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<div style="display: none; max-height: 0px; overflow: hidden;">VC has grown into massive funds like Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia, but the traditional VC model struggles with today’s software and AI markets </div>
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<a href="https://tracking.tldrnewsletter.com/CL0/https:%2F%2Fmetronome.com%2Fblog%2Fthe-openai-blueprint-designing-monetization-for-the-ai-era%3Futm_campaign=tldr-sponsorship%26utm_medium=newsletter%26utm_source=tldr-founder%26utm_content=/1/0100019c28d59785-cf529f31-1066-48da-95ce-9df9f645f07f-000000/70-s5q82vSVgHEzjSYT-FFGoPbLdnsNsuw-k2IfQLrc=443"><img src="https://images.tldr.tech/metronome2.png" valign="middle" style="vertical-align: middle !important; height: 100%;" alt="Metronome"></a></td></tr></tbody></table>
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<h1><strong> TLDR Founders <span id="date">2026-02-04</span></strong></h1>
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<a href="https://tracking.tldrnewsletter.com/CL0/https:%2F%2Fmetronome.com%2Fblog%2Fthe-openai-blueprint-designing-monetization-for-the-ai-era%3Futm_campaign=tldr-sponsorship%26utm_medium=newsletter%26utm_source=tldr-founder%26utm_content=/2/0100019c28d59785-cf529f31-1066-48da-95ce-9df9f645f07f-000000/JEFLGrMN3RSUEiDUdFyBdSUFzbH-iLa6fh9gLdv2NoU=443">
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<strong>OpenAI's monetization blueprint for the AI era (Sponsor)</strong>
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When Sara Conlon joined OpenAI, each product team managed its own billing logic. The result was duplicated effort, inconsistency, and technical fragility. <p></p><p>Conlon changed that by creating the Financial Engineering team and centralizing billing for the whole company. At Monetize 2025, she sat down with Metronome to explain how she <a href="https://tracking.tldrnewsletter.com/CL0/https:%2F%2Fmetronome.com%2Fblog%2Fthe-openai-blueprint-designing-monetization-for-the-ai-era%3Futm_campaign=tldr-sponsorship%26utm_medium=newsletter%26utm_source=tldr-founder%26utm_content=/3/0100019c28d59785-cf529f31-1066-48da-95ce-9df9f645f07f-000000/3G1U88axht5hMLTFxgK75n0LKLE2DofJ9oo1rfsWZgk=443" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank"><span>built a billing org for hypergrowth</span></a>.</p>
<p>Read the <a href="https://tracking.tldrnewsletter.com/CL0/https:%2F%2Fmetronome.com%2Fblog%2Fthe-openai-blueprint-designing-monetization-for-the-ai-era%3Futm_campaign=tldr-sponsorship%26utm_medium=newsletter%26utm_source=tldr-founder%26utm_content=/4/0100019c28d59785-cf529f31-1066-48da-95ce-9df9f645f07f-000000/GUbTfIYktAcIpn7ik7qbSZrfr8FhbUTERG5LdaF3oCc=443" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank"><span>blog</span></a> for key insights, including:</p>
<ul>
<li>The evolution of billing teams in 3 stages: Survival, Advising, and Proactive</li>
<li>Why embedded monetization code causes outages, and how platformized billing solves this</li>
<li>Designing systems to expand with new models</li>
</ul>
<p><a href="https://tracking.tldrnewsletter.com/CL0/https:%2F%2Fmetronome.com%2Fblog%2Fthe-openai-blueprint-designing-monetization-for-the-ai-era%3Futm_campaign=tldr-sponsorship%26utm_medium=newsletter%26utm_source=tldr-founder%26utm_content=/5/0100019c28d59785-cf529f31-1066-48da-95ce-9df9f645f07f-000000/c59zCJVrycLm3hFa7pAb2CuzytfPW5TFAL06wrX8Bkw=443" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank"><span>Read more on the Metronome blog</span></a>
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<h1><strong>Headlines & Trends</strong></h1>
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<strong>Patient Capital Will Eat the World (25 minute read)</strong>
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Venture capital has grown into massive funds like Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia, but the traditional VC model struggles with today's software and AI markets. Growth-stage software no longer requires or generates capital in the way early SaaS or consumer internet companies did, and AI companies increasingly need infrastructure financing, not conventional venture funding. Institutional VC is constrained by LP mandates, fund timelines, and deployment expectations, forcing investment even when better opportunities would be to wait. As a result, funds invent narratives to justify current positions while real liquidity remains scarce due to limited IPOs and conservative M&A markets.
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<strong>YC Spring 2026 Requests for Startups (5 minute read)</strong>
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YC published a list of 10 startup areas it wants to fund this spring. The themes span AI-native workflows replacing legacy software, stablecoins as financial infrastructure, and modernizing heavy industry and government. Notable entries include "Cursor for PMs," AI-native agencies, and modern metal mills.
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<h1><strong>Strategies & Tactics</strong></h1>
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<strong>Finding GTM alpha (10 minute read)</strong>
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'Alpha' is an investment's outperformance over a market benchmark. It is what separates market-beating investors from the rest. GTM alpha starts with having better data than your competitors. Unique data is a competitive edge. Top teams stay ahead by experimenting, learning, and launching better plays faster.
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<strong>When to Raise VC (3 minute read)</strong>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif;">
Venture capital requires extremely high returns, often 50x, which rules out businesses in small or focused markets that can still generate strong profit and exits. Forcing a VC narrative onto a business misaligned with hypergrowth pressures leads to wasted time and compromised product decisions. Founders should match their financing strategy to market opportunity, using angels or bootstrapping for steady growth and VCs only when capital materially changes outcomes.
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<strong>How to Build AI Product Sense (12 minute read)</strong>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif;">
Product managers and founders can develop AI intuition by using tools like Cursor for non-technical work. This interactive guide walks through practical exercises that help you understand AI capabilities and limitations firsthand. The best way to know what AI can do for your product is to experience it yourself rather than relying on demos or documentation.
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<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 36px;">⚒️</span></div></div>
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<h1><strong>Tools & Resources</strong></h1>
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<strong>moltbook (Tool)</strong>
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moltbook is a social network for AI agents where agents can share, discuss, and upvote content. Humans can observe, but the platform is designed for agent‑to‑agent interaction.
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<strong>Polyvia (Tool)</strong>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif;">
Polyvia is a Visual Knowledge Index that turns large collections of images into a queryable, disambiguated source of truth for multimodal agents and knowledge workflows.
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<strong>Hugo (Tool)</strong>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif;">
Hugo is an AI support teammate that resolves customer tickets autonomously, reducing support workload while maintaining quality responses.
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<div style="text-align: center;"><strong><h1>Miscellaneous</h1></strong></div>
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