This one was written straight from the heart at 4:32 am..

You can just do (hard) things..

Reading biographies of successful people, and if I had to summarize it in one meme, this would be it..

I feel a little bit for the @GoogleDeepMind team.. You build a world changing model and everyone is posting Ghibli-fied pictures instead. But this is the core problem with Google - they can build the best models in the world but if they don’t focus on the consumer experience they are going to get MOGGED again and again. It’s never been part of the core DNA but I beg of them to take 20% of their best talented folks and give them free rein on building world class consumer experiences. Like why is Gemini Advanced just not free for anyone to use instead of making people pay atm? Why is the personality so dry compared to the others? Why are there no good templates on the Gemini page instead of this crap like “inspire me”? Why are the best features trapped in AI studio or in NotebookLM? You have such incredible tech, all the reach in the world - just set it free.

This is easily the best essay I’ve read all year.. highly recommend reading in full

A lesson that took me 10 years to learn..

How I feel after launching 5 instances of Claude Code..

It's wild that Google wrote the Transformers paper (that birthed GPTs) AND open sourced Chromium.. Both of which will (eventually) lead to the downfall of their search monopoly. History lesson in there somewhere.

When you genuinely love the problem, the hours disappear...

In today's 996 chest-thumping culture, don't forget about the quiet ones keeping your company together..

I’m really envious of people who are able to communicate clearly & effectively especially in unrehearsed settings.. I feel I need to write to structure thoughts - otherwise my brain is generally a garbled mess. Must get better, will get better. Any tips or pointers are welcome!

We spend years getting comfortable at companies building consensus. Then, we join the dictator and finally ship something that matters..

Can’t believe it’s taken me 20+ years to come to Bombay.. Even sweeter when the occasion is to surprise Dad 🥳

The best founders operate on a different clock - and it drives most of their employees crazy..

Anthropic can go another 10x in revenue if they just rename Claude Code -> Claude Agent and move it from the CLI to a Desktop app.. People just don't get how good this is 😅

You can just fix things..

"How many American jobs did you displace? Why don't you go back to your country and leave us alone?" Question asked by an American as I handed back his camera after taking a photo of him and his wife with the beauty of Yellowstone National Park behind us. July 2015. The irony of his words against that backdrop of America's natural wonder wasn't lost on me. This memory is forever etched in my brain—the first time I experienced the vitriol that people harbor against immigrants. One moment erasing years of welcome. My first seven years in America were pretty sheltered. I moved to the States for undergrad in 2008—I went to a large international school and then moved to the Bay Area. From frat parties to Thanksgiving with American families in suburbs of Chicago to wealthy people in Los Gatos, there was not once that my country of origin was a source of conflict. I always felt welcome with every generation, regardless of gender or background. But that moment in Yellowstone—I realized I lived a very sheltered life. There's a stark difference between communities that have been exposed to immigrants and those that see them as threats. In recent years, the rhetoric has been escalating where the word "immigrant" has been muddled—it doesn't matter if you create 1,000 jobs or cross the border illegally. You are an "immigrant"—someone who'll take this country away from their core. When you point out that 99% of people living here displaced the native population, you are met with blank stares. Complexity dissolves in fear. It took me fourteen years to be a permanent resident—every day before that carrying the weight that losing my job meant ninety days to find another or leave. It'll take another five to be a citizen if I choose that path. This despite managing dozens of Americans and paying more in taxes than probably 95% of people in this country. Lost is the fact that we are actively choosing to make this our country and improve it every day. We are equally if not more frustrated when we see people jump the border. We just want the playing field leveled where merit, not birthplace, determines opportunity. Here's hoping more people engage in meaningful dialogue about fixing this broken system rather than throwing accusations at those helping build America's future ✌️

it's time to get back to fundamentals..

Agents are the perfect tremor for the earthquake coming to SaaS pricing..

I have been struggling for months to explain why I think Claude Code is a BIG deal for non-technical people as well. Finally seem to have found a framing that might make sense..

First time founder focuses on product / second time founder focuses on distribution is common lore. But, here are some other notes I’ve taken over the years.. What’s missing?

Young people, this rant is for you.. Even the most famous person has 15 minutes to give you—if you give them a good reason to. Most successful people I know have some combination of family, close friends, a stressful job, unlimited chores—and definitely not enough time to sleep and exercise. So if you want 15 minutes, they'll find space for you—but you can't just say, "Can I call you?" or, "Can we connect?" or, worst of all, "Let's explore synergies." Put in the work. Read about them. Understand what this person really can offer you. Write 3-5 simple bullet points of context, along with one concrete ask. If you're sharing attachments, keep them to a single page. Keep your message short, genuine, and include available times (not a Calendly link). Make sure your signature includes your phone number. I bet this works better than your standard message—try it and let me know. Finally, and most importantly: don't feel entitled to anyone's time. If you send a cold email, it doesn't mean they have to respond. Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind!

15 years of Depending on the H1-B lottery, anxiety of being deported if I was laid off, H1 transfer not happening, countless forms, consulate appointments.. Finally, in some personal news, I’m excited to share today @shimoleejhaveri & I became permanent residents of USA 🎉🥳

Waymo spent 15 years getting from 90% to mostly autonomous. Companies are about to learn the same lesson..

If you are even a teeny bit inspired by SpaceX’s achievement, let this be your call to go join a company that’s building more than just software. It’ll expand your systems thinking and make you significantly better at your job - even if you come back to doing just software.

PMs, here's a bitter pill to swallow alongside all that holiday candy..

If I was running a B2B company today, I'd be on the market to hire this role right away..

My grandparents & parents are alive. I have two loving brothers who have an incredible family of their own. I have the world’s best wife and two healthy kids. And we are all free of any debt or lifelong sicknesses. This won’t last but can’t describe how special it is rn 🧿🤞

Call me old fashioned but the only moats are a) retention and b) a mission worth spending 10+ years on. When these companies chasing fast cheap growth flame out, and they will, this will be exhibit A of VC behavior fueling the madness. If you are a founder that’s NOT chasing overnight success, please reach out to me 👋

Day 1 🤓

Being a VC is quite simple in Silicon Valley.. First, you have to understand that founders don’t like to meet VCs. So, we have to do elaborate schemes like host poker nights disguised as sourcing nights obviously. And, you have to have someone from OpenAI or Anthropic there since something something RL and GPUs go brr. And vibes matter. A lot. And, since no one drinks in SF anymore, there needs to be artisanal non alcoholic beer, natural wine and good food. But, not so fancy, that it feels off. And, if you want a bit fancy get proper tables and dealers. But honestly the living room works as well. They won’t care. And, then you just use the three mantras that will keep everyone interested: 1) “this is the worst the models will ever get” 2) “so RL environments huh” 3) “applications are cool but picks and shovels are better”. And make a joke about how just holding NVDA would return more capital. And, then founders will go back to work so you give them Celsius and bump your phone to exchange numbers. All while ignoring inbound emails since they didnt come from a trusted angel investor and having Claude run market research reports for you for your IC tomorrow. So simple. And since most people don’t get my sarcasm, this is 98% truth, 2% satire. Just like the HBO show.

Every Patel family asking “beta, what have you done today?”

Spent 18 months trying to find what's coming beyond chat, here are some emerging patterns..

Kingdoms are built on customers, not capital..

I know most folks already know this but.. If something is obvious to you, and it’s NOT obvious to everyone else, then do something about it (start a company, invest, join etc). All of my greatest mistakes in my career have come from not acting on that knowledge / instinct.

Only in SF 🤑

One small piece of advice to founders pitching their startups today..

Founders, building a company is THE hardest thing in the world. It’s borderline delusional. There will be a lot of naysayers and people dunking on you for trying. Ignore them - it’s hard but do it. Find the choice few who are as convicted as you and go change the world.

If you are an "idea guy" and lean technical, this has to be the BEST time in history to be alive.. Era of abundance has truly begun 🪄

New experiment 👀 Why buy billboards in SF, when you can just send me swag to market your startup.. I walk 5-7 miles every day here and will wear it for the FULL day. On weekends, you get premium coverage with B2B buyers (i.e. parents) eyeing it in parks. Reserve below!

Don't be an extra in your own movie..

One simple reason SF is the greatest city in the world: When you leave a job, everyone responds with genuine enthusiasm and says “Congrats, what’s next?” and starts making intros to help. Most other places, it’s considered a moment of worry or pain or potentially ridicule.

For both AI and immigrants, O-1 is all you need 🍓

Claude Code leaderboards NOW being displayed in every startup's office in 3, 2, 1..

I think most folks don’t realize that in Silicon Valley.. There are plenty of people who are living paycheck to paycheck even though they are earning top-tier income. This is happening for early-career folks and definitely true if you have kids. “Going negative” for a few years is a common utterance, especially if people want to be ambitious (aka working on startups). Given that real estate and daycare are expensive, people end up having absurdly high monthly burn. Add lifestyle creep, and folks are essentially one layoff away from a house of cards coming down. This is especially happening now as “directors” are getting fired from large companies and they are forced to take a title and compensation deflation. You only hear the “killing it” and “making millions” stories so it’s often good to remember that this other reality also exists. Just stay humble and play your own game!

Accidentally said "sales" instead of "distribution" and they kicked me out of SF

I had always joked that @SiliconHBO is a documentary rather than a TV show.. 12 months in as a VC, I can confirm it’s 100% a documentary. Someone please make a new season - there is SO much recent news to take advantage of 🥺

VC (me): How can I help? 6 founders this week: Get me a full-stack engineer with limitless potential (& energy) Checks my pipeline.. (sweating) SO! If you are a full-stack engineer in SF and wants to work with A+ founders, I'd love to buy you lunch or coffee. DMs are open!

This is the most “her” moment I’ve felt in the last few years.. It’s truly uncanny - recommend trying this out now sesame.com/research/crossing…

👋 Just finished my last week at @khoslaventures. Incredibly grateful to @vkhosla (and team) for a great year of learning about all things investing. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more relentless and ambitious partner than him (truly). What's next? In the short term, I'm going to work on some side projects that have been lying dormant for a while and take some long walks. In a few weeks, I'm excited to continue to be the first call (and check) for founders. In the meantime, if I can be helpful, please don't hesitate to reach out. I may not be able to reply to you all, but I'm genuinely grateful to a LOT of you who've helped me along the way. Next play!

My hottest VC take is that if you are not talking to college students on a weekly basis you are ngmi 🫣

boomer VC stack - LinkedIn - CB insights and Pitchbook - Email - Team of analysts - Zoom - Fortune / Forbes - Salesforce new age VC stack - X - ChatGPT (o3 and Deep Research) - iMessage - IRL - Substack - Granola & Attio

I think about this trap all the freaking time.. finally found the right words to share it.

Happens at least once every single week.. Person X: We’re doing $4M in ARR (I go to the website, check pricing page, see they have no subscription options 🤔) Me: What part of your revenue is recurring? X: None - we’re usage based. Me: Ok. So what was your revenue last month? Money that *actually* came to your bank account. X: $30k Me: Wait, so how is that $4M in annualized revenue run rate - which is not ARR btw.. X shares some absurd math on how it translates and upsell opportunities in pilots. Me: Hmm, fine, what are your margins? How much of it is pass through to the large labs if you’re not hosting your own? X (evasively): Umm, we’re not at liberty to share that today. The end. Founders, please please don’t do this today. I’m not sure who’s training you but just know that investors are NOT that gullible. Or maybe they are 🤷‍♂️

I meet one too many VCs who think they are entitled to a founder's time. If there's one thing I learned from @vkhosla last year, it's that you gotta..

This is why founders dislike VCs so much. Don’t hate the player - and we are nothing without the founders and the founding team. Be kind, I think you are better than this.

What most young people don’t know about careers is you need ONE breakout success (or company) to change your entire trajectory.. And, this is true for operating AND venture. If you join at the right moment and do well, your entire past is replaced with that “high point”. It’s very rare to do it again and again - especially 0 to 1 - and that’s why I have a lot of respect for people who continuously reinvent themselves.

SF rental market is SO crazy that VCs will soon need to give rentals to founders as part of their term sheets.

One of the biggest things I find missing in most AI decks (business or consumer) is the clear data loop.. - what data are you capturing - why will users give you this data - how does it make the product better (evals, fine tuning) - how does that increase retention & growth

Rishi is here 💙🧿

Product leaders - some free advice that’ll make your exec team happy in the upcoming year: 1) Buy your team subscriptions to @chatprd @Replit & @v0 2) Force your team to use it for 30 mins/day 3) Don’t accept PRDs without prototypes 4) Burn your hiring plan You’re welcome 🙏

scenes from mumbai 📸

Thrilled to share that I'm joining @FPVventures to find and invest in unreasonably deep founders. Why FPV? The name says it all: Founder's Point of View. Wes and Pegah have built something special: a firm that combines the rigor needed to build category-defining companies with the empathy to support founders through the inevitable challenges. They're a complementary duo who understand that great companies aren't just built on metrics, but on trust and partnership. We're a generalist fund that recently closed $525M for Fund II, bringing our total to $1B under management. But the numbers only tell part of the story. Ask the founders of @canva , @monarch_money , XOPS, Enveda, or Strand Therapeutics why they love working with Wes and Pegah, and you'll hear the same themes: genuine partnership, strategic clarity, and unwavering support through the hardest moments of building. I'm joining them because I believe in their approach and want to help build on what they've started. We're committed to backing founders at the earliest stages, when the path forward is still uncertain but the potential is greatest. It's time to accelerate. Longer post below!

I'm still shocked websites are not prebuilt with two things.. 1) chat with website - why am I still navigating your website to find info when I should be able to simply ask chat? 2) llms.txt or agents.txt - your primary customer is changing to an agent. get discovered or die.

Everyone (in tech) should work at an early stage startup at least once.. The intensity, chaos, and unpredictability really prepares you well for life ahead. Most hard things will then look like child’s play -- and you might get addicted to the pain/fun of solving 0->1

clarity of thought and precise instruction is going to matter a LOT more in the near future..

Mini rant on how we’ve swung the pendulum a bit too far from product-maxxing to views-maxxing.. For years, companies have been told to focus on distribution first. Building a good product is important but it’s also important to focus on sales. There’s a long graveyard of “great” products that never went anywhere because the founders were not able to find a market for their product. Technical people were often told to find a “business” cofounder (or vice versa) to avoid the trap of building a solution vs. finding a core problem to solve. It seems like in the AI world we’ve now completely swung the pendulum to “attention first”. It’s also about how you can get a viral launch on X or how you’ve crushed revenue from 0 to 500k in ARR. VCs extenuate this behavior by also mostly asking for revenue and not even interested in a meeting if you haven’t ramped up revenue. This has led to “wedge” companies who are effectively maximizing for the smallest possible thing they can build that helps them get a foot in the door and lots and lots of pilots. But, when you ask a large majority of these companies on what core long term problem they’re solving or for usage/retention metrics, they look at you as if you’re from another era. What I really worry about, and maybe sound like an old soul, is we’re this upcoming “cracked” generation the wrong lessons. This was perfectly encapsulated when a 19 year old founder came up to me and before starting this accelerator asked me “how do you think I should best go viral so that VCs throw money at me”. No questions about what do you think the market is, what product problem.. just views. So while I’m glad this next generation of companies are thinking of commercialization, I think it’s important to remember that “without retention, all attention is useless”. And history has shown time and again that some of the most successful companies in the last decade took a WHILE to take off since they spent years perfecting the product. If you’ve made it all the way to the bottom, I urge you to think fast, but also think big and really be obsessed with the customer problem. Thank you for your attention 😅

Dear founder, you are SO much more than your age..

Best use case I’ve found so far for the new image generation capabilities..

Main problem is every founder wants to hire level 5 talent and give them .3% in the company.. My #1 advice is to always give WAY more equity when you find these people. No one has regretted it so far!

It seems like EVERY single company is building the same three products.. 1) App builder (think Replit, Bolt) 2) Enterprise search (think Glean) 3) Agentic codegen (think Devin) It seems like the path to AGI is building the orchestrator with having these three tools on tap.

Some unstructured thoughts on what creates abundance mindset..

People just don’t realize how hard early stage startups are.. And by chance you find PMF, you are given EVEN harder problems. Most employees (including founders) don’t scale, burn out, quit - as they deal with larger orgs and hyper growth. Easy to comment on the sidelines, infinitely harder to build. Just be kind and thankful to folks who are on this journey since they are changing the world!

ChatGPT & @Replit are the greatest inventions that happened to PMs (like me) who never got into programming full-time.. It's wild how fast I can take ideas in my head to a full working prototype As cost of software goes to zero, craft / taste will become important again

The best startups are built for obsession. Increasingly, they're built for optics..

product development needs an AI native overhaul. a preview of what's to come..

The difference that is getting more and more obvious between @OpenAI and @Google every day is one company talks and the other company shows.. Just today, @Google announced something mind-blowing with Gemini 1.5 Pro with a context window of up to 1 million tokens (source: blog.google/technology/ai/go…) But there's no playground, I can't try it myself. There's some very impressive videos in the blog post, but it's not personalized to me at all. In contrast, today @OpenAI launched SORA - a text to video model. The demo videos are truly mind-blowing. It's not something I can try myself, BUT @sama is taking prompts (nitter.app/sama/status/1758193792…) from customers and showcasing SORA's outputs in public. This is going to vastly overshadow Google's very very impressive achievements. Google is on the backfoot and needs to "share" to capture mindshare again. But if they truly want to, then take a leaf out of OAI's playbook and start showing more!

Inverting the interview process 🔎

VCs talk about how they only back “AI-native” companies.. Ask them what it means and they can’t speak more than a few words (*cough agent cough*). Tried to take a crack at the differences. What’s missing?

People often ask me what type of founders/companies I like investing in.. see below 👇

Inflection (Microsoft), Adept (Amazon) and now Character (Google). These examples _will_ make early employees question why they should join high growth startups in the first place since they are the biggest losers of these transactions. And that's a catastrophe in itself.

A bit of an unstructured rant but I’m jet lagged in London so here goes.. I meet a lot of product builders who want to join hyper growth or promising startups and struggle to find any inroads. I ask them what have they done so far and the vast majority say they wrote a well crafted cold email or got a referral. When I ask if they have built anything on top of the prospective company tools that they might find interesting or if they wrote about their experience using the product, most just give me an incredulous stare. Are you kidding me? In this era of incredible tools like @replit @Galileo_AI @cursor_ai and many others, if you can’t even build a prototype then of course that startup has no business hiring you. I think the vast majority of PMs don’t realize how quickly their job is changing and how much AI will truly automate their work. You have to quickly learn how to build, sell, research or design (ideally all) or you are truly ngmi. And the amazing thing is you can learn these fairly fast if you give it sometime today. It is sad that product management as a craft has mostly gone away from building hard things to simply being a conductor with largely no control. And it’s because at large companies you just simply learn the wrong lessons (process over agency, bureaucracy over shipping, talking internally vs talking to customers, optics over impact). People don’t like hearing this but this is the reason why startups don’t hire big tech folks. So before you apply to your next startup job, I urge you to really take some time - try and build something of value. It really doesn’t take that long. And I guarantee you will make inroads faster than you think.

If you are technical AND have decent operating background, every VC firm is looking to hire atm. Even if they say no, trust me, they are looking to hire. Why? Besides shuffling ranks, they are looking to add AI native folks to their primarily enterprise SaaS bench.

New year, same spicy takes.. 🫡

New final boss YC challenge unlocked.. $10M in ARR is not cool. You know what’s cool, $10M in MRR. You know what’s cooler, $5M in monthly profit.

Life doesn't have a framework, and neither do startups..

I’m fairly convinced that running ChatGPT Deep Research queries is the new buying books but never reading them.. We’re wasting GPUs instead of trees now 🙃

Agency has a secret ingredient..

Before you ship something, ask yourself -- would you sign your name next to it..

8 meetings, 6 coffee shops, 5.5 miles walked.. and it’s only 2 pm I love coming to NY ❤️

Real transcript from a founder call yesterday (edited for clarity).. Founder: What metrics do I need to get to a Series A? I hear a lot of different things. Me: It honestly really depends. I wish I could tell you an exact number.. Founder: What do you mean? It used to be $1M, isn't it now $2M. Me: You'd think that.. But, it also depends what sector you are in, what your growth rates are, ACV, quality of revenue, storytelling ability. And frankly, all of those go to the sink when sometimes the round gets extremely hot. Founder: Share more? Me: I just heard of a round getting done at >$200M post for <$200k in ARR. Yes, by a high quality investor. And, I was talking to a founder who's doing $3M in ARR but can't even pull a round together. Founder: So, what should I do? Me: First, I won't compare your round to others, it's just not worth it. You don't know what side of the bed a VC woke up on to give someone that money. Second, I'd figure out what does additional capital get you today. Venture capital is meant to be an accelerant, raising should not be the default path. Third, in the long term, building a great product and gaining distribution faster than anyone is the only alpha. Everything else is just noise. Plenty of famous examples of companies that took a while to "win" even though the competition was far better funded. Founder: Hmph Me: I'm sorry it's not the clear answer you want, but that's what I think.

No one talks about how life in your 30s in the Bay Area is financially hard if you are have kids and both parents want to stay ambitious.. Only people who do it without burning their life savings have either a) secured the bag or b) one partner eventually working at a FAANG

Speed and breadth of @OpenAI releases is truly mind boggling.. that too in just one quarter. App SDK, AgentKit, ChatKit, Codex, Sora 2 API, GPT 5 Pro API. Kudos to the entire team there for pushing us into the vortex 🌪️

The number one reason to move to SF is to experience the “pay it forward” culture. It’s unlike anywhere in the world where you constantly see random acts of kindness for no “return” whatsoever. Tech, in general, has this abundance mindset that then translates to people embodying it and being transactional ends up being like organ rejection. Even if you visit for a few weeks, you usually experience it and then you can take it to wherever you decide to stay long term.

VCs, today is the day to “Happy Diwali!” your way back into that founder’s life. 🎇🪔🎆

Founders often ask me - “Aren’t you a VC? Why do you keep shipping side projects”.. For me, the best way to learn about a space IS to build it - especially in software. In the last 12 months, I have finetuned models, run large inference on clusters to try open source TTS models, have my own embeddings, built many websites that show me the limits of vibe coding, built and ran my own evals, built plenty of AI agents using frameworks etc. All done on nights and weekends, btw - days are for founder meetings. But, now when I talk with a founder now, I can show them what I have built and dig deep on the challenges that I could foresee in their space. It also sparks new ideas on where a moat could lie (distribution or technical) - something market research or customer references often don’t help with. And I have personally never been afraid of looking stupid - so you’ll continue to see me ship ideas on my X!

Most people think startups are an "overnight success".. Launching a new event series with founders of @NotionHQ, @WorkOS, @TrustVanta, @canva, @meter & @vkhosla sharing all the low points nobody talks about. Intimate conversations, ~30 founders per event. Register today 🥁

In this AI gold rush, Never been easier.. - to raise a preseed or seed round - to build a prototype and ship it - to find a niche and 50 customers - to distribute via an audience Never been harder.. - to hire a founding engineer (or employee) - to find missionaries vs mercenaries - to get to (true) PMF and raise a series A - to get (AI) applications working at reliable scale - to find deeply ambitious people who want outlier outcomes

If you’re in the market for something new, here are some of my recent favorites.. - @signulll (bangers only) - @DialecticPod (authentic and deep) - @fkpxls & @jasminewsun (just beautiful writing) - @_sonith (you can just do things) - @uncapped_pod (@jaltma knows how to put on a show) - @_brianpotter (national treasure) - @tbpn (duh) - @sonofalli (how can someone be so funny) All of you make my screen time infinitely better - thank you!

Might get canceled, but pray tell me - why does SF need a tech week? It's like tech week - EVERY single week here. As most people who breathe tech, it'd be frankly more interesting to have an "everything-but-tech" week that talks about other important/fun things.