"The system of records are too static. Understanding the reasons that decisions are made will allow for tacit knowledge to be stored and acted upon."

Foundation Capital argues that the next trillion-dollar enterprise platforms will be built on context graphs — structured records of decision traces (exceptions, approvals, precedents) captured at decision time by agent orchestration layers. Unlike incumbents and data warehouses, agentic orchestration sits in the execution path and can persist the "why" behind decisions, enabling auditability, searchable precedent, and compounding automation. Startups can pursue three paths: replace whole systems of record, replace modules, or create new decision-focused systems of record, with observability and replayable traces becoming critical infrastructure. The piece highlights signals for founders (high headcount, exception-heavy workflows, cross-system "glue" functions) and explains why incumbents face structural limits in capturing decision lineage.