True North Newsletter: Your agent stack is an attack surface

Our team gets a front row seat to the tech ecosystem’s most influential founders — and the insights they’re gaining along the way as they build new stacks, agentic workflows, and the companies of tomorrow. Here’s our latest edition of True North, our newsletter for early-stage startup founders, builders, and our community of teams and supporters.

Signal

Your agent stack is an attack surface. Agents spawning sub-agents, operating invisibly, bypassing every control you thought you had — it’s already happening. If you’re building on agents, your security stack wasn’t designed for what you’re asking it to do. Founders see the gap and are building fast to fill it. Our team’s seeing a massive influx of pitches tackling this infrastructure layer.

Stop helicopter parenting your agents. Some of the sharpest agentic builders in our community tried continuous human-in-the-loop and found it made things worse. The humans couldn’t justify their edits better than the model could. What works: structured checkpoints at deliberate moments. Not micro-feedback on every output. Speed and consistency are the two things agents do better than us. Secure your workspaces then get out of the way.

Physical AI’s moat is data, not hardware. Across embodied intelligence — manufacturing robotics, autonomous platforms, and factory data capture — the winning bet is proprietary data flywheels built in the physical world. Millions of hours of real-world operational data, captured where things are actually made. But hardware hasn’t commoditized yet, and that gap is killing companies before the flywheel ever spins. The thesis isn’t wrong; the economics just can’t keep up yet.

Founders Building

Modern Animal. In an agreement to be acquired by Chewy. Turns out rebuilding veterinary care from the ground up with a membership model, purpose-built clinics, and tech that actually reduces friction was the right bet.

Madison Reed. Early AI adopter that knows its market. A consumer brand that looks a lot like SaaS. 72% recurring revenue, 98 physical locations acting as permanent billboards, and a trade-down economy sending affluent customers their way.

Our Perspective

What We’ve Learned at the Intersection of AI and Biology

Adam and Rohit on why biology has become the most interesting technology platform we know — and what 14 years of bets have taught us.

Muppets, Founders, and Humanity

Madeline on why the thing that scales best in venture might be the thing you can’t automate.

Open Tabs

A quantitative look at biotech platforms

Impressions from Toni’s first week at Bluesky

How most people actually experience AI

Weird Internet

All the tech billboards on 101. Someone mapped every single one— 80 miles, Claude riding shotgun. The result is weirdly beautiful.

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