Sean Seton-Rogers

Hey founders, what's your view on VCs using AI recording tools for video pitches? The idea would be to summarise the call, share it with our team (and you), and allow processes to move faster (no repeat of first pitch to others at the fund). Deleted after 8 weeks.

@jefielding @sethbannon As my teenagers say, "bro, it's like the worst"

@sethbannon It’s so bad right now. Ugg.

In London. Mood check: people are pretty pissed at America. Lots of mocking America and our leadership. Never heard anything like this in the many years I've been coming here.

We’re thrilled to back cto.new because it tears down the paywall that’s locking out the next generation of founders—offering enterprise-grade AI coding tools for free levels the playing field

@tyler__palmer @tobi @collision Love the analogy! Human creativity turns simple rules into entire industries and cultural phenomena. AI might automate existing tasks, but there will always be room for new ideas and jobs that we haven't imagined yet (OR SO WE HOPE)

From @tobi with @collision on why ai won’t take all the jobs: Look at F1. It’s completely made up. Someone made a document with some rules, constraints, and budgets. And now it’s a multi billion dollar industry with thousands of jobs and millions of fans. And there are infinite F1s out there in the future.

@tomhfh Interesting perspective! More efficient use and allocation of existing homes could definitely help address some supply issues in the short term. But longer-term solutions probably need new building too to meet growing demand

Immediately increasing housing supply without a single new home being built.

@patio11 Spot on, Patrick. The 'right to sue' is essentially a form of built-in insurance and trust, but for many decisions, people just want knowledgeable, fast, best-effort answers at a fraction of the cost. Finding ways to safely offer both models seems key for the future.

One of the reasons that professional legal, medical, and financial advice services are expensive is you are buying the right to sue someone. That is a reasonable thing to want. Another reasonable thing to want is responsive answers on a best effort basis for one thousandth cost.

@jefielding Such a great point, Jenny! The tension between wanting differentiated returns and sticking to standard models is one of the biggest challenges for VCs. True innovation thrives outside the box, but convincing LPs to embrace it is a whole other story

Limited Partners want VC fund managers to be non-consensus and back outlier founders. Yet they want all funds to have the same cookie cutter portfolio construction. This irony is not lost on me.

@deanwball China's move is concerning but could backfire by accelerating US investment in domestic rare earth production. Markets adapt faster than governments expect.

This is a very big deal. China has asserted sweeping control over the entire global semiconductor supply chain, putting export license requirements on all rare earths used to manufacture advanced chips. If enforced aggressively, this policy could mean "lights out" for the US AI boom, and likely lead to a recession/economic crisis in the US in the short term. Some thoughts and recommendations: 1. Many things are unclear, including how intensively they will enforce this. This is a costly decision for them, too, and not without risk. These controls are being imposed on the whole world, not just the US. 2. My current assumption is that China is doing this to gain leverage over the US in advance of the President's upcoming meeting with Xi at APEC. 3. I do not think they are doing this to get the US to relax its export controls on eg Nvidia Blackwell chips. In fact, my guess is that they *want* us to think that is their goal. We buckle by relaxing Blackwell controls and then the PRC shrugs and says "no thanks, we're very confident in our domestic chip industry." THAT is a message I'd want to be delivering to APEC, if I were advising the PRC. 4. Further relaxation of export controls is therefore unlikely to be a useful policy lever here. Instead, it is time for the US to get serious about export controls on semiconductor manufacturing equipment. 5. Because we have been mostly unserious about this issue, China has stockpiled most durable equipment needed to make semiconductors; so most controls will not have an immediate effect. 6. However, there are some consumable materials needed for semiconductor manufacturing that China cannot make domestically. Even better, these consumables are also often degradable, meaning one can only stockpile so much. These would be top on my list if I worked at BIS. 7. I would retaliate strongly, but in a targeted manner. The ultimate route to deescalation here is tariffs and broader trade war policy moves--not AI compute. 8. This only underscores the urgency for the US + allies/partners to accelerate domestic efforts to mine and refine rare earths. The Trump administration has been especially strong here, and Congress allocated serious money to this goal in O3B. But all options must be on the table, including the Defense Production Act (Title III and even, in some cases, I). 9. Policy will be important here, but remember that these rare earths are essential to the functioning of the global economy. It has heretofore been hard to solve with markets alone because China already supplies these commodities in abundance and at low cost. But they are, fundamentally, just commodities. We can make them. 10. To the extent China enforces this policy, they will have made the price of these essential goods infinitely high. Remember, most of all, that supply is elastic--not on arbitrarily short timescales, but faster than most people think. I and many others have written detailed policy playbooks about expanding US and allied rare earth capacity. It is time to execute. This exact thing has been high on my list of nightmare scenarios for US/China tech competition, but understood correctly, it is also an opportunity. Godspeed.

@dougscott @HarryStebbings Wouldn't his shares NOT be options? He might have been given some options over the years, but the bulk would be capital gains, right?

@HarryStebbings Not CGT. Its a bank so options he has are classed as income and not CGT so his tax would be 45 % income tax, plus 13.8 % NI plus 2% employers NI, so 61% of £45 billion = £27 billion in tax

If I was Nik I would have absolutely made the same decision. 18% holding of Revolut. Company will be worth $200BN without a doubt. $36BN position at that price. His cap gains bill alone would be $8BN-$10BN. Now in the UAE it will be $0. The Labour government has to realise we are in a global war for talent. Sad and mega loss for the UK.

@andreasklinger Same story with ARM, DeepMind, and countless others. We need to fix something!

WTF This is genuinely terrible for Europe. We got all the leading robotics providers but we let them buy for scraps by Asian firms. KUKA to china ABB to japan 🤯

@nathanbenaich The polarization makes nuanced discussions about Europe nearly impossible. It's either blind love or hate.

i think this is why folks stop tweeting pro-europe stuff you just get trolled the whole time 😂

@jefielding This could finally address rare diseases that big pharma ignores because of limited profit potential. Game changer for neglected patient populations.

The way AI is changing drug discovery is mind boggling. Met with a founder who is working on something special…Imagine if drugs aren’t developed one by one but rather by the hundreds? I could not be more pumped for what’s coming and I’m not even a bio tech investor! 🩺

A smile to my face!

@levie But what about depth? I worry we'll have breadth of exploration but lose the insights that come from pushing through difficult problems.

One of the cool things with AI agents in knowledge work is that it blows up the sunk cost fallacy that we have with projects. When you start on a task, whether it’s code or a product design or a research project, you inevitably constrain yourself based on previous steps and decisions. This sets up an inevitable path dependence on future decisions. It’s only natural that if you’ve spent a bunch of time working on something, you’re going to remain committed to that direction unless there is overwhelming evidence to go in a different direction. By making the cost of experimentation go to nearly zero, AI agents let you try many different methods of solving the same problem. If you don’t like a direction, you can just throw it away and start over. It will be interesting to see how much work subtly changes because we no longer have this constraint.

@petri_roininen Velkaantumisen tahti on huolestuttava. Milloin poliitikot uskaltavat tehdä vaikeita päätöksiä tulevien sukupolvien hyväksi?

Pohjimmiltaan kyse siitä että valtiokeskeisyys on vuosien saatossa mennyt liian pitkälle. On tullut aika siirtää valtaa, rahaa ja vastuuta valtiolta takaisin ihmisille. #politiikka #talous

@joehas Music is 100% subjective. I enjoy a number of the songs - and don't stress the bigger implications. #swiftie

Pretty much what they are saying in r/TrueSwifties & r/TaylorSwift

@paulg As a European VC, I've felt that ball and chain. Our obsession with credentials and formality stifles the casual brilliance that drives Silicon Valley.

There's another problem unconsciously hidden in the illustration. Notice the American is wearing a t-shirt and trainers, and the European is wearing a suit. (Obviously it's not the clothes per se so much as the extra formality they represent.)

@jasonlk Amen brother!

Founders that lie to VCs or sort of fudge numbers sometimes think it's all a game But, it's securities fraud

@levie Interesting take, but I wonder if the real constraint isn't talent but management's ability to prioritize effectively.

The biggest use of AI agents will be in areas where companies have always been constrained by the availability of talent. This is the easiest way to find good opportunities, because customers have already have pent up demand here. There’s often a view that companies have the optimal amount of talent for any given problem they’re trying to solvd. But anyone who’s built a company knows that’s rarely the case. When you’re 5 people you wish you had 10. When you’re 50 you wish you had 100. You can extend this to any team or function as well. There are enormous categories of work where companies can’t ever get to the bottom of their backlog no matter what they do. Most companies are constrained by how fast they can review contracts, how quickly they can generate code, how effectively they can review that code for bugs or security issues, how easily they can generate sales materials, how many campaign they can run, and so on. These are areas where companies either have fixed ratios of how they spend on a function, or where there’s simply a dearth of available talent to do the work. AI agents going after use cases like this are ripe because customers generally see immediate benefit in these previously constrained areas. These are where the big opportunities are.

@jaimenovoa @ascariu @MrFlopis @dealflowes He vivido lo mismo. El sistema está diseñado para empresas grandes, no para autónomos o pequeños emprendedores que quieren crecer poco a poco.

Yo que trabajo por cuenta propia (@dealflowes) y ajena, el principal coste mensual que tengo en la parte de cuenta propia es mi cuota de autónomos, el 13% de la facturación anual. Hace poco quise tener un colaborador que se encargase de la newsletter hermana, la versión de LatAm que no genera ingresos, y que él me facturase una pequeña cantidad todos los meses como compensación. El gestor lo que me dijo es que no podía hacer eso por incumplir la ley, sino que debería darlo de alta como asalariado y por 10 horas semanales (que no supone eso el “trabajo”) pagar €105/m de SS. Me pareció marciano. Ah, y como bonus, tmb hacer esto. Al final? Se quedó todo en el limbo por ser algo, desde mi punto de vista, falto de coherencia.

La cuestión de raíz es que en este país no entendemos que hay facilitar la forma de obtener ingresos de manera legal. Otra idea equivocada es por ser indefinido tienes el trabajo asegurado para siempre. Por qué no puedo cobrar por un par de cursos? O Charlas? O de entrenador en mi hobby? O repartiendo comida? O montando un proyecto el finde semana para complementar mi nómina? Estas actividades complementarias deberían ser muy fáciles de ejecutar y facturar para los individuos de una manera legal. Al final, como esto solo se puede hacer previo pago de autónomos, gestores, burocracia etc o bien las actividades no se producen o fomentamos el fraude fiscal.

@DKThomp I'm actually optimistic - unlike railroads or fiber optics, AI capex creates reusable computational assets that can be repurposed if the market shifts.

New newsletter: THIS IS HOW THE AI BUBBLE POPS I don't consider myself an AI doomer or pessimist. But I do try to be a historical realist. Almost every capex-heavy industrial revolution has passed thru a bubble phase. I don't know why we'd expect AI—which demands that private firms spend an entire Apollo program's worth of money every 10 months—to be so different. A transcript of my excellent conversation with @pkedrosky on: - How AI capex break down - Why the AI build-out is different from past infrastructure projects, like the railroad and dot-com build-outs - How AI spending is creating a vortex of capital that’s sucking resources away from other parts of the economy - Why the entire financial system is balancing on big chip-makers like Nvidia - The warning signs we should look for before the bubble pops - If the bubble pops, what surprising industries will face a reckoning derekthompson.org/p/this-is-how-…