Gm! 🌞 “Every time you state what you want or believe, you’re the first to hear it. It’s a message to both you and others about what you think is possible. Don’t put a ceiling on yourself.” - Oprah Winfrey TLDR: "What f*cking ceiling?" ~ Tess

Summer side quest

We’re hosting Roots Under Pressure at Homebrew Club for Mental Health Awareness Month 🌱 An intimate evening with Emari for AANHPI founders, investors, and community members on founder burnout, cultural silence, identity, and culturally rooted care. RSVP link below👇

Ready @StartupGrind

The IRL connection economy is a $400B market. And companies are racing to own it. In the last 6 months, $800M in capital was deployed on "IRL" bets. @Tinder invested $60M into a new Events feature for connecting matches in-person. They're pivoting to IRL and offering experiences such as speakeasies, raves, and pottery classes. @222place: raised a $10.1M Series A to curate blind social experiences for Gen Z. Personality-matched groups sent to hyperlocal nightlife events. @JagermeisterUSA launched BestNightsVC - the only venture fund in the world dedicated solely to nightlife and IRL connection. 16 portfolio companies across 4 continents. @timeleft: dinner with 5 strangers, every Wednesday. €18M ARR. 6,500 dinners/week across 200 cities. Dion: members-only social app where the first move is buying someone a real drink, redeemed IRL. 10K members, 30K on the waitlist founded by @revekkapal. Pie: Bonobos founder @dunn built an IRL friendship app. $24M raised. 130K MAU. @weroad_official: group trips for 20-30 year olds who don't know each other beforehand. $150M valuation. Matchbox: is an algorithm-powered matching platform for IRL events and has powered over 100,000 connections. founded by @liamjmcgregor (prev @MarriagePact) New dating apps like Known @Celesteamadon, Cerca @MylesCerca, and Ditto @AllenWangzian are aiming to improve connection amongst young people. Billion-dollar companies are paying $$$ for community and events leads: - @AnthropicAI: Marketing Events Manager ($255k) - @tryramp: Community Manager ($223k) - @tryramp: Events & Culture Manager ($181k) - @duolingo: Senior Community Manager ($193k) - @NotionHQ: Community Programs Lead Everyone knows the more time we spend online, the more valuable real-life connection becomes. The question isn't whether IRL wins. It's who facilitates it best.

On a plane to SF, I can’t be the only one stress testing the system @claudeai

Introducing Claude Managed Agents: everything you need to build and deploy agents at scale. It pairs an agent harness tuned for performance with production infrastructure, so you can go from prototype to launch in days. Now in public beta on the Claude Platform.

BREAKING: Apple is scared of vibe coding they removed Anything from the App Store so we moved app building to iMessage good luck removing this one, Apple

Most podcasts never make it past 7 episodes. How many times have you heard someone say, "I'm going to make a podcast." 🙄 That's the landscape @joenewsman walked into and launched anyway. Joe is one of the sharpest communicators I know. As an Emmy Award-winning journalist, he understands something most podcast hosts don't: the real job isn't talking, it's translating. AI is moving at a pace that leaves most people behind, drowning in jargon and "technobabble" with no on-ramp to the conversation. Answering AI is that on-ramp. The latest episode is a perfect example. We dug into AI agents, one of the most hyped and least understood topics in tech right now. What actually makes an agent different from a bot? Why are people handing over their credit cards and laptop access to software? And what does it mean that some of these agent "workforces" are now running stand ups, managing employees, and apparently talking a little smack about their humans on Reddit? We also got an up-close look at LiveX AI (backed by Google Cloud and Nvidia) and their holographic agents from Super Bowl week. We had a real conversation about the one question everyone is actually thinking: what happens to jobs? It has been a genuine privilege to work alongside Joe as a recurring guest and co-producer on this show. Watching him take decades of storytelling instincts and apply them to this space has been a masterclass in purposeful communication. If you're tired of feeling like AI is happening to you instead of for you, this is your podcast. Find Answering AI on YouTube (@AnsweringAIPodcast) and wherever you listen to your favorites. 🎙️ Drop a comment: What AI term, tool, or topic do you wish someone would finally explain in plain English? We're building the episode list, your answer might just become the next show. youtu.be/2h_R5EFi7g8?si=prk3…

HealthTech founders, your name could get called in two weeks. San Francisco's Got Talent is back on Tuesday, March 24th at Homebrew Club (111 Maiden Ln, SF). This time, we are focused on people building in the health, wellness and longevity space. Here's how it works: Every founder who registers gets thrown into the hat. We draw 8 names live, night of. You get 4 minutes to pitch. Then 3 minutes of unfiltered feedback from people who actually know what they're talking about. Your judges this month: 🎙️ @joenewsman — 4x Emmy Award-winning TV journalist 🎙️ @EllaSogomonian — KRON4 journalist, launched the Bay Area's first 24/7 local news app Plus 2 active investors who've heard thousands of pitches. 👀 This isn't polished BS and deck reviews. It's journalism meets venture capital. What makes a story stick applied to your pitch, live, in real time. Win tonight → you're in the October Grand Finale during SF Tech Week. Simple as that. Doors at 5:30. Pitching starts at 6:00. Come ready or come to watch someone else step up. Either way, you're walking out sharper. 🔗 Register: luma.com/j7wwy9iw Tag a HealthTech founder who needs to be in the room. 👇

PODCAST LAUNCH ALERT: AI is moving so fast, and because of all the "technobabble," it is not easy to understand. That’s why I’m launching the podcast, Answering AI. Let's slow it down, strip away the jargon, define the terms in plain English.

went on a date with a tech bro recently. he showed me his mac mini in his wardrobe linked to an android phone auto-swiping dating apps. even had pause time built in so it looked human. this is what open claw has done to us.

Today was a CRAZY day in the AI space. Morning - Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei refused to work with the Pentagon because they wanted to use Claude for mass surveillance and autonomous killer robots. Afternoon - OpenAI’s Sam Altman came out in support saying, “For all the differences I have with Anthropic, I mostly trust them as a company and I think they really do care about safety.” Evening - President Trump banned Anthropic from every federal agency in the United States government. Night - Sam Altman flipped. OpenAI submitted a bid to replace Anthropic and officially reached a deal with the Pentagon.

We did it. San Francisco’s Got Talent: Pitch Event is officially a thing. February’s kickoff? Electric. Real founders. Real feedback. Zero fluff. The kind of energy that makes you remember why you started. Now we’re doing it again. And this time, we’re going deep on HealthTech. San Francisco’s Got Talent: Pitch Event — HealthTech Edition 📅 Tuesday, March 24th | San Francisco 8 founders randomly drawn from the hat the night of the event. 4 minutes to pitch. 3 minutes of unfiltered feedback from a panel of active investors and ex-TV journalists who know the difference between a story that lands and one that dies in the room. No applications. No pre-screening. No “we’ll be in touch.” You show up. You might get called. So come ready. HealthTech founders, this one’s for you. Whether you’re building in diagnostics, mental health, longevity, medtech, or somewhere in between: the room is waiting. Win March? You’re locked in for the October Grand Finale during SF Tech Week, where every monthly champion comes back to compete for the ultimate prize. 🎟️ Register for March 24th → luma.com/j7wwy9iw 🏆 Peek at the Grand Finale → luma.com/6lylg6au This series is just getting started. Don’t watch from the sidelines.

Cardiologist wins 3rd place at Anthropic's hackathon. Out of 13,000 applications. Built in 7 days by Michał Nedoszytko MD. Coded day and night - in the hospital, in the cloud, while flying from Brussels to San Francisco. A few years ago, it would have been impossible for a doctor to build this alone in just a couple of days. AI changed that. The project is called postvisit.ai. It is an AI agentic care platform for patients. Including reverse AI scribe it is a companion that guides the patient from the moment they leave the doctor's office. Powered by the massive context window of Opus 4.6, it allows patients to explore their full medical history, connected devices, Evidence Based resources and external data sources — all in one place. Today, the barrier to entry has vanished; even a practicing physician can build an application from scratch.

I'm hosting a SheBuilds International Women's Day build session in SF on March 5 at 6 PM If you've been waiting for a sign to build something, this is it!! link in comments to join

Equestrians will get it ☔️

If you're testing this out, let me know your experience

BREAKING: AI can now do market research like McKinsey (for free). Here are 12 insane Claude Opus 4.6 prompts that replace $5,000 consultant: (Save for later)

OpenClaw AI FULL 6 Hour Course