Wing is an early-stage B2B/enterprise firm built around a single conviction: the digital transformation of the last two decades is being surpassed by a larger 'AI-first transformation of business' — what they call the next and most powerful super-cycle of their careers. They back founders at every layer of the AI-first stack: AI-centric data platforms, AI tooling/processing, and increasingly autonomous applications, plus product-led growth companies that accelerate adoption. They invest early (often pre-product, pre-revenue), engage deeply with founders, and validate product-market fit through a curated network of CIOs and enterprise buyers.
A crisply stated, urgent market problem placed in the context of a large market need. Wing's deck guide puts the problem right after a one-sentence intro and tells founders to flow from market opportunity to urgent need to solution.
“Concisely and clearly identify the problem you are aiming to solve.” — Building your pitch deck: A slide-by-slide walkthrough
“Work your way from market opportunity, to urgent market need, to why your product is the right solution.” — Executing the raise: The pitch process
“A brief overview of your company and its purpose. One short sentence will do on this slide!” — Building your pitch deck: A slide-by-slide walkthrough
A clear statement of how the product solves the stated problem, told at the level of outcomes rather than feature minutiae. For Wing's own thesis, the strongest solutions sit at a defensible layer of the AI-first stack (data, tooling, or autonomous applications).
“Clearly state how your product or service solves the problem.” — Building your pitch deck: A slide-by-slide walkthrough
“Don't get lost in the weeds describing your product in minute detail. Instead, highlight key successes and outcomes.” — Executing the raise: The pitch process
“Atop the stack sits autonomous applications, which go beyond workflow automation.” — AI-First | Wing Venture Capital
Quantified market opportunity sized top-down and segmented — TAM, SAM, SOM, segmentation, and growth rate — set against a thesis that AI-first is a multi-trillion-dollar super-cycle.
“Describe the market size and overall potential for your solution including TAM, SAM, SOM, market segmentation and market growth rate.” — Building your pitch deck: A slide-by-slide walkthrough
“The AI-first transformation of business represents the next and most powerful super-cycle we will see in our careers.” — Peter Wagner
“Physical AI and robotics will be the largest market of the next two decades...the world spends roughly $50 trillion a year on labor, the overwhelming majority of it physical.” — Human Archive: The Common Crawl for Embodied Intelligence
Evidence of product-market fit and real adoption — customer feedback/testimonials, revenue growth, engagement metrics — with the highest-value signal being trust and dependence from demanding, named customers. Wing invests pre-product/pre-revenue, so for early companies validation can be design-partner and buyer signal rather than revenue.
“Show your evidence for the alignment of your product to the needs of a specific market using market research, customer feedback and testimonials, revenue growth, engagement metrics.” — Building your pitch deck: A slide-by-slide walkthrough
“Over 3,000 teams now run on Dust, and users have deployed more than 300,000 agents.” — Zach DeWitt
“Gray Swan is named in the documents those labs publish to demonstrate their models are safe. That is a different category of trust entirely.” — Jake Flomenberg
“Enterprises expect a median of 50% of AI pilots to convert to production.” — The State of AI in the Enterprise
A founding team whose combined background is rare and ideally non-replicable — deep technical/AI research paired with product and operating craft. Wing tells founders the team is what to emphasize in the pitch.
“Draw attention to your fantastic team and why it's perfectly suited for the mission at hand.” — Executing the raise: The pitch process
“Few founding pairs combine that depth of AI research with that level of product and operating craft.” — Zach DeWitt
“This combination of co-founders — a CEO who mapped the attack surface from first principles and a Chief Scientist embedded at the center of frontier AI governance — is not something you can construct, nor is it something you can replicate through hiring or partnerships.” — Jake Flomenberg
“The four co-founders are young, brilliant, and relentless. They have known each other for over 20 years, and each owns a distinct surface area of the company.” — Human Archive: The Common Crawl for Embodied Intelligence
A clear financial picture and a credible go-to-market motion (marketing-, product-, or sales-led), with strong preference for product-led growth that accelerates adoption across the stack. Wasteful overcapitalization is a red flag; right-sized, milestone-driven economics are preferred.
“Describe how you plan to acquire and retain customers. Are you marketing-led, product-led or sales-led?” — Building your pitch deck: A slide-by-slide walkthrough
“Wing invests in product-led growth companies that accelerate the adoption of all layers.” — AI-First | Wing Venture Capital
“Overview of your startup's financial situation, including current revenue, gross margin, operating expenses, net income and burn rate.” — Building your pitch deck: A slide-by-slide walkthrough
A real analysis of the competitive landscape plus a defensible, compounding moat — Wing favors flywheels where usage makes the product harder to displace, and data/positioning advantages that competitors cannot easily copy.
“Analyze the competitive landscape and spotlight what sets you apart and how you are uniquely positioned.” — Building your pitch deck: A slide-by-slide walkthrough
“Each new agent increases the surface area of institutional knowledge available to every other agent, creating a flywheel that makes Dust harder to displace.” — Zach DeWitt
“Whoever builds the foundational corpus owns one of the most strategically valuable positions in AI...we believe Human Archive is the team most likely to own its data layer.” — Human Archive: The Common Crawl for Embodied Intelligence
A timing argument tied to a structural shift — Wing's whole thesis is that AI is the next super-cycle, and that by 2026 enterprises have moved from experimenting to building and running AI in production. Founders should articulate the inflection that makes now the moment.
“As the cost of training and fine-tuning models has collapsed, enterprises are no longer just deploying AI, they are building it.” — Investing in Gray Swan: The AI Security Platform That Every Frontier Lab Trusts
“56% of large enterprises are in early or large scale production for AI agents.” — The State of AI in the Enterprise
“Robotics is replaying the large language model (LLM) playbook, and the bottleneck at this stage is identical to the one LLMs faced a decade ago: an enormous, well-aligned, multimodal pre-training corpus.” — Human Archive: The Common Crawl for Embodied Intelligence
“I don't believe humans will be replaced by AI. But humans working with AI will replace humans working without it.” — Peter Wagner
A right-sized, milestone-driven ask — raise enough to hit specific milestones plus a buffer, not the maximum available. Wing's deck guide is light on a dedicated ask slide, but its fundraising docs strongly warn against overcapitalization and favor disciplined, milestone-based budgets.
“Focus on what you need to achieve specific milestones, rather than getting every possible cent from investors.” — The pitfalls of overcapitalization: How raising too much can hurt your startup
“Create detailed financial projections and milestone-based budgets, then plan to raise enough to meet those targets plus a little bit of buffer.” — The pitfalls of overcapitalization: How raising too much can hurt your startup
“Raise only what you need, so you can maintain control over your company and make the decisions you want as a founder.” — The pitfalls of overcapitalization: How raising too much can hurt your startup
“I don't believe humans will be replaced by AI. But humans working with AI will replace humans working without it.”
“This is the next supercycle in B2B tech—just as the confluence of data, mobile, and cloud technologies reshaped digital transformation, we see AI's potential as equally disruptive and transformative.”
“Few founding pairs combine that depth of AI research with that level of product and operating craft.”
“This combination of co-founders — a CEO who mapped the attack surface from first principles and a Chief Scientist embedded at the center of frontier AI governance — is not something you can construct, nor is it something you can replicate through hiring or partnerships.”