The IRL connection economy is a $400B market. And companies are racing to own it. In the last 6 months, $800M in capital was deployed on "IRL" bets. @Tinder invested $60M into a new Events feature for connecting matches in-person. They're pivoting to IRL and offering experiences such as speakeasies, raves, and pottery classes. @222place: raised a $10.1M Series A to curate blind social experiences for Gen Z. Personality-matched groups sent to hyperlocal nightlife events. @JagermeisterUSA launched BestNightsVC - the only venture fund in the world dedicated solely to nightlife and IRL connection. 16 portfolio companies across 4 continents. @timeleft: dinner with 5 strangers, every Wednesday. €18M ARR. 6,500 dinners/week across 200 cities. Dion: members-only social app where the first move is buying someone a real drink, redeemed IRL. 10K members, 30K on the waitlist founded by @revekkapal. Pie: Bonobos founder @dunn built an IRL friendship app. $24M raised. 130K MAU. @weroad_official: group trips for 20-30 year olds who don't know each other beforehand. $150M valuation. Matchbox: is an algorithm-powered matching platform for IRL events and has powered over 100,000 connections. founded by @liamjmcgregor (prev @MarriagePact) New dating apps like Known @Celesteamadon, Cerca @MylesCerca, and Ditto @AllenWangzian are aiming to improve connection amongst young people. Billion-dollar companies are paying $$$ for community and events leads: - @AnthropicAI: Marketing Events Manager ($255k) - @tryramp: Community Manager ($223k) - @tryramp: Events & Culture Manager ($181k) - @duolingo: Senior Community Manager ($193k) - @NotionHQ: Community Programs Lead Everyone knows the more time we spend online, the more valuable real-life connection becomes. The question isn't whether IRL wins. It's who facilitates it best.

1 year ago, we launched $OWA No product. No map. No proof. Just belief. Today it’s real.

@a16z just raised $15B . American Dynamism $1.176B Apps $1.7B Bio Health $700M Infrastructure $1.7B Growth $6.75B Other strategies $3B That’s ~18% of all U.S. VC deployed in 2025. Capital is concentrating. Conviction is tightening. Infrastructure beats features. From our POV VC appetite is back, but selective. Platform-scale problems win. Consumer infrastructure. Online → offline. Behavior change > dashboards. It’s time to build $OWA @GetOpenworld will be raising this year.

Openworld iOS beta mobile app is live now 👀 getopenworld.com

Getting closer 🥵

Agency > Intelligence I had this intuitively wrong for decades, I think due to a pervasive cultural veneration of intelligence, various entertainment/media, obsession with IQ etc. Agency is significantly more powerful and significantly more scarce. Are you hiring for agency? Are we educating for agency? Are you acting as if you had 10X agency? Grok explanation is ~close: “Agency, as a personality trait, refers to an individual's capacity to take initiative, make decisions, and exert control over their actions and environment. It’s about being proactive rather than reactive—someone with high agency doesn’t just let life happen to them; they shape it. Think of it as a blend of self-efficacy, determination, and a sense of ownership over one’s path. People with strong agency tend to set goals and pursue them with confidence, even in the face of obstacles. They’re the type to say, “I’ll figure it out,” and then actually do it. On the flip side, someone low in agency might feel more like a passenger in their own life, waiting for external forces—like luck, other people, or circumstances—to dictate what happens next. It’s not quite the same as assertiveness or ambition, though it can overlap. Agency is quieter, more internal—it’s the belief that you *can* act, paired with the will to follow through. Psychologists often tie it to concepts like locus of control: high-agency folks lean toward an internal locus, feeling they steer their fate, while low-agency folks might lean external, seeing life as something that happens *to* them.”

This robot solving a rubiks cube in 0.103 seconds is a little preview of what "AGI" really means

🏆 Congratulations to the winners of the 2025 App Store Awards! 🏆 Let’s celebrate these groundbreaking apps and games from around the world. apple.co/ASA2025 #AppStoreAwards2025

"The scarce commodity would be live events." @elonmusk

I was 20 when I first came to India with nothing but a restless mind and an old Enfield I bought from a friend in Delhi who taught me to ride in one dusty afternoon. He took my money, flew back to Florida, and left me with one rule: don’t hit a cow, and only ride between 2–6 a.m. if you want to survive the heat and smog. Somehow, that became a philosophy for everything that followed. I crossed the country like a kid inside a dream — Calcutta to Delhi to Rishikesh — sleeping on the bike when I had to, chasing chai stalls to stay awake, tossing the bike on trains when I could afford it. I swam in the Ganges, did yoga with elders who moved like water, bought vinyl in back-alley shops, fell in love the way only your twenties let you, and wrote long confusing emails to my mom from glowing village internet cafés. In Gujarat I stopped long enough to help with earthquake relief, eat thalis in strangers’ homes, and learn “Kem Cho” and “Majama.” India didn’t just teach me independence — it cracked me open creatively. It showed me how improvisation is its own kind of discipline, how getting lost is a form of education. I never imagined I’d be invited back years later to collaborate with artists I once watched on café computers — working with actors like SRK, making videos like “Lean On” that crossed billions of views, nearly dying during spiritual side quests in Leh and Varanasi, falling for Bollywood sweethearts, and still believing every strange turn meant something. Twenty-five years later I returned to these roads, riding nine hours a day across the Himalayas on a much newer Enfield. And then — perfectly — I ended up performing at a massive Enfield festival in Goa and celebrating afterward in a motorcycle garage, as if time folded back on itself. Two decades have changed India and me both. But every time I come back, I feel the same truth: growth happens when you surrender to the unknown, when the road teaches you more than any classroom could. India was my beginning. And somehow, it still is.

Brian Armstrong's original Coinbase pitch (2012) Listen closely and you can hear Paul Graham giving pointers on the storytelling

how it feels to get into YC

$OWA launch party went nuclear ⚠️ Android APK live at getopenworld.com

Ngl I love to see the team kept on hustling. Im a supporter since early days and I see this doing numbers. This space needs dedicated devs like @vabrxham. $OWA FTW!