Eric Stromberg

@Rick_Zullo The only way to repeatedly set price independent of the market is to have no competition i.e. be deeply non-consensus in some way where everyone else passes.

Price Makers vs Price Takers Been speaking with several peers in the seed VC managers community amidst the historic escalation in pricing and there is a tremendous delta between VC price makers and VC price takers in this market. As a price taker, you adhere to the rules of the market. You pay market valuations led by bigger firms. Your ownership and/or portfolio becomes more concentrated than initial construction suggested, but there is nothing that you can really do, so you continue to invest as you always have. As a price maker, you generally lead rounds and set valuations, so you are accountable to the prices you set. You can’t blame market pricing as your LPs will likely hold you accountable to the prices you invest at and to the portfolio construction you have, so you need to be extra creative and selective to find deals within your range. This often means maintaining portfolio construction, but slowing pace. Sacrifice ownership/diversification or pace. As a LP, which would you see?

This is a good framework! Imo when a company meets this bar, there's just one question left: How likely is it the CEO/Founder/force of energy will become distracted by life's numerous shiny objects over the next 5 years?

It's almost as if idea selection really matters

Big launch for @p0. Web search has historically required a tradeoff between quality, cost, and speed. Turbo is built on a new architecture to be the best at all three.

The best founders share a rare ability to (1) meet someone, (2) instantly identify the unique knowledge they've accumulated over a lifetime, and (3) extract the parts they can learn from in minutes.

2021 was a bubble of abundance: software markets were bigger than expected, so anyone could build a $1B+ outcome. 2026 is a bubble of scarcity: the biggest companies will be far larger than expected, but there will be fewer. Either way, expected value rises, along with prices.

On balance, VC ownership targets are good for the startup ecosystem. Each company only has so many 10% slices to give, so capital gets forced across more founders and ideas. On a firm level, ownership targets also push capital to less crowded areas. That creates powerful alignment if you are pursuing a non-consensus strategy. If not, you're just baking adverse selection into your model.

Duke K Academy 2026 in the books. ✅ Next up: @terraincap Invitational 2 👀

Following rapid growth, a $100M Series B, and a slate of new launches, I sat down with Parallel co-founder @travers00. @p0 is building core search infrastructure for the agentic web: systems that enable AI to retrieve, structure, and reason over information across the internet with speed, accuracy, and reliability. I joined Travers at Parallel’s new Palo Alto office for a wide-ranging conversation on: > The pace going from launch last August to becoming critical infrastructure powering production workflows at companies like Notion, Harvey, Granola, and more. > Why Parallel sees the future of search as far beyond “ten blue links,” toward systems built for retrieval, reasoning, monitoring, and computation. > The changing nature of the web itself: its economics, openness, and what happens as agents become primary users. > The artistry and legacy of internet history shaping the company: Olivetti typewriters, Douglas Hofstadler, Lloyd Shapley, Christo & Jeanne-Claude, Google’s Search Box, and how it inspired programs like the Museum of the Human Web. This is an extensive and wide ranging look into one of the most interesting sectors of the agentic web. We @terraincap feel lucky to have worked with Travers and the team since the start just two years ago. So much to do.

we started @p0 because we believed agents would be the primary users of the web, that they'd use it far more than humans, and that they'd need new infrastructure and new business models to support that the first part is already playing out. today we're announcing the second

My trainer informed me he's quitting to do AI consulting for SMBs. From a boat in the Caribbean, powered by Starlink. He's in his 50s and taking the Google Gemini course now. You really can just do things.

a few months ago we had a whacky idea: what if we built a physical museum of the human web? the internet was a place many of us lived. i grew up pouring hours into every weird niche and the wayback machine the web has a new user now. we wanted to celebrate the weird, whacky, and magical parts that got us here open online today: museum.parallel.ai open to the public in SF May 8-16

When we evaluated agentic web search providers, it was clear that the best solution wasn't just the fastest, or the cheapest. It's a balance of token use, total trajectory latency, and net new information that language models don't already know. Congrats to @p0 on a solid product and some awesome technology.

The web’s second user is coming online. Our customers are building at the frontier - shaping every corner of the economy. pioneers.parallel.ai

Soon, more AIs will use the web than humans. That was the idea @paraga and @travers00 shared with us @terraincap in early 2024. Today it's becoming reality, powered by @p0 and the companies building on it. It's been an honor for us to work with the team from the start.

In the span of ~3 months, the team @basepowerco has built out operational tools that replace or avoid the purchase of an enormous amount of SaaS. Token costs might actually equal the cost of buying the SaaS, but cost isn't the point. It's the fact that the tools are perfectly tailored to our operations, infinitely customizeable going forward, and tied into our data. A sampling: - Warehouse Management System (WMS) - Manufacturing Execution System - CRM for B2B sales - Material Requirements Planning (MRP) - Sales & Operations Planning tool - Labor crew management, forecasting, and associated vehicles tool - Policy objectives and stakeholders tracker - Countless dashboards for each team The impact that AI has had on our business is incredible.

The best web search for agents is now free. Upgrade to Parallel's web search tools in any MCP-supported tool or agent, for free, in under 60 seconds. No account. No API keys. Zero cost. docs.parallel.ai/integrations/m…

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