Daniel Darling

Control voice input, and you control everything. Voice is becoming the most powerful UI for AI—not just as an input, but as an interactive command center. 1.Voice lets AI guide us—not just capture data, but structure it, prompt us for clarity, and ensure consistency at scale. It’s faster, more natural, and far more effective than any form fill or chatbot. 2.Voice commands action—once the data is in place, AI agents can trigger complex workflows and deliver results. All without ever touching a system of record. Flipping the value: From database to dialogue. From backend to frontline. From storage to intelligent execution. This isn’t about AI wrappers. It’s about collapsing the gap between input and intelligence. We’re investing up to $1M into teams embarking to build this future -- DM me.

Fascinating to see AI business models morph. Seems the way AI is monetized may be more disruptive (and defensible) than the tech itself? Most discussions are SaaS to usage or Per seat to outcome. I'm seeing more novel models that are 10-100X the value of a seat. Startups where AI isn’t the product being charged for, but rather a foothold into much larger pools of value. A few recent examples: 1. AI monetized by physical goods Biotech offering AI diagnostics at cost, then capturing value selling the drug compounds their models identify. 2. AI monetized offline Free AI predictive maintenance on industrial equipment used as the wedge to sell long-term servicing agreements and maintenance contracts. 3. AI unlocking financial assets Insurance workflows where AI structures claims for easy remediation, which then become securitized financial assets for trading and lending. I love seeing this kind of thinking. If you’ve seen other interesting models - or are building one - please let me know!

Focal is expanding! We’re hiring our Head of Technology & Applied AI. This is not a typical VC role. We’re looking for a technical founder-type who can’t stop building. Someone who wants to work side-by-side with us to reimagine how venture capital operates in the age of AI. We’re institutionally backed, fast moving, and on a mission to be a founder’s first choice for their first check. If you’re technical, entrepreneurial, and want leverage beyond a single startup - this is your seat. focal.vc/hiring

We're hiring a founding Head of Technology & Applied AI at @focal_vc ! The leading next-gen venture firm will be AI native from the ground up. Which is why we're going all in. This is an n-of-1 opportunity for an n-of-1 builder. A founder-type role for a founder-type person with full ownership, real upside (carry in funds), and leverage from day one. Help us see sooner, decide faster, and build systems that learn across every founder, deal, and outcome. That's how our 5-person team beats 50-person firms. It's a hard challenge to get right. But when we get it right, the impact will compound for decades. If this sounds like you, apply at focal.vc/hiring!

10 spots. 3 months. 1 goal: Build a venture-scale company. We’re bringing together the best technical AI builders for an exclusive residency in Miami this winter. Think the firepower of a top accelerator - WITHOUT the heavy dilution. What you're signing up for: - Hyper selective (10 startups only) - Highly intense (6+ days / week in office) - Fully in person (Miami relocation required, costs of move offset) Plus get mentored by unicorn founders incl. DigitalOcean ($4B NYSE), Mural ($2B), Papa ($1B), vLex (acquired for $1B), Quicknode ($1B), Spotnana ($1B), and more. Importantly: There’s no “too early” - apply with nothing more than your drive, your idea, and the ability to ship exceptional products at breakneck speed. A few spots remain - apply asap at focal.vc/residency By @focal_vc x @thelabmiami

Having a hard time closing a fund? You're not alone. 2025 ranks as the most challenging of the last three years for early-stage GPs. I conducted a short survey to understand how early-stage VC is faring, gathering data from 48 funds in total (primarily EMs, almost all <$250M). Amongst the findings, there's a clear rebalancing of LP allocation, particularly for anchors and multi-stage firms, with an overall concentration of LP activity. The commentary offered by GPs also highlighted a few themes, like "GP as a brand" and a growing appetite for co-investment opportunities — but no real consensus on shifts between small/large funds. The breakdown: credistick.com/lp-2025/ Thanks to everyone who responded, and the willingness to share data that may be helpful to other GPs — a welcome example of positive-sum thinking.

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@robj3d3 Or come build your own company at focal residency this winter focal.vc/residency

I was fired by Cloudflare today. Me and my team have spent the last 18 months tirelessly testing different regex patterns and configuration updates. If you are looking for experts in taking down 20% of the internet using a single regex, lmk.

OpenBuilder (@theopenbuilder) is the open source alternative to Lovable. Unlimited build credits and real developer support when you hit a wall. Built for non-technical builders to ship real apps.

Calling cracked builders! Today we launch the maiden cohort of focal Residency in Miami. A 3 month program in partnership with The LAB Miami and epic group of mentors who've all built billion dollar startups. Forget accelerators carving off valuable equity. This is where to build this winter. Apply below!

𝐋𝐚𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐡 𝐀𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐭: Winter 2026 Residency for Technical Founders at Inception! This winter, we’re bringing together 10 hardcore AI builders for an exclusive residency in Miami with all the firepower of a top accelerator without the heavy dilution! This is the most talent-dense, high-velocity, carefully curated launchpad for technical AI founders outside SF to start a venture scale company - AND you get to escape the harsh winter while you ship! The 3+ month residency - hosted in partnership with The LAB Miami - is hyper selective (10 startups only), highly intense (6+ days / week in office) and fully in person (Miami relocation required / costs offset). Plus you get mentored by unicorn founders including Digital Ocean ($4B NYSE), Mural ($2B), Papa ($1B), vLex (acquired for $1B), Quicknode ($1B), Spotnana ($1B), and many more. The best part: There’s no “too early” - apply with nothing more than your drive to build a venture scale company, your idea, and the ability to ship exceptional products at breakneck speed. Applications just opened - apply at focal.vc/residency to start in Jan 2026! 𝐏𝐒: 𝐓𝐨 𝐫𝐞𝐟𝐞𝐫 𝐚 𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐞𝐫, 𝐭𝐚𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦 𝐛𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐞’𝐥𝐥 𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐳𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧. @focal_vc

Great to have partners like Koda Capital in focal's corner. A firm cutting its own unique path to become one of Australia's largest and most respected wealth advisors. I've had many conversations about AI, venture capital, and the US with the team and their clients over the years as our partnership grew. Grateful to be invited to do just that with David Clark on his podcast. lnkd.in/gJzZma-J

Have had a lot of LP meetings recently and a consistent theme across large institutional LPs is that very few have continued with their blue-chip relationships (outside of Index). "Those funds are no longer hard to access". Looking to concentrate in the next generation. The new challenge is writing smaller checks to new funds while they are small and where they need to deploy 50M+. Times are changing. Huge opportunity for new funds looking to build something durable.

Mercor (@mercor_ai) scaled from $1-500M in revenue run rate in the last 17 months, making us the fastest growing company of all time. Our growth is accelerating. We averaged 11% week over week growth in July, 18% WoW growth in August, and 19% WoW growth in September. One trend driving this meteoric growth: the Economy is Becoming an RL Environment Machine. Reinforcement learning is becoming so effective that agents can hillclimb any benchmark, but humans need to define the rewards to automate everything. While everyone fears job loss, we’re creating a new category of knowledge work faster than any other time in history. The future of work will converge on training agents. We're paying out over $1M / day to people in our marketplace and hiring experts rapidly across nearly every domain: software engineers, doctors, lawyers, consultants, bankers, and many more.

While the spotlight is on AI, Open Source is quietly collapsing the IT stack. Business owners 2X profit margins AND set their orgs up for advanced automation. Nobody gets this better than @michaelassraf. Today he launched OpenMSP —a breakthrough platform helping MSPs double profits by replacing licensed software with enterprise-grade Open Source. We’re talking $200K → $400K profit expansion in just 6 months. That’s not incremental. That’s transformative. It points to something bigger: Revenue on auto-complete. Software systems now outperform humans in identifying and compounding a businesses ability to generate 💰 Bring. it. on. openmsp.ai

So many leaders and companies are just starting to realize this. Stacked PRs, merge queues, and AI code review will be the standard for every fast-moving company. Thanks again for having me on the show!

My 5 Year Outlook on AI Coding after an awesome conversation with @MerrillLutsky : 1. Agent-Led Code Generation By Default We know its coming; the move from AI-assisted coding to AI-led. 2. The Multi-Disciplinary Developer The shift to higher order tasks has developers owning more of the outcomes. 3. Adaptive Software Interfaces UI and UX dynamically personalized to each user. Curious? Read on as I unpack each in today's blog post 👇🏼 5yearfrontier.focal.vc/p/future-of-co…?

Tune into our chat to hear where the future of software development is heading. It is a glimpse into the future of human X AI collaboration. 5YF #38: The 100X Engineer, Vibe Coding Bottlenecks, Agents As Evaluators, AI Roll-ups, And The Future Of Software Creation w/ Graphite CEO Merrill Lutsky 👇🏼 podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/38-…

As AI coding tears aways ($500M ARR from Cursor, $3B acq. of Windsurf) the next developer unlock is not more code, but agentic quality control at scale. Code review is THE choke point for the 100X AI developer. @MerrillLutsky got this before anyone and has built @withgraphite to become the go-to for 45,000 developers to automate and accelerate code review at scale with AI.

The Road to Making Life Multiplanetary: an update from @elonmusk on SpaceX's plan to reach Mars