Dave Wehner

@gauravkapadia Congrats Gaurav! This is awesome.

I am thrilled to announce the launch of Totei.com. Totei is a magazine devoted to craft and craftsmanship in all its forms. The name Totei comes from the ancient Japanese word for apprentice. I have always been inspired by those with a deep devotion to their craft—across every discipline. Making something truly remarkable requires extraordinary dedication, and the creative process behind it is rarely seen. That curiosity is why I started Totei. My hope is that everyone who reads it feels the same sense of inspiration I do when getting inside the minds of exceptional makers.

@markpinc Looking forward to reading this!

I'm excited to share that my book, Life at the Speed of Play, will be out in June. I've spent the last 5 years writing so I can share my lessons and stories around building products and scaling companies.

@dcsandbrook @TheRestHistory @ApplePodcasts @holland_tom Well deserved!

It's an incredible honour for @TheRestHistory to be named @ApplePodcasts Show of the Year - the first ever non-US winner. It's something @holland_tom and I never anticipated when he suggested doing the show in 2020, and tribute to the hard work of our wonderful & talented team.

@jamesproud James - Great to see Substrate launched publicly! Thanks for all the hard work to make the next bleeding edge of semiconductors! Onward.

History repeatedly shows that American science and engineering solve impossible tasks. I started Substrate because I believed that this impossible task is one worth trying.

@JoshuaKushner Congrats Josh!

@CassSunstein @tylercowen @MargRev Awesome. Love that podcast and looking forward to it.

Excited to be doing a Conversation With Tyler in the near future. (On Liberalism will come up, I expect. Bob Dylan too, I hope, and the first two lines of Visions of Johanna, and the last stanza of You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go.) @tylercowen @MargRev

@lessin Now that few people in Silicon Valley drink this suggests that the ability to ship user-friendly products will decline. Then a lack of success will lead to drinking and the balance will be restored.

The ‘Drunk’ Product Test for AI

@lessin Yes, I think this gets at valuations vs. economic activity, the latter of which is taxed. The Buffet Indicator (Market Cap / GDP) is at something like 200% vs. more like 50% in 1990. There is still a big debt/GDP problem.

Are we all that stressed about adding a fewtrilly to the national debt in a world where NVIDIA is about to cross $4T in market cap? .. IN 1990 Exxon was the largest company in the world and was worth $30 billy... would be have been uber stressed then about $30 over 10 years?

@aleximm And no mention of the ice cream scene?

Proud to live in SF. Friends from NYC: you're welcome here. We have AI, Waymo, 60 degrees year-round, and burritos, with safety and capitalism on the rise.

@JTLonsdale @8vc This is compelling. There is lots of excitement about AI and drug discovery, but clinical trials are the rate limiting step of getting the benefits.

Full piece from me and @8VC team below - blog.joelonsdale.com/p/make-the-fda…

America built the biotech revolution. But FDA red tape and policy that discourages US bio-manufacturing is strangling our innovation and handing the future to China. We've watched this happen in other industries. Our new essay shows how the administration can fix it and restore U.S. leadership. Let’s make the FDA Great Again! 1) Clinical trials and FDA reviews must move faster. Every FDA delay means patients wait longer—often forever—for lifesaving treatments. The FDA must ditch nonsensical requirements for Phase 1 trials. It must also embrace smarter clinical trials: adaptive designs, challenge trials, and partial holds instead of freezing entire studies. Real-time AI-driven reviews can cut delays from years to weeks, accelerating innovation while maintaining safety. Rare diseases suffer the most from rigid FDA demands—huge trials for conditions with fewer patients. Let's renew the Priority Review Voucher program and tailor approvals realistically. Every patient deserves a chance at life, no matter how rare the condition. 2) The FDA needs to rethink approvals altogether. Transparency, progressive approvals, and robust post-approval monitoring let doctors and patients make informed choices. Trust innovators and physicians—we shouldn't be held hostage by a single bureaucrat's opinion. Competition breeds innovation—bureaucratic monopolies breed stagnation! We need multiple approval pathways. 3) The medical & drug supply chain is dangerously reliant on foreign manufacturing with no oversight, especially in China. We must onshore critical medicines and build domestic production capacity while the FDA enforces equal standards globally—no more free passes abroad! COVID exposed our medical supply vulnerability. Reorganize BARDA, ARPA-H, and ASPR into a rapid-response powerhouse, focused on swift clinical trials and flexible manufacturing. Future crises demand speed, agility, and resilience. America has the talent, resources, and innovation to dominate biotech in this century, and improve tens of millions of lives. What has been missing previously is bold leadership at FDA and HHS willing to take on bureaucracy and risk-aversion; I’m optimistic for the new leaders!

@nfergus @WSJ Great article!

Debt Has Always Been the Ruin of Great Powers. Is the U.S. Next? From Habsburg Spain to Trump’s America, there’s no escaping the consequences of spending more on interest payments than on defense. wsj.com/politics/polic… My new Saturday Essay for the @WSJ.

"In the ancient Hellenic world, hubris was the kind of pride or arrogance that led a mortal to defy the gods. But hard on its heels there usually came Nemesis, the goddess of divine retribution. The historian prefers to exclude deities from his narrative. He discerns the more prosaic operation of budgetary constraints. For it is these, not gods, that set limits on the geopolitical ambitions of republics and empires alike."

@JTLonsdale @8vc This is awesome. Great work by all.

We co-led the Series A in Joby at @8vc out of 8VC-1 nearly a decade ago, and got a ton of pushback and lectures about how insane it was (almost as much pushback as Anduril at the time!). In fact it *was* insanely ambitious; but don’t bet against top talent & persistent leaders.

@CliffordAsness Unfortunately we already do this with the US International Development Finance Corp. what could go wrong with a late stage private equity fund started in 2019? I’m sure the returns to taxpayers are stunning.

Apparently we’re running a surplus now as a country right? I mean no sane country would raise taxes or borrow money just to speculate on stuff right?

@terryangelos @elonmusk @USTreasury @jevgenijs $5T is the number a few sources have reported.

Payment nerds love scale. How does @elonmusk administering @USTreasury compare to the payment giants? - Visa $14T - Mastercard $10T - China UnionPay ~$9T - PayPal $2T - Amex $1.5T Anyone know the TPV for Direct Disbursements by Treasury? @jevgenijs

@GavinSBaker A great set of investors!

Alex and I started the same day at Fidelity. It was an honor for us to be introduced by Steve Wymer and interviewed by Will Danoff at the Boston Children’s Investment Conference yesterday. Steve and Will have exceptional 25 year plus track records, each at over 100b in AUM.

@auren It’s higher for people who look up this stat

more good news. USA, USA!

@nikitabier This is smart.

When designing the sharing flows your app, you have to regularly remind yourself that there only four reasons people post things: 1. To sound smart 2. To be funny 3. To look hot 4. To look rich The more your product obfuscates those goals, the lower your share rates will be.

3/ After removing and gently placing a single brownie on my desk, he walked out of my room carrying the tray full of the remaining brownies. "Thank you," he said. A moment later he returned to the room with a huge smile on his face, grabbed his one brownie and left me the tray.

2 / I was sitting at my desk and saw Dikembe walk by and asked him if he wanted one. He said "yes," ducked into my room and proceeded to carefully slice the brownies.

1/ It's very sad to learn of Dikembe's passing. I had the pleasure of living next door to him my sophomore year at Georgetown. He was a friendly, larger-than-life personality. Once for my birthday my mom had sent me a pan of brownies. #DikembeMutombo