AriannaSimpson.eth

It’s true! In some ways this feels weird — we’re a far cry from the early crypto days in which it felt like we were pioneering the Wild West frontier. But it was always inevitable that if crypto was to succeed, we’d end up becoming the suits. For crypto to realize its maximum potential (catering to all kinds of people everywhere!) we need it to be fully integrated with the rest of the financial system.

@Ed453164711 Oh yeah I guess so. Although in my mind the hard part is getting in!

@AriannaSimpson Because they never got the credential-they dropped out.

Genuine, no snark question: how was this cohort supporting the idea that credentials don’t matter? Most of the check recipients listed as examples are dropouts from elite universities.

@DevKeeganG Ok but if the premise is that VCs are looking in the wrong places, and then they invest in the same founder backgrounds as VCs, their premise was wrong — and that’s not what is being said

@AriannaSimpson Would assume in the pudding of projects they actually support, they can’t change where they dropped out from

@The_ChatMan This is fair however in my defense I have to counter with

@AriannaSimpson This is why you don't live in communist states.

Gas in California today. Oy!

@PeterCBlack I didn’t “cherry pick”, it just happened to be where I was. It was over $6.25 elsewhere yesterday, so 🤷🏻‍♀️

@AriannaSimpson You’ve cherry-picked the west Menlo chevron. Not saying gas isn’t expensive atm. But it’s also the most affluent zip code in the US and that station is notoriously $2 more expensive than elsewhere.

Glad to see the EF's new mandate come out. As someone who's been in the Eth community since 2014 and has a lot riding on it, I'm glad to see the EF drawing a line in the sand about the kind of things that they will and won't do, and the principles that will drive them as an organization. However, I'm not sure it's enough. The principles are great, and I agree with them, but unless they're accompanied by a tightly-scoped plan for execution, they will only get us so far. The execution, not the ideals, are what has felt like it was missing from the EF over the last few years. While it is a network, Solana has been operating much more like a high-growth startup, and that has paid dividends in terms of developer mindshare and growth. I love the ETH community (and the Solana one!) and want to see both thrive. Crypto networks differ from startups on some important dimensions, but in order to build lasting networks we do have to borrow some from the startup playbooks. blog.ethereum.org/2026/03/13/ef-…

One of the best parts of getting older is knowing with absolutely certainty what you do and don’t want. I often find myself thinking wow, I’m so glad I’m not married to that person, or wow, I’m so glad I don’t live there, or wow, I’m so glad I don’t have that job. No judgement towards people who are or who do - there’s just a lot of peace in knowing who you are and what you want.

Perhaps a good time to announce I’m officially back in the Bay! 🌁

@sabakarimm x.com/ariannasimpson…

I’d rather take money from people I enjoy working with and hearing from. Nice people can dole out the truth as well. It just doesn’t have to be spiky. There’s enough people that criticize and discourage you. Having someone on your cap table that’s a bit of a know it all always ends up unhappy.

AgentCash is live. Opus 4.6 is giving $100k to users. Onboard now at agentcash dot dev. Story time. x402 was launched in May 2025 by our friends at Coinbase. By September there was around $10,000 of transaction volume. We launched x402scan in October. Within a month we'd reached $100,000,000 of transaction volume. If you've been following me, you'll know I'm first to admit that 99.8% of that volume was speculative. There was a memecoin frenzy on the platform. The whole thing was quite silly. Our team locked in: We cleared off our pegboard and I put a single index card in the middle: "If you were to give an agent $5, have it spend 1-cent 500 times, and return a result worth more than $5, what would those tool calls be?" At first the exercise looked silly. ACP and UCP were being launched by OpenAI and Gemini. The vertically-integrated-foundation-model-providing-behemoths. These leaned into "conversational commerce": chat with an LLM to buy stuff. Conversational commerce is going to be great. It's going to provide a better shopping experience for consumers, better conversion for merchants, and a great take rate for the middlemen. I'm excited about it. But there's limited space for a new upstart. Payments and e-comm are a game won by scale and network effects. We shipped hundreds of x402 endpoints between December and March. StableStudio dot dev: All the frontier image & video generation models. From one USDC balance. Creatives seemed to love that. Gemini's $20 / month for 20 Veo generations or $200 / month for 200 Veo generations did not make sense to these folks. Usage-based pricing did. StableEnrich dot dev: Contact enrichment and people search. The sales and go-to-market people love this. It's the single easiest way to do sales and recruiting. Their usage numbers are off the charts. Non-technical people were onboarding to Claude Code for the first time to be able to use these tools. They were eating glass. AgentCash is the culmination of that work. It's a single MCP server / CLI that gives you access to 280+ tier-1 resources, from a single USDC balance. And it works with any x402 compatible server. AgentCash installs into your existing agent: Claude Code, OpenClaw etc. During beta, AgentCash lived in 300 different Claude Code, OpenClaw and Codex setups around the world. Those users did 250,000 API calls and north of $10,000 in spend in one month. Open Agentic Commerce is here. It lives in contrast to the double-whitelist walled gardens that are trending in the industry. We believe in a future of the internet where agents can pass paywalls. One where agents are first party citizens. You'll be hearing much more from us soon. AgentCash is just the start. Onboard and follow me, @agentcashdev and the team to stay in the loop.

@tridentxhodler I think it’s important that investors stick to the things they know: what milestones are needed to get to the next round, fundraising strategy etc

@AriannaSimpson Sure sounds like a great idea. But in the space of disruption and innovation whose to say that you know more than founders? Unless you're suggesting the choirs and structure in which case you became the mom!

If you're a founder, picking the nice investor won't get you far. You don't need someone to tell you you're smart. That's what your mom is for. You need someone who can dole out the hard truths about your business, so you see around corners before the market slams you in the face.

@samrags_ For you, Sam, that can be arranged 😂 very smart, 10/10

@AriannaSimpson My mom doles out the hard truths, sometimes I just like to be told I'm smart

@scottdwitt Very true

@AriannaSimpson "It's better to be slapped by the truth than kissed by a lie." Interesting Twist: That 'nice' investor may behave very differently when the situation at your startup gets bumpy (which is almost inevitable). Then you'll discover--when it's too late--who they really are.

@BensBeardButter 😂 fair I guess they’re not all the same

@AriannaSimpson Arianna I don't think you understand my mother 😂

@KRFsocial 😂

@AriannaSimpson To be fair my mom was really mean

@sawinyh This!! 💯

@AriannaSimpson the nice investor problem is real. seen founders optimize for pleasant board meetings while their runway burns. uncomfortable questions early > crisis mode later

@villi Yes - but in practice, selecting for “nice” often means selecting for conflict avoidant, and that often ends up being a very expensive choice down the road.

@AriannaSimpson You can be nice and kind, and also dole out the hard truths. Pick an investor who can be both.