How AI Is Changing The Playbook For Venture-Backed Companies

Nada Usina is CEO & Co-Founder of NU Advisory Partners.

​The question I hear most often in VC circles is whether the AI investment boom is a wave that will eventually crash. Will the flood of capital and climbing valuations prove to have sustainable traction and revenue? I’ve been at the forefront of several major technology shifts, from leading digital media companies through the dot-com era to working at the leading edge of mobile. Today, I’m building an AI-native, high-growth business. I’ve seen firsthand what happens when excitement gets ahead of fundamentals.

AI investment will continue well beyond 2026, but what interests me most is how AI is changing the way companies are built and led. Technology allows them to move faster with fewer people, challenging assumptions about what an executive team should look like.

AI Investing Is Earlier Than It Looks

The enormous amounts of capital being poured into AI make the market appear more mature than it is. Commercially, it is still early. A breakthrough in technology does not automatically create distribution, customer trust or a sustainable business.

AI can shorten that timeline considerably. We are seeing companies go from zero to $100 million in revenue at speeds that would have seemed extraordinary a decade ago. When a company can accomplish in a few years what once took 10, investors naturally start looking for the next one.

That speed can also lead to bad bets. Some companies will be swallowed by larger platforms while they are still small. Others will discover that an impressive product does not solve a problem customers urgently need to solve. It also raises a practical question for investors: What kind of leadership does a company need when it can grow this quickly with a much smaller team?