Michael Staton

IMPORTANT: If you are an entrepreneur with subscription expenses you cannot figure out how to cancel or reduce and now you continue to get billed for things you have tried to cancel or reduce…. Please retweet this!!! Stand up for startups @stripe ! #helpUsStripe

@hthieblot A politician?

You just sold your company for $ 100M. What’s the first thing you buy?

I talk to thousands of LPs every year. Here's what I'm seeing right now when it comes to how they're approaching VC. 1) Late-stage co-investments have never been hotter. The top 5-7 names have effectively *unlimited* demand. And that supply/demand imbalance has created three real issues: First, the question of *true* access. Many of the SPVs floating around for these companies are not sanctioned by these companies. Buyer beware. These companies are tight on their cap tables, and access can be gated beyond just capacity. The fee creep is getting egregious. Someone shared with me recently that for a top AI lab, a group was charging 15% upfront, 20% carry, and 30% over a 2X. At those economics, you can take what would be a generational company but a bad investment. Fees are the silent killer of returns in late-stage co-invest, and this risk is now being focused on the logo, but ignoring the fee effects. Additionally, for those who aren't getting access to the top companies must go a tier (or two) below. Very dangerous in a high-intensity / valuation market for AI. As I've mentioned, there will be a lot of expensive mistakes made as we figure out what winners will look like in the future. 2) Capital is flowing to large, established brands. This is the clearest trend right now. LPs are concentrating on the top multi-stage and Series A firms. The logic is straightforward: these are easier to underwrite, and given how extreme the power law has become, investors want exposure to the trophy assets soon after investing. If you're a top 10-20 brand, you're oversubscribed, sometimes in multiples. If you're not, the fundraising environment is a different world. 3) Emerging and emerged managers are in the toughest spot, with a notable exception. Spinouts from top firms and operators with strong brands are moving fast and generally very oversubscribed. For everyone else, the bar has never been higher. I think this is actually where the opportunity is for LPs If they have the time/expertise to do so. The issue isn't that LPs don't know this. Most do. The problem is twofold: the time and difficulty of sourcing and diligencing emerging managers is real, and the hangover from 2019-2021 is still very present. A lot of people tried VC during that era who probably shouldn't have, and the failure rate on those Fund 1s has made the entire segment harder to navigate. Matching supply and demand here has become nearly impossible. Supply (Managers) far exceeds demand due to the issues noted.

@CitiesSkylines so why does this game still not work on Linux? Insane.

@AaloAtomics That's funny slop.

🎄⚛️

This is 101 guys, 101. (Shout outs to @LGClaret )

Yo @AnthropicAI you forgot to train @claudeai on Andrew Loomis youtu.be/BJVWtmX9sag?si… Claude just created all kinds of amazing geometric shapes in @threejs for a new site, but cannot get the figure of the human body even close. With examples.

youtube.com/post/UgkxARcOl… via @YouTube

@jmickelin Happy to walk an old friend through it!

@mpstaton Oh wow! I have to look in to this

am i the only one that fins that gemini 3.0 just goes off and does random things around the code base without it being asked to? #Gemini #LLMs

@burakkarakann This is awesome, great for #DataPipelines and #DataOps

I am incredibly excited to announce Bruin MCP! 🚀 Bruin MCP allows your AI agents to connect to your data warehouses, analyze data, compare tables, and more. The interesting part, however, is not the launch, but the design decision: should a CLI tool even use MCP?

Unpopular opinion: It is absolutely okay for a founder to give up. If you're 3+ years in, 8+ pivots deep, barely paid yourself, and your spirit is broken, you've run out of emotional runway. Go get a job, enjoy life, and come back in a year. You need a reset.

@MattWalshBlog This is pretty myopic.

If you aren’t from this country: We don’t care what you think about American politics. We don’t care what you think about American culture. We don’t care what you think about American elections. Your grift is over. Focus on your own problems.

@DanielleFong aalo.com/post/introduci…

@sciencegirl Sterile.

What are your first thoughts on this home

Thanks for featuring our work, @Forbes! forbes.com/sites/christop…

We’re in a weird era for startups where perception has become the moat. Raise early, get labeled a “category leader,” and that perception attracts capital, customers, and talent until it’s no longer perception. The irony is many kings were crowned long before they’d earned it.

@jimmykimmel and @stephencolbert for president.

First time an LLM used a naughty word in our chat. I use them all the time.