My shot at how application companies survive the “what if large lab builds this” question 😅

Not sure which founder needs to hear this.. but paid partnerships and boosting “views” on X are now negative signal in all VC group chats. I’m hoping this comes to the inflating ARR trend soon, but that might still take another cycle.

Anyone else have two voices? I often have two voices that come out both in my writing and how I speak. One is the frenetic, time is the enemy, direct, punchy gets to the point quickly and then the second is more calm, measured, structured inquisitive, trying to peel the layers. They are distinctive enough that people think it’s two different people (especially in writing). They are usually separate but I feel I often oscillate between the two in the same conversation.

What you work on has never been more important. Make sure it’s fun. Make sure it’s insanely ambitious. That’s the greatest moat.

TIL: You can just roast your way into getting some legit coffee at the Cognition office ☕️

One of my favorite bits on my chat with @taiuti was how GTA played a major influence in his career and how it eventually led to @reactorworld

The funniest texts are from founders who meet “thesis driven” GPs hoping they’ll understand EXACTLY what they are building.. And then realize the thesis was written and built by an associate (or, worse an intern). Don’t always read what the VC writes on the internet - yes, that includes me too (although I can guarantee I don’t have an associate, intern, EA or ghostwriter) 😆

Fun to see all the “autonomous” companies being launched in the late few months.. however, even with all the loops, the last mile is still quite hard. That gap probably shrinks in the next few months!

Given all the “loops” conversation, @Apple has the chance (and address) to do the funniest thing at WWDC..

The vibe shift from tokenmaxxing and token anxiety to tokenoptimizing in just a few weeks is wild 😅 Might be a hot take but I still believe companies should give copious amounts of token budget to employees to stay at the frontier and explore all the edges. Otherwise, it’s way too easy to fall back to “doing the things how they have always been done”.

don’t forget to touch sand this weekend 🌞

A Walk In The Park (part II) feat @taiuti 🌎 (00:00) 👋 (01:10) What world models are (03:42) Origin story from text-to-3D to @reactorworld (09:22) Deciding to start the company (11:22) GTA, games, and the path into programming (15:09) Building in stealth and keeping secrets (18:32) Picking investors with independent conviction (21:43) Where world models will grow first (26:08) Why low latency matters (29:34) Becoming CEO and scaling the team (32:23) Final advice

QED. The quote tweets in this thread just show we HAVE to do better. Evergreen reminder that without founders, there are no VCs!

Introducing the Nock skill (powered by @meetgranola) 👀 Someone recently asked me if I can be replaced by AI, and my ego initially said NO WAY.. Then, I thought about what's the best way to have the most accurate "AI" representation of me for these conversations. So, I used @claudeai Code to pull >200 1:1 founder pitch meeting notes that were captured by Granola in the last couple of years. Focused all the notes to only things I asked. Distilled it further down to ~53 meetings where there was a lot of good discussion and debate. Finally, I took a few of my essays which describe the kind of founders that I love. Using those, I used Claude Code again to build this skill called "Nock" that has some principles and a question bank that are grounded in real conversations. To refine, I used this skill over 5-10 actual decks and conversations where we first had the skill output what it thinks and then we compared it against the real conversation. We kept improving it - till it felt like an accurate representation of me. So, if you are a founder raising and want to see what I would think about your deck, try this out: nikunjk dot com / nock And, if you are a VC who wants to build your own Nock, we have that too: nikunjk dot com / buildnock

For a year now, I’ve been texting @toddsaunders every week asking him when he’s going to quit to build the future for the trades.. And finally when I got the text, I knew we @FPVventures had to invest. A lot of “businessmen” and technologists treat this area as a lucrative business. Very few people have the empathy, trust and sheer love for this space. And that’s what will enable him, Sean and @DaltonMillsAI to win. If you are in the NY area, and want to join this phenomenal group, please reach out!