diffuser of models, fmr @thrivecapital
Joined September 2016
- Tweets 628
- Following 897
- Followers 3,519
- Likes 33,683
46 Photos and videos
May 22
bill is a great person driven by an important mission.
he is the kind of person to give you the time of day before you have any "accolades" or "experience."
he did this for me in college before i'd done anything meaningful. i'm fortunate he is now a mentor.
listen to his story and if you are building in the space i could not imagine a better partner to your company.
May 21
The world is getting warmer while our infrastructure gets older: a recipe for disasters.
We’re excited to announce Fund II: $85M for early stage investments in disaster resilience.
23
5,716
May 18
given the ai hate rn, here's a story on how my dad used it as a tool for good during a very difficult time.
my grandpa passed away 3 months ago. he grew up in switzerland and had a number of old documents stored under his bed.
everything was written in german but none of our american family members read nor speak german.
my dad fed all the documents into chatgpt and asked it to translate the documents to english. he wanted to preserve the tone and to learn more about that period of time.
chat did this all.
while grieving, my dad was able to take a moment to himself to understand more about his father’s story.
before we would've used google translate and read poorly translated german articles that were almost nonsensical. we've tried to use google translate in the past to speak to our swiss relatives but it goes poorly bc of the very literal translations.
now, my dad was able to stay in the moment and immediately share the story with my grandma.
18
12
327
129,700
May 17
this fails for two reasons:
it’s out of touch and demeaning.
eric is 71, worth $43.3 billion, and has a 27 yo girlfriend. he’s addressing graduates my age that are experiencing a shift we have never seen before.
yet, he claims he can understand and feel what we do.
he can’t.
he then goes on to talk about not giving up agency before pivoting to say ai is inevitable and the only area you can shape.
this is giving up agency. ai is the only problem worth working on.
his conclusion puts ai at the center of the story. “ai agents are solving problems you could never do on your own. ai is solving protein folding.”
who the hell does that resonate with?
certainly, not a group of 22 year olds that are looking out into an ominous job market while also experiencing the emotional rollercoaster of graduation.
imagine if he had started like this:
“you’re entering a world that is changing faster than we’ve ever seen. you’re scared because many people in my exact position are telling you ai is going to take your jobs. you watch TikTok’s that tell you ai is using all of the water.
i cannot relate to you. it’d be silly to tell you i can fully understand your emotions and feelings. i graduated in <old ass date> (no shade Eric) and only experienced the first technology revolution. i try to stay in touch with students like yourselves and other young entrepreneurs. you give me hope.
i hope to share an alternative story about this crazy moment from what i’ve heard at schools like yours.
professors have directed ai to solve a 50 year old genomic protein folding problem that will help cure cancer, provide new antibiotics, and even aid in providing clean energy. students with ESL and insufficient tutoring are going deeper on subjects in realtime by telling ai what else they want to learn about.
i hope you exercise your talents, no matter the field, to solve similarly ambitious problems. together we will build towards a better future than the one my generation thrust upon you.”
as a fellow Gen Zer, with many friends at labs and many friends in the trades, i can tell you people do not want to hate this technology nor you.
we use it to write our essays, create memes of our friends, to build incredibly, ambitious projects in record time, and to connect with our families (more on this tmrw).
i hope we can inject a little hopium and come back down to earth. go reconnect with friends from college, your hometown, or the barista at your local coffee shop. nurture your relationships, ask about their fears regarding technology, and what they want to see more of.
i’m sure at the very least you’ll have an interesting conversation. you might even forget about the permanent underclass for just a moment. maybe that’s enough.
May 16
What a horrible message. Bad speech, bad message, bad ability by Arizona to read the room once again. It fails time and time again to win in the PR department
46
39
830
205,734
May 11
i may have a task for an adventurer.
you’d likely be a fit if:
- you could teach my Luddite grandma to use ChatGPT and for her to love you
- you yearn to go to north dakota
- you can tell a language model how to write code
- you’ve been described as “having rizz”
9
87
6,850
May 10
the best people i know have one thing in common: they don’t go to these events.
here’s how i met them.
1) i was chronically online while building shit at college. i dm’d brilliant guy working on a product i used. he responded.
2) got internship with guy and turned it into a full time job. grinded my ass off in Lake Tahoe for a year. no one knew me.
3) applied to thrive on a whim. told my story about startups and tahoe.
4) managed to be accepted to thrive fellowship. they gave me full time offer
5) thrive and nyc friends introduced me to tons of incredible people. these people introduced me to others and now things have snowballed
i grew up in cleveland, went to boston college, and then lived in lake tahoe, nevada.
none of those places have real tech scenes.
follow your own path, do right by others, relentlessly chase after your passions, and when opportunities present themselves — deliver.
networking as activity is mostly cope.
e.g. the conference circuit, the warm intros, the moving to sf discussions or whatever, oh & the “grabbing coffee” economy.. all of this is overwhelmingly negative selection esp with vc (lol). the ppl worth knowing are usually too busy doing the thing to be farmable, & the ppl available to be networked w/ are available cuz they have literally nothing better going on.
do the work, then publish it loudly enough that the right ppl can find you w/o you having to chase. one way broadcast > two way schmoozing. this is why x matters a ton now more than ever before.
14
22
744
58,870
jake 🗺️ retweeted
May 8
what if everything goes right
233
840
6,568
491,585
May 8
openai will merge codex with chatgpt when they can move all this to cloud.
it will be the biggest moment in consumer ai since chatgpt.
the gap to usefulness will then strictly be building custom tools and deployment.
May 8
33
16
923
119,394
May 3
services are the most human occupation.
ai will enable us to do this at greater scales, higher quality, and cheaper rates than ever before.
ritz-carlton for the everyman.
May 3
the industrial revolution made goods abundant. ai will do the same for services
7
100
9,604
Apr 30
daniel is such a cool dude. i cannot wait to share his story with all of you soon.
he runs a cleaning supply distributor and a vintage clothing store in LA. he was also a professional soccer player.
we are rolling out Codex to him to help him run his businesses better, reduce monotony, and grow with less stress.
in these documentaries, there will be no mention of “ai” nor “ai transformation” just incredible people and businesses that deserve to be heard.
9
4
110
12,066
Apr 27
a wise man once told me: the reward for good work is more work.
but damn man i did not believe there would be this much work
3
1
102
3,743
Apr 25
oai will overtake in frontend now too.
- image gen
- 5.5 implements to spec
- screenshot
- pixel level diff of implementation
- repeat until model does in 1 shot
Apr 25
we still get looksmaxxed on frontend a little but we IQmog hard now
1
51
5,018
Apr 24
be long post agi businesses:
- entertainment
- services
- health & wellness
- the labs themselves
Apr 24
Today we announce Thrive Eternal, a permanent capital holding company that will be concentrated in a small number of assets that we can own and steward over many decades.
Across Thrive Capital and Thrive Holdings, we are building and investing through a moment of exponential change; backing emerging technologies, the infrastructure that powers them, and the businesses they can transform.
Increasingly, we see a fourth category.
These are assets with qualities that cannot be replicated by technology. Iconic franchises and cultural institutions rooted in tradition, identity, and shared experience. In a world shaped by abundant intelligence where creation scales and distribution fragments, we believe they will matter even more.
Thrive Eternal is built on the belief that the most enduring of these assets share common characteristics: they benefit from long-term stewardship, they compound through cultural resonance, and they are enhanced by technology rather than displaced by it.
Our work at Thrive has always been informed and inspired by a deep appreciation for product, brand, and the ways in which consumers form lasting relationships with the things they love. We have been building towards this for a long time.
Our first partnership is expected to be with the San Francisco Giants - an institution built on more than a century of shared identity and community, and among the most iconic sports franchises in America. We have reached an agreement, subject to league approval, to acquire an ownership stake. We feel privileged by the opportunity to be long-term partners to the Giants.
12
21
536
53,484
Apr 23
given the vague post is blowing up, i want to tell you all a story from last night in nyc and where i think the world is going.
last night, i went for a long walk as i felt quite existential about my business. i stopped into a restaurant. they had one last seat at the bar. i was sat next to a new friend, also 23, that teaches chess to kids and resells vintage clothes.
he asked what i did after i peppered him with questions. i told him i just make chatgpt work for businesses. he could go into the actual chatgpt app and it would know what recent lessons he gave, how he communicated with clothing suppliers, and actually do the monotonous work for him. no setup, no management on his end.
he was fascinated and open to the idea. we sat next to each other for hours and ended up talking about the implications of ai, the fear of joblessness many of our friends experience postgrad, and the meaning crisis if everything is automated (but how good the bartender's aux was, how she nearly went to deep springs college, and nascar drivers).
i generally agree but still hold that ai is the most empowering technology ever bestowed upon humanity. the gap is only engineers and pseudo-technical people can make it truly work for them in the interfaces people are comfortable with (ChatGPT/Codex & Claude). we sand down the rough edges to make the models understand our context across imessage, notes, and disparate systems.
now, step back for a minute and put yourself in your parents' or grandparents' shoes. think about the monstrous software they must battle everyday to get their job done. the legacy ERP that takes 45 minutes to process an order (i just learned what an ERP was 2 months ago).
it is obvious to me that the labs will continue pushing models up the exponential. they will make it easier for people across the country and the world to build with ai, have the models automatically surface workflows and automations for monotonous work. however, we are a ways away from this.
you, dear reader, have the unique skill set to direct codex to solve the problem. to build the integration that "just works" then to store the proper memories so it can do it faster and knows who your dad is and how he works. this technology should "just work." it is literally intelligence in a box; ai is the most malleable technology humanity has every experienced. make it so.
i hope this causes many businesses of my shape to spawn up.
go do this for the 3 businesses you know. go do this for your parents to help them have more free time to focus on what they actually love doing (i can almost assure you it is not manually inputting data into an ERP).
i have no idea if this is a "venture sized" outcome. candidly, i do not care. the largest impact i think you and i can have is to deliver on the promise of ai. it is the most human technology we have ever created.
intelligence that understands you, your parents, and your grandparents. intelligence that never tires, that handles the monotony no human wants to do, so we can focus on what is truly human -- serving others.
22
9
197
17,278
Apr 23
this is what i saw:
x.com/OpenAI/status/20473765…
Introducing GPT-5.5
A new class of intelligence for real work and powering agents, built to understand complex goals, use tools, check its work, and carry more tasks through to completion. It marks a new way of getting computer work done.
Now available in ChatGPT and Codex.
1
2,251
Apr 23
after today, you will see why i started a services business to diffuse the models.
Feb 20
last friday was my final day at Thrive.
witnessing the herculean effort that went into closing Thrive X was the way to finish. it resembled everything i love and admire about the place and its people.
so what's next...
i left to build any and all software for any and all businesses. an ~ai~ consulting company of sorts.
i've craved to run a service based business like this where i know my customers and they know me.
there's no amorphous corporate blob to deal with. clients deal with me.
now, with leverage from AI, they can get world class, personalized service from one guy at a reasonable rate.
i hope this model lets me build trust and goodwill between tech and the long tail of industries from Anthropic's survey. (important note: i will also work with startups and tech companies given my mandate is literally any business)
i've started with a used machine shop in Louisville, a wayfinding company in Cleveland, and a distributor of rags (literal towels not RAG...) in LA.
we'll see how it goes...
8
1
181
45,018
Apr 23
for anyone curious. here is my long form, one take call to mission. x.com/jakeottiger/status/204…
Apr 23
given the vague post is blowing up, i want to tell you all a story from last night in nyc and where i think the world is going.
last night, i went for a long walk as i felt quite existential about my business. i stopped into a restaurant. they had one last seat at the bar. i was sat next to a new friend, also 23, that teaches chess to kids and resells vintage clothes.
he asked what i did after i peppered him with questions. i told him i just make chatgpt work for businesses. he could go into the actual chatgpt app and it would know what recent lessons he gave, how he communicated with clothing suppliers, and actually do the monotonous work for him. no setup, no management on his end.
he was fascinated and open to the idea. we sat next to each other for hours and ended up talking about the implications of ai, the fear of joblessness many of our friends experience postgrad, and the meaning crisis if everything is automated (but how good the bartender's aux was, how she nearly went to deep springs college, and nascar drivers).
i generally agree but still hold that ai is the most empowering technology ever bestowed upon humanity. the gap is only engineers and pseudo-technical people can make it truly work for them in the interfaces people are comfortable with (ChatGPT/Codex & Claude). we sand down the rough edges to make the models understand our context across imessage, notes, and disparate systems.
now, step back for a minute and put yourself in your parents' or grandparents' shoes. think about the monstrous software they must battle everyday to get their job done. the legacy ERP that takes 45 minutes to process an order (i just learned what an ERP was 2 months ago).
it is obvious to me that the labs will continue pushing models up the exponential. they will make it easier for people across the country and the world to build with ai, have the models automatically surface workflows and automations for monotonous work. however, we are a ways away from this.
you, dear reader, have the unique skill set to direct codex to solve the problem. to build the integration that "just works" then to store the proper memories so it can do it faster and knows who your dad is and how he works. this technology should "just work." it is literally intelligence in a box; ai is the most malleable technology humanity has every experienced. make it so.
i hope this causes many businesses of my shape to spawn up.
go do this for the 3 businesses you know. go do this for your parents to help them have more free time to focus on what they actually love doing (i can almost assure you it is not manually inputting data into an ERP).
i have no idea if this is a "venture sized" outcome. candidly, i do not care. the largest impact i think you and i can have is to deliver on the promise of ai. it is the most human technology we have ever created.
intelligence that understands you, your parents, and your grandparents. intelligence that never tires, that handles the monotony no human wants to do, so we can focus on what is truly human -- serving others.
8
2,438
Apr 23
to be clear this is not my launch, it is just the obvious bet we took that models will get exponentially better and helping others use it will be a service not a product.
27
2,333