How often do we see major investors in a share class change the rules on a particular investor? Surprisingly often, as it turns out. I asked one of the most prolific startup lawyers @Yashreeka1 for her unfiltered take on Valar Atomics vs. Day One Ventures

Took us long enough, but glad to finally get together IRL at Long Horizon @chris_j_paxton!

There’s a reason I’ve been talking about and backing Dirty, Dusty and Dangerous industries for the past 5 years…

RomCom Pitch: Two laid off co-workers who can’t stand each other hatch a plan to throw a lavish Indian wedding they can charge for. She’s deep in college debt and her parents have cut her off, he needs to send money home while keeping immigration off his back. Hijinks ensue. Love follows. “Arrangement Marriage” Coming to Netflix in 2027.

I would like one refund for the "Jameis Winston Experience" please...

First comes the decline of soft power, then follows the decline of hard power.

Big point of discussion at Dirty Jobs this year was the tightening of the triangle, that is: Data <> Model <> Deployment Model companies realizing they have to own deployment in order to get unique data because, as Peter Ludwig of @AppliedInt said, "You're going to hit a wall if you're just training off of data you can purchase." @Lindon_Gao, echo’d this sharing learnings from recent @DynaRobotics deployments and take it a step further, teasing their new semi-humanoid Taku. When collecting data to train a frontier manipulation model, off the shelf hardware just didn’t cut it for them. This week we saw the importance of deployment to general model companies via partnership between @goformic and @physical_int. Question I’m thinking through is: If you're starting out today, seeing every model company hit some wall, can you afford NOT to own your own deployment.

Have this longstanding theory that VCs are attracted to funding a new category until they know “how the magic trick is done” You always see it in the run up to a sector getting hot. Software. Crypto. AI Wrappers. Defense. Robotics. Investors use terms like “cracked team” and “relentless energy” because they don’t know enough yet to explain how the startup translates technology into a business. As soon as the magic is known and they realize it’s all a learnable trick that takes time, effort and capital to perfect, the allure is gone and investors move on. Am I wrong?

This feels like a uniquely SF problem. I’ve never heard of an investor from NYC having a problem passing to their face. Time and clarity is a gift you can give a founder when you know the opportunity is not for you. The goal is to still be kind, at the cost of being too nice.

New Podcast Idea: PUMPING BAGS VCs are allowed to come and unabashedly pump their portfolio companies but we do it at the gym while they are lifting heavy AF weights (~70-80% 1RM) Willing to sweat and look nasty on camera in order to pump your portfolio company? Let's talk.

Valar Atomics vs Day One. When a pro rata fight between founder and investor goes nuclear. For those who don't live their every hour on X (bless you!) I'll summarize. Stick with me, because this stuff is fascinating: @ValarAtomics is a startup that builds nuclear reactors and just announced a $1B Series B from @Sequoia in August 2026. On October 9 it sued @DayOneVC, its seed investor and Series A co-lead, in the Delaware Court of Chancery. The issue in question comes from the removal of a "spring back" provision. Pro rata is the right of an investor to maintain their prior level of ownership by buying additional shares at the current round's financing. It's a common right granted to Major investors. If major investors waive their pro rata and the company lets one of them back in anyway, Spring Back means everyone gets their rights back at the same proportion. Well, the day before Valar's $1B Series B closed, Valar and a majority of Major Investors share class amended the agreement to take that spring back clause out. Meaning the company can now include or exclude any investor they want. Day One's GP @mashadrokova says amending in this fashion singled them out as an investor which goes against the letter of their agreement and against their rights as a Major Investor. The question at hand is: Can founders get a majority of investors to change the investor rights agreement to deny the rights of a particular investor? And most importantly, is that what happened here? My friend @Yashreeka, Partner at @AshurstPerkins, joined me to unpack what the clause actually means, whether the removal was done the right way, and what happens in reality when founders and investors disagree over pro rata. Must listen because this is the legal stuff Claude can't teach you. Full episode below 👇👇👇

If you wanna know what an actual lawyer thinks about this, I thought why not ask one directly 👀

If you want to know where we are in the market cycle, we've got full-on music videos for $4 million seed rounds now. Very creative concept and thankfully not a “straight to camera” hostage video like most founders shoot these days.

"Trading power law for power ball"

This really doesn’t help disprove the long running theory that WeWork was a Mossad-operation to drain $45Bn from Saudi Arabia — the largest investor in Masa Son’s Vision Fund

BTW don’t think this is a new position for me. We wrote this almost 5 years ago: techcrunch.com/2022/03/22/it…