We need to rebrand this company ASAP

What was in the water during the 1960s? I’m here at Idaho National Labs doing a 2-day deep dive on nuclear power. Every 15 minutes they say “…and this was invented in the 60s.” Cracked engineering generation.

When I co-founded @EniacVC with my friends and partners @Hadley @nihalmehta @timy0ung in 2009, we recognized a unique opportunity to build a new venture capital firm to serve founders at the earliest stage of their journey - seed - which did not exist back then as an institutional asset class.  That moment has arrived again for me. After 15 years of building Eniac, I’m leaving to start a new firm. It’s been an incredible ride taking Eniac from a scrappy startup with a $1.5mm fund to a top-performing VC firm with over $500mm in AUM. I couldn’t be more grateful to my partners, the founders and LPs who chose to work with me over the years. I will continue in an official capacity to serve the portfolio companies I backed.  Looking ahead, I am energized by novel foundational technology - catalyzed by open ecosystems - creating boundless opportunities across the technical stack for decades to come. Stay tuned and mad love to my partners, what a journey!

Last year, we raised a $32M Series B in a tough economy. Despite massive R&D costs in robotics and AI, as well as hardware capex, we did ~$5M in annual revenue (real rev, no ARR trickery), with just $14M raised. Boy, I find myself envying revenue-free startups that secure astronomical valuations by tackling simpler problems this year. VCs struggle to reconcile rapid rev growth with serious tech dev—believing sophisticated tech implies a delay in sales. The devil on my left shoulder tempted me to delay rev, to allow VCs to grasp the depth of our R&D efforts. When you excel in both, they assume the tech is effortless. Few VCs understand this, they are a rare breed. Ultimately, the perspective from the angel on the right shoulder should prevail; do what's best for the company, and it will yield long-term benefits.

🫡 The problem’s solvable, it needs 1) Company adoption (direct industry certifications for individuals, bypass as many middlemen) 2) A framework, a system of systems. A way to organize all occupations / skills 3) A short term widely scalable model (I.e. digital for low hanging fruit) then after proving model, a medium term less scalable but more impactful model to be all encompassing I don’t spend much time on the rhetoric of “people don’t want to work in manufacturing”, they do, even if just for the pay. Aerospace avg $/hr is ~40% higher than equivalent role / requirements All people need is for the pathways and doors to be opened, and to be aware of them

you: pitching vc associate me: rizzing the janitorial staff at the GP’s favorite Aman property to get them to leave my pitch deck scattered around the resort

Started watching Bluey with my son and get the hype. The “Sleepytime” episode is perfect (and too real). One of the few kid shows can actually enjoy with him…and a streaming juggernaut, per Bloomberg: ▫️Brand valued at $2B ▫️731 million viewing hours in 2023 (2nd most-streamed show after Suits) ▫️29% of all Disney TV views in Q4 of 2023 The show was created by Joe Brumm, a veteran TV animator (he worked on “Peppa Pig”). After moving from the UK back to Australia, he made a 1-minute “Bluey” sample in 2015 and showed it to Brisbane-based Ludo Studios. People enjoyed the teaser but didn’t know the intended audience. Brumm had initially considered an R-rated version of Peppa Pig but went with a show targeted at preschoolers (of note: the real Peppa Pig sold for $4B to Hasbro in 2019). With the kid's focus, Ludo convinced the country’s national broadcaster (Australian Broadcasting Corporation aka ABC) to give Brumm $13k for a 5-minute episode. Brumm delivered with the Heeler family, who are 4 cattle dogs living in Brisbane: title character Bluey (7-years old), her sister Bingo (5-years old) as well as Chilli (mom) and Bandit (dad). Material for the show was borrowed from Brumm’s own life as a father of two girls. ABC liked the episode and greenlit $5m for a first season. Unable to foot the whole bill, ABC partnered with BBC Studios (the business segment of the UK’s national broadcaster). BBC got the global distribution, licensing and merchandising rights for Bluey (outside of Australia). In other words, ABC is barely profiting from one of the country’s largest cultural exports since Mad Max, AC/DC, Kyle Minogue or Crocodile Dundee. Brumm has written every episode by himself and it was a deliberate choice. He told The Hollywood Reporter that established kids TV writing is too “formulaic”. He integrated adult themes into the show because he wanted “a good co-viewing show where the parents could genuinely watch it with the kids” and there weren’t many options for the “the preschool stage”. Important topics treated with care include infertility, mental health and alcohol. “Whale Watching” is my favourite episode and is about parenting while hungover — see a spot-on excerpt at the (1:59) mark in the clip below. There have been 150 episodes (~7 minutes each) over 3 seasons. Some are worried Brumm’s run is coming to an end: ▫️His daughters have gotten older (less material) ▫️ The voice actors — including some Brisbane-based children — are also getting older (and voices changing) ▫️Also, the season 3 finale on April 14 is suspiciously long (at 28 minutes) However it shakes out, Brumm has created a masterpiece…and given a few go-to quotes in my house including “I slipped on ma’ beans!”, “a tactical wee” and “pass the sauce, dude!”

No joke this looks like sold out stadium seats for a concert. I went to one gtc in person, in China, and it was nothing at all like this

This isn’t a close up of a computer chip, it’s an aerial photo of a giant steel plant in South Korea called Gwangyang Steel Works (courtesy of @DOverview).

Somehow both extremely cliche and extremely funny still.

It seems like tons of startups pitching "let's make robots easy" and very few "let's make robot cells/industrial control systems easy" pitches, as latter is unsexy, difficult-to-explain-to-VCs, and possibly intractable, but is where actual bottleneck is in robot adoption.

the movies fell short of my expectations in a lot of ways but the worst was failing to deliver any of the mysticism of dune: the jihad as the collective life drive of humanity asking for a change