Partner @A16Z - started @speedrun, prev @Initialized, 2X founder - acquired @Farmville, then AI startup 13yrs ago, here to tell you the secrets of seed VC
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Full-circle moment: @sama of @OpenAI stopped by @speedrun yesterday to answer questions from our founders. Sam and I met nearly 20 years ago at H Cafe in SF. He has given me advice ever since - on startups (“unless you have a burning desire to solve a problem, take a break”), work ("it's a tough lesson to learn to give something up to someone who will get the job done but not how you would do it") and on life ("you prob don't need this, but read the Dale Carnegie book").
What struck me most about the former Loopt founder: he is still fundamentally the same person he was then.
Everyone begins as an unknown - future founder, investor, or star employee. The world has not yet caught up to what you may become. Don’t let the smallness of your current role define the size of your ambition.
A few takeaways from the conversation:
- model capability is accelerating faster than adoption.
- the future is proactive agents, not chatbots.
- AI will make individual contributors more productive - and force them to become better managers of systems.
- AI is not the moat. Customer love, distribution, brand, and switching costs still matter.
- The rules of business have not changed.
Huge thanks to @DavidGeorge83 for his expert moderation and for our founders for being inquisitive
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Death to the billable hour! @hanhanhan_kim @af_gao are the leaders we need to make every idea a reality - EVERYONE should use this
Today, we're killing the billable hour for patent work.
Fearn Legal (@fearnlegal ) is a modern patent firm built from the ground up on our own operating system, FearnOS.
What that means:
→ Flat fees, not hourly billing
→ Drafts in days, not months
→ Experienced patent attorneys reviewing every application
→ One platform for your entire portfolio, with permissions you control
If you're building something worth protecting, we'd love to help.
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if the dog was technology and the bus was every industry on the planet - if you see charts like this you know you're in for a cambrian explosion
must read by @jkhamehl
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this man has been in the wilderness and found himself back at the beginning... I feel like this is happening for every single founder in the past few years
Congrats @blader!
introducing
═══════════ 𝚌𝚏𝚘.𝚊𝚒 ═════════════
tl;dr
1/ runway is now cfo.ai
2/ you can hire @arithecfo and he can start TODAY
3/ you can give @arithecfo a test drive by replying to this thread with any ridiculous thing you want him to model for you, and he'll come back to you with a beautiful, detailed, fully wired financial model
... in 30 minutes or less
now, story time:
🧵 1/n
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Full-circle moment: @sama of @OpenAI stopped by @speedrun yesterday to answer questions from our founders. Sam and I met nearly 20 years ago at H Cafe in SF. He has given me advice ever since - on startups (“unless you have a burning desire to solve a problem, take a break”), work ("it's a tough lesson to learn to give something up to someone who will get the job done but not how you would do it") and on life ("you prob don't need this, but read the Dale Carnegie book").
What struck me most about the former Loopt founder: he is still fundamentally the same person he was then.
Everyone begins as an unknown - future founder, investor, or star employee. The world has not yet caught up to what you may become. Don’t let the smallness of your current role define the size of your ambition.
A few takeaways from the conversation:
- model capability is accelerating faster than adoption.
- the future is proactive agents, not chatbots.
- AI will make individual contributors more productive - and force them to become better managers of systems.
- AI is not the moat. Customer love, distribution, brand, and switching costs still matter.
- The rules of business have not changed.
Huge thanks to @DavidGeorge83 for his expert moderation and for our founders for being inquisitive
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also shout out @brezina for being the one to connect us together oh so long ago!
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"I'm not an agent harness engineer but I may have played one on television"
- what every investor says
Thanks for making cameo’s in our new video @_CallMeMacy and @emilybenn12 and @ndrewlee .
You are all ⭐️ s
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RIP @DollyParton - I'm just so grateful she created @dollyslibrary . There's unequivocal evidence that kids before age five benefit from reading esp from parents. The streets of heaven have an angel returning to them today
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"Peace through understanding can survive conflict, while peace through agreement lasts only as long as everyone keeps agreeing"
I've officially become the old guy that is impressed by a younger generation
Noah Eckstein Delivers the Senior English Address | Harvard Commencement... piped.video/Bz_iIA3kaLI?is=4jgX…
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Some of the best founders I know are from Sweden!
a16z Speedrun is coming to Stockholm 🇸🇪
We’re excited to meet the next generation of Swedish founders and invest more in the region
We're hosting a number of events from June 24 - 26. Sign up and come meet the team - links below!
--
1 - Fireside chat with @Gabriel1 and @GEVS94 at Norrsken House
2 - Office hours with @WaveVentures at Founders House
3 - Fireside chat + mixer with @KTHinnovation and @KTHAISociety at KTH Stockholm
4 - Office hours with @SSEBusinessLab at the Stockholm School of Economics
5 - Founder + builder dinner with node vc
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every morning, I wake up and tend to the Codex/Claude cows and then feed the kids and get them ready for school... anyone else?
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congrats to Han, Angela, and team Fearn on closing their $5.5m seed round led by our friends at Kindred, Designer Fund, & Essence VC!
@fearn_ai is the AI-native patent platform built for a fast-moving IP world where being first-to-file is the difference between making money off your idea or not. Fearn has developed purpose-built models with custom workflows to take inventions from disclosure to filing-ready draft in minutes, all at a flat $2k per patent. Fearn is already used by leading startups and public companies, including Unity, Dandelion Energy, Serova Bio, Capsule, Syncere, Sans Strings, Taya etc
we’re proud to have been investors since the preseed thru a16z @speedrun where we saw the team in action up close. This team has amazing founder-market-fit: Han was a former patent prosecutor at Morrison Foerster and Angela is a Caltech PhD and AI researcher at Google
@ndrewlee @samshank and I have been so impressed by their vision and sheer velocity, and we couldn’t be more excited to support Fearn on the next phase of their journey! Let’s build!
Patent systems are first-to-file. It's produced a quiet two-tier system: well-funded companies file in 48 hours. Everyone else waits weeks.
Today we're announcing @fearn_ai's $5.5M seed to end that gap. 🧵
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The patent system is first-to-file, but the old workflow quietly created two classes of inventors:
Those who can protect ideas in 48 hours.
And everyone else who waits weeks.
Proud to back @fearn_ai @hanhanhan @af_gao
to close that gap: Big Law-quality patents in ~20 minutes, self-hosted AI, no outside model calls, built by people who lived the pain
Patent systems are first-to-file. It's produced a quiet two-tier system: well-funded companies file in 48 hours. Everyone else waits weeks.
Today we're announcing @fearn_ai's $5.5M seed to end that gap. 🧵
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this happens in SF all the time but it's before the founders/investors/cool people become famous/rich/known
Whether mafia, escape rooms, or Catan - hang with those who live in the future... it's bound to be fun
We put 12 of our favorite people in a room
@sama @zoink @bryan_johnson @PalmerLuckey @cyantist @traestephens
And made them play the diabolical game of deception, Mafia
And filmed it all live with @micsolana as the moderator
Good fun :)
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