Cole Rotman

@jackdent @anuhariharan @IndexVentures @kleinerperkins @sequoia @_DimensionCap @m_delamerced @nytimes Proud of you guys ❤️

Thrilled to announce our $400M Series C led by @IndexVentures, with @kleinerperkins, @sequoia, @_DimensionCap and others. Great to speak to @m_delamerced @nytimes about how drug discovery using AI is moving from a promise to actual deployment.

@WillManidis Ask everyone that has ever blogged about “taste” if they’re familiar with the Bowery hotel lobby

they’re calling it the most functional board in technology podcasting

@jfbrly @bryceehunt 😂😂😂

@shayanshafii Google slop might be more credible

@ColeRotman You have to be in the right networks to get the VC Associate handcrafted PDFs

@gaby_goldberg @a16z Can we wrap Gaby’s brother and father to celebrate @FarroYossi

I’m excited to share that I’m joining Andreessen Horowitz as a Partner on the New Media team, focusing on the intersection of comms, networks, and investing. I’ve been working on these three things throughout my career, first in early-stage investing and most recently in comms at Rostra, writing about my perspectives and experiences along the way. For a long time, I thought these were three different paths I’d have to choose between. I’ve done comms, but I’m not just a comms leader. I write and build community, but I’m not just a writer or community builder. And I’ve invested, but I’m not just an investor. When @eriktorenberg approached me about the opportunity, he told me I could come do all of it under one roof, at a scale that wouldn’t be possible anywhere else, and crafted the right role to make it work. @a16z is the perfect place for me to manifest the full range of my interests, skills, and ambitions. Erik has been one of my earliest believers (since college!), so this feels like a long arc finally closing. I look forward to working alongside him and the rest of a16z’s brilliant team, and also hire even more great people into the firm. I’ll be taking some time between roles to touch grass and exist in the context. In the meantime, my DMs are always open.

@pitdesi I think this is the most interesting thing I’ve ever read on X. Thanks sheel! @grok was there a similar dynamic in Montreal Jewish community that produced rigorous adherence to quality standards? Or any other interesting historical tidbits of the development of bagels in Canada?

TIL: New York bagels are the way they are because of a culinary mafia. For much of the 20th century, bagels in NYC were controlled by Bagel Bakers Local 338, a union of Jewish bakers who enforced wages and very specific standards around how bagels were made. The bagelmakers did a great job negotiating... for every date I looked up, the standard salaries for bagelmakers were $75–$100k in todays dollars- far more than teachers or police made at the time. They also controlled what a bagel was. To be called Bagels (or Beigels) they had to be made of high-gluten flour, water, salt, yeast, and malt- with no sugar or dairy. Bagels had to be hand-rolled, boiled, and baked on stone, and they maintained uniformity across bakeries by random taste tests. There were 6 flavors: Plain, Poppy, Sesame, Salt, Onion, Garlic. They defended their power like a mafia: they routinely went on strike, and crushed every non-union bagel shop that popped up, by picketing, offering free bagels in front of non-union shops, and by telling all their suppliers that if they supplied to the non-union shop they'd lose the union business, which no supplier could afford to do. In 1964, they standardized the spelling from beigel, baigel, beygel, or beygl to "Bagel" The cartel ruled the bagel industry in New York for ~70 years, until a California-based company came in with a technology that made it a lot cheaper (the Uber of its time? Lots of similarities to taxi medallions!). Daniel Thompson, an inventor in LA created a machine that could make bagels way faster and 4x cheaper. The machine-made bagels didn't taste as good, but they were a lot cheaper and had a longer shelf-life. By the late ’70s, the Local 338 union had collapsed. Mass-market bagels had won. The bagel machine was part of a broader postwar trend, and was late to it: food became cheaper, softer, and mass-produced... bagels went from chewy and handmade to frozen and uniform. It fit the era’s obsession with convenience. Making them cheaper also made them popular... they went from a niche Jewish delicacy to a popular breakfast item for many. Many of us grew up with Lender's frozen bagels... Lender's was the largest buyer of the Thompson bagel machine. In New York, handmade bagels mostly disappeared from the 70s to the 90s. But now, after decades of industrial food, we crave the opposite, and handmade bagels have made a comeback in New York. Today’s best bagels look a lot like the ones from a century ago: hand-rolled, boiled, blistered, and slightly uneven. All of our favorite spots (Brooklyn bagel, Apollo, Popup) make their bagels by hand. Your average deli bagel though? It's made in a machine, steamed not boiled, and done on a rotating rack oven. It looks like a bagel but does not have the chew or crust of a real handmade bagel. The average deli bagel, even in New York, is absolute crap!

@sarahdingwang @justin_kahl @shangdaxu Do you have any insights on enterprise engagement (ie. excl. ChatGPT usage + distribution across functionalities)? All the data I’ve seen suggests this is slow

1/ In 2024, we saw a massive opportunity for founders building AI for the enterprise. 1 year later, this market has evolved more quickly than we imagined (& we were bullish!) 🧵what @justin_kahl @shangdaxu and I are seeing from our survey of 100+ CIOs: a16z.com/ai-enterprise-…

@benln 👀

Cursor Conf would break San Francisco

@tkexpress11 👀 love this

a16z speedrun is coming to Israel 🇮🇱 I'm heading to Israel week of June 22nd to meet early founders at the 0->1 stage starting the next generational company We're hosting 2 events: 1. a16z speedrun in Israel - June 25 2. Israel’s Next Elite Founders Dinner - June 24 Event 🔗👇

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/posts/saurabh-…

My favorite snippet

“The AI Era” New thoughts from our co-founder, Saurabh Gupta: sgthoughts.substack.com/p/the-ai-era?u…

Do this enough times, the only question left will be… Where do I wire the $?

Best pitch advice: refine after every meeting based on questions. Small upgrades can compound fast and allow you to preemptively address questions before they’re asked, which makes your audience think… “Wow they must know exactly what they’re doing b/c they think like me”

@P_Bonnet I would think key think to get comfortable here is ACA marketplace subsidies

🚨 New buy this week: $OSCR. Position initiated on Monday at $13.80 per share. 💵 I believe there is now asymmetric upside. Here is why: 👇 1) ~$12bn run-rate premium as of 1Q-25, growing 43% YoY. For ~$2bn of EV. So ~0.15x EV / Earned Premium. The company is now getting to scale and still growing fast: insurance is a game of scale. You need it to amortise your SG&A expense ratio (which includes some fixed costs). Oscar is now doing this nicely ✅ 2) Mark Bertolini (@mtbert), took over as CEO in April 2023, building on the awesome work of @mariots. 🥇 Mark is a legend in health insurance - he led @Aetna from 2010 to 2018 (its acquisition by CVS, a deal he personally oversaw) 🤝 The share price increased ~7x under his tenure at Aetna. Mark is 69yo, and I don't think he came here if he did not think the opportunity was not similar or greater in size. 📈 3) The medical loss ratios are getting under control at 81.7% in FY24. Management guided to flat / further improvements in FY25 (80.7-81.7%). 💳 This is now best in class for the industry, and opens to door to profitability. It makes managements 5% operating income target potentially realistic. I believe there is a path to see Oscar at $15-20bn of premium in 2027 or 2028E. And on 5% operating margin - that is $750m-$1.0 of operating income (currently on <$4bn market cap...). So what are the risks? Well insurance is a thin margin business, and another risk is regulatory - ACA marketplace subsidies are definitely under scrutiny, which could slow down growth. But there is clear asymmetric potential now - and it's just too good to ignore. I'll keep you all posted! 💹 Not financial advice - do your own research. #Insurtech #HealthTech #Investing #HealthInsurance #OscarHealth #GrowthStocks #StockMarket #EquityResearch #LongTermInvesting #DeepValue #InvestingTips #PublicMarkets #Nasdaq #MarketLiquidity #PersonalFinance #TechEcosystem $UNH $HIMS

@ArfurRock @clay_gtm This is not helping the rumors that I am you!

This is a solid list. @clay_gtm @ $3B 🤫 Congrats friends. x.com/BennettSiegel/…

@BennettSiegel Couple plz fixes in here but otherwise I’ve trained you well padawan 🤛🏻 Leaderboard (post-updates) — A16z (6), GC (2), LSVP (2), Redpoint (2) And big up @origoshen for being the first Israeli AI unicorn! 🤘🏻

Inspired by @ColeRotman, we looked at the seed rounds of all the AI Unicorns founded post transformer. Interestingly, none have come out of YC, and no one except a16z has led or co-led more than 2 seeds. ~20% of the founders pivoted to their current businesses.