🤝 Sell Coffee and Jeans, Not Picks and Shovels
• Theory Ventures argues most AI "picks and shovels" (infra/tooling) won't endure — echoing how Gold Rush hardware makers vanished while Folgers coffee and Levi's jeans became lasting brands.
• New framework: picks & shovels (tools, fade post-rush), coffee (usage-billed consumables with recurring revenue), and jeans (durable vertical workflow tools that become standard).
• Implication for investors: favor usage-billed application-layer and vertical workflow products over narrow dev-tooling plays like fine-tuning platforms or chat-with-docs builders, which risk being tied to one moment in the AI stack.
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