Anthropic’s new model, Fable, has restrictions many users find unacceptable. Also: a new trend of smart model routing, Coinbase’s core service has no automatic cross-zone failover, and more.

The Pulse: Did Anthropic’s new model just boost rival Codex’s market share?

Most founders have no idea what their SAFEs turn into at the next priced round. This tool shows you the math before you sit across from a lawyer.

You Signed a SAFE. Now what?

Markie Wagner Co-Writes

Return on Tokens (ROT)

Distributions are dry, the IPO market is broken, and the secondary market is now bigger than public offerings. The doom loops might already be here.

The Venture Capital Liquidity Crisis That Nobody Is Talking About

Deepdive into the tech jobs market with exclusive data revealing AI labs are more attractive than Big Tech, native mobile & frontend roles are declining, management’s “great flattening”, and more

State of the software engineering job market in 2026, part 2

36 more timeless books that’ll make you a better builder, leader, and person

24 more timeless books that’ll make you a better builder, leader, and person

Essential books for product builders—part 2

6 ways to cut your AI spend without cutting AI usage. Every CFO needs to understand these.

How I Cut Our AI Spend in Half | "Tokenmaxxing" is Dead

From Vinod Khosla to Sequoia Capital, founders posted through their grievances

VC Twitter Airs its Dirty Laundry: Our Summary of the Beefs, Bits & Quotes 

Names, organizations, investment stages, and contact context for active women angel investors across the US

590+ US Women Angels

Don't overreact to the AI headlines, Apple is still an iPhone company. Plus: A look at SpaceX's coming valuation.

Apple's WWDC Reality: Scaled Down AI Ambitions As The iPhone Remains Dominant

How to Make Flying Cars an Everyday Reality

Expanding the Radius of Daily Life

Another week, another pulse check on Tech.

Startups Are Skipping the Old Playbook🎯, How VC Became a Fee Business💰, Software Factory Ladder Explained 🏭

Hinton says AI is already conscious and humanity will have to accept that we’re not the only intelligent things around.

Nobel Prize Winner Geoffrey Hinton on AI: “They’re Beings Like Us”

The definitive guide to engineering a board that actually helps you scale.

A Founder's Guide to Building and Managing a Board That Works

Plus, Gigascale raises a climate-focused hardware fund & VC firms start seeing better TVPI

AI Pushes Markets into Uncharted Territory as SpaceX & Google Seek $160 Billion Combined with OpenAI & Anthropic in the Wings

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies.

Clouded Judgement 6.5.26 - Where Are the American Open Source Models?

Antares Goes Critical, NewLimit, BioWeapon Letter, Helion, Alzheimer's x Mushrooms + Extra Doses

Weekly Dose of Optimism #196

Do people want to watch the likes of Sam Altman, Trae Stephens & Palmer Luckey compete in a party game? We'll soon find out.

Founders Fund's New Media Play: Tech Celebrities Playing Mafia

A study of 260 founders.

Saplings: The Childhoods of Exceptional Entrepreneurs

What even is ARR in 2026? There is lots of ARR fraud/deception out there...

The "ARR" Guide for an AI World

A practical, founder-friendly breakdown of the metrics that matter, and the model that ties them together.

The SaaS Metrics Dashboard Every Top Company Uses (Excel Sheet Included)

Devs are generating twice as much code (or more) than just 6 months ago, which is a problem for quality, reliability, and tech debt. A rational fix is available for these, but who’s acting rationally?

Ideas: slow down to speed up when working with AI agents

Building the Electric Stack by making motors and actuators next to drones and robots

America Spins on Westmag

Apply to secure your spot for the summit on June 24 in London

New to the Cerebral Valley AI Summit in London: Index Partner Danny Rimer & Luminance CEO Eleanor Lightbody Join as Speakers + Discussion Group Leaders Announced

Token waste in service of productive use, not waste for the sake of waste, could be the biggest problem in AI right now.

The Token Reckoning is Here and It’s Not What You Think

Claude Mythos⚠️, Altman on ChatGPT’s Psychology🧠, The Karpathy Loop🔁

How do Entrata's financials stack up, and will it pave the way for more software IPOs?

Entrata S-1 | An Actual Software IPO?!

High agency is the only way to move from being a passenger to the one who drives the outcome.

The One Trait You Need to Succeed in the Next 10 Years

Could the AI labs intuit your next move and accomplish it for you? That seems to be where they're heading.

The Chatbots and Agents Are Going To Merge

A VC’s honest take on pricing risk, belief, and hype at the earliest stage.

Stop Asking What Your Startup Is Worth

Plus, Anthropic tops OpenAI in valuation & a new book by our editor at large discusses the rise & fall of tech's San Francisco values

Booming AI Revenues Boost Inference Startups to Decacorn Status 

Clouded Judgement 5.29.26 - The Second Life of a GPU

LDL Gene Therapy, GLP-1s slow Cancer, Supersonic Hermeus, Nanotech, Moon Base + Extra Doses

Weekly Dose of Optimism #195

Salesforce & Uber are among those investing heavily. A fierce debate is roiling the industry on when & how to measure ROI.

‘Tokenmaxxing’ Starts to Fade as Companies Eye Agentic Coding Costs

Here Is Everything That Changed

Anthropic Just Dropped Claude Opus 4.8. 

Top-down and bottom-up efforts to rationalize AI token spend, interesting AI coding stats from Cursor, GCP suspends $2M/month customer without warning, and more

The Pulse: a trend of trying to cut back on AI spend within eng departments?

These Gigavillains Are Bringing So Many Technologies Down the Learning Curve

Thank God For Data Centers

The $120K seed deck from 2016. The playbook behind 50 million users, $878M raised, and a $9B valuation. And the 1 founder bet that made all of it possible.

Replit Was Rejected by YC 3 Times. Then Paul Graham Called Sam Altman Personally

As the technology's reputation wobbles, the pope joins a chorus of AI watchers calling out its potential harms and working with the industry to mitigate them.

The Pope Takes On AI

A deepdive into today’s tech jobs market, with exclusive data on software engineering jobs, the AI engineering boom, whether AI engineering is “replacing” software engineering hiring, and more

State of the software engineering job market in 2026

AI token spend will soon be the largest vendor expense for most companies, and many of you are accounting for it wrong...

AI token spend will soon be your largest vendor expense (if not already), and many of you are accounting for it wrong...

Where AI Costs Belong on the P&L

36 timeless books that’ll make you a better builder, leader, and person

Essential books for product builders—part 1

The communication system behind every funded pitch, every winning board presentation, and every cold email that gets a response. Full Claude setup inside

McKinsey Charges $500K for This Framework. Here Is How to Wire It Into Claude for Free

A generation is being told AI is their enemy. And they’re starting to believe it.

AI’s Public Relations Emergency

Plus, Google tweaks its search box amid agent push & Meta attributes big layoffs to AI

Epic Race for AI Supremacy Hits Overdrive as SpaceX, OpenAI & Anthropic Head for IPOs. Key Investors Poised for Paydays in the Billions.

Clouded Judgement 5.22.26 - The Neocloud Boom

Reta Phase 3, Colossal Eggs, SpaceX, OpenAI x Erdős, SendCutSend + Extra Doses

Weekly Dose of Optimism #194

The public sector moves slowly by design. That might actually help it get AI right.

Believe It Or Not, The Government Is Adopting AI to Make Your Life Easier

Negative feedback greets Google’s redesigned AI IDE, why Google’s product ecosystem is so chaotic, Meta cuts 10% of staff as it hits record revenue and profits, and more

The Pulse: Antigravity 2.0 takes ‘IDE’ out of its new IDE

Big ambitions in space-based compute show the rocket-and-AI company's drive to dominate AI infrastructure for his own purposes — and for re-sale

SpaceX IPO: Orbital Data Centers Emerge as a Central Component of Musk's Grand Vision 

*Get our Business Idea Database:* https://clickhubspot.com/o2kq

Episode 833: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) breakdown the biggest IPO of all time. 
—
Show Notes: 
(0:00) what even is SpaceX
(7:11) What even is a trillion dollars?
(8:51) Launches explained
(9:07) Starlink
(14:07) Data centers in space
(17:39) Starship
(24:46) Grok
(28:06) a wonderful business at a silly price?
(34:16) the mission
(37:51) SBF's $114B fumble
(39:04) funny, weird, surprising nuggets from the IPO
(42:35Who's getting rich this week?
(51:13) The genius insight of Luke at Gigafund
(55:46) Pessimists get to be right, optimists get to be right
(59:12) Elon's comp package



—
Check Out Sam's Stuff:
• Hampton (joinhampton.com): My community for founders. Average member does $25m/year. Many of the guests are members. Get after it...apply: http://joinhampton.com/mfm


—
Check Out Shaan's Stuff:
• Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com 
• Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents.
• Mercury - Need a bank for your company? Go check out Mercury (mercury.com). Shaan uses it for all of his companies!
Mercury is a financial technology company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC
• I run all my newsletters on Beehiiv and you should too + we're giving away $10k to our favorite newsletter, check it out:
beehiiv.com/mfm-challenge

My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by HubSpot Media // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano /

The most simplified breakdown of the SpaceX IPO on the internet

Fable (Mythos) is getting taken out of Claude subscriptions soon, so until then how do we use as much of it as possible...

Thank you Render for sponsoring! Check them out at: https://soydev.link/render

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Check out my Twitch, Twitter, Discord more at https://t3.gg

S/O @Ph4seon3 for the awesome edit 🙏

Mythos is here, it’s time to start tokenmaxxing

00:05:03 Bezos AI Play
00:20:16 Is TSA Goated?
00:24:44 Future of Airports
00:29:39 𝕏 Timeline Reactions
00:51:17 David Reger, founder and CEO of Neura Robotics, is a pioneer in cognitive robotics, aiming to integrate robots into daily life by enhancing their cognitive abilities. In the conversation, he discusses the company's focus on developing robots with physical AI brains capable of performing tasks autonomously across various sectors, emphasizing the importance of diverse embodiments, including mobile manipulators and humanoids, to adapt to human-centric environments. Reger also highlights the establishment of Neura Gyms worldwide, facilities designed to train robots in physical tasks, thereby generating essential data to refine their AI capabilities.
01:04:55 Mike Wior, co-founder and CEO of Allen Control Systems (ACS), discusses the company's development of Bullfrog, an autonomous robotic weapon station designed to counter small, fast-moving drones by combining AI, computer vision, and machine learning to achieve both speed and accuracy. He highlights Bullfrog's 100% success rate in neutralizing 13 Army-operated drones during a November field test, emphasizing its capability to address the evolving drone threat landscape. Wior also notes ACS's rapid growth, with the team expanding to approximately 250 employees and securing a $200 million Series B funding round to scale manufacturing and deployment efforts.
01:14:50 𝕏 Timeline Reactions
01:18:46 Ariel Cohen, co-founder and CEO of Navan, has a background in product management and leadership roles at companies like Jive Software and Hewlett-Packard. He discusses Navan's significant growth, highlighting a 50% increase in usage and a 40% rise in revenue, attributing this success to the essential need for face-to-face business interactions. Cohen also emphasizes the company's strategic use of AI to enhance user experience, streamline operations, and drive efficiency in business travel management.
01:41:38 Jeff Tatarchuk, co-founder and Chief Growth Officer of TensorWave, discusses the company's exclusive focus on building AI infrastructure with AMD GPUs, stemming from their prior collaboration with AMD during the Xilinx acquisition. He highlights the initial supply constraints of Nvidia chips in 2022-2023, which led to exploring AMD's offerings, and emphasizes the importance of developing a robust ecosystem to support AMD's hardware, addressing software gaps and reducing dependency on a single vendor. Tatarchuk also notes that while CUDA's ecosystem presents challenges, efforts are underway to create a heterogeneous stack that allows seamless switching between different GPU platforms.
01:52:02 Matt Joseph, co-founder and CTO of Minerva, an AI platform for consumer marketing, discusses how their technology helps brands unify first-party data from various systems, creating a comprehensive consumer profile to optimize sales and marketing strategies. He highlights their expansive dataset covering 270 million Americans, enabling performance marketers to better understand their consumer base and tailor marketing efforts accordingly.
02:01:33 CAA Fund
02:08:09 Ade Ajao, co-founder and Managing Partner at Base10 Partners, shared his journey from co-founding Tuenti, the "Spanish Facebook," to leading Base10's recent $850 million fundraise, bringing their assets under management to $2.6 billion. He discussed the firm's focus on automating the real economy through applied AI, emphasizing the importance of understanding client needs over industry labels. Ajao also highlighted the evolving venture capital landscape, noting the rapid growth of AI applications in sectors like logistics and transportation.
02:19:04 Jeremy Fraenkel, CEO and co-founder of Fundamental, discusses his company's development of a foundation model for tabular data, aiming to enhance enterprise decision-making by pre-training on billions of tables.

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Bezos AI Play, Future of Airports, Trucking is Back, CAA Fund

Render is the easiest place to ship full-stack apps and agents. The first 2,000 people to use the code RENDER-FIRESHIP will get $50 in credits: https://dashboard.render.com/register?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=organic_video&utm_campaign=2026_partnership_fireship

This week, Anthropic released Claude Fable, a Mythos class model that's been carefully lobotomized for public consumption. But is it legit? Let's run it...

#coding #programming #ai

🔖 Topics Covered
- Claude Fable release
- Fable 5 vs Opus 4.8
- Fable 5 Demo

Want more Fireship?

🗞️ Newsletter: https://bytes.dev
🧠 Courses: https://fireship.dev

Anthropic begged the world to stop AI… then shipped this

Brian Singerman spent 17 years at Founders Fund, where he helped drive large concentrated investments into companies like SpaceX, Palantir, Airbnb, Stripe, Stemcentrx, Anduril, and Affirm. He recently left to co-found GPx, a new fund backing emerging managers. In this episode we break down the philosophy behind Founders Fund's concentration strategy, how a lifetime of competitive strategy gaming shapes the way he reads founders, and why he is now applying the same framework to GPs instead of companies.

"When I did get to meet Elon and learn more about SpaceX, it was extremely clear that there was nobody else like him on the planet who could actually pull something like SpaceX off."

The conversation runs from his 2008 start at Founders Fund and what he learned from Peter Thiel, to the SpaceX bet the firm staked its career on, why he has never read a financial report, and his read on genuinely authentic founders like Cyan Banister, Palmer Luckey, and Alex Karp. Plus a round of questions submitted by Max Levchin, Trae Stephens & Scott Nolan, his views on wealth taxes and asset seizure, and his bet on N-of-1 human cultural artifacts.


Brian Singerman: https://x.com/briansin 
Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea 
Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy 


𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/brian-singerman-if-spacex-didnt-work-founders-fund/id1738124704?i=1000772192944

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2AemjauQGGUcf4TmlTi2Jn?si=vXX6HOg0QkOPb4pB3ySxjA


𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒

• Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery 

• Turing—Turing delivers top-tier talent, data, and tools to help AI labs improve model performance—and enables enterprises to turn those models into powerful, production-ready systems. https://turing.com/sourcery 

• VCX—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio at http://GetVCX.com  

• Deel—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery

• Public–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourcery 

• Merge—The leading provider of customer-facing integrations and agentic tools for frontier LLMs, Fortune 500 organizations, and B2B SaaS companies. Visit https://merge.dev  

Follow Sourcery for the latest updates!
https://www.sourcery.vc

Disclosure
Paid Endorsement. Brokerage services by Open to the Public Investing Inc, member FINRA & SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC-registered adviser. Crypto trading provided by Zero Hash LLC, licensed by the NYSDFS. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool by Public Advisors. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. See disclosures at public.com/disclosures/ga. Matched funds must remain in your account for at least 5 years. Match rate and other terms are subject to change at any time.
 

𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒

(00:00) Brian Singerman, Partner at Founders Fund
(00:42) The Founders Fund origin story
(02:09) Max Levchin's unfiltered questions
(05:25) How gaming shaped his investing
(06:11) Joining Founders Fund in 2008
(07:34) Silicon Valley's most fascinating characters
(09:29) Lessons from Peter Thiel
(11:26) Building a culture of conviction
(11:59) The art of spotting A+ founders
(13:55) Trae's biggest lesson from Peter Thiel
(14:41) Is socialism a threat to America?
(15:58) Why capital is leaving California
(17:03) The obsession with Hawaii
(20:59) The Founders Fund playbook
(24:51) "If SpaceX didn't work, Founders Fund would not exist"
(26:03) Why Elon is one of one
(27:30) Why everyone knew Starlink would win
(28:42) Inside Founders Fund's biggest bets
(31:06) The Founders Fund founder archetype
(33:25) Backing fund managers instead of startups
(35:22) The new generation of GPs
(36:34) The most authentic people in tech
(41:38) Why other VCs aren't the audience
(44:05) Music, Memorabilia & N-of-1 Artifacts
(46:25) The story behind Brian's music studio
(49:22) What's next for Brian?

Brian Singerman: "If SpaceX Didn't Work, Founders Fund Wouldn't Exist"

Vidit Aatrey is the co-founder and CEO of Meesho (S16), an e-commerce platform built for mass-market India that has grown to about 1 millions sellers and 2.5 billion annual orders. Since launching in July 2021, It has become the largest shopping app on Android in India.

In this fireside chat at Startup School India, Vidit sat down with YC General Partner Ankit Gupta to go over how he and his co-founder went from studying small business WhatsApp groups in Bangalore to building a full out social commerce platform.

https://meesho.com

Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply
Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs

00:00 - Intro
00:33 - What is Meesho?
01:56 - 250 Million Buyers a Year
02:33 - Why They Started in 2015
04:28 - Leaving Jobs to Build Something
06:19 - Talking to Small Businesses
07:42 - Version 1: Fashion Nearby (and Why It Failed)
09:00 - Getting Into YC
09:20 - The WhatsApp Discovery
11:00 - When Sellers Won't Pay You
12:20 - Finding the Power Users
13:25 - The Dropshipper Insight
14:11 - What Real PMF Feels Like
15:32 - 10 Million WhatsApp Groups
17:38 - Jio Kills Their Business Model
18:36 - The Hardest Pivot
20:35 - Number One in Five Months
21:37 - 10M to 100M Users in Five Months
22:28 - Be Rigid on Problem, Flexible on Solution
24:23 - AI as the Next Paradigm Shift
26:16 - From 250M to a Billion with Voice AI
29:17 - Advice for Founders Today

How Meesho Became India’s Biggest Shopping App

Mythos is here. It's good. Really good. Mythos 5 and Fable 5 are groundbreaking, and I'm addicted.

Thank you Blacksmith for sponsoring! Check them out at: https://soydev.link/blacksmith

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S/O @Ph4seon3 for the awesome edit 🙏

#ai #coding #dev

Fable is Mythos, and it is really good.

00:04:20 The Social Reckoning Trailer Reactions
00:19:18 Fable 5 Sparks Safety Debate
00:34:00 Farza Majeed discusses his journey from creating an AI tutor for DaVinci Resolve to developing Clicky, an AI assistant that executes user commands on computers. He explains Clicky's functionality, including real-time GPT responses and integration with models like Fable 5 for screen understanding, and addresses the business model, emphasizing cost-effective agentic work and a $20 monthly subscription. Majeed also highlights the importance of balancing his media presence with startup development and expresses his vision for Clicky as a versatile interaction layer across devices.
00:48:46 Trent Simonian, co-founder of Sidetalk, a New York City-based one-minute street show, discusses the show's origins, emphasizing its commitment to capturing candid, high-energy street interviews without staging.
01:03:19 Sridhar Ramaswamy, CEO of Snowflake since February 2024, previously led Google's advertising products and co-founded the AI-powered search engine Neeva. He discusses how Snowflake's AI-driven tools, like Snowflake Cowork, have significantly reduced data integration times and enhanced conversational data access, enabling businesses to solve complex problems interactively. Ramaswamy also highlights the company's focus on streamlining migrations from legacy platforms, reducing timelines from years to quarters, and emphasizes the importance of effective go-to-market strategies and partnerships, such as with AWS, to deliver joint solutions to customers.
01:20:21 𝕏 Timeline Reactions
01:32:44 Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, discusses the company's recent acquisition of Void Zero, the creators of Vite, a popular developer platform. He highlights the synergy between Vite and Cloudflare's infrastructure, emphasizing the potential to enhance support for internet agents and improve developer experiences. Prince also addresses the challenges developers face with CPU bottlenecks and outlines Cloudflare's strategies to optimize performance and efficiency in the evolving digital landscape.
02:08:35 Vinod Khosla, founder and managing director of Khosla Ventures, discusses the significance of auto formalization in enhancing AI reliability by converting human language into machine-checkable formats, thereby reducing issues like hallucinations. He highlights Pramana's role in this field, particularly in formalizing complex domains such as tax law to ensure precision and compliance. Khosla emphasizes that while large AI labs continue to expand, there remains substantial opportunity for ventures addressing specific challenges through auto formalization.
02:19:35 Ranjan Rajagopalan, founder of Pramaana Labs, discusses the company's mission to enhance AI accuracy in critical fields like tax, legal, healthcare, and governance by focusing on formal verification to prevent catastrophic errors.
02:32:43 Markie Wagner is the founder and CEO of Poetic, an AI startup backed by OpenAI, Kleiner Perkins, and Founders Fund, focusing on automating complex business processes with high accuracy. In the conversation, she discusses the challenges of capturing undocumented, intricate rules within large organizations and emphasizes the necessity of AI systems that can learn and execute these processes with near-perfect precision. She also highlights the importance of forward-deployed engineers who not only possess technical expertise but can also drive organizational change to effectively implement AI solutions.
02:49:27 Bret Taylor, an American computer scientist and entrepreneur, co-created Google Maps, served as Facebook's CTO, chaired Twitter's board, and co-CEOed Salesforce before founding Sierra, an AI startup specializing in autonomous customer service agents. Taylor discusses Sierra's recent achievement of FedRAMP High certification, enabling federal agencies to utilize their AI solutions, and emphasizes the potential of AI to enhance government services like Medicare and passport processing by improving efficiency and accessibility. He also highlights the importance of multilingual support and the role of AI in transforming customer service interactions within the public sector.
03:06:02 𝕏 Timeline Reactions 


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Facebook gets a movie, Anthropic gets a Fable, Vinod Khosla, Matthew Prince, Bret Taylor

Cursor is the best way to build software with AI → https://trm.sh/cursor

Chapters
00:00:00 - Intro
00:00:08 - I was right about Token Cost
00:02:35 - Prediction 0: AI Labs will trade tokens for equity
00:02:51 - Prediction 1: Opensource Token Donations
00:04:06 - Cursor
00:04:46 - Prediction 2: Token Budgets/Stipends
00:06:35 - Prediction 3: Token Poker
00:09:07 - Prediction 4: Org & Team Wide Token Budgets
00:11:31 - Prediction 5: Rewarding LoC with more token budget

Sources:
- https://geohot.github.io//blog/jekyll/update/2026/05/24/the-eternal-sloptember.html
- https://x.com/BusinessInsider/status/2062211094450434219
- https://www.wheresyoured.at/ai-is-too-expensive/#organizations-cannot-afford-to-keep-blowing-through-their-ai-budgets-millions-of-dollars-at-a-time-without-roi
- https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/head-of-claude-code-what-happens

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#theprimeagen #programming #computerscience #ai #chatgippty #terminaldotshop

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ssh terminal.shop

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Unfortunately, I Was Right

Brex co-founder and CEO Pedro Franceschi believes most people still underestimate how much AI will change the way companies are built. AI isn't just another tool, it's a new foundation for building products, teams, and companies.

In this episode of Lightcone, Pedro shares why he thinks we're only months into a platform shift as significant as the invention of electricity, how AI has changed the way he works, and why every founder should be "token maxing" to understand the limits of the technology firsthand.

He explains why the CEO needs to be the chief AI officer, how Brex is rebuilding itself around AI, and why founders should rethink what's possible when intelligence is available on demand.

Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply
Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs

Chapters:
01:13 – How Pedro Became AI-Pilled
04:08 – The Electricity Analogy
05:21 – Free the Claw
06:56 – Making AI Safe for Enterprise
10:57 – Why Most Companies Are Behind
13:09 – AI Teammates, Not Chatbots
14:22 – The Case for Tokenmaxxing
18:24 – The Company of One
20:54 – The One Thing AI Can't Replace
28:06 – Building Customer World Models
32:58 – Rebuilding Brex Around AI
39:02 – The CEO Must Be the Chief AI Officer
43:50 – Building Company AGI
51:43 – Why We're Still So Early

The Most AI-Pilled CEO We Know

Mike Volpi is a General Partner at Hanabi Capital, with a background that spans senior operating roles and nearly two decades of investing. Mike currently sits on the boards of several innovative companies, including Scale AI, ClickHouse, Ferrari, and Confluent, where he is known as a thoughtful sounding board and a steady presence through the highs and lows of startup life.

Mike is a retired partner at Index Ventures, where he led investments in category-defining companies across AI, software, and infrastructure. Earlier in his career, he held leadership roles at Cisco, including as Chief Strategy Officer and SVP/GM of Cisco’s routing business, giving him firsthand experience in building products and teams at scale.

We discussed what it takes to build a great venture firm in the AI era, why many of venture’s traditional rules are breaking down, and how AI is reshaping software, investing, and company building. We also explored the future of frontier AI labs, robotics, defense tech, and the mindset founders and investors need to adapt to a rapidly changing world.

Timestamps:
(0:00) Intro
(0:39) Building a venture firm for AI
(4:02) Designing Hanabi
(5:52) Why stage matters less
(9:38) Building a venture brand
(13:58) The role of board seats
(17:06) Attributes of enduring firms
(20:44) The future of AI labs
(23:14) Open-source and neolabs
(32:49) The compute race
(36:51) The future of software
(45:49) Investing in defense
(47:50) From operator to investor
(50:35) Thriving founders today

Links:
https://x.com/mavolpi
https://www.hanabi.com/
https://x.com/jaltma
https://uncappedpod.com/

friends@uncappedpod.com

Mike Volpi on Why AI Breaks Traditional Venture Capital | Ep. 52

Biohub started with an ambitious goal of curing, preventing, and managing all disease by the end of the century. A decade later, thanks to the convergence of frontier AI and biological data, that goal may have been too conservative. In this episode, Elad Gil and Sarah Guo sit down with Biohub co-founders Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, alongside Biohub Head of Science Alex Rives. Together, they discuss Biohub’s $500 million virtual biology initiative, which integrates frontier AI with wet-lab work to build predictive world models of cells, proteins, and systems. They also talk about their newly announced open-source engine for digital protein and antibody design, ESMFold2; why Biohub is a nonprofit rather than a venture-backed startup; and how hierarchical simulations will soon allow doctors to treat patients at an individual, mechanistic level.  
Sign up for new podcasts every week. Email feedback to show@no-priors.com
Follow us on Twitter: @NoPriorsPod | @Saranormous | @EladGil | @Biohub | @finkd | @alexrives | @ChanZuckerberg

Chapters:
00:00 – Cold Open
01:02 - Mark Zuckerberg, Priscilla Chan, and Alex Rives Introduction
01:26 – Why Biohub and Their Mission
08:27 – Integrating Frontier AI and Frontier Biology
09:45 – Micro to Macro Biological Modeling
14:22 – Mechanistic Interpretiability 
16:58 – Why Biohub is a Non-Profit
21:41 – Understanding How Biology Works
24:23 – Timeline for Curing All Diseases
26:25 – Translating Research to Patient Impact
28:04 – Launch of ESMFold2
32:13 – Tackling Off-Target Effects and Edge Cases
38:39 – Putting the Tech in Individual Hands
41:06 – Talent at Biohub
44:25 – What’s Next After ESMFold2
46:10 –  Connecting ESMFold2 to Agentic Systems
46:51 – The Virtual Cell
49:33 – Defining Success for Biohub
51:52 – Biohub Strategy Update
56:20 – Conclusion

Biohub: The Future of Biology is Open-Source with Mark Zuckerberg, Priscilla Chan, and Alex Rives

*Get our Investment Guide:* https://clickhubspot.com/xg92

Episode 832: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talk to legendary fund manager Barry Ritholtz( https://x.com/Ritholtz ) about the behaviors that destroy returns for investors and how to avoid them. 
—
Show Notes: 
(0:00) Intro
(2:19) christmas tree portfolio
(4:43) the cowboy account
(9:51) day trading
(11:09) Barry yells at Lloyd Blankfein
(13:46) panic selling
(16:45) sam picks a fight
(18:46) direct indexing
(21:43) Great investors 
(27:25) 90% of everything is crap
(36:14) Elon's foray into PE
(44:02) Predicting the housing crisis
(46:01) spending a year as the dumbest guy on wall street
(49:01) Why bubbles are good for the economy

—
Links:
• How Not To Invest - https://www.hownottoinvestbook.com/


—
Check Out Sam's Stuff:
• Hampton (joinhampton.com): My community for founders. Average member does $25m/year. Many of the guests are members. Get after it...apply: http://joinhampton.com/mfm


—
Check Out Shaan's Stuff:
• Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com 
• Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents.
• Mercury - Need a bank for your company? Go check out Mercury (mercury.com). Shaan uses it for all of his companies!
Mercury is a financial technology company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC
• I run all my newsletters on Beehiiv and you should too + we're giving away $10k to our favorite newsletter, check it out:
beehiiv.com/mfm-challenge

My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by HubSpot Media // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano /

Exposing the fake financial "Gurus" destroying your net worth

Get $30 of Pioneer inference credits for only $5 - https://pioneer.ai/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=ext_social&utm_campaign=pioneer_launch&utm_content=FS

Anthropic just proposed something insane - the idea that maybe we should wait a second and pause all AI development. But why now?

#coding #programming #ai #nthropic

📚 Resources
- https://www.anthropic.com/institute/recursive-self-improvement

Want more Fireship?

🗞️ Newsletter: https://bytes.dev
🧠 Courses: https://fireship.dev

Anthropic is starting to panic…

The compute crunch has gotten so bad, that it turns out buying way too many GPUs a couple years ago was a great plan...

Thank you Wispr Flow for sponsoring! Check them out at: https://soydev.link/wisprflow

SOURCES:
https://x.com/SawyerMerritt/status/2062972460018905246
RELATED:
https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/2057214687633137940

Want to sponsor a video? Learn more here: https://soydev.link/sponsor-me

Check out my Twitch, Twitter, Discord more at https://t3.gg

S/O @Ph4seon3 for the awesome edit 🙏

Elon won after all

00:05:48 WWDC Reactions
00:24:05 Jobs Up Stocks Down
00:28:20 VC Horror Stories
00:45:15 Will Marshall, co-founder and CEO of Planet, discusses the company's mission to make global change visible and actionable through a fleet of over 200 Earth-imaging satellites that capture daily images of the entire landmass at approximately 3-meter resolution. He explains their vertically integrated approach, building custom components for their satellites, and highlights applications such as detecting methane leaks, monitoring deforestation in the Amazon, and assisting in disaster response. Marshall also touches on their diverse clientele, including defense and intelligence sectors, commercial industries like agriculture and energy, and recent capital-raising efforts to secure the company's long-term future.
01:02:20 Baroness Dambisa Moyo is a Zambian-born economist, author, and investor who serves as a member of the UK House of Lords and sits on the boards of major corporations like Chevron, Starbucks, and Conde Nast. She discusses the critical role of corporate boards in strategic oversight, CEO selection, and societal engagement, emphasizing the importance of adaptability and partnership with governments, especially in the context of emerging technologies like AI. Moyo also highlights the need for companies to balance risk-taking with long-term sustainability, drawing from her extensive experience on boards of both longstanding and tech-based organizations.
01:31:51 Samuel Hume, a medical doctor, scientist, and co-founder of Somatic Labs, is dedicated to advancing the frontiers of medicine and science. He discusses the challenges in biotech, particularly the impact of patent cliffs on pharmaceutical companies, and highlights the promising results of the RASolute 302 trial, where the investigational drug daraxonrasib nearly doubled overall survival in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer. Additionally, Hume introduces Somatic Labs' efforts to expedite drug development by automating systematic reviews using AI, aiming to reduce the process from years to mere hours.
01:48:00 David Kirtley, co-founder and CEO of Helion Energy, discusses the company's recent $465 million Series G funding round and the development of their seventh-generation fusion system, Polaris, in Washington state. He explains Helion's unique approach to fusion energy, focusing on direct electricity extraction from fusion reactions to achieve high efficiency and scalability. Kirtley also outlines plans to build a 50-megawatt fusion power plant for Microsoft by 2028, emphasizing modular, scalable systems for rapid deployment and global impact.
02:05:26 Pete Florence, co-founder and CEO of Generalist AI, has an extensive background in robotics and AI, including a PhD from MIT and experience as a Senior Research Scientist at Google DeepMind. In the conversation, he discusses his journey from academia to industry, highlighting his collaborations with co-founders Andy Barry and Andy Zeng, and their collective decision to establish Generalist AI to advance general-purpose robotics. Florence emphasizes the company's focus on developing versatile robotic systems that extend beyond humanoid forms, aiming to address a wide range of applications through scalable AI models and innovative data collection methods.
02:28:01 Jordan Bramble, CEO and co-founder of Antares Nuclear, discusses the recent successful criticality demonstration of their advanced reactor design, the Mark-0, at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). This milestone, achieved under the U.S. Department of Energy's Reactor Pilot Program, marks the first privately developed advanced reactor to go critical in the U.S. in decades. Bramble emphasizes the significance of this achievement in revitalizing America's nuclear industry and highlights the collaborative efforts with INL and the DOE that facilitated this success.
02:50:57 𝕏 Timeline Reactions

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WWDC, Jobs Up Stocks Down, VC Horror Stories, Cars and Planes

Roman Chernin is Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer of Nebius, one of the fastest-growing AI infrastructure companies in the world. Today, Nebius operates some of the largest AI compute clusters globally and serves leading AI labs, enterprises, and developers. Today, Nebius has a market cap of $57BN.

-----------------------------------------------

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro
01:24 Why AI Infrastructure Is Not a Bubble
04:11 The Real Impact of Open Source on OpenAI & Anthropic
11:03 Jevons Paradox: Why Cheaper AI Creates More Demand
13:06 The Four Layers of AI Infrastructure Explained
18:49 If Nebius Had 10x More Capacity Tomorrow
28:51 The Shift from Training to Inference and Agents
37:18 How Token Factory Cuts AI Costs by 70%
50:34 Sovereign AI, Europe, and the Future of Model Building
53:52 Competing Against Hyperscalers with 10x More Capital
01:08:46 The Biggest Threat to Nebius Isn't Competition

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Subscribe on Spotify:
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Subscribe on Apple Podcasts:
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Follow Harry Stebbings on X:
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-----------------------------------------------

#20vc #harrystebbings #nebius #ai #founder #aimodels #gpu

Nebius Co-Founder on AI Infrastructure Bubbles | How Price Elastic is Demand for Compute

Erik Torenberg speaks with tech analyst Benedict Evans about the current state of AI, what has changed over the past year, and which questions remain unanswered.

The conversation covers coding agents, foundation models, AI infrastructure spending, software economics, and the tension between today's AI excitement and the long-term realities of technology adoption. Evans discusses why coding has emerged as AI's first breakout use case, how previous platform shifts can help frame the current moment, and why many of the most important questions about AI remain unresolved.

Along the way, they explore the future of software, enterprise adoption, consumer behavior, and whether AI models ultimately capture value themselves or become infrastructure for the next generation of applications.

Timestamps:
00:00 - Intro
00:44 - What's Changed Since Last Year
05:53 - OpenAI vs Anthropic Strategy
10:31 - The Pricing Crunch & Platform History
22:48 - What Comes After Coding
38:18 - AI & the Future of Enterprise Software
48:43 - The CapEx Problem
55:07 - Will Models Become Commodities?

Resources:
Follow Benedict Evans on X: https://x.com/benedictevans
Follow Erik Torenberg on X: https://x.com/eriktorenberg
Read Content Isn’t King: https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2017/7/13/content-isnt-king
Read Netflix is Not a Tech Company: https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2019/7/31/Netflix

Stay Updated:
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and share with your friends!

Find a16z on X: https://twitter.com/a16z

Find a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16z

Listen to the a16z Show on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5bC65RDvs3oxnLyqqvkUYX

Listen to the a16z Show on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a16z-podcast/id842818711

Follow our host: https://x.com/eriktorenberg

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see http://a16z.com/disclosures.

The Economics of AI Usage and What's Next For SaaS | Benedict Evans on a16z

Ed Zitron is back, and he's making his strongest case yet that OpenAI and Anthropic are running a deliberate con on the public.

In his second appearance on the Newcomer Podcast, Ed Zitron sits down with Eric Newcomer to break down why he believes there is no real ROI in AI, how Sam Altman and Dario Amodei have hidden the true cost of their products behind subscription pricing, and why enterprises like Uber are already pulling back. Ed also makes the case that the entire culture around AI is a psyop designed to silence skeptics and protect a trillion-dollar house of cards.

Eric pushes back throughout, defending the long-term potential of AI and pressing Ed on whether pure skepticism is its own kind of shtick. The result is one of the most honest and combative conversations about AI you'll find anywhere.

00:00 Intro
00:44 Ed Zitron Returns
01:41 Why AI Writing Feels Dead
02:44 Eric Sets the Stakes
05:07 There Is No ROI in AI
07:20 The AI Psyop and Valley Culture
09:06 Should OpenAI and Anthropic Go Public?
12:06 The Uber vs AI Economics Debate
19:03 Why Token Pricing Changes Everything
29:17 Ed Admits He Got the Timing Wrong
32:44 Equity Raise Debate
33:11 Data Center Debt Crunch
35:16 Why AI Only Really Works at Code
37:16 The iPhone Comparison Argument
40:27 Manufactured Consent and AI Culture
41:48 Executive AI Psychosis
48:15 The Hallucinations Debate
56:13 Was the Trillion Dollars Worth It?

🎙️ New episodes every week! Subscribe and turn on notifications to stay ahead of the next big story.

👇 Watch more from The Newcomer Podcast:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0Yg1id5olJMOyUnYF5AZnIo2ZXdyYd-L

 🔗 Read more at newcomer.co
🐦 Follow us: @NewcomerMedia

If you want honest, insider analysis from the heart of tech and venture capital…you’re in the right place.

#EdZitron #OpenAI #ArtificialIntelligence

Ed Zitron Unfiltered on OpenAI, Anthropic & Why the Whole Thing Is a Con

Blacksmith is the fastest way to run your Github Actions. 2x faster job runs, 4x faster on caches, and 40x faster on Docker builds, slashing costs by up to 75%. Already trusted by over 3,500 companies, including Ashby, Veed, Clerk, and Mintlify → https://trm.sh/blacksmith

Resources:
* https://github.com/golang/go/issues/77273

Topics:
* Go
* Language Evolution

https://twitch.tv/ThePrimeagen - I Stream on Twitch

https://twitter.com/terminaldotshop - Want to order coffee over SSH?
ssh terminal.shop

This is also the best way to support me is to support yourself becoming a better backend engineer.  

Great News?  Want me to research and create video????: https://www.reddit.com/r/ThePrimeagen

Kinesis Advantage 360: https://bit.ly/Prime-Kinesis

I am done with Golang

Anthropic wants to pause AI development and thinks that recursive self improvement is a real possibility...

Thank you Depot for sponsoring! Check them out at: https://soydev.link/depot

SOURCES:
https://www.anthropic.com/institute/recursive-self-improvement

Want to sponsor a video? Learn more here: https://soydev.link/sponsor-me

Check out my Twitch, Twitter, Discord more at https://t3.gg

S/O @Ph4seon3 for the awesome edit 🙏

I didn’t expect this from Anthropic

Don’t let bad code get merged without reviewing (hopefully not by merge cop!). Checkout out Code Rabbit at https://trm.sh/coderabbit

Full Episode:
Youtube: https://youtu.be/PxNr7k1v-Rk
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4VOHebTzXEThro58G1ArKp

[Description]
We dive deep into technical performance debates, specifically the nuances of floating-point math—is multiplying by a reciprocal actually faster than division on modern CPUs?

We also break down the latest from Microsoft and NVIDIA, including the "RTX Spark" and the vision of "unmetered intelligence." Plus, don't miss "Trash Facts" about professional bowling and the latest "Snack Picks."

[Chapters]
00:00:00 - Intro
00:03:32 - CodeRabbit
00:05:28 - Prime Blocker
00:27:48 - Outro

[Sponsors]
Linear: https://trm.sh/linear
Sentry: https://trm.sh/sentry

https://twitch.tv/ThePrimeagen - I Stream on Twitch
https://twitter.com/terminaldotshop - Want to order coffee over SSH?
ssh terminal.shop

Great News?  Want me to research and create video????: https://www.reddit.com/r/ThePrimeagen

Kinesis Advantage 360: https://bit.ly/Prime-Kinesis

Casey Destroys Optimization Myths | TheStandup

Tony Fadell created the iPod, co-created the iPhone, and founded Nest (which he sold to Google for $3.2 billion). He’s co-authored over 300 patents, was part of the legendary team at General Magic, and wrote one of the most important and inspiring books for builders, called Build.

*In our in-depth conversation, we discuss:*
1. The heated internal debates about whether the iPhone should have a physical keyboard
2. Why opinion-based decisions are essential for v1 products
3. Why marketing matters as much as the product itself, and how the iPod almost failed
4. Why voice will eventually become the primary interface with AI
5. Why cognitive surrender to AI is the biggest risk facing product builders today

*Brought to you by:*
WorkOS—Make your app enterprise-ready, with SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more: https://workos.com/lenny
Vanta—Automate compliance, manage risk, and accelerate trust with AI: https://vanta.com/lenny

*Episode transcript:* https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/father-of-the-ipod-and-iphone-on
*Archive of all Lenny's Podcast transcripts:* https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/yxi4s2w998p1gvtpu4193/AMdNPR8AOw0lMklwtnC0TrQ?rlkey=j06x0nipoti519e0xgm23zsn9&st=ahz0fj11&dl=0

*Where to find Tony Fadell:*
• X: https://x.com/tfadell
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonyfadell
• Website: https://www.buildc.com

*Where to find Lenny:*
• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

*In this episode, we cover:*
(00:00) Introduction to Tony Fadell
(02:23) The Blackberry vs. iPhone keyboard debate
(07:50) Micromanaging vs. kind lies: what great products actually need
(15:57) The Nest thermostat and smoke alarm story
(21:22) How to decide what’s worth building: pain plus new technology
(27:36) The three-generation rule: why nothing works the first time
(34:20) The full customer journey: why marketing defines your product
(40:53) The power of storytelling and the press-release-first approach
(48:37) The evolution of product management and the builder role
(50:27) Why AI-generated code creates brittle, unmaintainable products
(58:00) Storytelling techniques
(1:05:45) The next iPhone
(1:13:15) Hardware is back
(1:17:01) What Tony is most excited about
(1:21:38) Working with Tony
(1:25:36) Ethics, morals, and the responsibility of product builders
(1:32:40) How to connect with Tony and Build Collective

*Referenced:*
• BlackBerry: https://www.netflix.com/title/81725542
• Functional systems: https://x.com/bhalligan/status/2051873396896518558/photo/1
• Nest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Nest
• Everyone’s an engineer now: Inside v0’s mission to create a hundred million builders | Guillermo Rauch (founder and CEO of Vercel, creators of v0 and Next.js): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/everyones-an-engineer-now-guillermo-rauch
• Hermann Hauser on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hermannhauser
• Acorn Computers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Computers
• Skunkworks project: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunkworks_project
• Netscape Navigator: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Navigator
• Unpacking Amazon’s unique ways of working | Bill Carr (author of Working Backwards): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/unpacking-amazons-unique-ways-of
• General Magic: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6849786
• Dario Amodei’s website: https://www.darioamodei.com
• Flighty: https://flighty.com
• Dave Chappelle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Chappelle
• Humane Inc.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humane_Inc
• Her: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798709
• Spike Jonze: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike_Jonze
• Waymo: https://waymo.com
• Snapchat CEO: Why distribution has become the most important moat | Evan Spiegel: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/snapchat-ceo-why-distribution-is
• Simbe Robotics: https://www.simberobotics.com
• Greyparrot: https://www.greyparrot.ai
• Grok: https://grok.com
• Cerebras: https://www.cerebras.ai
• Esther 4:14: https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Esther%204%3A14
• iPod Inventor and Nest Founder Tony Fadell Named MAD’s Inaugural Designer in Residence: https://mad.mit.edu/news/ipod-inventor-and-nest-founder-tony-fadell-named-mit-morningside-academy-for-design-s-inaugural-designer-in-residence

*Recommended books:*
• Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0063046067
• Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Working-Backwards-Insights-Stories-Secrets/dp/1250275717

_Production and marketing by https://penname.co/._
_For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com._

Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

Tony Fadell: How to build real taste (and why AI makes it matter more)

Cloudflare just bought Vite, this one's gonna be very interesting...

Thank you Browserbase & Infinite Red for sponsoring!
Browserbase: https://soydev.link/browserbase
Infinite Red: https://soydev.link/infinite

SOURCES:
https://x.com/voidzerodev/status/2062520542121304146
https://voidzero.dev/posts/voidzero-cloudflare
https://blog.cloudflare.com/voidzero-joins-cloudflare/

Want to sponsor a video? Learn more here: https://soydev.link/sponsor-me

Check out my Twitch, Twitter, Discord more at https://t3.gg

S/O @Ph4seon3 for the awesome edit 🙏

Cloudflare bought Vite to destroy Vercel

Jacob Lauritzen serves as the CTO at Legora, the fastest growing B2B enterprise company in history; hitting $100 million in ARR in just 18 months . Legora boasts a valuation of $5.6BN and has raised a total of $866 million in funding.

Legora's investors include the likes of Accel, Benchmark, and Bessemer Venture Partners, alongside strategic tech giants NVIDIA (NVentures) and Salesforce Ventures.

-----------------------------------------------

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
01:19 Building Engineering in 2026 vs 2024
03:44 Code Is Now Cheap: So What's the New Bottleneck?
06:03 AI Code Review Is Still Broken
07:19 The Future Engineer: Systems Design Over Writing Code
10:28 Over 50% of Legora's Code Is Now AI Generated
12:48 How AI Is Making PMs and Postmortems Faster
15:31 Does Taste Matter or Is It Silicon Valley BS?
17:47 You Can Build Faster Than Lawyers Can Consume
31:06 What Harvey Has Done Better Than Legora
32:47 The Developer Experience Team: The Most Underrated Hire in Engineering
34:05 Hiring Engineers in Europe vs. the US
45:44 Token Maxing: Are Enterprises Using AI Wrong?
55:13 The Crazy Prediction: Lawyers Will Work One Level Above the Contract

-----------------------------------------------

Subscribe on Spotify:
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Subscribe on Apple Podcasts:
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Follow Harry Stebbings on X:
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-----------------------------------------------
#20vc #harrystebbings #legora

Why Token Maxing is Failing Enterprise Startups | Legora CTO

Mukund Jha is the co-founder and CEO of Emergent, a platform that lets anyone without programming knowledge build, ship, and monetize real software by chatting with an AI agent. Launched roughly nine months ago, Emergent has surpassed 8.5 million users across 190 countries, seen more than 10 million apps built on the platform. At Startup School India, Mukund sat down with YC Managing Partner Jared Friedman to go over his founder journey and insights from building two successful companies.   

https://emergent.sh

Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply
Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs

Chapters:

00:00 - Intro
00:56 - What is Emergent? 
02:54 - 9 Months to $100M ARR
03:44 - Why build a global company from India?
05:00 - Dunzo: The Origin Story
06:36 - Five Startups Before This One
10:35 - Lessons from scaling Dunzo
13:21 - Leaving Dunzo and finding Emergent
15:44 - Tinkering as a Startup strategy
17:25 - Living at the edge
18:07 - The multi-agent architecture
20:42 - Beating the SWE-bench benchmark
22:42 - Second mover advantage
25:32 - Building global from Bangalore
27:11 - Outro

Emergent: How Six Months of Tinkering Led To A $100M ARR Company

Max Junestrand was a college student in Sweden with a McKinsey offer in his back pocket. Instead, he and two co-founders went all in on legal AI — and built Legora (YC W24) into one of the fastest-growing enterprise companies in history, surpassing $100M in ARR in just 18 months. Today, Legora is one of Europe's most valuable AI startups, recently valued at $5.6B, with close to 500 employees serving 1,000+ organizations across 50+ markets.

In this fireside with YC General Partner Gustaf Alströmer at our Stockholm event in April, Max shares how Legora found its way into legal AI, why it moved so fast after YC, and how it convinced one of the world's most conservative industries to embrace a new way of working. He also digs into fundraising, competing in the age of foundation models, scaling a founder-led culture, and why Legora's ambition goes far beyond legal tech.

Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply
Work at a Startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs

00:00 —Max Junestrand, CEO of Legora
03:11 — Starting Out: What Were You Thinking?
04:36 — Risk, McKinsey Offers & Taking the Leap
05:37 — Getting Into YC
07:06 — Arriving With Imposter Syndrome
09:59 — The YC Fundraise Grind
11:31 — Staying Confident Through the No's
12:00 — Building the Next Google From Europe
14:25 — Mini Games & the Product Manifesto
16:28 — $100M ARR, 500 People, Going Global
19:15 — M&A Agents Doing the Actual Work
20:41 — What If OpenAI Does This?
21:27 — Finding Your Moat as Models Get Smarter

How Legora Went From YC to $100M ARR in 18 Months

Cursor is the best way to build software with AI → https://trm.sh/cursor

Sources:
- https://world.hey.com/dhh/let-the-agents-democratize-open-source-9fd630a9
- https://ziglang.org/code-of-conduct/#strict-no-llm-no-ai-policy
- https://github.com/mitchellh/vouch
- https://x.com/kirancodes/status/2060389488317116649
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqddnwKF8HQ

https://twitch.tv/ThePrimeagen - I Stream on Twitch

https://twitter.com/terminaldotshop - Want to order coffee over SSH?
ssh terminal.shop

Become Backend Dev: https://boot.dev/prime
(plus i make courses for them)

This is also the best way to support me is to support yourself becoming a better backend engineer.

Great News?  Want me to research and create video????: https://www.reddit.com/r/ThePrimeagen

#theprimeagen #programming #computerscience #ai #chatgippty #terminaldotshop

It finally happened

Being lazy when programming is good actually

Thank you Depot for sponsoring! Check them out at: https://soydev.link/Depot

SOURCES:
https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2026/04/12/the-peril-of-laziness-lost/

Want to sponsor a video? Learn more here: https://soydev.link/sponsor-me

Check out my Twitch, Twitter, Discord more at https://t3.gg

S/O @Ph4seon3 for the awesome edit 🙏

I miss when programmers were lazy.

04:30 - Live from Palantir's AIPCon 10
17:08 - Ramp raises $750M at $44B valuation
19:49 - Timeline reactions
28:27 - Alex Karp, co-founder and CEO of Palantir Technologies, discusses the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) adoption, noting a shift from skepticism to widespread recognition of its value, while cautioning against unproductive overuse. He emphasizes the importance of taste and discernment in effectively integrating AI into business processes, highlighting that successful implementation requires more than just technical capability. Karp also warns of potential nationalization and regulation of AI technologies by governments, urging proactive engagement to address these challenges.
52:34 - Peter Zaffino, born in 1967, is the Chairman and CEO of American International Group (AIG), having joined the company in 2017 as Executive Vice President and Global Chief Operating Officer. In the conversation, Zaffino discusses AIG's global operations, emphasizing its balanced international and North American presence, and highlights the company's focus on managing complex risks for large clients. He also elaborates on AIG's partnership with Palantir Technologies, detailing how their collaboration has enhanced data integration and decision-making processes within the organization.
01:06:05 - Chad Wahlquist, a Forward Deployed Architect at Palantir Technologies, discusses his role in assisting clients to decompose complex problems and apply Palantir's technology in innovative ways. He emphasizes the importance of integrating AI with human processes to model business operations effectively, highlighting the ontology's role in providing a structured worldview that enhances decision-making. Wahlquist also addresses the balance between software malleability and enterprise-grade robustness, advocating for adaptable systems that empower users while maintaining security and scalability.
01:27:05 - Timeline reactions
01:29:52 - Sam Berry, a USDA employee with a background in engineering and a family history in farming, discusses the diverse roles of the USDA, including food inspections, SNAP administration, and scientific research. He highlights the importance of technological advancements in agriculture, such as automation and AI, to address challenges like workforce shortages and pest control. Berry also emphasizes the need for effective data collection and management to ensure program integrity and support national food security.

TBPN is made possible by:
Ramp - https://ramp.com
Public - https://public.com
Cisco - https://www.cisco.com
Console - https://www.console.com
CrowdStrike - https://www.crowdstrike.com
Figma - https://www.figma.com
MongoDB - https://www.mongodb.com
NYSE - https://www.nyse.com
Railway - https://railway.com
Shopify - https://www.shopify.com/

Follow TBPN: 
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https://open.spotify.com/show/2L6WMqY3GUPCGBD0dX6p00?si=674252d53acf4231
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/technology-brothers/id1772360235
https://www.youtube.com/@TBPNLive

🔴 Alex Karp LIVE from AIPCon 10

Economics of AGI episode w Alex Imas and Phil Trammell.

There's a bunch of important questions about how we deal with AI that only economics can answer.

What is the optimal way to tax and redistribute the wealth that will be generated? How should countries not in the AI supply chain index into the gains? Is there any world where inequality doesn't explode?

It might seem like these questions have obvious answers, but the first thing economics teaches you is that your intuitions can often be entirely wrong.

It was very helpful to chat through these things with Alex and Phil. 

𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒
* Transcript: https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/alex-imas-phil-trammell
* Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/alex-imas-and-phil-trammell-what-remains-scarce-after-agi/id1516093381?i=1000771185825
* Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/52wp90vqwiRmmQaOm9M2uZ?si=8a81MnA4Tf-X3VUzpzE1qg

𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒
* Jane Street invests heavily in turning smart people into exceptional researchers and engineers. In addition to their apprenticeship model, Jane Street runs lectures and bootcamps in their in-office classrooms -- managers clear their teams' schedules to encourage attendance. If you'd like to work at a place that takes learning this seriously, Jane Street is hiring. Check out their open roles at https://janestreet.com/dwarkesh

* Google's Gemini Omni has incredible video editing capabilities -- you can upload a video and have Omni change the background, adjust lighting, or add specific elements. But Omni is also a preview of how future frontier models will be trained -- fully multimodal on both input and output. You can try it yourself in the Gemini app at https://gemini.google or in Flow at https://flow.google

* Cursor used targeted RL with textual feedback to help train their Composer 2.5 model. One of their researchers, Sasha Rush, gave me an impromptu blackboard lecture to explain how this form of on-policy self-distillation works -- I posted the full thing on X. If you want to try Composer 2.5, go to https://cursor.com/dwarkesh

To sponsor a future episode, visit https://dwarkesh.com/advertise.

𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒
00:00:00 – Will capital share increase?
00:19:36 – Messy Middle scenario
00:25:57 – How to tax and redistribute AI wealth
00:30:02 – Why demand collapse is unlikely
00:39:26 – Human employees would be hard to integrate into the machine economy
00:43:08 – What if some humans (or AIs) value wealth accumulation intrinsically?
01:01:28 – What should developing countries do?

The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammell

In the first episode of our new series Full Stack, Conductor CEO and co-founder Charlie Holtz takes us into the details of how he sets up his workflow for coding and managing AI agents. 

https://www.conductor.build/

Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply
Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs

Chapters:

00:00 - Intro
00:23 - Talking to computers more!
00:51 - Using Conductor to build Conductor
02:20 - Conductor “on the go”
02:40 - Does Charlie still write code by hand?
04:04 - Feeling like the CEO of a little company
04:18 - Other apps & software, customization 
05:48 - “Slop-free” zones
06:33 - Conductor tech stack
07:06 - Don’t let the AI be your architect
08:31 - Where you can give the AI more free reign
08:59 - Enforcing workflows and building conviction
10:40 - Codex vs Claude Code
11:17 - Why is a terminal not enough? 
12:01 - Thoughts on tokenmaxxing? 
12:53 - How have workflows changed compared to 6 months ago?
13:25 - Most surprising thing someone has done with Conductor?
14:17 - Something obvious to you that the world doesn’t see yet?
15:00 - Code is becoming sawdust
15:48 - Call Of Duty modding to software

Conductor CEO Charlie Holtz Walks Us Through His AI Coding Setup

Tom Mueller, Founder, CEO and CTO of Impulse Space, (aka Employee #1 at SpaceX) gives Sourcery a walkthrough of the company's Redondo Beach factory, from the avionics clean room to a live rocket engine firing in the vacuum chamber.

As SpaceX's founding employee, Tom led development of the engines for Falcon and Dragon and started the origins of what became Starship. His proudest project, the Merlin engine, still flies Falcon 9. In this episode he explains why he left to build the next layer of space infrastructure: moving payloads and cargo around once they're in orbit.

We tour Mira (the company's precision maneuvering spacecraft), Helios (the vehicle bringing same-day delivery to space), and the Deneb engine, and get into how Impulse designs and builds: extreme vertical integration, 3D-printed engines, in-house composite tanks, and a "build, test, iterate" loop.

Tom also shares where he thinks the industry is heading, on nuclear electric propulsion, data centers in space, the return to the Moon, and what it was like to work with Elon Musk.


Tom Mueller: https://x.com/lrocket 
Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea 
Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy 


𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/inside-impulse-spaces-factory-with-founder-tom-mueller/id1738124704?i=1000771141258

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2VpDv9C136A5ETWulolAxA?si=i_758fGHQsiMx_iVAyZ1zg


𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒

• Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery 

• Turing—Turing delivers top-tier talent, data, and tools to help AI labs improve model performance—and enables enterprises to turn those models into powerful, production-ready systems. https://turing.com/sourcery 

• VCX—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio at http://GetVCX.com  

• Deel—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery

• Public–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourcery 

• Merge—The leading provider of customer-facing integrations and agentic tools for frontier LLMs, Fortune 500 organizations, and B2B SaaS companies. Visit https://merge.dev  

Follow Sourcery for the latest updates!
https://www.sourcery.vc

Disclosure
Paid Endorsement. Brokerage services by Open to the Public Investing Inc, member FINRA & SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC-registered adviser. Crypto trading provided by Zero Hash LLC, licensed by the NYSDFS. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool by Public Advisors. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. See disclosures at public.com/disclosures/ga. Matched funds must remain in your account for at least 5 years. Match rate and other terms are subject to change at any time.
 
𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒

(00:00) Tom Mueller, Founder, CEO & CTO of Impulse Space
(00:49) Inside Impulse Space
(02:32) Avionics Bay floor
(02:59) Building rockets at home
(03:50) Mira and Helios
(08:00) Why he left SpaceX
(09:33) The Deneb Engine walkthrough
(11:42) Testing in Mojave
(12:23) Favorite part of the Engine
(13:30) How it's 3D Printed
(14:21) Why 3D Printing changes everything
(16:54) Finding Talent for COPVs
(17:28) No Modern hardware without software
(19:52) The Mill Turn explained
(22:42) Payload Deck Design
(25:28) Entering the Secret Area
(30:48) Thrust, Flow Rate, and 100 Sensors
(32:13) Collision avoidance in Orbit
(32:57) The Electric Propulsion Chamber
(34:28) Nuclear Electric is the future
(38:49) Data Centers in Space
(40:28) SpaceX and Starlink's Growth
(41:10) Working with Elon
(42:07) If not CEO, then what?
(42:32) Moon matters more than Mars

Tom Mueller: SpaceX's #1 Employee Built the Merlin Engine. Now He's Building Impulse Space

*Get our Unsexy Business Idea Database:* https://clickhubspot.com/oang

Episode 831: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) tell the story of a $270M/yr meat purveyor plus Nick Sleep’s letter and the framework that will make Elon a trillionaire. 
—
Show Notes: 
(0:00) The $300M butcher
(18:28) Nick Sleep letters
(23:20) the idiot index
(35:44) breaking your own frame
(39:04) how to become a king maker
(51:49) Idea: Teen nerd awards
(57:23) Sam's List

—
Links:
• https://www.lafrieda.com/
• https://www.omahasteaks.com/
• https://drinklmnt.com/


—
Check Out Sam's Stuff:
• Hampton (joinhampton.com): My community for founders. Average member does $25m/year. Many of the guests are members. Get after it...apply: http://joinhampton.com/mfm


—
Check Out Shaan's Stuff:
• Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com 
• Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents.
• Mercury - Need a bank for your company? Go check out Mercury (mercury.com). Shaan uses it for all of his companies!
Mercury is a financial technology company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC
• I run all my newsletters on Beehiiv and you should too + we're giving away $10k to our favorite newsletter, check it out:
beehiiv.com/mfm-challenge

My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by HubSpot Media // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano /

The one calculation Elon runs everything on (it made him billions)

What does it mean for a business to truly operate at the AI frontier? In a special crossover episode at Microsoft Build, Sarah Guo and Elad Gil team up with Latent Space host “swyx” to talk with Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella about the future of AI platforms, software development, and the tech ecosystem. Satya reflects on the latest breakthroughs from Microsoft Build, the strategic shift toward multi-model harnesses, and why private evaluations (evals) are now a company’s most important intellectual property. They also discuss how autonomous AI agents are reshaping the role of software engineers, the durability of SaaS business models, and why showing communities the ROI on data centers is so critical. Plus, Satya shares his thoughts on the economic and societal impacts of the token economy, as well as the future of AI-driven education startups.
Sign up for new podcasts every week. Email feedback to show@no-priors.com
Follow us on Twitter: @NoPriorsPod | @Saranormous | @EladGil | @satyanadella | @Microsoft | @latentspacepod | @swyx

Chapters:
00:00 – Satya Nadella Introduction
01:48 – Reflections from Microsoft Build
03:12 – Microsoft’s AI Training Strategy
05:48 – Complexity of Real-World Deployment of AI
07:33 – Augmenting Human Capital
09:37 – Harnesses for Enterprise
11:49 – Developer Value
15:09 – Can Everybody Operate at the Frontier with Their Frontier Intelligence?
15:51 – Modern Definition of IP
17:38 – Future of Vendor vs. Enterprise Agents
21:48 – Near-Term Predictions on Model Pricing
24:02 – Durability of SaaS
25:58 – What Satya’s Building
28:18 – Future of Engineering Roles
30:54 – How Microsoft Can Be More Ambitious
34:36 – Data Centers and Community Impact
38:01 – AI’s Impact on Society
39:52 - AI and Education
42:28 – Conclusion

The Rise of the Full-Stack Builder and Hyper-Leveraged Generalist with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella

00:05:10 Microsoft Chases the Frontier
00:09:35 Project Solara
00:20:54 Mikey Shulman, representing Suno, discusses the company's recent achievement of raising over $400 million, led by Bond, highlighting significant traction and progress in user engagement and retention. He emphasizes the importance of retention as a key metric, noting that improvements in the product have led to increased user engagement and a broader audience. Shulman also addresses the evolving perception of AI-generated music, suggesting that as more people experience the product, acceptance grows, and he envisions a future where AI tools like Suno become integral to creative processes in the music industry.
00:39:55 𝕏 Timeline Reactions
00:48:03 Samir Chaudry is an American entrepreneur and co-host of the YouTube channel "Colin and Samir," where he interviews creators and discusses the creator economy. In the conversation, he explores the evolving collaboration between YouTube creators and Hollywood, emphasizing the emergence of internet-native filmmakers and the significance of community-driven intellectual property. He highlights the success of horror and animation genres on YouTube, noting their potential for adaptation into feature films, and underscores the importance of development support for creators transitioning to larger projects.
01:13:22 Tom Farley, CEO of Bullish and former President of the NYSE Group, discusses his career trajectory from traditional finance to the digital asset sector, highlighting his early investment in Coinbase and the evolving role of blockchain in financial markets. He reflects on the maturation of the cryptocurrency industry, noting its transition from speculative hype to a more stable and institutionalized market, and emphasizes the potential for blockchain technology to revolutionize global securities by enhancing transparency and efficiency. Farley also addresses the challenges and opportunities in integrating digital assets with traditional financial systems, underscoring the importance of regulatory clarity and technological innovation in driving future growth.
01:37:23 Nikesh Arora, an Indian-American business executive born in 1968, has been the chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks since June 2018, following senior roles at Google and SoftBank. In the conversation, Arora discusses the challenges AI models like Anthropic's Mythos face in cybersecurity, emphasizing issues such as high false positive rates and the lack of real-time enforcement capabilities. He also highlights the importance of focusing on detection and remediation over mere protection, given the evolving AI-driven threat landscape.
02:00:39 Henri Stern, co-founder and CEO of Privy, a blockchain infrastructure company, discusses his participation in the Money 2020 fintech conference in Amsterdam, where Privy launched new products in partnership with Deel to enable contractors to receive stablecoin payments globally. He highlights the growing adoption of stablecoin cards that allow users to spend stablecoins directly through traditional payment networks like Visa and MasterCard, facilitating seamless transactions for merchants. Stern also notes the significant adoption of stablecoins in regions like Latin America and Southeast Asia, while acknowledging the regulatory restrictions in countries such as China that limit stablecoin usage.
02:15:48 Alex Good, a former Army officer and experienced professional in finance and technology, has transitioned into the crypto and AI sectors, focusing on developing protocols that integrate these fields. He discusses the challenges at the intersection of crypto and AI, including increased hacking incidents due to AI's ability to evaluate human-written code, and emphasizes the need for secure protocols to prevent unauthorized transactions. Good also shares his "doom thesis," suggesting that AI might accelerate the emergence of surveillance states, prompting capital to move into privacy-focused cryptocurrencies like Zcash.

TBPN is made possible by:
Ramp - https://ramp.com
Public - https://public.com
Cisco - https://www.cisco.com
Console - https://www.console.com
CrowdStrike - https://www.crowdstrike.com
Figma - https://www.figma.com
MongoDB - https://www.mongodb.com
NYSE - https://www.nyse.com
Railway - https://railway.com
Shopify - https://www.shopify.com/

Follow TBPN: 
https://TBPN.com
https://x.com/tbpn
https://open.spotify.com/show/2L6WMqY3GUPCGBD0dX6p00?si=674252d53acf4231
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/technology-brothers/id1772360235
https://www.youtube.com/@TBPNLive

Microsoft Builds! SUNO on Fire, AI Roll Up Roll Ups, Mysterious Data Centers

Kelsey Hightower went from a self-taught technician installing DSL modems to becoming one of Google’s elite Distinguished Engineers, whom the CEO of Microsoft personally tried to recruit. Hightower’s career achievements are rooted in hard work and self-directed learning, and today he’s one of the most influential voices in modern infrastructure, through his talks, open source work, and writing.

In this episode of The Pragmatic Engineer podcast, Kelsey and I cover his unconventional path into tech and the lessons he’s learned during three decades in the industry. We discuss his entrepreneurial years, building a reputation through open source, the rise of containers and Kubernetes, and his time at Google during one of the most consequential periods in cloud computing. 

He recounts how a job offer from a big tech giant led to the biggest raise of his career, what prompted him to slow down after years of career acceleration, and we also discuss his perspective on AI. Throughout, Kelsey keeps a simple idea front of mind: that technology is ultimately about people. Whether it’s infrastructure, leadership, careers, or AI, he argues that the goal is not to build technology for its own sake; it’s to solve meaningful human problems.

—
*Brought to you by our season partners:*
• Antithesis – verify your system’s correctness without human review or traditional integration tests – and avoid bugs or outages https://antithesis.com/pragmatic
• Buildkite – CI software built to absorb whatever your coding agents throw at the build queue http://buildkite.com/pragmatic
• Sentry – application monitoring software considered “not bad” by millions of developers https://sentry.io/pragmatic

—
*The Pragmatic Engineer deepdives relevant for this episode:*
• Career paths for software engineers at large tech companies https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/career-paths-for-software-engineers
• The past and future of modern backend practices https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-past-and-future-of-backend-practices
• How Kubernetes is built https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/how-kubernetes-is-built-with-kat
• How Linux is built https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/how-linux-is-built-with-greg-kroah
• The Staff Engineer’s Path: You’re a role model now (sorry!) https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-staff-engineers-path

—
*Where to find Kelsey Hightower:*
• X: https://x.com/kelseyhightower 
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelsey-hightower-849b342b1

—
*In this episode, we cover:*
00:00 Intro
03:34 Kelsey’s first job at McDonald’s
05:04 His non-traditional path into tech
11:45 Landing his first tech job with an A+ certification
15:33 His entrepreneurial years
19:45 Joining Google as a data center technician
27:48 Learning automation at a Rackspace spinoff
33:26 Moving into financial services
50:00 Building a reputation through open source
53:55 From configuration management to containers
1:08:20 The rise of Kubernetes
1:25:05 Why he almost joined NASA instead of Google
1:29:20 Defining DevRel at Google
1:38:20 Demonstrating impact at Google
1:41:20 Microsoft's offer
1:55:20 Learning how to slow down
2:06:39 Advising and investing
2:15:03 A people-first view of GenAI
2:24:27 Using AI with guardrails
2:28:26 Matching AI to the task
2:36:06 Staying relevant in the AI era

—
See the transcript and other references from the episode at https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/podcast

—
Production and marketing by https://penname.co/.

Kubernetes and retiring at the top with Kelsey Hightower

Some of the biggest companies of the next decade won't be software businesses. They'll be services companies like insurance carriers, law firms, and tax practices rebuilt from scratch with AI doing most of the work. 

In this episode of Startup School, YC Visiting Partner Charlie Warren walks through the playbook for building AI native services companies, covering how to pick a market with the right traits, why variance kills these businesses faster than anything else, and the P&L math that’ll transform your business model.

Chapters:
00:00 — Intro to AI Services Companies
01:01 — Picking the Right Market
02:55 — Markets YC Likes Right Now
03:43 — The Sam Altman Test
04:35 — The Right Founding Team
05:28 — Building the Product
06:19 — Variance Is the Existential Problem
07:08 — The Early Demand Trap
07:53 — How to Price AI Services
08:41 — The P&L Walkthrough
09:33 — AI Operating Leverage
10:27 — Don't Buy Your Way In

Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply
Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs

If you're in the Bay Area and Charlie's video resonated with you, come join us in San Francisco on 6/22. We're hosting a founder panel on AI-native services across industries, followed by a happy hour with the panelists, YC partners, and a room full of engineers, researchers, and builders thinking about this space.

Apply to attend: https://events.ycombinator.com/3EKUFJ6V7

How to Build an AI-Native Services Company

Big A: https://youtube.com/@AtriocClips

Sources:
https://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2026/05/24/the-eternal-sloptember.html

Topics Covered:
- Layoffs in 2026
- AI affecting Jobs

https://twitch.tv/ThePrimeagen - I Stream on Twitch

https://twitter.com/terminaldotshop - Want to order coffee over SSH?
ssh terminal.shop

Become Backend Dev: https://boot.dev/prime
(plus i make courses for them)

This is also the best way to support me is to support yourself becoming a better backend engineer.

Great News?  Want me to research and create video????: https://www.reddit.com/r/ThePrimeagen

#theprimeagen #programming #computerscience #ai #chatgippty #terminaldotshop

Layoffs are getting Wild (ft. Big A)

prompts, agent instructions, and project markdown files become technical debt when they grow stale overtime

Thank you Arcjet for sponsoring! Check them out at: https://soydev.link/arcjet

SOURCES:
https://www.seangoedecke.com/prompts-are-technical-debt-too/

Want to sponsor a video? Learn more here: https://soydev.link/sponsor-me

Check out my Twitch, Twitter, Discord more at https://t3.gg

S/O @Ph4seon3 for the awesome edit 🙏

More Prompts = Worse Code?

00:04:27 Google Taps Berkshire
00:28:43 Berkshire Bets on Housing
00:43:00 History of Confidential IPO Filings
00:50:39 Jack Doohan, an Australian racing driver, discusses his journey from karting in Australia to becoming a Formula One driver, including his early move to Europe at 13 and his progression through the racing ranks. He shares the challenges he faced, such as being sidelined six races into his F1 career due to circumstances beyond his control, which led him to explore his interest in AI and technology. This exploration culminated in the founding of Muse, a company aimed at solving data fragmentation issues in the food and beverage industry by unifying various systems into a single, orchestrated platform.
01:11:54 Nate Cavanaugh, co-founder of Special, discusses the launch of their new holding company aimed at applying AI tools to the $10 trillion Main Street services economy, starting with healthcare. He explains their strategy to acquire independent small businesses, beginning with at-home senior care, and enhance them with AI to improve efficiency and service quality. Cavanaugh emphasizes their commitment to sharing cost savings with workers to attract talent and plans to replicate this model across other labor-intensive, highly regulated industries.
01:19:37 Thomas Mueller, a renowned aerospace engineer and propulsion expert, is the founder and CEO of Impulse Space, a company specializing in in-space transportation services. In the conversation, Mueller discusses Impulse Space's mission to enhance space mobility by developing technologies that transport payloads from Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to higher orbits like Geostationary Orbit (GEO), the Moon, and Mars. He highlights the company's products, such as the Mira spacecraft for precision maneuvering and the Helios kick stage designed to efficiently move payloads to higher orbits, aiming to make space access more reliable and cost-effective.
01:38:40 𝕏 Timeline Reactions
01:43:02 Putin's Longevity
01:50:52 Edward Kim, co-founder and head of technology at Gusto, introduces Gusto Co-Founder, an AI agent designed to automate small business back-office tasks like payroll, benefits, and HR scheduling. This tool integrates with existing systems such as Notion, QuickBooks, and Google Workspace, allowing users to manage operations via SMS and Slack, thereby streamlining processes and reducing the need for direct platform interaction. Kim emphasizes the importance of creating a seamless, teammate-like experience to enhance efficiency and user satisfaction.
02:06:12 Shreya Murthy, co-founder and CEO of Partiful, a social event planning platform, discusses the launch of Partiful's new ticketing feature, enabling hosts to sell tickets directly through the platform. This addition addresses a feature gap, enhancing user experience and supporting various events like concerts and fundraisers. Murthy emphasizes the company's commitment to fostering real-world connections and outlines plans for future growth and monetization.
02:22:04 Brynn Putnam, a former professional ballerina and Harvard graduate, is the founder of Mirror and Board, companies that integrate technology into fitness and gaming experiences. In the conversation, she discusses the unexpected success of Board, noting its adoption by a diverse audience beyond early tech adopters, including families and educators. She highlights the development of Board Studio, a tool enabling users to create custom games, and addresses the challenges of balancing innovation with intellectual property considerations.


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Google Taps Berkshire, History of Confidential IPO Filings, AI Executive Order, Putin's Longevity

Eric Romo, President & COO of Impulse Space, joins Sourcery on the company's manufacturing floor in Redondo Beach to break down the freshly closed $500M Series D co-led by 137 Ventures and BANNER VC that pushes Impulse past $1 billion raised.

We get into what the capital actually unlocks (hiring and production, not flashy CapEx), why "space tug" doesn’t cut it for Mira, and how a single successful flight spurred demand from across the industry. Eric explains Impulse's three products — Mira, Helios, Caravan — and makes the case for staged access to GEO against traditional options.

He also gets candid: reality on orbital debris cleanup, why Impulse is "closer to a fighter jet than a tugboat," and the hard lesson from his SpaceX days (he was employee #13; CEO Tom Mueller was #1) that made in-housing manufacturing non-negotiable.


Eric Romo: https://x.com/_Eric_Romo 
Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea 
Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy 


𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/why-impulse-raised-%24500m-to-move-things-in-space-president/id1738124704?i=1000770764706

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1hg0gnk5BK5MaT9cT2sG0Y?si=fy7hP-goSpCC6aOEQXuC7Q


𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒

• Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery 

• Turing—Turing delivers top-tier talent, data, and tools to help AI labs improve model performance—and enables enterprises to turn those models into powerful, production-ready systems. https://turing.com/sourcery 

• VCX—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio at http://GetVCX.com  

• Deel—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery

• Public–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourcery 

• Merge—The leading provider of customer-facing integrations and agentic tools for frontier LLMs, Fortune 500 organizations, and B2B SaaS companies. Visit https://merge.dev  

Follow Sourcery for the latest updates!
https://www.sourcery.vc

Disclosure
Paid Endorsement. Brokerage services by Open to the Public Investing Inc, member FINRA & SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC-registered adviser. Crypto trading provided by Zero Hash LLC, licensed by the NYSDFS. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool by Public Advisors. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. See disclosures at public.com/disclosures/ga. Matched funds must remain in your account for at least 5 years. Match rate and other terms are subject to change at any time.


𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒

(00:00) Eric Romo, President & COO at Impulse Space
(00:58) Fueling the next phase with a $500M Series D
(04:30) Crossing the $1B funding mark
(06:00) The freedom to execute
(07:09) Why startups die from indigestion
(08:30) Building beyond SpaceX
(13:32) How defense became the real opportunity
(16:19) Impulse’s product stack: Mira, Helios & Caravan 
(23:43) The economics of urgency
(26:23) "Closer to a fighter jet than a tugboat"
(30:40) The new era of space defense
(37:33) The SpaceX DNA at Impulse
(38:27) The biggest lesson from SpaceX
(44:23) Hiring world class engineers
(45:38) If not COO, then what?
(46:43) The road to first Helios launch

Why Impulse Raised $500M to Move Things in Space | President & COO Eric Romo

*Get our Business Idea Database:* https://clickhubspot.com/wosk

Episode 830: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) rate 7 crazy business ideas that are actually genius. 
—
Show Notes: 
(0:00) Intro
(3:14) Pet Chat
(5:47) Super Brain
(9:44) At home hyperbarics
(13:03) Blue collar meta learning
(16:57) Endpoint Arena 
(21:54) Bathhouse + Steakhouse Experience
(27:46) Funday Press
(31:52) Dumb phones
(41:42) Zach Yadegari's new thing



—
Links:
• HVAC Technician Trainining - https://www.meta.com/experiences/hvac-technician/9277146442386260/
• Endpoint Arena - https://endpointarena.com 
•  The Funday Press - https://thefundaypress.com 
• Dumb.co - http://dumb.co/

—
Check Out Sam's Stuff:
• Hampton (joinhampton.com): My community for founders. Average member does $25m/year. Many of the guests are members. Get after it...apply: http://joinhampton.com/mfm


—
Check Out Shaan's Stuff:
• Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com 
• Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents.
• Mercury - Need a bank for your company? Go check out Mercury (mercury.com). Shaan uses it for all of his companies!
Mercury is a financial technology company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC
• I run all my newsletters on Beehiiv and you should too + we're giving away $10k to our favorite newsletter, check it out:
beehiiv.com/mfm-challenge

My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by HubSpot Media // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano /

7 killer startups that the internet has not caught up to yet

00:05:10 YouTubers Win the Box Office
00:36:53 𝕏 Timeline Reactions
00:39:45 Bernie Wants Public Stake in AI
00:53:08 Anthropic IPO
00:54:09 Salesforce Invests $2B in France
00:55:08 Salesforce on a Tear
00:59:42 𝕏 Timeline Reactions
01:03:44 Adam Iscoe, a journalist formerly with The New Yorker, has covered diverse topics including mental illness, contemporary art, and cryptocurrency. In the conversation, he discusses his journey to The New York Times, his writing process, and his experiences covering various subjects.
01:27:57 𝕏 Timeline Reactions
01:40:38 Danial Jameel, Founder and CEO of Saris AI, discusses how his company develops AI workflow agents to automate complex back-office tasks in banks and credit unions, enhancing efficiency and allowing staff to focus on more meaningful work. He highlights the significant impact on employees' work-life balance, sharing examples where staff previously working late hours due to backlogs can now leave earlier, improving their quality of life. Additionally, he mentions that increased productivity has led some institutions to forgo hiring additional staff, instead opting to reward existing employees with raises, thereby boosting overall morale.
01:45:48 Mike Schroepfer, former CTO of Meta Platforms, is the founder of Gigascale Capital, a venture capital firm focused on climate tech investments. In the conversation, he discusses his transition from Meta to venture capital, emphasizing the shift from digital to physical innovations in addressing climate change. He highlights investments in companies like Heron Power and Radiant Nuclear, which are developing advanced energy solutions, and underscores the importance of rethinking traditional manufacturing and energy systems to achieve significant environmental impact.
01:59:41 Nico Ferreyra, co-founder and CEO of Default, discusses the company's evolution from building top-of-funnel orchestration tools to launching a new product that integrates a real-time data layer with AI agents to enhance go-to-market execution. He highlights the challenges companies face with disconnected systems and how Default's platform unifies data to streamline growth processes. Ferreyra also touches on the company's intense work culture and recent $10 million funding round, emphasizing their commitment to solving complex problems in revenue operations.
02:11:00 Sue Khim, co-founder and CEO of Brilliant, discusses the launch of their new AI tutor, Koji, designed to help users learn math and coding through interactive, graphical assistance. She emphasizes the importance of reducing embarrassment in learning, allowing students to ask questions freely, and highlights the tutor's goal of becoming unnecessary as learners gain confidence and independence. Khim also addresses the significance of multimodal learning experiences and the need for purpose-built educational tools that provide real-time feedback and personalized learning paths.
02:20:23 Bernie Su is an American web series creator, writer, director, and producer, renowned for his Emmy Award-winning adaptations of Jane Austen's novels, including "The Lizzie Bennet Diaries" and "Emma Approved." In the conversation, Su discusses the evolving relationship between Hollywood and YouTube creators, noting that the integration has been progressing for years, with recent successes like "Obsession," "Backrooms," and "Iron Lung" highlighting this trend. He emphasizes that these achievements stem from creators producing content authentic to their brand, rather than merely leveraging their follower count, and observes that YouTubers are increasingly adept at franchising their content across various media platforms.
02:41:19 𝕏 Timeline Reactions



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YouTube Overtakes Hollywood, Sanders on AI, Anthropic IPO, SaaSpocalypse Over?

Brendan Foody is the Founder and CEO @ Mercor, one of the leading data providers to the largest labs on the planet including OpenAI. In the last two years, Brendan has scaled the company to $1.5BN in ARR and a valuation of $10BN.

-----------------------------------------------

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro
01:13 True or False: Mercor lost Meta & OpenAI as a customer with the hack?
05:52 Are We Entering a Golden Age of Cyber?
11:06 AI, Jobs & Layoffs: How Do Humans Fit Into the New Economy?
21:17 Rejecting a $30B Acquisition
27:39 The Fundraising Story: Helicopters, Ferraris & $10B Valuation
32:50 Infrastructure Will Win Over Application Layer
35:52 Is SaaS Dead? When Network Effects Are the Only True Moat
42:12 Token Spend on Agents Now Exceeds Employee Headcount
54:40 Competing for Talent When Meta Offers $20M Per Year
01:01:56 Do Sovereign AI Models Actually Matter?
01:07:17 Does HR Slow Companies Down? Brandon Pushes Back
01:09:31 Quick-Fire Round

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Subscribe on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/3j2KMcZTtgTNBKwtZBMHvl?si=85bc9196860e4466

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-twenty-minute-vc-20vc-venture-capital-startup/id958230465

Follow Harry Stebbings on X:
https://twitter.com/HarryStebbings

Follow Brendan Foody on X:
https://twitter.com/BrendanFoody

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-----------------------------------------------

#20vc #harrystebbings #mercor #ai #ceo #aimodels #saas #cybersecurity #hiring

Mercor CEO: Why Application Layer Companies Have No Moat & The Cost of Hiring AI Researchers

Merge co-founders Shensi Ding (CEO) and Gil Feig (CTO) join Sourcery for a wide-ranging conversation on building AI infrastructure that quietly powers some of the biggest companies in tech — including OpenAI, Perplexity, Netflix, Uber, Mistral, and Dropbox.

They break down Merge's three-product suite (Unified, Agent Handler, and Gateway), the make-or-break month that pushed them to rebuild around AI, and why they now believe "English is your programming language." Gil gets candid on the state of AI security — supply chain attacks, agentic code flooding GitHub, and why the scariest threat is always internal. Shensi shares hard-won hiring philosophy (missionaries vs. mercenaries), her admiration for Benioff and the "beginner's mind," and a hot take on companies over-engineering their own models.

Plus: the SaaSpocalypse, the brutal reality of token-maxxing bills, governing employee AI access, headless Salesforce, and whether today's AI valuations make any sense at all.


Shensi Ding: https://x.com/shensi 
Gil Feig: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gilfeig
Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea 
Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy 


𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/the-token-maxxing-bill-that-shocks-every-cfo-the-fix/id1738124704?i=1000770586557

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0yMSwgjd5k6nNyY4rSU9Ho?si=ob8fBblJQgaYjKz3Fwf_mg 


𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒

• Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery 

• Turing—Turing delivers top-tier talent, data, and tools to help AI labs improve model performance—and enables enterprises to turn those models into powerful, production-ready systems. https://turing.com/sourcery 

• VCX—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio at http://GetVCX.com  

• Deel—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery

• Public–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourcery 

• Merge—The leading provider of customer-facing integrations and agentic tools for frontier LLMs, Fortune 500 organizations, and B2B SaaS companies. Visit https://merge.dev  

Follow Sourcery for the latest updates!
https://www.sourcery.vc

Disclosure
Paid Endorsement. Brokerage services by Open to the Public Investing Inc, member FINRA & SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC-registered adviser. Crypto trading provided by Zero Hash LLC, licensed by the NYSDFS. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool by Public Advisors. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. See disclosures at public.com/disclosures/ga. Matched funds must remain in your account for at least 5 years. Match rate and other terms are subject to change at any time.
 

𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒

(00:00) Shensi Ding & Gil Feig, Co-Founders at Merge
(01:04) Three products. One big bet
(03:20) How Merge made the AI pivot
(04:42) The Classic Innovator’s Dilemma
(05:58) Building culture around AI
(07:10) The leverage nobody’s talking about
(08:52) Codex vs Claude Code
(09:15) The scale nobody knew about
(09:47) SaaS, Finance, and the Biggest AI Labs
(10:46) Why AI companies buy differently
(12:04) What AI sales actually looks like
(13:04) The Fastest sales cycles in the market
(14:35) Why is Cybersecurity broken
(15:59) Merge's solution to agent security
(19:16) Mythos, Wiz, and the GitHub Hack
(22:34) 1,000 Bot signups in one hour
(23:23) Real reason companies pay ransom to hackers
(25:43) The State of AI Infrastructure Costs
(26:41) Internal AI Governance is the next big problem
(29:28) Most Popular Integrations on Merge
(30:54) Big Giants are planning big moves
(31:54) What does Salesforce going headless exactly mean
(33:41) Agents don’t need a UI anymore
(36:59) Can this AI generation actually adapt
(38:25) What Merge looks for in talent
(41:25) The SaaSpocalypse is real
(45:03) Are AI valuations actually insane?
(47:11) How Merge landed OpenAI, Perplexity, Netflix & Uber
(49:02) The Metrics that actually drive the business
(49:58) Biggest misconceptions in tech right now
(51:55) The market is finally catching up to Merge

"We Don't Trust Agents" - What This CTO Knows That You Don't

AI does a surprisingly good job of steering weaker engineers in the right direction...

Thank you WorkOS for sponsoring! Check them out at: https://soydev.link/workos

SOURCE
https://www.seangoedecke.com/ai-makes-weak-engineers-less-harmful/

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S/O @Ph4seon3 for the awesome edit 🙏

This might be a Hot Take

Benedict Evans is an independent analyst and former partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where he spent years as their in-house “thinker” tracking the most important technology trends. For the past six years, he’s been publishing deeply researched presentations on where tech is heading, most recently focused on AI’s transformation of the economy. His work is read by founders, investors, and operators trying to make sense of a noisy field. His most controversial opinion: AI is as big a deal as the internet or mobile—and only as big.

*In our in-depth conversation, we discuss:*
1. Why we’re in “1997” for AI—early, exciting, and deeply uncertain about what comes next
2. Where value will actually accrue in the AI stack
3. The anti-AI backlash, and where it may lead
4. The surprising boom in consulting and professional services at AI companies
5. Why distribution is becoming the ultimate moat as software gets easier to build
6. Why the right question about your job isn’t “What percent can AI do?” but “Is this a task or a job?”
7. Why things will probably be okay—and what you need to do to prepare

*Brought to you by:*
WorkOS—Make your app enterprise-ready, with SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more: https://workos.com/lenny
Vanta—Automate compliance, manage risk, and accelerate trust with AI: https://vanta.com/lenny

*Episode transcript:* https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/a-rational-conversation-on-where
*Archive of all Lenny's Podcast transcripts:* https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/yxi4s2w998p1gvtpu4193/AMdNPR8AOw0lMklwtnC0TrQ?rlkey=j06x0nipoti519e0xgm23zsn9&st=ahz0fj11&dl=0

*Where to find Benedict Evans:*
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benedictevans
• Newsletter: https://www.ben-evans.com/newsletter
• Website: https://www.ben-evans.com

*Where to find Lenny:*
• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

*In this episode, we cover:*
(00:00) Introduction to Benedict Evans
(02:19) What people aren’t pricing in about AI’s impact
(06:24) Why we’re in the 1997 moment of AI
(09:44) The unexpected boom in professional services and consultants
(17:44) Why distribution is becoming the ultimate moat
(23:17) The coming job transformation: what’s real vs. panic
(27:33) Why AGI definitions keep shifting
(38:11) Where value will accrue: models vs. applications
(42:55) Distribution wars: Google, Meta, Apple, and OpenAI
(48:12) The anti-AI sentiment and backlash
(53:11) How to raise kids in an AI future
(58:27) What jobs to steer toward or away from
(59:20) The question nobody’s asking about AI
(1:06:25) How to be successful in this coming future
(1:08:43) AI corner
(1:11:43) Lightning round

*Referenced:*
• Andreessen Horowitz: https://a16z.com
• AI Eats the World: https://youtu.be/niJpDnNtNp4
• VisiCalc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiCalc
• McKinsey & Company: https://www.mckinsey.com
• Bain & Company: https://www.bain.com
• Accenture: https://www.accenture.com
• Jevons paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
• Benedict’s post on LinkedIn about Excel: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/benedictevans_younger-people-may-not-believe-this-but-activity-7303217994459938816-PNqu
• The AI-native startup: 5 products, 7-figure revenue, 100% AI-written code | Dan Shipper (co-founder/CEO of Every): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-every-dan-shipper
• Dario Amodei on X: https://x.com/DarioAmodei
• Marc Andreessen: The real AI boom hasn’t even started yet: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/marc-andreessen-the-real-ai-boom
• Frame.io: https://frame.io
• Food Marketing Institute: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_Marketing_Institute
• Llama: https://www.llama.com
• Steven Sinofsky on X: https://x.com/stevesi
• Drake meme: https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/343699919/Drake-Hotline-Bling-Transparent-Background
• Ex-Google CEO Gets Booed While Discussing AI in Commencement Speech | WSJ News: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNH43a1EI7s
• Jonathan Swift’s quote: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9838985-you-cannot-reason-a-person-out-of-a-position-he
• George Carlin’s quote: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/george_carlin_391403
• Fujitsu: https://global.fujitsu
• O*NET OnLine: https://www.onetonline.org
• Pete Holmes’s website: https://peteholmes.com
• The Seventh Seal: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050976
• Ericsson R310s phone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ericsson_R310s
• i-mate phone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-mate

*Recommended books:*
• Three Men in a Boat: https://www.amazon.com/Three-Men-Boat-Jerome-K/dp/1512099899
• Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West: https://www.amazon.com/Natures-Metropolis-Chicago-Great-West/dp/0393308731

_Production and marketing by https://penname.co/._
_For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com._

Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

The most rational take on AI you’ll hear this year

We finally got a benchmark that actually matches reality.

Thank you Browserbase for sponsoring! Check them out at: https://soydev.link/browserbase

SOURCES:
https://deepswe.datacurve.ai/
https://x.com/theo/status/2059352130289651925

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Check out my Twitch, Twitter, Discord more at https://t3.gg

S/O @Ph4seon3 for the awesome edit 🙏