note to the team - nov 12 It was always obvious or likely that the unwinding of the AI boom would start with Nvidia. It just never seemed possible that the catalyst would be so profoundly stupid as this. The AI capex trade is too interconnected and too much of that interconnecti…↗

prediction: with startup and VC pods and content so abundant and accessible, trad and indie media co coverage will become increasingly higher signal↗

The McDonaldization of Venture Capital McDonald’s sells more burgers than anyone, and they’re slop made physical. Venture is going the same way: AI took all of VC’s growth since 2023, and a16z raised 20%+ of US venture this year. Every step is rational. But can a system built to…↗

okay public speaking is hard, apologies for the folks who showed up to watch me overheat and bomb, so here’s all the stuff i meant to explain right now you are being asked for a near 100% prepayment because neither you nor the cloud is considered credit worthy, and so nobody can…↗

Ok so the only vc fundable business options left are the following: - AI Lab (Neo/Physical/Robotics/Nocturnal) - Company that sells data/widgets to AI Labs - Company that sells GPU hours (inference bby) - Speculative Unknowable TAM Deeptech/Defence Good luck to all involved.↗

Writing a check doesn’t qualify you to give advice. When @fredwilson was 29 he tried to show up to a board meeting and start giving advice. One of the founders stopped him, “come do every job in the company for a week, then we’ll listen.” So he flew to Buffalo and did it. With …↗

A small UK VC running a $5m fund can expect 27% (!!) of the fund to go on admin & compliance under current regulation, vs just 7.9% in the USA. At Odin we've launched a campaign to fix this. A key cost driver is AIFM (Alternative Investment Fund Manager) regulation, which makes…↗

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.↗