This is a great point, although I would note that modern effective philanthropy, and I think the philanthropy that Nan is describing, often includes for-profit ventures. For example, I have spent the past ten years investing in biotech companies to advance global public health. The first fund has already distributed multiples of invested capital back to philanthropic investors who will then use that capital for investments or grants. I think this is an overlooked model and there should be more of it (I’m sure Blake would agree but thought I’d share this specific example)!

We started @ruvopay to make moving money between Brazil and the U.S as easy as a Pix. The rebrand reflects that: a global dollar account built on modern rails, for people who live and work across borders. Pix. Crypto. USD. Visa. Save & invest. One wallet. This is Ruvo.

Hosting an intimate NeurIPS dinner for AI researchers and early-stage founders with @DellTechCapital and Mayfield. Expect thoughtful conversation, great food, and serendipity. If you’re an AI researcher, engineer, or founder at NeurIPS, join us: luma.com/y98ypnlo

“Dwarkesh, Dylan, and Sholto are all roommates” 🤯 I have so many questions: * did they know each other before becoming roommates? * if so, how? * if not, they just happened to live together by pure chance?? * presumably they can all afford to live solo, so they choose to continue to be roommates for the insane intellectual density? * who does which chore?

Stories can change our lives, especially when the path forward is unclear. That’s why @0xEbaad is launching Against All Odds, a podcast from @capihouse_ that showcases the stories of immigrant founders and provides resources for immigrants pursuing their own founder journeys.

Advice for VCs and candidates -- think hard about why a company was founded. Do the founders actually deeply care about this problem? Is this their calling? Or are they starting a company for the sake of starting a company, jumping to whatever the current trendy thing is that's easy to raise capital for? (common these days) Think of any great company -- Google, OpenAI, Tesla, Figma, Anduril -- the founders were clearly obsessed with something, and something that wasn't trendy at the time. Only a lifelong calling can keep you going hard for so much of your life (>10 years), through the unending obstacles and total life sacrifice that is a startup. Sure, founders could make it work for some years by the sheer desire to win, but that'll burn out eventually, and it won't be an interesting company to associate with regardless. And to any prospective founder, perhaps think hard about the word "calling" -- before calling others to your movement and risking their time, you should first hear the divine calling yourself.

Super excited to have gotten early access to Tinker by @thinkymachines! Tinker is great at making it easy to post-train, but also meant I wound up with lots of model checkpoints 😅 This is why I built a finetuning journal to keep track of each model iteration, with the help of Claude Code!

🚨How does an AI-native startup unseat an incumbent?🚨 👇Enter the Greenfield Strategy: AI-native startup bingo. The battle between every startup and incumbent comes down to whether the startup gets distribution before the incumbent gets innovation. One of the most powerful, and underrated, ways for startups to win distribution is to serve companies at their formation: greenfield companies. @stripe @deel @mercury @cartainc @brexHQ @tryramp have all done this at scale. Why does this work? Simply put, acquiring customers de novo is easier than getting customers to switch: - Many of the large software incumbents have hostages, not customers. Their customers would love to switch, but ripping and replacing existing software is risky and expensive. New companies don’t face those switching costs; they simply look for the best solution and evaluate based on merit. - New companies don’t need as many features to have a complete solution. - New companies have fewer stakeholders. You only have to convince the founders. Grow with your customers: If you attract all of the new companies at formation and grow with them, you will become a big company as your customers become big companies. Consider @stripe: many of Stripe’s customers did not yet exist when Stripe was founded. Some of those early customers later became large businesses in their own right. So when enterprises outside of Silicon Valley also needed to prepare themselves for a shift to ecommerce models, Stripe was an obvious choice, with plenty of relevant reference customers already in place. Incumbents, on the other hand, would much rather sell to existing businesses vs. companies that don’t exist now but might exist in huge numbers in a few years. They are bound by the rules of P&L (Profit & Loss) – and there’s no “P” for greenfield companies that don’t exist yet, just “L” (in sales, marketing, and product development costs). The startup, however, isn’t bound to a financial model – the startup doesn’t need one; it's still figuring stuff out! That leaves ample room for the startup to define the category. Graduation moments: In a similar way, software “graduation moments” (the moments when a startup begins to develop enterprise needs) also create opportunities to execute this greenfield strategy. QuickBooks may be great for single-product, single-entity companies, but once businesses add multiple subsidiaries, currencies, or more complex reporting needs, they outgrow it and require the controls, integrations, and scalability of an ERP like NetSuite. And you can now build a far better ERP with AI - just look at @RilletHQ. AI-native startup Bingo: There are many different categories of enterprise software. Enough to fill a 5x5 Bingo board and more! In each category of the Bingo board, there sits an incumbent that could be dethroned by an AI-native alternative. So, how does a new company win the game of Bingo? - Pick a square - Make a narrow wedge much better - Find a constant source of new customers - Rapidly iterate and add features to grow with your customers - Don’t be constrained by the division of existing categories If you’re building a category-defining company on the Bingo board - come and talk to us. cc: @arampell @astrange @a16z