A VC Lesson From the ‘Rodney Dangerfield of SaaS’

Venture capitalists should try this fun game at their next (increasingly alcohol-free) game night: artificial intelligence funding mad libs.

[VC fund 1] and [VC fund 2] lead funding round for [number]-year-old [type of AI startup], founded by professors at [name of university], at a $[some-billion] valuation.

This week, that formula would have yielded announcements about robotics startup Skild one day and coding assistant startup Cognition the next. (To fill in the other blanks, see the two stories my colleagues wrote. Both valuations had three commas, and the companies’ combined age barely represents a trip around the sun.)