I asked people: "who are the best active angels in AI?" 5 votes: Jeff Dean (@JeffDean) 4 votes: Umesh Khanna (@forwarddeploy) 3 votes: Sholto Douglas (@_sholtodouglas) 3 votes: Thomas Wolf (@Thom_Wolf) 2 votes: Daniel Chang (@dnnssl2) 2 votes: Elad Gil (@eladgil) 2 votes: Eri…↗

I made a list of great startups to join. It's called the Breakout List. The list has 92 companies. These are the 20 with 25 or fewer employees: - Hone (@moritz_stephan, @CarloWillem, @oqbrady) - Normal (@ansonyuu, @hudzah) - Standard Intelligence (@G413N, @devanshpandey) - Tacit…↗

being legible to capital This is the most consensus market I have seen in a while. If you're hot, you're really hot. If you're not, you're not. There's almost nobody left in the middle, and I've written about [what that does to Series A valuations](…↗

scoop: a new vc fund managed by @dylan522p, founder of @SemiAnalysis_, is targeting raising $400 million, per a securities filing. w the raise, patel joins a swelling coterie of tech personalities who have parlayed fandom into fundraising.↗

Never Compete. I was on with someone from our team at slow talking about competition recently… ‘how do you compete in venture capital’, etc… win deals. My honest philosophy? I hate competition professionally (love it in sport, but not business)…. And I think competition is espe…↗

Notes from Chapter One Investment Committee (July 20, 2026) 1. We recently finished fundraising our Fund Three (which we call Page III). We'll have more details to share soon, but one of the biggest questions we're now thinking about is how we want to build the firm in advance o…↗

.@coatue_thomas describes how a meeting with Steven Spielberg eventually taught him how to pitch companies. "Steven said, 'Every great story can be pitched in three sentences, no matter what the story was.'" "In three sentences you got the whole movie. And what I realized is it…↗

Some spicy takes on venture capital: - Saying that "seed has gotten expensive" or something and then pointing to a valuation - like "they used to be $10 million and now they're $20 million" - is bascially the same thing as people who say Stock A is more expensive than Stock B…↗

My view is the AI boom will only accelerate and is a once in a lifetime transformation This is orthogonal to whether many AI companies should exit in next 12-18 months, as some may lack durability vs labs, new entrants, or weird market shifts businessinsider.com/ai-startup-fou…↗

x.com/i/article/2044…↗

It's a terrible idea to build a ~10 year VC fund strategy as a reaction to temporary market conditions. Yes; bifurcation, concentration, consensus, consolidation, stagnation... All valid observations, but they do not change the persistent reality of VC. - Greatness is idiosync…↗

Just made my first investment as an @a16z venture scout. Pitch me more!!↗

🧵 1/ Is venture broken? It’s a question I’m hearing almost daily across the VC ecosystem – and as an LP, one I can’t ignore. We set out to find an answer by digging into the data. What we found was that, despite the expanding influence of mega-funds, dedicated Seed & Series A f…↗

We're Hiring! USV is looking for an AI Lead—a technical operator who will help us reimagine how a venture firm develops theses, finds companies, and supports its portfolio in the AI era. You’ll be the builder-in-chief: prototyping tools that help us source founders earlier, syn…↗

We asked @joshuabrowder about his new $30M fund and investment heuristics. "We are seeing a rise of super-credentialism. Top VC firms are tracking high school math competitions." "Just because someone's good at math doesn't mean they make a good founder. The best entrepreneurs…↗

Here's how it works at @pioneer_fund: - One call with the founders. - We come prepared, having reviewed any materials. No pitch needed. No deck needed. - Clear decision within 48 hours. - No games. - No waiting for other VCs. 100% our decision. - Sign and wire same/next d…↗

Ten Things That Matter Right Now in Seed VC…↗

Can the @blumhouse model pioneered by @jason_blum to make insanely lucrative Hollywood movies work in tech? Yup This is the opposite of the go big or go home VC model I break it down and then highlight 14 tech startup categories where the Blumhouse model can work↗

WHY INVESTORS DON'T FUND AI STARTUPS you might know A16Z is running a seed-stage startup accelerator called SPEEDRUN where we're funding 40+ companies in the next 2 months with $750k per company. (apply here: sr.a16z.com). As part of running this accelerator, we get thousands of…↗

When I joined @HustleFundVC, I immediately started listening to @dunkhippo33's pitch meetings w/ founders. This was the most effective education process I've ever had. So when Angel Squad hosted a founder pitch event, I had to watch. Some Qs EY asked + her pitch analysis →↗

I've invested in 35-40 different venture funds. The single best fund, by far, has returned 7.89x. For every $100,000 invested, they returned $789,000. And they aren't done yet. Sub $100m fund, tons of QSBS, couple unicorns, 4+ IPOs. When venture works, it really works.↗

Who are great early-stage pre-seed AI funds? Should be comfortable with R&D-heavy aspects/risks and technically competent. @w_conviction comes to mind - who else?↗

Seed investing isn't coming back... at least not as it existed in the last decade.↗

@_mattneary seed dollars are best applied when a modest amount of money 1-3m ideally but not more than 5-6 can help a company flip 1 or 2 cards / answer specific questions which -- if proven out, will unlock significant value and ideally a bunch more relatively lower risk capital…↗

Too expensive or too cheap - why AI continues to reveal itself as a terrible VC bet↗

🤯 VC’s have poured $385M+ into Generative AI this quarter with billions in the past 2 years Here’s a breakdown of the top VC investors in the space and their investments 👇🏼 @lightspeedvp @sequoia @khoslaventures @a16z @IndexVentures @insightpartners @Accel↗

If you could invest in: One seed firm. One series A firm. One growth firm. What would they be? Go. 😉↗

Marc Andreessen has grown a16z from their first fund of $300M in 2009 to over $25B+ in AUM as of 2022. His framework for understanding any business is simple. It comes down to unpacking what he calls "the onion theory of risk." Here's what he means...↗

The End of “Industrial” Seed VC… (and return to the cottage industry it always was)↗

Constellation Software is a $30b+ publicly-traded software holding company employing more than 25,000. A former venture capitalist, Mark Leonard started Constellation in 1995 with $15m of outside investment & a goal of buying vertical software companies.↗