Tom Tunguz is General Partner at Theory Ventures, a venture capital fund he founded after a decade as a partner at Redpoint Ventures. He writes daily on his blog at tomtunguz.com, tracking AI company formation patterns, SaaS valuation multiples, and the economic structure of services-as-software businesses. His analysis covers private and public market data, company-building patterns in AI-native startups, and the structural shift from seat-based to outcome-based pricing models.
Operating themes
- Category position over growth rate. Tunguz argues the market in 2026 prices AI company category leadership rather than trailing growth, mirroring 2021 multiple dynamics but at 3x faster underlying growth rates.
- Services-as-software economics. He tracks how AI agents replace high-margin human-delivered services, shifting revenue per employee benchmarks and redefining unit economics for professional services categories.
- Infrastructure monetization of agents. His public market analysis identifies which existing software companies are positioned to earn compounding revenue from every new AI agent deployed, and why category position predicts the multiple more than growth rate does.