanding the industry you invest in is somehow advantageous. Who could have predicted this shocking development? Which vertical specializations do you think will deliver the strongest returns in the next decade? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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From our PearX S25 cohort, meet Pravāh, the AI-native operating system for the electric grid When Mohak Mangal, Dhruv Suri, and Aman Gupta looked at the strain on the U.S. electric grid, they saw a system pushed to its limits. Exploding demand and unpredictable supply have made blackouts increasingly common. This costs the economy more than $150B a year, a number that could 10x in the next five years. Mohak Mangal and team founded Pravāh to help fix it. Their platform helps utilities and grid operators make real-time decisions on load, generation, and congestion, reducing blackout risks, optimizing power procurement, and bringing much-needed stability to the backbone of modern life. We’re proud to support the Pravāh team as they take on one of the toughest and most important infrastructure challenges of our time.

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From Measurement to Orchestration, with Pranav Piyush from Paramark.com In this week's Intelligent Marketer ep, Rishabh and I dug into the evolution of marketing measurement in a world where direct, click-based attribution has broken. The smartest marketing teams are building systems that triangulate incrementality testing + MMM results. Pranav discusses how getting this "central brain" right is a critical foundation for AI-driven orchestration & execution of an end-to-end marketing roadmap. Topics covered: - Policies, not dashboards: how to decode decisions as machine-readable rules that turn insights into actions - Confidence-weighted budgets: how to use error bars in lift/MMM results to drive budget reallocation - Latency-aware orchestration: how to incorporate daily platform signals vs weekly incrementality results vs quarterly MMM output - Creative as a portfolio: how to weight hit rate & EV alongside typical ROAS metrics - Constraint-aware bidding: how to bake margin, inventory, compliance, and brand safety costs into the decision function

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Zipline, a U.S.-based drone logistics company backed by Goldman Sachs and Sequoia Capital, plans to expand to 5 additional Nigerian states by the end of 2025. This expansion follows an MOU signed with the Nigerian government in September 2024, allowing Zipline to use its #drone infrastructure to deliver essential #medical #supplies to #remote and #underserved areas. Zipline, which expanded to Nigeria in 2022, operates drone deployment stations, known as “nests,” in Bayelsa, Kaduna, and Cross River. The company is in talks with five more states to expand its network to seven nests, further strengthening its role in Nigeria’s #healthcare #supplychain Read more on TechCabal: https://lnkd.in/eBrMB-WW

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The old SaaS pricing playbook doesn’t work for AI. Madhavan Ramanujam and I partnered with Emergence Capital and Jake Saper to write a new one—built for where AI is going, not just where it is today. We lay out what state-of-the-art AI pricing looks like now—and what it will look like: ✅ Hybrid pricing (seats + usage) is the current best practice 🎯 Outcome-based models are the future—pricing tied directly to impact 💰 The best AI companies already capture 25–50% of the value they create As autonomy and attribution improve, outcome pricing will go from rare to expected. Founders who move early will win. Full read here 👉 https://lnkd.in/gwp6tDtp

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