GP @sparkcapital | prev: Partner @pearvc | Founder Flannel (Exit to @Plaid) | Founding team @robinhoodapp | @stanford | tweets are just my personal hottakes
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Zuck started wearing a gold chain after attending a massive wedding celebration in India. This is not a coincidence.
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The US has more elastic labor laws than a lot of places, people can overhire faster but also fire faster. Same kind of efficiency in commodities markets. Everything responds more quickly to emerging market realities
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I’ve gotten to know the amazing team at @sparkcapital over the last few years and was constantly blown away by the thoughtfulness of their approach! I’m thrilled and grateful for the opportunity to join them and partner with amazing founders who continue to dream incredibly big!
Please join us welcome @arpans to our Spark team. We have had the pleaure of knowing his as an executive, a founder and a fellow investor. We are looking forward to working with him as our partner! medium.com/@sparkcapital/wel…
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My guess is that a loud, noisy democracy feels right at home for Indians and the culture that is “The Argumentative Indian”.
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Kolkata is unfortunately/fortunately a good reminder of what happens if you have a communist party ruling your state for 3 decades in a row
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Tragic terrorist attack in Kashmir, India.
Many innocent tourists lost their lives.
I don’t usually tweet on this stuff but one of the challenges with combating terrorism is no matter how many attacks you successfully prevent. The perpetrators need to succeed just once to spread fear.
Tough to do, but the belief that the perpetrators have- that they could gain anything in such a situation has to be completely eliminated
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At @pearvc too, if you’re raising a round at the early stages we’re here all summer, please don’t hesitate to reach out!
Noticing a lot more OOO from the VC industry this summer. Highly advise founders to hold off initiating their fundraise processes until after Burning Man (early Sep), if possible.
Sadly, I’m totally serious.
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Tragic terrorist attack in Kashmir, India.
Many innocent tourists lost their lives.
I don’t usually tweet on this stuff but one of the challenges with combating terrorism is no matter how many attacks you successfully prevent. The perpetrators need to succeed just once to spread fear.
Tough to do, but the belief that the perpetrators have- that they could gain anything in such a situation has to be completely eliminated
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Skilled Immigration is a US superpower.
Chess is not followed nearly at closely in the US as it is in India. The US team still came second in the Olympiad. How does this happen?
The answer is immigration. Of the four person first team, 3 are immigrants born in another country and the fourth is the child of immigrants.
Immigration is the superpower the US has to become the one of the best in the world at anything it chooses.
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He’s got a line in the song about “pouring his ashes in the river, cuz the flow bout to carry on” - must be about reincarnating as Freddie 😆
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Society doesn’t work as a centralized planned top down entity like China or Russia where you can push folks through programs at a young age.
Society too poor to prioritize sports from the bottom up so far.
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This would be difficult to watch. I decided to try and get an EB-1 right after I did some math on how long it would take via other paths as soon as I got my degrees. I told myself that if I didn’t get the green card that way, I’d just move to another country/back to India instead of being bound to an employer here. I was fortunate I managed to qualify for one.
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Kind of crazy and impressive that India will move to T+1 settlement before the US will. The benefits to all stakeholders are immense in the financial markets .
livemint.com/market/stock-ma…
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It is amazing to work with some of the hardest working people I’ve met, to partner with some of the most ambitious founders at the earliest stages!
We're thrilled to share that, after spending the last year as a Visiting Partner with us, @arpans has officially joined Pear as a Partner. Read more about Arpan on our blog today! pear.vc/welcoming-arpan-shah…
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Good day to remind folks that @pearvc is hiring an associate 😂! Associates at Pear definitely drive deals. Please apply here if interested jobs.ashbyhq.com/pear/bff0a5…
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@satyanadella and @sundarpichai both probably hand delivering an offer letter as we speak
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Chess is not followed nearly at closely in the US as it is in India. The US team still came second in the Olympiad. How does this happen?
The answer is immigration. Of the four person first team, 3 are immigrants born in another country and the fourth is the child of immigrants.
Immigration is the superpower the US has to become the one of the best in the world at anything it chooses.
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The X1 card acquisition for ~95m after raising ~62m shows that CAC in consumer Fintech is the toughest problem. High ARPU products like credit cards are especially difficult in terms of customer acquisition.
This is something all Fintech investors should be thinking about.
My take on this acquisition is that it is a good decision by Robinhood. They can take their customer base and the quality of product that X1 has built to create meaningful synergy even though $HOOD dipped today on the news.
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I couldn’t agree more! I personally went through an EB1 retrogression in the past. It is immensely demoralizing to know you qualify for a high bar that most countries would fast track but instead you have to wait for an indeterminate amount of time based on the country of birth
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I remember years ago, when it was far from clear that Robinhood would be where it is, before the company had even launched a crypto product, @BaijuBhatt and I were talking in a small conference room at the office about how incredible it would be one day to buy Robinhood stock on the Robinhood app. Even then, he said, we would be in the SP500 one day. Seemed like a crazy dream but here we are! So proud of everyone who contributed along the journey of making this possible 🚀
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In the Indian context, the philosophy and religion are intertwined, so a lot of Jain, Buddhist and Hindu texts contain the seeds of Indian philosophy. I’d start with reading the Mahabharata if you haven’t yet, tons of philosophical ideas that still persist today beyond the story
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Amazing to have so many founders and builders hear @vladtenev’s story and the story of Robinhood today at @pearvc.
Vlad’s experiences and journey are inspiring and it was awesome to see the time he spent on all the questions and photo requests😅 from the next generation of founders!
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I’m excited to speak with @vladtenev later this year to share many of his learnings for the next generation of ambitious founders
Pear Studio Speaker Series!
Thrilled to launch our speaker series with the world's top tech CEOs and visionaries! 🚀 Exclusive insights and close connections await Pear Studio members! @pearvc
@t_xu @vladtenev @dkhos @vkhosla @pedroh96 Adam Foroughi
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The horrific #Pahalgam attacks put India in a difficult situation. Should India replicate Israel’s response and drive tanks through Pakistan and level large parts of the country ? Should it “merely” bomb terrorist bases in Pakistan ? what are other options ?
m.economictimes.com/news/ind…
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For some, the dream is to be followed by Elon , Obama or Modi. For me it is @ParikPatelCFA . I am living the dream 🙏. Honored 🥹
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One of the biggest things I learned through mistakes made at Robinhood was What is engineering in service off at the earliest stages. It is in service of the customers, not technology or quality in and off itself, but only if those things help move the needle for customers.
Technical debt like all debt is not necessarily bad. At the earliest stages, some debt for velocity is the right tradeoff. Too much debt, like financial debt can ruin you, but if you take no technical debt at all it you probably are over-engineering.
One of the things Robinhood got right early and became an important trait was customer focus on the engineering team. This involved getting involved with customer tickets/complaints and diving deep into user research for engineers too. It was a good reminder that most things you worry about as early engineers are not things that customers want or need you to focus on.
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Increasingly, while it may be difficult to find folks who share your worldview on politics, economics, society around you locally, it is likely that there is a large group with the same perspective globally. @balajis proposed network states amplifies otherwise hidden voices.
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Also very grateful for the folks at @pearvc and @pejmannozad and @MarHershenson whom I got to work with over the last few years! I am sure we will continue collaborate on many amazing companies together❤️!
I met Pejman and Mar when I was still a student 10+ years ago and it has been amazing to see @pearvc and the team grow from strength to strength.
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@JTLonsdale thanks for speaking about this. My father almost couldn't attend my wedding because of this. Many relatives actually couldn't. There are many families waiting to travel that I personally have heard about
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Microsoft probably has one of the best investment + acquisition strategy of all tech in the last 7 years (since satya took over) - Minecraft, LinkedIn, GitHub and OpenAI were all non-obvious when the investments were made
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Folks who have been laid off or are looking to find roles in tech but unsure what’s available, please reach out! Tons of companies in the @pearvc network and other startups I know are still hiring! Many hiring folks on visas too
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Same experience here! The Bilt for X ideas or innovative credit cards in general struggle because it’s hard to get CAC down without something that’s too good to resist, but if you offer something too good to resist the unit economics on the card itself don’t work.
Wild how many companies I've seen trying to be the "Bilt for X" (I've seen 4 "Bilt for mortgage" companies alone) and every time I dig in to the unit economics there is some hand-wavy answer about how Bilt made it work...
Good luck!
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I agree with this take. More importantly, in my personal opinion, on reciprocity alone the US should not allow any Chinese social media company to operate in the US given how China has treated social media companies from here
Future historians will show us allowing this—Tik Toxic—in US was historic mistake.
It amplifies anything that divides us and hurts western interests…but I repeat myself
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It was amazing to talk to all the @StanfordGSB students to share our theses and views within the Fintech market today. Amazing questions and some really cool ideas too!
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It has been amazing to work at Pear and thrilled to continue partnering with amazing founders!
We are thrilled to announce that we closed our fourth seed fund at $432M. Read all about it from @Katie_Roof at @business: bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
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Why I am bullish on Fintech and the room for innovation in finance even though Fintech has had a rough year and a half:
I tried to turn on options in one of my legacy brokerage accounts. Communicated Time to Resolve (TTR): 3-4 days. 14 days later and after 5 phone calls and 2 escalations, still pending. Wrote in a detailed ticket and 2 days later: crickets.
I decided to ACAT out to another brokerage in frustration. It’s already processing within 2 hours and should be done in a day or two.
Lots of room when something automatable to help a customer stay is lower priority than something that helps a customer leave forever.
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I’m so in awe of India having a fast bowler that the entire world can agree is the very best. Didn’t think it would ever happen in my lifetime when I was growing up
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Crazy to me that someone who came to the US legally like @sriramk , became a citizen and who advocates for skilled
, merit-based *legal* immigration is piled upon by calls like “go back to your country”!
Every immigrant at some point has had someone say that to them but I figured it goes away after spending a long time as a tax paying, productive, and law abiding citizen. I guess not 😕.
If on the one hand, assimilation and merit is the goal and on the other hand, at the first sign of a citizen having some views you disagree with you want them to leave, then no level of assimilation would be sufficient. It would allow for no policy suggestions from naturalized citizens.
Needless to say, the history of the US is filled with naturalized citizens who made massive contributions to their fields!
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When you get a chance to work with @pejmannozad it isn’t too surprising to see @pearvc and him top the Midas seed list! The hunger to constantly set bigger targets and do the best for founders has been a hallmark of his whole career :)
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Amazing to see the work and commitment of @pejmannozad and @MarHershenson recognized on the Forbes Midas list!
We're excited to see @pejmannozad and @MarHershenson on the 2024 @Forbes Midas List!
The list recognizes the 100 investors with top returns, but the thing we're always the most proud of is the amazing partnership between our team and our founders. 🍐
forbes.com/lists/midas/?sh=1…
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My understanding is that not many branches of some banks are open on the weekends. This means that while the crowds are larger than usual probably not too concerning on its own
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Let’s say that two companies end up being in the race for personal super intelligence
One is public and the other is still private (say meta and openAI)
It would be perfectly reasonable for people to root for the incumbent and not the underdog if they can’t have any upside to that company succeeding
This is why more companies need to enable their champions to have upside for their belief in them.
Either more companies should go public or welcome the tokenization of equities
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Every Independence Day. I’m reminded how far India has come from when I was growing up there.
As a professor in a lecture at Stanford would say: A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept
Happy Independence Day! 🇮🇳
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Congratulations @willbokuishen and the @apparatelabs team on this launch! Building real time video generation, and making it accessible via easy APIs unlocks a whole set of use cases that are transformative! I and @pearvc are excited to be along for this journey 🚀
Introducing Proteus 0.1, REAL-TIME video generation that brings life to your AI.
Proteus can laugh, rap, sing, blink, smile, talk, and more. From a single image!
Come meet Proteus on Twitch in real-time. ↓
Sign up for API waitlist: apparate.ai/early-access.htm…
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The world’s businesses needed a better way to connect and grow. Nuvo is making it happen. Congratulations to them for $45M raised and their launch today! I'm thrilled to share us at @sparkcapital leading their last round alongside our friends @sequoia - @schreier and team:
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Someone could easily do with these mangoes what that one person did with restaurant reservations in NYC and make a killing. Indians in the US have the purchasing power and the same obsession with these mangoes.
It’s that time of year!
Alphonso mangoes are in season.
Customs restrictions, transport costs, & short shelf life make them tough to get in the US.
Call your Indian store to see if they can get you some. They sell out within hours of arriving from the plane, are worth it!
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People in India should really not miss this news and this is an example of why I think banning TikTok in 2020 was the right move by the Indian govt at the time
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This is very true! Also the reason why reference checks from someone from a long time ago in someone’s career is useful only for information on character and rarely on skills and capabilities
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It would be amazing if companies didn’t need to conduct acquisition workarounds and instead do things directly. The health of public markets and all innovation markets depend on it.
If this is the only way meaningful acquisitions can be done by public companies it will discourage more companies from going public. Which is the last thing we need
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If iRobot $IRBT or Spirit $SAVE go bankrupt because of their failed mergers (a deal that two willing parties couldn’t conclude simply because of regulatory approvals), then the winners are not consumers who get more competition - there is no competition from a dead company. The only winners would be the lawyers who get fees for
1) trying to complete the deal
2) working to unwind a bankrupt company
Overall net negative to everyone else including the US economy because of unnecessary job losses.
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We’re quite excited about Fintech at @pearvc. The market opportunities are still very large and preferences across lending, saving, spending and investing continue to evolve
Bringing you some non-AI coverage this morning, with interviews from @sarahhinkfuss and @arpans and on-stage fodder from our capital conference earlier this week.
theinformation.com/articles/…
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Telemundo Deportes
I’m a broken record on this, but this is a tragedy that they didn’t go public yet
If you want America to cheer its winners and its most successful companies and the system that creates them, the average American needs to be able to see some upside in their retirement accounts.
OPENAI CLOSES A NEW RAISE OF $40B AT A $300B VALUATION
LARGEST PRIVATE TECH FUNDING ROUND IN HISTORY
bullish $NVDA
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One of the remarkable things that chess experts have also been pointing out, is how strictly weaker moves are chosen by top players because the best move is so analyzed that it is tough to win playing the best move.
We will see more and more of this in this
world championship
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Netravalkar getting bought by an IPL team and returning to India next year to play cricket full-time will be the most incredible story arc.
Either that or he will at least get an EB1A out of this performance and finally have a green card
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Great essay! As companies get bigger, one of the reasons simply delegating doesn’t work is most of the actual work is being done in the leaves of the tree. It’s impossible to “game of telephone” via process up and down with the CEO accurately. All effective companies have some work around. I’ve often seen this in the form of some trusted individuals who help the CEO cut through the noise of the org chart.
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When Flannel joined forces with @Plaid one of the key reasons @hongxia_zhong and I chose them was the synergistic value faster payments and RTP could provide to Plaid’s ecosystem.
It is exciting to see that early vision we had come to fruition: plaid.com/blog/plaid-transfe…
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Excited to work with @pejmannozad and @MarHershenson and the awesome team at Pear
We’re excited to announce that @arpanshah29 has joined Pear as our newest FinTech Visiting Partner!
Arpan is excited to share his operating experiences from building Flannel (acquired by @Plaid) + leading engineering @RobinhoodApp
blog.pear.vc/2022/02/08/welc…
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Disagree. Most countries that ended up having trade relationships that were strong with the US became rich overtime. If India can workout something that is fair for both, it will help India and the US too. In many ways the vast income gap helps make the relationship complimentary.
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Not a lot of feel good stories coming out of Afghanistan but the story of their cricket team and their progress to the cricket World Cup semi-finals is such an incredible underdog success story!
Icing on top is India not having to face Australia in the finals as a result
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It’s heartwarming to see how much space can inspire an interest in science and innovation!
Woke up at 5am to see the Chandrayaan 3 moon landing and was amazed to see millions of viewers on every YouTube stream
🇮🇳🌕
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Having interviewed hundreds of engineers, the most underrated trait is strong ownership: most engineers see their job as building something but not being responsible for the impact it has.
The best engineers aren’t just shipping but constantly paranoid about outcomes.
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People convinced that they have the right solution on a conflict should have some skepticism and humility given the track record of countries in history where group think has lead to tragic escalations. This is why I appreciate @DavidSacks , @elonmusk , @naval and others
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Anyone who has tried to innovate in finance will tell you how important licenses and your relationship with regulators are! Brico.ai is bringing financial licensure to the next era where it is no longer opaque, complex and expensive! I am so excited to partner with @snigdhak17 and the team at Brico! @pearvc is thrilled to lead this past round to support this incredible mission alongside our friends at @restivevc , @FlourishVC and @rexsalisbury amongst others!
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Shopping for books at small local bookstores is the best way to buy books because a shop can only stock so many items. So the personality, choices and local culture of the shop owner come through inevitably in an unspoken act of curation.
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The one product that Google has launched recently that is N of 1 is Waymo. Everything else Google has created in the last 5 years has real peers: products that are as good and in many cases much better
Waymo stands out as the one differentiated magical experience they offer.
I’m surprised the Capex numbers aren’t 100 billion or greater for Waymo
If Waymo filled San Francisco with as many as they could produce, they would have the market share of Google search in transportation within the city.
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Nothing says India is on an upward trajectory like Magnus Carlsen having Pan masala: Rajnigandha on his jersey at the Global Chess League 😂📈
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Build a company that is a small tax on every dollar spent in the whole category
Cloud providers: a small tax on all software
Ad networks like Google, meta: A small tax on every consumer dollar spent
Nvidia: a small tax on every dollar spent on AI
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The storm expected tomorrow in the Bay Area sounds like something we are even more unprepared for given this past weekend.
Fingers crossed for minimal loss of life and property 🤞
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It’s no longer possible to get news faster than Twitter for any story that is unfolding rapidly. This on its own makes Twitter a competitive threat to all other media entities
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Congratulations @kevinxu and the team on the raise! The financial community they’re building for traders is based on actual positions people have taken so you know whether people have actual skin in the game
We've raised $4.5M to build @AfterHour_HQ, the ultimate financial community app for the internet generation.
With our raise, we're doubling down on community features that give everyday traders the chance to find alpha faster.
A big thank you to our lead investors for believing in our mission: @rabois @foundersfund @bonatsos @generalcatalyst @pearvc
Here’s what we’re building 👇
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My guess is that user adoption of ChatGPT exploded in India over the last few days due to Ghibli.
How do I know? My mom sent me a ghibli-fied picture of her friends.
what's happening with ai adoption in india right now is amazing to watch.
we love to see the explosion of creativity--india is outpacing the world.
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Pear Portfolio company @AfterHour_HQ and @kevinxu have built an incredibly fun game for people who love the markets and investing!
On a personal note, some of my most fun memories in the early days at Robinhood were sitting around the lunch table discussing random investment theses with other folks who also loved investing
Do check this game out!
This has been a dream come true to build
We built the sexiest bracket game for the stock market in the world
Huge thanks to @papperzz and his team for phenomenal execution
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This is accurate. I went from H-1B to EB1a , while the O-1 path is good one it doesn’t necessarily mean your odds are any higher
Immigration News for Entrepreneurs!
Founders with 50%+ equity CAN file for an H-1B for themselves. Most usually opt for the higher effort O-1 because there's a myth that it's needed for EB-1A. It's not.
In most ways, the H-1B is more convenient so long as you make the lottery.
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confident that Robinhood and its impact in driving the whole ecosystem's commissions to 0 had a significant impact in improving stock ownership especially for those below the 60th percentile. 🚀
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It’s amazing how space flight can captivate people from all kinds of diverse backgrounds! Amazing work by @isro to have a successful launch! Hopefully the entire mission will succeed and India will be the 4th nation to soft land on the moon 🇮🇳
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Assuming they are on the path to parity and be just a few generations behind, I disagree here.
I think if intelligence is as important as energy in the future you need a secure supply chain for intelligence just as you need one for energy.
If India can be in the race even if it remains behind for a few years, it will create the environment (talent, infrastructure etc) to enable parity at some point.
For the secure supply chain alone, you can’t rely on someone benign giving you an Opensource one forever
I don't believe there's value in India having its own AI model unless it's clearly world class (or has a path) at certain things.
Unlike software enabled services (Swiggy, Flipkart) or social (WeChat, Xiaohongshu), there's no inherent benefit of an LLM serving a contained market
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Every legal immigrant will agree that there is scope for and probably abuse of every pathway of legal immigration.
There are many ways the H1b , the O-1 and yes even the family based immigration mechanisms are probably abused today.
Most of these cases can be resolved by some structural changes and every immigrant will gladly welcome these changes: make the bar as high as people want.
What is sad though is the type of language used against people from India by some. You can see it very easily in many comments.
It shows the level of hatred some folks have and I’m grateful many have called it out: This is what makes America the greatest country in the world. It is still the friendliest place in the world for immigrants where it is possible for anyone from anywhere to succeed.
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All great startups build a strong culture by having a memes/shitposting channel in their internal slack
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Hard to be an internet celebrity today without picking up some Indian culture. Amazing transformation predicted early by @balajis
I love the culture of bakchodi in India. It perfectly captures my worldview:
take your work seriously, not yourself.
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@CoinbaseSupport I’ve got a transfer in pending state for 6 months now. Multiple emails,phone calls and support requests later.I got a note saying that the transfer was cancelled months ago. Those tokens are still not returned to the account and still in “pending” in the app.
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This was and always will be the product philosophy at Robinhood: if you have a product, offer so much value to customers that every other option feels like you’re just leaving money on the table
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The city of San Francisco gets all the attention but of all the trillion dollar companies started in the Bay Area, every single one of them: Tesla, Nvidia, Google, Apple, Broadcom and Meta were built in the South Bay.
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This will be controversial, but if the US created unlimited immigration based on a bar for tax collected by the US (I.e high skilled immigration with no cap but a high salary hurdle), then I don’t see a way that China or any other would catch up on total GDP for a long long time.
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Incentives guide behavior: If the prerequisite for a manager to go to the next level in the career ladder is having more members in the team, you can be sure that smart, ambitious managers will be able to come up with a way to justify (even argue it is essential) hiring people..
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Craziest news I saw today was how a fintech startup Frank allegedly created fake accounts and tricked JP Morgan Chase into acquiring them.
I then saw it happened in 2021, and it made sense how JPM fomo’d in
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As always from @paulg: extremely important ideas communicated with remarkable clarity. Worth a read!
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The single biggest thing a country can do to become rich is to stop looking down on wealth and progress due to some utopian ideal on how evenly progress should occur and in what order
Good to see Modi echo Deng Xiaoping on Aaj Tak just now. When asked about inequality Modi turned the question around and asked the journalist (@rahulkanwal) if he would prefer it if everyone in India was equally poor. It’s okay if some people get rich first, said Modi. That’s how countries make progress. And wealth creators deserve respect, not admonition.
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