Hyatt: B2B SaaS investing was about metrics; AI is a mystery
Nabeel Hyatt · Nabeel Hyatt, GP @ Spark Capital: To Win in AI, Investors Need to Change Their Approach | E1255 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Feb 3, 2025 · at 1:47
Nabeel Hyatt, General Partner at Spark Capital, contrasts the metrics-driven B2B SaaS era with AI investing, arguing that AI's unpredictability renders traditional venture capital playbooks obsolete.
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“Greg Treverton uses this phrase of puzzles versus mysteries, which is just like puzzles are this thing that you can like, you know, use that raw horsepower to solve. And mysteries are, you know, there you have to go on the journey. There's like fog of war and you cannot work it out ahead of time. And many, in many ways, like the BDB SaaS blow up of that era was all about like the industrialization of venture capital. It was all about figuring out all of the puzzles needed to hire a hundred associates to do all of the work, to figure out exactly the right SaaS metrics, and then grind it all out. And no one has any idea what a model is even going to do in a week. So I don't know how that isn't a mystery.”
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