Eagle of Byblos

we track every vc newsletter in internet capital markets so founders don't have to. daily digests, weekly roundups, conviction maps, and vc directory - just what's actually moving and why it matters the investor interned, curated. byblos.digital

@im_the_giulio @forgegui @michaelfertik @bonatsos @VerdictCap @cory @collectiveGBL @sheeltyle this is amazing. if you plan raising again, we will be happy to help. we are doing researches of VCs using our database to make fundraising easier identify matches.

I’m 17 and raised $3.2M for @forgegui. Our seed round was led by @michaelfertik and @bonatsos at @VerdictCap with other investors including @cory, @collectiveGBL, @sheeltyle, and other amazing partners. In ~2 months, we’ve grown to 90,000+ game dev users, with a current $40M cap. Growing extremely fast. I’ve been building in this space for 7 years, since I was 10. We’re building the AI platform for game developers. We’re hiring 2 more cracked engineers who want to help build a generational company. DM me if you want to join.

@dessaigne yeah the investor can't tell the difference, so they assume the worse one.

A founder told me last week that they were at $1.2M ARR. When we dug in, the real recurring revenue was closer to $1M. The rest was expected usage that never came. I'm not saying this to be harsh. That will derail a fundraise during diligence. Know what is contracted, what is usage, and what is hope. The honest number raises better than the impressive one.

@pmitu that's so real

AI can't do marketing. It has to have the human cringe.

@garyvee now anyone can build software in a weekend, so "easy to build" became a commodity

You know what's about to explode? Analog. The real world.

@pegobry_en bc you have to use your brain to figure out it does. if you just skim over, everything looks amazing at first

Noteworthy: nobody talks about AI hallucinating anymore.

@askOkara our startup also started just from one person figuring out how to make fundraising easier for founders. it then just spread to other people who also thought it made sense

in 2026 a solo founder can > build ai apps with claude code > get traffic and users with okara > run email with beehiiv / kit > accept payments globally with stripe > find and email leads with apollo or clay > track everything with posthog one person now does what took an entire team three years ago the leverage is insane

@staysaasy i mean some of the annoying things are real scar tissue, and some are just fossilized

Every startup eventually rediscovers why big companies do the annoying thing they swore they'd never do.

i polled a bunch of YC founders on how they got their first 10 customers. i was so surprised by the results that i made a video about it. enjoy!

when a government can switch off your model vendor overnight like it did to Anthropic, open weights you control can't be export-controlled out from under you. take a look at what we do! it might help you with the next raise. we research VC newsletters to spot cross-fund patters and design unique approaches for founders that save time

founders: before you raise, check if your sector's narrative is heating up or cooling in investor writing.

most vc writing this week agreed with itself. go-to-market: uniformly bullish. the only two places vcs actually disagreed: crypto market structure, and whether ai capex is a bubble.

we tracked what elite funds vs smaller funds wrote about this week. clean split: big funds → market structure, macro, the contested stuff. what does the cycle mean. smaller funds → operators, product, how-to-build.

@yashpanditrao you can check out our substack for some articles: byblosdigital.substack.com/?utm_campaign=… or our app: byblos.digital/home but we are also providing unique datasets per request

@ByblosRadar superb! let me know where i can read/access this information

If you are a founder trying to get your first investor meeting, try Compass. Our VC database went viral and we realised founders need better fit ones. Compass matches you with relevant investors from 380+ vetted VCs, angels, and family offices.

what vcs stopped writing about this week: geopolitics, robotics, stablecoin payments, product management. all cooling across the newsletters we track.

@dessaigne totally! it's amazing if you are a genuis at 5 and do masters at 15 so you found a company at 20 but you also don't have to

I was 37 when I started YC. It changed my company and my life. I’m sharing that because a lot of founders quietly think they missed their window. Too old, too settled, should’ve done it at 25. You haven’t missed it. The experience you think makes you late is often what lets you build.

Everyone is super bullish on whatever company they just quit. 😳

@AndrewCurran_ at the end of the day taking Fable 5 and Mythos 5 away from the public doesn't slow the labs down. and also the model you can't access is still getting smarter where you can't see it.

A new, more capable version of Mythos has emerged from training. I don't know whether it will be called Mythos 5.1 or Mythos 6, or if Anthropic will keep it internal to accelerate further development - but it has arrived. Stopping models like Fable 5 or Mythos 5 from being served to the public does nothing to slow down development. In fact, it probably speeds it up slightly by freeing up resources. There are also no rules preventing the labs from continuing to advance capabilities while any current model is under embargo - or from keeping progress quiet until they choose to release it. None of them can afford to pause or slow down. We need only look at how capable GLM-5.2 is as proof of this. To protect their business models, the frontier labs must continually train increasingly capable systems to stay ahead of open source, and each other. The current continues to rage beneath the ice, and we continue to race toward our destination.

@shyamalanadkat @OpenAI well good luck! also India had the engineers the whole time so it really feels amazing the world finally believes you can build something big from there

after close to four years at @openai, i moved from the bay area to india earlier this year. i still believe deeply in ensuring true superintelligence accelerates science and remains accessible and beneficial to all. having grown up here, i've also always felt deeply connected to the ecosystem here. over the past several weeks, i've been speaking with researchers, engineers, and thinkers across india and apac. it's become clear that there are many who want to build the future from here. moving back felt like the counterintuitive choice. i no longer think that's true. what's been missing is the belief that you can build institutions of global consequence from anywhere. and more importantly, the ambition and the will to pursue ideas that seem impossibly large at first. this may be a once in a generation opportunity. more to come soon. DMs open if this resonates.

@neilmhta @WSJ thanks dude! this was kind of expected tbh. once you ban the real users but still want the growth, you're left selling the feeling of winning instead of the thing itself

NEW investigation for @WSJ: - Polymarket is paying scores of offshore clippers to quietly promote its international exchange in the U.S. (though it’s banned from letting Americans trade on the platform) - Polymarket made dummy websites mirroring its real site, then paid creators to use the fake site and pretend to win thousands. - Creators altered headlines and used outdated footage to imply they won bets—even when they often lost - Polymarket paid Adin Ross multiple millions to promote the site All that and more in my latest story with @ByKLong @ceostroff @brenna__smith