“Embedded finance” has gone mainstream

3 trends in startups/tech/venture

📈 “Embedded finance” is going mainstream

• Embedded finance—integrating payments, lending, or insurance directly into non-financial platforms—is no longer a trend; it’s becoming the new standard.

• Vertical SaaS startups (software focused on a specific industry) are leading the charge. The goal? To become the business "operating system" by collecting industry-specific data and then using that data to offer industry-specific products (like instant lending for factory maintenance).

• I’ve regularly spoken about embedded finance and the future of finance more broadly for executives at EY, Google, NVIDIA and more (video clip here).

🤖 More isn’t better when it comes to AI agents

• The current AI hype cycle is pushing companies toward complex, multi-agent workflows. However, the latest research from Google and MIT suggests that "more" often leads to "less."

• Researchers found that adding more AI agents doesn't guarantee a linear improvement. Instead, results vary wildly based on the task:

  • Data accuracy tasks (e.g. financial analysis) saw an 81% improvement when split across agents.

  • Sequential tasks (e.g. Minecraft gaming) saw performance degrade by up to 70% when more agents were added.

  • The 45% threshold: When a single agent can hit 45%+ accuracy on a task, adding more typically leads to worse performance — with multiple agents eating through AI tokens quickly and costing more than they’re worth.

• The takeaway? For tasks requiring accuracy, multiple well-optimized agents are faster and cheaper. For tasks requiring step-by-step reasoning, a single well-optimized agent is faster and cheaper.

💰 Solo capitalists are in the spotlight

• 5 years ago, "solo GPs" (venture funds run by a single individual as General Partner) were a rarity. Today, solo GPs have not only become the majority of new funds raised, but are even outraising and outperforming their multi-GP peers:

  • Outraising: In 2025, Elad Gil became the first solo GP to raise a $1.5 billion venture fund, proving that LPs (Limited Partners, aka investors into venture funds) are willing to back individual talent at scale.

  • Outperforming: Per AngelList, solo GPs funds consistently show higher markup rates (rates at which their portfolio companies increase in valuation) than multi-GP funds.

• Why are one-person funds winning?

  • More efficient: Solo GPs are more likely to use AI-driven sourcing and diligence tools to replace the traditional "army of analysts," thereby keeping costs low.

  • More personal: Founders increasingly favor having a single point of contact over faceless and impersonal “institutions.”

  • More stable: LPs increasingly see solo GPs as less risky because they won’t have the co-founder conflicts, team politics, and compensation disputes commonly seen in multi-partner firms. In fact, it’s more likely for partnerships to break apart than for solo GPs to walk away.

2 theses on what’s next

🤖 The best products will prompt you

• As I’ve shared previously, we’ve officially entered “phase 3” of the AI era. What happens in “phase 3”? It’s when AI shifts from being reactive to proactive.

• Rather than require users to initiate every task, the best products will be “ambient agents” that gather context from external tools (e.g. emails, Slack, Zoom) to learn what users need, and then use that data to nudge users into taking the necessary action.

• The result? Humans will shift from “writing” to “editing.”

🤔 The best founders LEAP from fractional to full-time

• LEAP stands for:

  • Leverage: Leverage their full-time role as an unfair advantage to learn deeply about problems worth solving.

  • Experiment: Experiment part-time with potential solutions (after honing in on a problem). Every startup is a hypothesis, and the best fractional founders run efficient experiments. 80/20 rule.

  • Accelerate: Accelerate growth (e.g. revenue, users, learning) so that growth in their part-time project outpaces growth in their full-time role.

  • Persist: Persist longer than others. Ten Year Rule.

• I’ve put together an email course called “Zero to Startup: How to Identify a Winning Idea Fast” (you can find it by clicking into any post in the newsletter here, then Ctrl + F for “Enroll Now”), and I’m working on a workbook to help fractional founders make the leap from part-time to full-time (coming soon).

1 tool I love

🎓 Turn ideas into personalized and ready-to-teach resources

• TeachShare helps educators create engaging, differentiated, and evidence-based classroom lessons. The co-founders (who are former students of mine!) were just featured on Forbes 30 Under 30.

• You can learn more about the story behind TeachShare here.

More of my work 👇🏼

🎤 Decode videos | For top Berkeley and Stanford founders

• DECODE is the largest founder community co-hosted across UC Berkeley and Stanford. The DECODE annual conference focuses on helping founders in their earliest stages of starting a startup. I’ve had the honor of serving on the DECODE board since 2016.

• You can find the latest conference highlights video and playlist here.

🤖 Founders' prompt library

• My team and I have compiled the largest AI prompt library optimized for founders – especially fractional founders. This is not just another collection of prompts. It’s the largest and most comprehensive prompt library for founders.

• You can access it here.

👥 Pop up board

• I regularly host pop-up board, which is a unique 45-minute session where founders can present to a handpicked group of seasoned operators and executives, who have led teams as C-Suite at some of the world's top companies. This is founders’ chance to ask their toughest strategic questions, get tailored advice, and learn what it’s like to engage with a real board.

• You can find the application here.