How can we succeed, together? This is exactly the aim of my🇺🇸mission. Glad to engage w/5️⃣0️⃣ investors&innovators @ Menlo Circus Club. 🇪🇺is ready to lead the🆕wave of innovation, with impact 👉1M deep tech talents, strong regional ecosystems, 🚀funding #EUInnovationAgenda.

If you want something from someone, make it clear what. It's not imposing to ask explicitly for something; it's imposing to be vague and make the recipient work to figure out what you want.

There was actual human beings saying fucking KYLIAN MBAPPE must be benched for France 😭

The reason anyone gets insanely rich is almost always because of the stock market. It certainly how @elonmusk did. And the reason they get rich from the stock market, is because 150m Americans decided they wanted to own shares of stocks directly, or through their retirement plans, or through other approaches as a way of building their net worth and trying to create a better life for themselves. One Hundred Fifty Million Americans. About 60% of adults. Effectively believing that @elonmusk and many billionaires could make them wealthier and help them achieve a better life. If you want @elonmusk , and most billionaires to no longer be that rich, convince those 150m to sell their stocks, funds, ETFs whatever. Of course you would wipe out the net-worth of most of those people, and everyone else’s savings, as the markets crashed and brought down the economy and created the worst depression we have ever seen. Alternatively There are ways to improve healthcare access and eventually make it available to all. To start - If you want @elonmusk and all billionaires to improve healthcare for everyone , ask them to stop doing business with the enormous healthcare conglomerates and to work directly with transparently priced care providers. It’s the behemoth HC conglomerates that make HC so bad for so many. (Check my timeline for more detail) Removing them would push the cost of healthcare down for everyone. Their corporate decisions impact our healthcare cost and availability. Of course if they do that, not only would our HC costs go down , and the quality of care for their employees and the entire country go up But They would see their corporate cash flow increase dramatically and we would have more millionaires, billionaires and maybe even another trillionaire when that cash flow moved from the big health care conglomerates to their bottom line, so would the net worth of the 150 million American adults that own public stocks Capitalism is better than socialism because 150m Americans can influence exactly what happens in this country.

The biggest bullshit move by DHS in its history. So everyone on a O1 or H1B visa would have to stop working legally in the US, go back to their country and wait for years of backlog? This includes top scientists in our universities, founders of billion dollar companies (at least 3 just in our portfolio would be affected by the way). And if we look at individual countries it becomes even more bs. Indians would have to wait decades. Russians don’t have anywhere to go (there is no US embassy in Russia, hello?). This is the worst imaginable way to disrupt important work for the country and pretend you’re fighting some loophole.

Most human tasks are not Markovian, the optimal next action cannot be determined solely by looking at the current state. It depends heavily on the past trajectory, the original intent, and context constraints. An agent that cannot compress and track its past trajectory with absolute fidelity is maybe 20% as useful as one that can.

In Bulgaria they don't say 'Congratulations Dara on your historic Eurovision win for Bulgaria', they say 'Bravo Darche you fucked their mother bravo' and I think that's beautiful.

The closest I will get to admitting to MAGA people and other Europe haters that Europe is ridiculous is when I see the pictures from the Eurovision. I used to enjoy it a lot when I was a kid back when it was a music contest. Why have normal Europeans allowed it to turn into this freak show?

Emm… this photo is posted (December 2025) by a Bulgarian singer, who won the Eurovision 2026. Don't even try to tell me that she didn't know the meaning of this symbol and didn't mean it, she meant…

Yeah, I know the world outside of Europe doesn't care , but Eurovision 2026 goes to ... Bulgaria 🇧🇬!

Here is the moment Bulgaria WON The 70th Eurovision Song Contest with BANGARANGA! 🇧🇬 #Eurovision #Eurovision2026

Sama during trial: "I don't think Mr. Musk understood how to run a good research lab" Q: How did Musk's management affect OpenAI's research culture? Sama: "He had demotivated some of our most key researchers... required Greg and Ilya to make a list of the researchers and list out their accomplishments and sort of stack rank them... I take a chainsaw through a bunch and that did huge damage for a long time to the culture of the organization... this idea that you constantly have to show your results and if they're not good enough on a short period, you're going to get fired... that really didn't work for the kind of research we went on to successfully do."

Sure you can earn a billion dollars. I've been teaching people how to do it for 20 years. The way you do it is to start a company that grows fast. You don't have to do anything bad to make a company grow fast. You just have to make something people want. paulgraham.com/ace.html

This is an email I sent earlier today to all employees at Coinbase: Team, Today I’ve made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%. I want to walk you through why we're doing this now, what it means for those affected, and how this positions us for the future. Why now Two forces are converging at the same time. We need to be front footed to respond to both. First, the market. Coinbase is well-capitalized, has diversified revenue streams, and is well-positioned to weather any storm. Crypto is also on the verge of the next wave of adoption, with stablecoins, prediction markets, tokenization, and more taking off. However, our business is still volatile from quarter to quarter. While we've managed through that cyclicality many times before and come out stronger on the other side, we’re currently in a down market and need to adjust our cost structure now so that we emerge from this period leaner, faster, and more efficient for our next phase of growth. Second, AI is changing how we work. Over the past year, I’ve watched engineers use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks. Non-technical teams are now shipping production code and many of our workflows are being automated. The pace of what's possible with a small, focused team has changed dramatically, and it's accelerating every day. All of this has led us to an inflection point, not just for Coinbase, but for every company. The biggest risk now is not taking action. We are adjusting early and deliberately to rebuild Coinbase to be lean, fast, and AI-native. We need to return to the speed and focus of our startup founding, with AI at our core. What this means To get there, we are not just reducing headcount and cutting costs, we’re fundamentally changing how we operate: rebuilding Coinbase as an intelligence, with humans around the edge aligning it. What does this mean in practice? - Fewer layers, faster decisions: We are flattening our org structure to 5 layers max below CEO/COO. Layers slow things down and create coordination tax. The future is small, high context teams that can move quickly. Leaders will own much more, with as many as 15 direct reports. Fewer layers also means a leaner cost structure that is built to perform through all market cycles. - No pure managers: Every leader at Coinbase must also be a strong and active individual contributor. Managers should be like player-coaches, getting their hands dirty alongside their teams. - AI-native pods: We’ll be concentrating around AI-native talent who can manage fleets of agents to drive outsized impact. We’ll also be experimenting with reduced pod sizes, including “one person teams” with engineers, designers, and product managers all in one role. In short: AI is bringing a profound shift in how companies operate, and we’re reshaping Coinbase to lead in this new era. This is a new way of working, and we need to leverage AI across every facet of our jobs. To those who are affected I know there are real people behind these decisions — talented colleagues who have poured themselves into this company and our mission. To those of you who will be leaving: thank you. You’ve helped build Coinbase into what it is today, and I am sincerely grateful for everything you've done. All impacted team members will receive an email to their personal account in the next hour with more information, and an invitation to meet with an HRBP and a senior leader in your organization. Coinbase system access has been removed today. I know this feels sudden and harsh, but it is the only responsible choice given our duty to protect customer information. To those affected, we will be providing a comprehensive package to support you through this transition. US employees will receive a minimum of 16 weeks base pay (plus 2 weeks per year worked), their next equity vest, and 6 months of COBRA. Employees on a work visa will get extra transition support. Those outside of the US will receive similar support, based on local factors and subject to any consultation requirements. Coinbase prides itself on talent density. Our employees are among the most talented people in the world, and I have no doubt that your skills and experience will be highly sought after as you pursue your next chapters. How we move forward To the team that is staying, I know this is a difficult day. We’re saying goodbye to colleagues and friends you've been in the trenches with. But here’s what I want you to know as we move forward together: Over the past 13 years, we have weathered four crypto winters, gone public, and built the most trusted platform in our industry. We’ve made it this far by making hard decisions and by always staying focused on our mission. This time will be no different – nothing has changed about the long term outlook of our company or industry. And most importantly, our mission has never been more important for the world. Increasing economic freedom requires a new financial system, and we’re building it. The Coinbase that emerges from this will be more capable than ever to achieve our mission. Brian

Okay guys, had a few cultural shocks in Spain: > Go to the gym, opens 10am on a Sunday > Go to work from a coworking, closed > Go to a coffee shop, no wifi Absolutely unthinkable in a barely productive economy like the US, yet alone UAE. Europe is a daylight museum.

Bulgaria’s inflation EXPLODED to 7.1%/yr in April from 3.9%/yr in March. As the Father of Bulgaria’s currency board, I predicted an inflation SURGE with the introduction of the euro. EURO INTRODUCTION = BAD MOVE.

A minimum wage of £15 would end my coffee shop, it would have to close, as would many other businesses. I’ll explain for the economically illiterate. Staff costs are currently half our costs, a £15 minimum wage is actually more than £15 an hour for the company, because you have to add: - 12.07% holiday - Sick pay - Maternity pay if and when required - National insurance - Pension contributions These costs would mean the shop loses money because remember, energy costs are up, rates are up, regulations are up. Now you can pass these costs onto the consumer - that would mean charging a lot more for coffee, people won’t pay it. The likes of Starbucks and Costa can, because they have economies of scale. The independent doesn’t. Now the little socialist will say well this is your fault, if you can’t run a business that can afford to pay its staff properly, but the little socialist has never run a business and does not understand the dynamics. Now I could pay some staff off and fill those hours myself or reduce us to one staff member during certain periods - but this proves the point that a minimum wage costs jobs. There was a time when these jobs were done by kids, perhaps on the weekend, paid a lower wage, no holiday and no silly employment rights. Perhaps they were even paid cash. The dynamic worked and small businesses like this could operate. It was also a great first job. Sadly now it isn’t worth employing entitlement youngsters at this level of pay. So alas, I don’t need the stress, the business would close, a number of jobs would be lost. Economics is about understanding these dynamics, no vibes. The cost of living is not solved through passing on inflation to the business, it is solved by ending high inflation and creating prosperity. This is what socialists don’t understand, they can’t create prosperity, they can only destroy it.

The best Champions League match ever? The best football match ever? Paris Saint-Germain 5-4 Bayern Munich was a once-watched, never-forgotten sporting spectacle featuring the kind of thrilling end-to-end action that every fan of the sport surely wants to watch. It may not quite take the claim of the greatest Champions League game of all time, but it certainly felt up there with the most enjoyable, most thrilling and most fun matches that the competition has ever witnessed. And there is still a second leg to come in Germany next week. 📝 @TimSpiers 🔗 nyti.ms/4dbmslA

What do the smartest kids in the world do when they grow up? I did the largest study of ~18,000 International Olympiad medalists (IMO, IOI and IPhO) over the last 25yrs, arguably the sharpest analytical minds of the world in high school, to see where they ended up and traced ~50% of them. Founders of ~20 unicorns and ~7 decacorns and ~10 billionaires: OpenAI, Cursor, Stripe, Databricks, Perplexity, Ethereum, Cognition, Hyperliquid, Fireworks, Modal, Quora, Parallel, Cartesia, Wispr Most kids went to MIT, a whopping 12% of them, followed by Cambridge (7%) and Sharif (3%)! The career paths they chose (of those who graduated) were: — 36% Academia (professors) — 26% Other — 22% in Software / Tech — 12% in Quant / Finance — 5% Founders! The biggest employer was Google, by far, at 6%. Others interesting tidbits were: — 47 of them work at Jane Street (#3) — 38 at OpenAI (#5) — 15 at Anthropic — 8 at Cognition — 6 at Isomorphic Labs Olympiaders were 1500x more likely to be billionaires and 4000x more likely to be unicorn founders than the average person!

6 months ago, I moved to San Francisco. It’s the best place in the world to build, and one of the worst places to stay human. My unfiltered take: 1. SF is both overhyped and underrated The overhyped part: there are a lot of people with incredible resumes who are deeply unimpressive in real life. They were at the right company, at the right time, in the right market, and got carried by the wave. They made money, got comfortable, and now spend their time “exploring opportunities” over coffee, wasting your time. The underrated part: the top 1% here is insane. But almost impossible to get. Hiring in SF feels like being a guy on a dating app: everyone you want is out of your league, and everyone in your league wants someone out of theirs. The best people have unmatchable packages, endless options, and are optimizing for maximum impact: labs, frontier companies, or startups raising $100M pre-seed rounds. If you raised $10M from Tier 1 investors, you’re not hot shit here. You’re a B-player. It’s humbling. 2. There are fewer mission-driven people than I expected Especially on the application layer. A lot of people are in “secure the bag before it’s too late” mode. And honestly, it gives me the ick. The real religious builders I’ve met are often in labs, hardware, biotech, deeptech, defense — places where the work is hard enough that you can’t fake obsession. 3. The status game favors builders This is what SF does better than anywhere else. It rewards obsession. It rewards weirdness. It rewards people who make building their entire personality. Europe punishes that. SF gives it status. If you’ve felt like an outsider your whole life because you care too much, work too much, think too radically, or refuse to be chill about things that matter, this city will make you feel less insane. 4. The market liquidity is absurd Even if you don’t build a billion-dollar company, if you manage to build a strong product with a great team, someone smart might still acquire you for $ 100M. Yeah I know, it’s not your dream outcome as a founder, but on the days you feel desperate, it helps to keep going. 5. SF does not care about the meaning crisis that’s coming Anyone paying attention here can feel that something massive is happening with AI. But I’m shocked by how little people talk about the meaning crisis coming next. Everyone wants to talk about AI liberating humanity. Almost no one wants to talk about what happens when work — the thing that gives most people identity, structure, dignity, status, and purpose — starts disappearing. The vacuum will not be peaceful. People are underestimating the chaos that comes from humans suddenly having no idea why they matter. And I really feel like no one cares. 6. Personally, I’ve never been more unhappy I moved to SF and entered the matrix. I’ve always been intense. I’ve always worked crazy hours. But here, I lost the last parts of myself that were not about building. I don’t go to events. Most networking events feel like theater for people pretending to be important. The only events worth going to are small, curated dinners with people who are actually alive. I’ve made 0 real friends. I don’t do well with transactionality. I don’t do well with people constantly performing greatness. I don’t do well with rooms where everyone is optimizing and no one is being honest. So yes, SF is lonely, transactional, delusional, addictive, inspiring, boring, extraordinary, and completely insane. But it is still the only place to be right now if you’re a founder trying to build the next wave of humanity. And for now, that’s enough.

Today, the course was reversed! Bayern pulled last minute magic and absolutely deserved to eliminate Real Madrid. ⚽ PSG will be their biggest obstacle to winning the Champions League!