Amber Illig

In 2011, Marc Andreessen famously proclaimed, “Software is Eating the World.” The thesis was that internet startups were “poised to take over large swathes of the economy,” and make all the failed dreams of the dot-com era (Act I) finally come true.

Andreessen was at least half right. In the decade that followed (Act II), software companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Google ascended to become the most valuable in the world. Billions of people did indeed buy smartphones, as predicted. And entire industries—news, entertainment, travel, communications, retail, productivity, finance, and more—were swallowed whole by software.

But software still hasn't eaten everything. The industries that form the foundation of the American economy—healthcare, logistics, construction, transportation, manufacturing, etc—are still waiting for the revolution. Just ask any consumer trying to find the right specialist at a hospital, or get insurance for a leaky roof. All across America, we are confronted with the type of antiquated, complex bureaucracies that we thought software would fix. The pandemic revealed how brittle our systems are. It’s now clear our foundations are crumbling.

But there’s good news: we are now on the precipice of Software's Third Act, in which startups will finally deliver on the dream of transforming the economy’s foundational industries. Identifying, backing, and supporting these companies is my life’s work, and inspires everything we do at The Council Fund.

In the full essay (linked below), I cover:
⏳ why Act III is finally the time for software to transform essential industries
🦿 which founders will have a leg up in Act III
🌁 why Silicon Valley will still be center-stage in Act III
🧗 how companies can scale vertically vs horizontally
🌟 how we @thecouncilcap support them

Love to see a big firm revisiting first principles. I have a friend who left their GP role at another “tier 1.” One of their main frustrations was that they spent all of their time in meetings and managing ppl internally instead of problem solving with founders. Less is more.

Just voted! San Franciscans, guess which 3 issues I couldn’t decide on last minute?

It was an honor to present in front of 300+ LPs at @raiseconference last wk and unveil our secret sauce at Council Capital. First Builders are the through-line to repeated top decile performance across our portfolios >>

First Builders are high-slope operators that join companies before they're successful, build processes, products, and teams from scratch, then later leave to found their own companies.

I became fascinated with them as a First Builder myself, and having worked with many of them at Snap as it navigated pre to post IPO and Cruise as it grew from early GM acquisition to $30B pre-IPO company. The founders sending our fund stats off the charts have all had similar experiences.

You might be thinking - aren't all VC firms looking for top operators? The reality is it's a very slim subset of operators that we see get to growth stage quickly with durable economics.

At @TheCouncilCap , we're a team of First Builders that has made it our job to separate former barnacles on the rocket ship from high impact entrepreneurial builders as they go out to launch their own companies.

By far the most productive 1-day conference I've been to in a minute. Thanks RAISE for having me!

*top decile measured on net TVPI, IRR in the Q2 2026 Carta VC Benchmarks report.

the only acceptable solution is to incinerate swag when you're done with it - unless you've got a vendetta against the company