Brian O’Malley

And so when you think about an Uber, when you think about a DoorDash, an Airbnb, those tools are ultimately connecting the digital and the physical world in a clever way.

And a lot of the companies that I'm most excited about are the ones that can do that leveraging AI, where you're ultimately not just taking budget from other digital spend, but you're helping people in their offline world.

And that's when I think it will really emerge from this toy phase into something that is a serious contender.

You referenced these AI agents that basically go on and do these complex tasks on your behalf.

What are some early use cases for AI agents?

How do you see them being used today?

I think that final step is still a little bit lacking.

Like we see a fair amount of AI agents in and around the travel space where they can help you come up with where you want to go on your honeymoon or your family reunion.

They might be able to help you with particular recommendations on what to do there.

But that final mile is still largely on the consumer in terms of being able to actually go ahead and execute that.

So...

If I look at the two investments that I've made in and around travel, Fora, for example, at the end of the day is a modern travel agency.

So they help people who want to build a business selling travel to their friends and family be able to do that with AI powered tools and a fundamental technology driven booking platform.

And so they're able to close out that loop because they have the integrations with the hotels to actually facilitate the bookings.

Another example of a company that I invested in around that category is called BoomPop.

And what they do is they help corporations who are planning off sites, sales kickoffs, any sort of group event, be able to plan those more easily, as well as actually facilitate them.

And so in that case, they have AI that goes back and forth and coordinates with vendors.

But ultimately, there's a person involved that's going to make sure that when you sign up the IT vendor, or you book that

banquet room, that that is going to live up to the expectations of the end consumer.

So when you start talking about really important events, you only get to take a vacation a couple times a year.