talent eng @spacexai | 👼 forward deployed angels | 2x founder | @uwaterloo
San Francisco, CA
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Founders have an incredibly difficult job.
Creating something from nothing is insanely hard.
I try to provide more than just capital and be as useful as possible in removing barriers so founders can focus on building.
It’s a privilege to be working with unapologetically ambitious founders like @weberwongwong
enough about forward-deployed engineers
we need more forward-deployed angels
was thinking about this because one of our angels Umesh Khanna (@forwarddeploy) has just been pulling up on Sundays and going deep with us on the product problems we're dealing with, designing growth loops, sharpening our "aha" moments and more. It’s been super helpful
very lucky to have him aboard the FLORA cap table
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Umesh Khanna 🇨🇦🇺🇸 retweeted
hopped on the @a16z pod with @eriktorenberg, @omooretweets, @joshelman to chat about @cosign
but, what is a Cosign?
It’s a small slice of your reputation- your personal credibility- attached to a person you want to vouch for.
A Cosign aims to capture what a résumé or a generic connection cannot: the strength and meaning of a relationship.
We have three core endorsement prompts:
- who shaped your career?
- who is someone you would work with anywhere?
- who is a person to watch - someone you think is going to be a star, and the world doesn't know it yet.
We want to make belief in someone more specific and useful.
Let's see if it works 😅
Would love any early feedback
Who believed in you first? Silicon Valley runs on that question.
a16z's Erik Torenberg, David Booth, Josh Elman, and Olivia Moore on Cosign:
Cosign is a curated professional network for the startup community. Profiles are built from endorsements, fundraises, and talent moves, with a private layer to signal who you'd fund or hire.
Erik ran a small version of this seven years ago, emailing a few hundred people and asking each for one person to watch. One of the answers was Russell Kaplan, then a 22-year-old engineer at Tesla, now president of Cognition.
Olivia on why this matters: "The most valuable data in all of Silicon Valley is who has conviction in who." Investors chase it every day and still struggle to find it. An engineer choosing between five offers has almost no way to get it at all.
Paul Graham cosigned Sam Altman in 2009, six years before OpenAI was founded. Ryan Hoover cosigned Erik early at Product Hunt. Silicon Valley has always run on cosigns from people whose word carries weight, and until now nobody kept the record.
The conversation closes on the question of why anyone would share their alpha. David's answer is that the person you cosign today is the one raising a round in two years, and when they do, they remember who believed in them first.
0:55 Twitter as a credential
3:05 Silicon Valley is a race to discover talent
4:10 The 3 questions on every Cosign profile
5:45 The email that found Russell Kaplan at 22
6:15 Conviction is the scarcest data
9:50 Why Cosign is free and strictly positive
11:05 Seeing things before the market does
13:00 Sending private "I'd fund them" signals
18:35 Endorsements that don't vanish
23:05 Recognition for the unsung engineer
29:40 Building LinkedIn Jobs in 2004
34:25 AI made human endorsement scarce
36:45 Why nobody has disrupted LinkedIn
42:10 Your Cosign profile may already exist
46:25 Silicon Valley always ran on cosigns
48:10 "Why would I give away my alpha?"
YouTube: piped.video/-ywZlfznTa4
@eriktorenberg @david__booth @joshelman @omooretweets
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Incredible group making sure we keep on having the resources for the future
Today we're announcing $75M to build Solcoa One, our 500-tonne rare earth metallization plant in Nevada.
At Solcoa, we believe rare earths are the foundation of America's next great industrial era. An era we intend to win on the merits, with superior American technology.
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.@chrisbarber made breakoutlist.com which actually led me to making some of the career decisions I did earlier on in my career.
Grateful to be on a new list by him with such incredible angels 🙌
If you’re building something impactful, i’m happy to help as an angel or be a sounding board.
Being a founder is one of the toughest things you can do, but having the right people around the table makes it just a little bit easier 🚀
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: Eric Glyman (@eglyman)
2 votes: Logan Kilpatrick (@OfficialLoganK)
2 votes: Michael Chen (@michaelzchen5)
2 votes: Nat Friedman (@natfriedman)
2 votes: Noam Brown (@polynoamial)
2 votes: Philip Bogdanov (@philip_bogdanov)
2 votes: Sarah Zeng (@sarahzengy)
2 votes: Tim Luong (@chongz)
2 votes: Zach Frankel
I asked people to focus on angels that work in AI.
People couldn't pick themselves. 3 people picked me; I left myself off the list. I didn't vote.
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👀 Eric Luhman (@eric_luhman1) and Troy Luhman (@troyluhman) have left OpenAI.
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Incredibly excited to be working with my favorite humans, welcome to the team! 🚀
I am excited to be starting a new role at Cursor/SpaceXAI! I will be working on long term research with @ellev3n11 and the amazing team here. Can't wait for what comes next!
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Umesh Khanna 🇨🇦🇺🇸 retweeted
Through the VOICE trial, Terry is using his Neuralink implant to help fine-tune a brain-to-voice interface for himself and others who can’t speak. He trained the algorithm first by miming speech as best he could, then by simply thinking the words and hearing them come out in his own natural voice.
Powered by Grok Voice from @SpaceXAI
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Meet SPECS Intelligence.
It knows what’s important to you: your people, priorities, and what you’re working toward, so it can anticipate your needs before you have to ask.
Get Early Access on Mac + iPhone. No glasses required.
specs.com/intelligence
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Umesh Khanna 🇨🇦🇺🇸 retweeted
Happy to share I'm 3 weeks in & designing at @SpaceXAI
SpaceXAI felt like a rare opportunity to work at the intersection of tech and design, and I'm grateful to be a part of it. Excited to build Grok, X, and more, with the best team.
Looking forward to more!
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🎡Life Hack With Grok Bot:
⭐️ Optimize your visit to Disney Land ⭐️
Use grok @bot as your personal assistant to optimize which rides to go on and when
It pulled the wait times and was able to optimize the lightning pass (turns out stacking them in the morning is more optimal than going on one and then the next lightning pass ride immediately)
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Will be in Toronto/Waterloo Sept 17th weekend for @HackTheNorth
Let me know if you'll be around, would love to meet!
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Umesh Khanna 🇨🇦🇺🇸 retweeted
we're hosting an event at berkeley tomorrow!!
luma.com/wyvf6hgu
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When we met half a year ago, I knew we’d eventually be working together. An incredibly talented and genuine human 🚀
Welcome to the team @larsencc!
It was fun bringing Browser Use from thousands to millions of agent runs.
Now it’s time to go from millions to billions.
I’m joining @SpaceXAI to build Grok products and agents.
LFG 🚀
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Umesh Khanna 🇨🇦🇺🇸 retweeted
I’ve been giving Grok Bot a new job every day this week.
Friday at 10 AM PT, I’m doing Grok Bot 101.
I’ll show you the Bots I’ve built this week and what I learned from them. I’ll also share how I decide which jobs are worth turning into Bots.
hiten.com/grok-bot-101
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Congrats Andrei/Neal and team, insane growth joining forces with Palo Alto Networks will be legendary!
Console has joined @PaloAltoNtwks.
Read the press release here:
paloaltonetworks.com/company…
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