CO

Conviction

Has RFS

Plausible AI Schemes

26 problems Conviction wants founders to solve

January 15, 202612 themesView Original

Summary

Conviction, founded by Sarah Guo (formerly Greylock), is a venture firm purpose-built for AI-Native "Software 3.0" companies. Their "Plausible AI Schemes" is a collection of 26 specific problems they believe are ripe for AI-native solutions.

The 2026 theme is "Year of the Agent Harness"—transitioning from "AI talkers" to "AI doers." The focus is on building infrastructure that allows AI agents to operate reliably and autonomously in production environments.

Key insight: Many existing beliefs about markets don't make sense anymore because AI changes technology so fundamentally. Conviction believes we can't trust previous assumptions—it takes work to find new truths.

The Recipe: AI Application Framework

AGI is increasingly an operational challenge of bringing tasks under distribution using reasoning models with tool access. The winners won't just have better models—they'll have better operational systems for deploying AI at scale.

  • Scaling complex cognitive work across domains
  • Combining reasoning models with tool access
  • Building reliable, production-ready AI systems

Machine Verified Trades

Years are required to train novices in electrician, HVAC, and solar installation roles. The opportunity: build a full-stack services company combining minimally trained workers with AI guidance systems, AR hardware, and remote expert oversight. Don't sell software to trade companies—become the trade company.

  • Workers productive in weeks instead of years
  • AI guidance with real-time instructions
  • AR hardware overlaying procedures
  • Full margin capture through vertical integration

The OfficeVerse: Agent Training

Agents trained on games and simulations lack real-world enterprise complexity. Build multi-agent simulations reflecting actual office communication (Slack, video calls, file sharing) for training domain-generalist work agents.

  • Multi-threaded Slack and email simulations
  • Document workflow and approval chains
  • Organizational hierarchy dynamics
  • Realistic task completion scenarios

Enterprise Reasoning Infrastructure

Large enterprises lack unified reasoning systems and integration hubs for AI actions. Build a live enterprise ontology mapping plus centralized action registry for AI execution across legacy systems.

  • Continuously updated entity and relationship maps
  • Centralized action registry with access control
  • Connectors exposing legacy capabilities uniformly
  • Audit trails for all AI actions

Vertical Robotics: Data In, Work Out

Healthcare faces repetitive, time-sensitive supply and sample movement between departments. Deploy robots that generate revenue while collecting deployment data for continuous improvement. Pick a specific vertical, deploy robots that create immediate value, and use the data to build an insurmountable advantage.

  • Immediate revenue from day one
  • Proprietary deployment data collection
  • Continuous improvement loop
  • Healthcare logistics as ideal starting point

Biological Needle in a Haystack

Drug development has single-digit clinical trial success rates despite improved molecular design. Use models like single-cell perturbation datasets to "pull forward" clinical risk to pre-clinical settings.

  • Single-cell perturbation data for prediction
  • Organoid models for complex tissue testing
  • Patient-derived systems for individual response
  • Multi-omics integration for better predictions

Enterprise Vibe Coding

Consumer no-code tools lack enterprise features like access control, integrations, and compliance. Build an enterprise-specific application builder with business-oriented templates and security features.

  • Security-first architecture from day one
  • Pre-built enterprise system integrations
  • Compliance automation and audit trails
  • Business templates for common use cases

IT Visibility Revolution

50% of CMDB data is unreliable, contributing to over 60% of IT incidents caused by misconfigurations. Build agentless discovery, graph construction, and AI reasoning for robust enterprise IT visibility.

  • Agentless discovery without installing anything
  • Automatic dependency graph construction
  • AI reasoning for impact prediction
  • Continuous updates as environment changes

AI Hardware Alternatives

Nvidia dominance in AI chip market limits competition and supply options. Build alternative chip solutions including TPUs, reconfigurable architectures, and latency-optimized inference hardware.

  • Application-specific chips for workloads
  • FPGAs and reconfigurable architectures
  • Inference-optimized low-latency hardware
  • Edge deployment alternatives

Production-Ready 3D Generation

Generated 3D models lack precision needed for manufacturing and construction applications. Combine generative models with validation and simulation for production-ready 3D assets.

  • Dimensional tolerance constraints
  • Manufacturability checking
  • Physics simulation validation
  • CAD-compatible output formats

AI-Powered Metadata Management

Manual metadata collection is painful and incomplete; legacy catalogs poorly support unstructured data. Build AI-driven classification, policy application, quality detection, and lineage understanding for modern data stacks.

  • Automatic data classification
  • Policy and compliance automation
  • Data quality detection
  • Lineage and provenance tracking

Ownership is the New Sales

Fragmented industries like HOAs, BPOs, and accounting firms are slow to adopt AI tools. Acquire and operate underinvested businesses directly rather than selling into them.

  • Acquire instead of sell into fragmented markets
  • Implement AI operations post-acquisition
  • Roll up industries with tech advantage
  • Capture full value, not just software fees

How this VC engages founders

Use this entry point to review how Conviction engages with early teams.

View Conviction RFS Signals

Source: Conviction Startups

Last updated: January 15, 2026

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