Barbell strategy for killing it in an age of superhuman AI: Simultaneously get as close to AND stay as far away from AI as humanly possible. 1. Get close — play with AI models, use them to help you think, ask them to teach you about the world, get them to help you create, work with them to write code, understand what makes them tick, embed them into your everyday life, have fun. 2. Stay far away — learn to tell stories, make eye contact, build a team, lead with courage, connect far-flung ideas, build lifelong friendships, debate persuasively, think forbidden thoughts, handwrite ideas, confess your fears, fall in love. Spend less time trying to master mental transformations that are purely mechanical — building spreadsheets, analyzing trades, balancing accounts, writing code by hand, following playbooks, searching for needles in haystacks. These are the emerging no-man's land, squarely the domain of AI. Venture to the extremes. That’s where all the fun is anyway.

a16z (@a16z) is now in the school business. The Horowitz Andreessen Academy (@theacademysf) launched with $42M, Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) and Erik Torenberg (@eriktorenberg) on the board, and OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, NVIDIA, Anduril, Coinbase, Palantir, Meta and Replit as founding partners. I walked with the Founder and CEO, Gagan Biyani (@gaganbiyani) to learn more about the vision and why he’s the best person to lead it. We talk about: - Starting a debate camp at 13 with 50% margins - Seven jobs, three years, rarely in class at UC Berkeley - Why most professors "don't care about teaching" - Leadership lessons learned at Udemy and Sprig - Why the best builders will pick a16z over MIT or Harvard - 50 founding students, tuition-free - The call from Andrew Chen (@andrewchen) that started the Academy - Ten meetings with Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz - Why Erik Torenberg (@eriktorenberg) keeps telling him "I leave that to you" TIMESTAMPS (00:00) Trailer (01:01) Gagan Biyani, Founder & CEO, Horowitz Andreessen Academy (02:23) A one-year fellowship built around building, not class (03:55) The three skills that are AI proof (08:16) Grandparents from Rajasthan who never finished high school (09:31) Starting a debate camp at 13 with 50% margins (12:59) Why schools are afraid of student agency (18:33) Seven jobs, three years, and rarely going to class (18:46) Why most professors don't care about teaching (25:41) What Udemy and Maven taught him (33:32) Raising $60M at Sprig, shutting down, and getting backed again (38:16) Why raising VC at 18 is a ten-year commitment (39:21) The call from Andrew Chen that started the Academy (41:18) Why the best builders will pick a16z over MIT or Harvard (43:17) 50 founding students, tuition-free (45:46) Why a Harvard dropout means nothing to him (51:42) Outro Full episode: piped.video/vmprTdld5X4

While I’m disappointed by today’s Senate vote, it doesn’t change the fact that crypto’s fundamentals are stronger than ever. Billions of dollars are moving onchain, leading payments companies and financial institutions are adopting blockchain technology, and entrepreneurs around the world are building new financial products that bring money into the internet age. Our work in DC is far from over. We’ll keep working for clear rules that protect consumers and let entrepreneurs build.

The new CLARITY Act text reflects years of bipartisan negotiations and is stronger for it. I urge the Senate to vote to advance the bill tomorrow.

Anyone can get my friend’s real SSN from Claude I'm Terrified of my data in training sets. Emails in databases. iMessages harvested. Cant trust the cloud as AI is crazy good at hacking So I built Underdog for myself: on-device AI OS. Capable & 100% local. now my friends love it

1/ Today we're releasing Lattice Jolt: a post-quantum version of the Jolt zkVM, built on lattices instead of elliptic curves. It's _faster_ than curve-based Jolt and has the shortest proofs of any post-quantum zkVM — under 100 KB. Post: a16zcrypto.com/posts/article…

The Jolt team is one of the best in zkVMs. They’ve been building from scratch via first principles for years. They’ve hit a big milestone with post-quantum support Congrats to @SuccinctJT, @a16zcrypto, and @LayerZero_Core on the milestone! A huge contribution to the industry.

Today I walked with Packy McCormick (@packyM), founder of Not Boring (@notboringco) and Not Boring Capital. Packy built Not Boring into a top newsletter on Substack (@Substack), spent years in finance before leaving to write full-time, and now invests in the same kinds of companies he writes about through Not Boring Capital. He gets into the moment his growth flatlined during the 2022 market crash and what it freed him to do, and why he considers Not Boring's founding mission basically complete. We get into: - Why he passed on investing in the friend who now runs a robotics company valued at $1 billion - The real "nobody gives a s***" moment that came after Not Boring's meteoric growth crashed in 2022 - The clay pot experiment behind why he still writes 30 imperfect essays a year instead of a few polished ones - Why he thinks Anthropic's (@AnthropicAI) careful, downside-focused posture on AI is a little too pessimistic - Why he doubles down on his strengths instead of trying to fix a below-average memory So much more! TIMESTAMPS (00:00) Packy McCormick, Founder, Not Boring & Not Boring Capital (01:02) Weekly business coaching calls with his mom (06:15) Passing on the friend who built a $1 billion robotics company (20:19) The moment nobody gave a s*** anymore (31:02) Being scared of infinity as a kid (34:50) Why Anthropic's pessimism wears him out (36:19) Retiring Not Boring's founding mission (41:09) Telling his pregnant wife he was starting over (45:27) The clay pot experiment behind his writing process (56:00) Double down on strengths, not weaknesses (58:52) What made Colossus's writer profiles so good (1:03:18) $470 million for micro nuclear reactors (1:04:19) The GLP-1 side effect nobody saw coming (1:07:58) What brought him joy this week

Today I walk with Zach Lloyd (@zachlloydtweets), founder and CEO of Warp (@warpdotdev). Zach is a former Principal Engineer at Google (@Google), where he led the Google Sheets team, scaled his first startup, SelfMade, to 150 employees before it fell apart, and raised over $73 million for Warp from Sequoia (@sequoia) and Google Ventures (@GVteam), and now he's betting the whole company on AI. He gets into the AI feature Warp built before Claude Code (@claudeai) and ChatGPT (@ChatGPT) existed, why not going harder at it is one of his biggest regrets as a founder, and what it's like having Marc Benioff (@Benioff) as his cousin. We get into: -The AI feature Warp shipped before ChatGPT even existed, and why building something like Claude Code six months early still turned into one of his biggest regrets -His first startup, SelfMade, scaling to 150 employees and multiple millions in revenue without ever finding real product-market fit -Why he calls hiring "just sales," and why he'd rather hand over equity than compete on salary -Growing up with Marc Benioff as his cousin, and watching a family member build one of software's biggest companies -Why he barely opens a spreadsheet anymore, and which AI-era tools he thinks actually survive So much more! Timestamps (00:00) Trailer (00:59) Zach Lloyd, Founder & CEO, Warp (01:03) Grandfather Lloyd K Lloyd, San Francisco's original salesman (04:42) Marc Benioff is his cousin (21:33) The humility lesson from Google Sheets' original creator (27:07) SelfMade: 150 employees, still not a real business (34:04) Why hiring is really just sales (39:32) Nearing a million terminal users (41:18) Building AI before Claude Code and Codex existed (42:52) Only going halfway in on AI (1:03:09) Why he barely opens a spreadsheet anymore (1:10:10) Warp is automating 30% of its own engineering work (1:11:12) Building automated cloud factories (1:14:49) Almost naming the company Cursor (1:15:48) Never living on Saint Mark's again

Another day, another recording - so many fun founder conversations coming!

Regret the tone of my post on data centers yesterday. What I should have said: There were reasonable concerns about data centers 18ish months ago: water, taxes, jobs, electricity prices, the environment and what they would do to small towns. Well-structured data center projects have largely addressed these concerns today and we should be celebrating this. On balance, data centers are awesome for America in every way. On water: U.S. data centers use a fraction of what golf courses use. A lot of the numbers from 18 months ago were off by over 1000x. Newer data centers use closed-loop systems or recycled water. Should be required by every town approving a data center project. On taxes: looking only at sales-tax exemptions, as Ronan Farrow did, is the wrong way to evaluate this. Data centers pay significant property taxes. Loudoun County, which is the wealthiest county in America, now collects on the order of $1 billion a year from data centers. In Quincy, WA, data centers are more than half the property-tax roll. Over time, property taxes can go to zero while government spending increases in these towns. On jobs: this has been unambiguously awesome for blue collar Americans. Demand for electricians, plumbers, welders, HVAC techs, and contractors has gone vertical, and it is not a one-time construction job. These buildings get upgraded and expanded over time. That is why the building trades are fighting for them, and why some unions are now treating opposition to data centers as a reason not to endorse politicians. On power: the original fear was that households would pay for the incremental electricity demand in the form of higher prices. That is why the ratepayer-protection deals and the new large-load tariffs exist. The right structure is: the data center brings or pays for new generation and signs a contract long enough that existing customers are protected. Where that is happening, utilities are cutting or freezing residential rates and saying so on the record. Where it is not, people are right to object. Electricity prices are going down *today* in a number of large states because of data centers. 
On the environment: data centers overwhelming use natural gas today, which is the cleanest power source outside of nuclear, solar and wind. And the companies that are building the data centers are committed to carbon neutrality such that an equivalent amount of solar will likely be built. Maybe more importantly, the data centers need batteries to function effectively and these batteries can also sell energy back into the grid (which recently prevented blackouts in Texas). Over time, data centers will run on solar plus batteries. On the towns: Poverty in Quincy, WA fell from 29% to 6%. Data center taxes paid for a new high school, a hospital, a library, police and fire stations. This is happening in many left for dead former mill and farm towns that had no other bidder for the land. Data centers are actually reindustrializing parts of America and creating the kind of working-class jobs both parties have spent decades claiming to support. That should not be a partisan issue. Data centers can and should be awesome for America and they increasingly, overwhelmingly are. Supporting the outsourcing of data centers to China will likely age just as well as support for the outsourcing of high quality, blue collar manufacturing jobs to China has aged. When the facts change, I change my mind. I hope that reasonable people who had good faith reasons to oppose data centers at least consider updating their beliefs given the change in the facts over the last 18 months. This really matters for America. I will say I also think the idea of making data centers beautiful is a good one that has yet to be implemented. Data centers should be just as beautiful as Grand Central Station. We can learn a lot from the railroad buildout. Neoclassical revival ftw. Might write up open-weight AI tomorrow as this is equally essential to America.

Today I walk with @bscholl, founder and CEO of @boomsupersonic. Blake was roughly @amazon's 200th engineer, spent more than a decade building XB-1 into the first supersonic jet made outside a government or military, got the US ban on supersonic flight repealed after breaking the sound barrier, and now he's scaling Boom toward carrying passengers in 2030. He gets into the six years Boom spent waiting on @RollsRoyce for an engine, and why that breakup turned out to be the best gift the company ever got. We get into: - Why he'd rather be a "dark matter entrepreneur" who tried and failed than spend his life asking "what if?" - The six years Boom spent trying to get Rolls-Royce to build a custom engine, and why losing that deal is what made the business financially viable. - Why "work on something you know about" is terrible advice, since what you know is far easier to change than what you love. - How a parenting lesson turned into the practice that built candour inside Boom's staff meetings. So much more! (00:00) Trailer (00:41) Intro (01:39) The day XB-1 broke the sound barrier (05:40) 2,000 pounds overweight and called the Theranos of aviation (09:15) How big a dent can we make in the universe (12:01) Bill Gates and the dark matter entrepreneur (14:55) Mom's advice: work on something you already know (17:12) The flying lesson at 19 that decided everything (23:17) Starting Boom with three kids under two (24:39) The mistake dinner that became a staff meeting (27:22) Why the Rolls-Royce breakup was the best gift Boom got (30:37) Brian Chesky and permission to make the big swing (34:29) Amazon at engineer 200 and automating ads at 22 (37:58) Congestion price the entire road network (40:12) "I'd be proud of you for trying" (43:58) The $750K prize to fly supersonic (44:33) Outro Full episode:

Today I walk with @annimaniac, co-founding partner of @floodgatefund. Ann has spent almost 18 years building Floodgate around a deliberately small, non-consensus fund model, made early bets on companies like @lyft and @Taskrabbit, and teaches entrepreneurship at Stanford, and now she's watching AI rewrite the lean startup playbook in real time. She gets into the AI agent inside one portfolio company that quietly caught millions of dollars in missed credit, and why she believes not losing is not the same as winning. We get into: - Why she waited nearly 18 years to grow Floodgate's fund size, and how staying small means a $1 billion exit still moves the needle for her investors - Making debate opponents cry for a slice of pizza, and the permission that gave her to be disagreeable for the rest of her career - SmarterDx, the company she couldn't get other investors to take seriously at Series A, that went on to exit for over $1 billion - The math behind "founder friendly" investing, and why a $100M exit barely registers against a $1 billion fund So much more! (00:00) Ann Miura-Ko, Co-Founding Partner, Floodgate (01:35) Making debate opponents cry for a slice of pizza (05:41) Truth-seeking VS defending your ego (11:12) How Mike Maples treated her as an intellectual equal from day one (18:04) Being told she was "average" before finding her calling (26:07) How AI is rewriting the lean startup playbook (36:35) Floodgate's bet to stay small while other firms scale up (39:53) The AI agent that caught millions in missed credits (46:43) SmarterDx: the $1B exit no other investor wanted (48:49) The real math behind a "founder friendly" investor (53:55) Category design and why Lyft had to break the law to launch (1:08:39) The Toyota Corolla he drove for 25 years to buy her a piano (1:11:53) Being the only woman in her electrical engineering class (1:16:37) Turning 50 and her year of saying yes

Today I walk with @jgreze, co-founder and CEO of @TownAI, an AI on-ramp platform for individuals and businesses. Jean-Denis is the former CTO of @Plaid, led engineering through a blocked $5.3B Visa acquisition, and walked away from the C-suite at 45 to start over from zero, and now he's turned a scrapped AI tax-prep startup into a $55M Series A company backed by Andreessen Horowitz(@a16z). He gets into the week he decided to kill a business that was actually working, and why he refuses to call Town an "AI assistant." We get into: - Why he waited until 45, after seven years as Plaid's CTO, to become a founder for the first time - The week he and his co-founder killed a working, revenue-generating tax-prep startup because it wasn't going to be a rocket ship - Town's real bet: not a smarter AI assistant, but an onboarding layer that gets normal people leverage from AI without writing a single prompt - His "accelerators, table stakes, foundations" framework for staying ahead of OpenAI, Gemini, and Google - Why turning "uncool" work into cult culture, from Dropbox's Team Cash to Plaid's colourful tights, built teams that stuck around so much more! Link in comments!

Aztec Alpha V5 is live. The fastest private transactions we've ever shipped, now on mainnet. Read more on aztec.network/alpha-v5. Apps roll out over the coming week, starting with @nyxmoney. Nyx is invite-only, but for the next 24 hours it's open to everyone. Code below 👇

Travis is back.