Top10 Lessons every EnterpriseAI Founder Should Know from VC Judge and Mentors at TiEcon 2025
TiEcon 2025 held at the Santa Clara Convention Center, brought together over 3,000 entrepreneurs, investors, tech leaders and aspirants to explore the future of applied AI under the “AiVerse” theme. As early-stage investors here are our Top 10 takeaways every founder should know. Written from our notes (not AI generated 🙂
10. Quantum’s Simmering, But Not Serving Yet
Quantum Processing (QPUs) are here and being used for biopharma and niche use cases. Its a rapidly evolving space and one we will watch and not be active in. The core technology is proven but a lot needs to be done before Enterprise Applications can be developed to run on Quantum infrastructure.
9. Enterprises are being AI-Rewritten (Your Opportunity)
As Chet Kapoor, Chairman and CEO of DataStax (acquired by IBM), aptly puts it: “Businesses are not just adapting, they are being rewritten by AI.”
Customer support, HR, sales, finance all the business processes are being re-done. The core of an enterprise will continue to be its proprietary data and the processes by which it serves its customers. We look forward to engaging with founders building the bridges for a company’s legacy business processes to be re-written in a world assisted and run by AI.
8. Every SaaS point solution is Now an AI Agent
Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, called it out. If you are building SaaS for the AI era, you will need more than an agent – think about how you optimize the entire stack – computer, memory, data, application, security and network for AI.
While some of this started many months ago, the path forward is getting clearer. We see 3 distinct trends emerging:
- Point SaaS solutions will get replaced with AI Agents.
- Business Logic workflows will move to intent driven agentic interactions.
- Per seat pricing models will evolve to outcome based models.
7. Binary Moments Create founder opportunity (G2C Sweet Spot)
With AI adoption in enterprises we are going through these binary moments. This in turn presents massive opportunities. Today, implementing AI is still in its infancy. The costs are high and the ROI is unproven.
We are looking to partner with founders who are thinking ahead and can articulate a clear and executable vision for solutions that can transform industries in the coming months and years. We saw a similar shift when the web browser started changing things. We built successful companies to transition on-premise solutions to the elastic cloud. Some of those same principles of company building will help build the leaders in Enterprise AI.
6. Ride the AI Horse
Mayfield’s Navin Chaddha stated this best: “AI is the new horse, you are the jockey.”
G2C has bet on the AI horse, we are now looking to partner with the best jockeys. Being a well coached jockey matters more than having the fanciest AI horse.
5. The One-Person $100M Company Dream will soon be reality
60% in room believed its 5 years away. A very smart Panel disagreed, indicating that scale will require teams.
We see today as the start of an era for developer renaissance.
With tools like GitHub co-pilot and resources from companies like AWS, Microsoft, NVidia, Cursor, etc are helping companies generate 30% of their code using AI. Developers and business visionaries who can get in a flow-state with AI assisted solutions will get massive leverage in getting to market faster. We are looking to partner with founders who can show that they punch above their weight class.
4. Security Makes or Breaks AI adoption.
“Without security – your AI Agent remains a demo.” stated Vasu Jakkal Corporate VP Microsoft Security who runs a $20B security business. With proper security controls and governance guardrails – you unlock enterprise budgets. She also stated “Use AI to secure your systems AND secure the AI agent itself.”
Lots of opportunities here as Agents go from Level 0 to 5 on a self driving scale.
3. AI is Math, Not Magic
Jay Vijayan Founder & CEO of Tekion dropped this gem: “Everyone from <an illiterate> to a PhD student knows math at their own level.”
Same goes with AI – it works for everyone, just differently.
Build apps that feel natural for whoever is using it. A business users shouldn’t need a 3 day training certification to use your app or trust it. Keep it simple, intuitive and useful.
2. Humans in the Driver’s Seat for now
Everyone is talking about AI Agents but “human in the loop” wins initial enterprise adoption.
We are looking to partner with founders who make AI automate the repetitive tasks while enabling users to intervene when needed to make judgement calls.
That’s a great recipe for success.
1. Hallway Wisdom Beats Keynote Hype
The real TiEcon magic happens in hallway and lunch conversations with battle-tested veteran founders. Over the years, we have worked with executives, founders and tech leaders who have navigated every tech wave since Windows 95 to Internet to Mobile and Cloud.
As one exec put it: “LLMs Compressed Google’s knowledge in 500B parameters — thats all it is.” Extracting value from it will take the same core company building principles and fundamentals that have unchanged over the decades of technology transformation waves.
We are looking to partner with founders who can cut through hype, build what works, and ride AI waves without getting wiped out by it.
Ready to partner? Let’s build the cognitive enterprise together.