Bonfire Ventures

My partner Brett Queener recently wrote a sharp piece on how the shift from SaaS to AI is rewriting the rules of defensibility and company building. I summarized his thinking here because it’s close to how we evaluate every new seed investment at Bonfire Ventures. The short version: code is getting easier to produce, single-player tools are increasingly vulnerable, and the companies that last will be the ones that build compounding loops, where proprietary data and deep workflow context make the product sharper with every deployment. That lens shapes where we spend our time. We’re looking for companies where AI changes the structure of the business, not just the product roadmap. The bar for founders is just as high. The best ones right now aren’t just adopting AI. They build with it and sell with it, and it shows in how lean they run from day one. I unpacked the full framework, including where Bonfire is focused with our $245M Fund IV and the companies already proving the thesis out, in the article below.

Just back from the Bonfire Ventures summit at the Ojai Valley Inn. Three days, 70+ founders, 45+ LPs, no agenda BS. The venue was unreal. The kind of place that actually lets you focus on the hard things. What's working, what's not, what we're quietly in denial about. Usually founder breakouts are surface level. Not this one. Everyone now has a quarter of Claude Code under their belt. Most founders have switched from OpenAI to Anthropic. We made the right call. The crossover sessions with LPs were a highlight too, rare to hear how they're seeing this moment from their seat. If you asked me three months ago how useful agents could be, I would've said the results were evolutionary, not revolutionary. I was wrong. I've never seen companies move at this speed. Fear is the biggest thing slowing companies down. People hear "automate your job with AI" and freeze. Do it. You'll learn fast where it can and can't, and you'll multiply your output in the process. The ones not leveraging these tools are still riding horses while Ford handed everyone else the keys. Massive thank you to Deb Goldstein, Jim Andelman, Jennifer Richard, and the entire Bonfire team. They have our backs in ways most funds don't, and this summit was another reminder of that. World class.

A huge thank you to the founders who helped make our Founder Summit what it was! It's one thing to attend. It is another thing entirely to get on stage, open up your playbook, share what is working, talk honestly about what's hard, and let other founders learn from the messy middle in real time. That kind of participation is what makes the Bonfire Ventures community so valuable. A few special thank-yous to the founders who contributed to this year’s content: AGM Founder Presentations: Halston Prox, Tabz (FKA HealNow), Keith Raphael (Straddle), Dave Haase (Juno) Building Offense and Defense in the Age of AI: James Zhan (Ranger AI), Reza Farahani (Katalyze AI), Ashton Slatev (Rwazi) led by Jennifer Richard AI Product Leadership: Building Durable Products at AI Speed: Jerry Zhou (Supio), Danny Freed (Blueprint Health), and Erik Ornitz (Topline Pro) led by Brett Queener Getting Vibe Coding Right: Jim Milton (Navless.ai), Lorien Gabel (Figment) Maximizing Internal Efficiency with AI: Ashton Slatev (Rwazi) The New GTM Playbook for AI: Sheila Stafford (TeamSense), Nick Ornitz (Topline Pro), Zach Vidibor (Octave) led by Tyler Churchill What made these sessions work was not just the content. It was the candor. The specificity. The willingness to share the decisions, experiments, tradeoffs, and lessons behind the headlines. A Founder Summit only works when founders are willing to show up for one another. Bonfire is extremely grateful to everyone who did exactly that! 🫶 🔥

We would have been remiss, frankly, if we didn't plan an epic fireside chat by the epic firepit at Ojai. The firm is called Bonfire Ventures. The chimney has a flame on it. The fire was real. At some point you have to lean in. So we did. On the first night of our LP Summit, Mark Mullen pulled up a chair with Umi Mehta, Erik Sebusch, Chris Cassidy and Nat Fraser, four people with a deep view into the venture ecosystem from different corners of the market. The placeholder title for the session was “WTF Is Going On?” At some point during the planning, we realized it wasn’t a placeholder. It was the title. And it was accurate. The premise was simple. The answers, less so. Mark moderated the way Mark moderates, asking questions with curiosity, candor, and zero pretense. It was the conversation everyone in the room seemed to have quietly shown up hoping to have. What is actually happening in the market? Where is capital moving? And what does it mean for founders building right now? What I didn't expect was how quiet the room would get. No phones out. The kind of attention you only get when people sense they're hearing the real version, not the conference-circuit version. That's the part you can't engineer. You can build the firepit, string the lights, put the right people in chairs around an actual fire, and at some point that's just stagecraft. The realness has to come from them. Last week, it did. Thank you to Umi, Erik, Chris and Nat for showing up exactly the way you did. And to Mark for steering it the only way you can.