Marc Andreessen explains how to identify fake founders “There are definitely people that come in [to pitch us] and present themselves to be something they’re not. They’ve read all the books. They will have listened to this interview. They study everything and they construct a facade…. And the amount of this is exactly correlated with the NASDAQ.” As Marc explains, when stock prices are high and tech is hot, there are a lot people who decide being a tech founder is a fast track to high status: “They’re fundamentally oriented for social status — they’re trying to get the social status without the substance. And there are always other places to go to get social status. So after 2000, the joke was B2B meant back to banking and B2C meant back to consulting — which is, the people who showed up to be in tech were like, yeah, screw it. This is over. I’m going to go back to Goldman Sachs or McKinsey where I can be high status. So you get this flushing kind of effect that happens in a downturn. But in a big upswing, you get a lot of people showing up with, let’s say, public persona without the substance to back it up.” How does Marc identify these people? He uses the same technique that homicide detectives use to find out if you’re innocent — keep asking increasingly detailed questions: “You ask increasingly detailed questions and people have trouble making things up and things just fuzz into obvious BS, and fake founders basically have the same problem. They’re able to relay a conceptual theory of what they’re doing… But as they get into the details, it just fuzzes out. Whereas the true people that you want to back can do it. What you find is they’ve spent 5 or 10 or 20 years obsessing over the details of whatever it is they’re about to do. And they’re so deep in the details and they know so much more about it than you ever will.” Source: @hubermanlab (Sep 2023)

NYC is the greatest city in the USA. This is coming from a lifelong LA native too lmao

I was once pitching in a board room at a top 3 VC firm for a $15M Series A. 12 people in the meeting. One of the GPs fully fell asleep. Out cold for 30 minutes. Nobody acknowledged it. Everyone just kept going. I kept presenting my Series A slides to an unconscious man in a Herman Miller chair and somehow that was considered normal. That's venture capital. You might fly across the country to perform for people who may or may not be conscious. It's a dance. And sometimes you lead and sometimes you follow and sometimes your partner is unconscious. If you're raising right now, just know: every founder has a story like this. The process is weird. The power dynamic is weird. You're not crazy for thinking it's weird. No one talks about it because they want to continue raising. But I'm happy to stick my neck out there. It is weird.

hot take but @mil000 genuinely excites me in a way the founderslop normies never will he possesses way more raw outlier traits: - obsessiveness (u should see how insanely he optimizes every penny in his life) - taste (at least in the negative sense, positive direction tbd) - natural disruptiveness similar to @im_roy_lee i think it will only be a matter of time and maturity before he absolutely runs shit

POV: you’re testing a $10M ARR product that just raised at a $250M valuation… …and you still have absolutely no idea what you’re looking at.

I just found out that Luel AI, the company that completely copied my company Kled's entire website, is misrepresenting their compliance practices, using Delve to outsource it, fabricating their website user numbers, and pulling in massive amounts of fraud data from exclusively fraud oriented regions. Skip to 1:15 if you want to skip context. You truly cannot make this up. This is egregious, disgusting behavior from everyone involved. This is people's data. It cannot be taken lightly. The only way a company like this can truly succeed is by investing the time and resources to commit 100% to the trust and compliance of their users' data. Luel AI is doing the exact opposite. Disgusting behavior for a company trusted with people's data.

literally if u use AI to write anything human-facing that is supposed to be compelling in any way whatsoever u are subhuman and everyone can tell

Business Insider just covered my most controversial hire: A private chef for my 9 person AI startup Series A thread (1/6) 👇

Grok called u a pussy not me 😭

humans make fast decisions based on poor signals. this improves that

Thanks

Apple accidentally left Claude.md files in today's Apple Support app update (v5.13)

Finally someone admits what started w series.so (j weird af so we never claimed it)

The Series private chef makes nearly 6 figures a year. She makes our team 3 meals a day and gets a free equinox membership. Most startups don’t hire a private chef, or a chef at all. Instead, they burn “$50,000 on DoorDash” every month for their team. (1/4) A thread👇

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Al Khamenei is officially dead. This is a statement to the entire leadership team of IRGC. Your days are numbered.

RT @ValVenisEnt: 🚨 BREAKING! MORE EVIDENCE PALM PISTOL RICKY IS THE CULPRIT 🚨 A MUST WATCH VIDEO! TYLER ROBINSON IS NOT GUILTY! https://t…

JUNE 2028. The S&P is down 38% from its highs. Unemployment just printed 10.2%. Private credit is unraveling. Prime mortgages are cracking. AI didn’t disappoint. It exceeded every expectation. What happened?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ citriniresearch.com/p/2028gi…

it’s been impressive and astonishing to watch mercury hand the entire startup banking market to rho without even an iota of a fight

This was an eye opener from Jensen Huang When asked whether he would rather relive his 20s or be 20 years old today, this is what he had to say: "I thought our 20s were happier than these 20s. I think everyone deserves some time to be oblivious, and not wear all of the world's problems on their shoulders on Day 1 We are raising a generation that is very cynical and too informed They are cynical, not because they are inherently cynical. They are cynical because they see so much stuff. It is too much stuff You have to build up some internal reserve of optimism. You have to build up some reserve of goodness."