Mercedes Bent

  • Digitizing Voice Buttons

    In the movie Arrival, there’s a scene where Ian reads from Dr. Louise Banks’ book: “Language is the foundation of civilization,” she wrote. “It is the glue that holds people together. It’s the first weapon drawn in a conflict.”  Arrival is based on Ted Chiang’s “A Story of Your Life” which is about the difference…

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  • The Missing Layer in the AI Stack: Authentication

    A few weeks ago in late March I hosted an event in San Francisco on the topic of “AI Agents” – what’s missing and what needs to happen for them to work. Erich Elsen, the cofounder of Adept, an early agent platform that raised $300M+, and Sam Partee, cofounder of Arcade.dev, spoke at our event.…

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  • Search is at War

    Defensibility in the Age of AI Search Search is at war. LLMs are quickly changing how consumers search. A lot is at stake, including the market caps of 2 of the top 5 most valuable companies in the world. Google (GOOG: $1.9T market cap) and Amazon (AMZN: $2.04T) each dominate different types of search: knowledge…

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  • Consumption v. Creation Breakthroughs and How AI Can Revive Consumer Social

    It’s been nearly a decade since a major social platform broke through — you can argue the last was either TikTok which bought Musically in 2017 (and then spent billions on acquisition), or Discord (200M MAU), founded in 2015.  But the time may be now. The newest wave of AI has created a perfect storm…

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  • The Screens are Marching Closer: How Tech Interfaces Evolve

    I’ve long had a thesis that “The Screens are Marching Closer.” The screens are marching closer means each successive iteration of tech interfaces will prioritize ease and intuition by bringing the screens closer to our face (and one day inside them with brain-computer interfaces). It’s what has me so convinced that typing into a chatbot…

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  • How AI is changing the rules of Consumer Engagement

    AI is changing the rules of consumer engagement. Many formerly dependable tactics for building consumer tech products are changing. Operators will need to “re-learn” how build consumer tech in the world of AI. Across our consumer portfolio companies and externally, here’s a snapshot of where I’m seeing key areas of change: 🔹 **Acquisition**– Who the…

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