We invested in SUN: Personalized AI audio content

One of our approaches to investing in AI is to figure out what industries have an elastic demand curve. As the cost to supply declines, will demand increase enough to lead to increased value, rather than a simple race to the bottom? One of the industries where I believe the demand curve is elastic is media and content, where I have predicted that media will end up like an hourglass: To succeed, content needs to either be premium content that a large and valuable audience will want to consume (e.g. the movie Oppenheimer) or it needs to be personalized to the very specific interests and passions of the individual consumer. SUN, one of the AI startups we've invested in from cohort 6 of a16z's Speedrun accelerator, is taking just this personalized approach to audio.

Artin, Amy, and Matt have built a product that makes it incredibly simple for an individual consumer to get the audio content they want, about the exact topic they want, whenever they want it. I've already used SUN to create and consume content about a host of niche topics, ranging from the history of the tabletop wargame Star Fleet Battles, to "The Architect of Scale: The Chris Yeh Story." It's rapidly become one of my favorite apps!

Of course, product-market fit is only one of our investment criteria at Blitzscaling Ventures. We believe that as SUN grows, it will naturally start to bring its avid listeners together based on their common interests, whether those be specific technologies, individual sports teams, or favorite reality television shows. This kind of community builds the kind of network effects and virality that a startup needs to attain long-term competitive advantage.

We're excited to be working with the SUN team on building the future of hyper-personalized audio and community! You try the app for yourself here.