Prateek Alsi

"The reality is, nobody's hiring." Marathon Founding Partner @gokulr reacts to the Block layoffs and predicts that over the next 18 months, every public company is going to have a 30%+ cut because of AI: "If they don’t, I question their leadership."

So good by @GavinSBaker In Michael Jordan’s second to last year with the Chicago Bulls, Jerry Krause, GM of the Bulls said, “Listen players don’t win championships, organizations do. It isn’t just Jordan or Pippen. It’s how we scout, draft, train, it’s our system." Well… after Michael Jordan left they never won another championship. The thing allocators struggle with is it feels safe and good to say there is a process and its repeatable. Yes, it is important to have a process that is repeatable that works for you, but any process that is repeatable that generates significant alpha will be quickly arbed away in a competitive world. So where does repeatable outperformance come from? I would submit that any investment organization no matter how big, there are somewhere between 2-10 people where if you took those people out, and that organization would have the exact same process, the results would be dramatically different. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cap…

we're making @blocks smaller today. here's my note to the company. #### today we're making one of the hardest decisions in the history of our company: we're reducing our organization by nearly half, from over 10,000 people to just under 6,000. that means over 4,000 of you are being asked to leave or entering into consultation. i'll be straight about what's happening, why, and what it means for everyone. first off, if you're one of the people affected, you'll receive your salary for 20 weeks + 1 week per year of tenure, equity vested through the end of may, 6 months of health care, your corporate devices, and $5,000 to put toward whatever you need to help you in this transition (if you’re outside the U.S. you’ll receive similar support but exact details are going to vary based on local requirements). i want you to know that before anything else. everyone will be notified today, whether you're being asked to leave, entering consultation, or asked to stay. we're not making this decision because we're in trouble. our business is strong. gross profit continues to grow, we continue to serve more and more customers, and profitability is improving. but something has changed. we're already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company. and that's accelerating rapidly. i had two options: cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out, or be honest about where we are and act on it now. i chose the latter. repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus, and to the trust that customers and shareholders place in our ability to lead. i'd rather take a hard, clear action now and build from a position we believe in than manage a slow reduction of people toward the same outcome. a smaller company also gives us the space to grow our business the right way, on our own terms, instead of constantly reacting to market pressures. a decision at this scale carries risk. but so does standing still. we've done a full review to determine the roles and people we require to reliably grow the business from here, and we've pressure-tested those decisions from multiple angles. i accept that we may have gotten some of them wrong, and we've built in flexibility to account for that, and do the right thing for our customers. we're not going to just disappear people from slack and email and pretend they were never here. communication channels will stay open through thursday evening (pacific) so everyone can say goodbye properly, and share whatever you wish. i'll also be hosting a live video session to thank everyone at 3:35pm pacific. i know doing it this way might feel awkward. i'd rather it feel awkward and human than efficient and cold. to those of you leaving…i’m grateful for you, and i’m sorry to put you through this. you built what this company is today. that's a fact that i'll honor forever. this decision is not a reflection of what you contributed. you will be a great contributor to any organization going forward. to those staying…i made this decision, and i'll own it. what i'm asking of you is to build with me. we're going to build this company with intelligence at the core of everything we do. how we work, how we create, how we serve our customers. our customers will feel this shift too, and we're going to help them navigate it: towards a future where they can build their own features directly, composed of our capabilities and served through our interfaces. that's what i'm focused on now. expect a note from me tomorrow. jack

we're making @blocks smaller today. here's my note to the company. #### today we're making one of the hardest decisions in the history of our company: we're reducing our organization by nearly half, from over 10,000 people to just under 6,000. that means over 4,000 of you are being asked to leave or entering into consultation. i'll be straight about what's happening, why, and what it means for everyone. first off, if you're one of the people affected, you'll receive your salary for 20 weeks + 1 week per year of tenure, equity vested through the end of may, 6 months of health care, your corporate devices, and $5,000 to put toward whatever you need to help you in this transition (if you’re outside the U.S. you’ll receive similar support but exact details are going to vary based on local requirements). i want you to know that before anything else. everyone will be notified today, whether you're being asked to leave, entering consultation, or asked to stay. we're not making this decision because we're in trouble. our business is strong. gross profit continues to grow, we continue to serve more and more customers, and profitability is improving. but something has changed. we're already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company. and that's accelerating rapidly. i had two options: cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out, or be honest about where we are and act on it now. i chose the latter. repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus, and to the trust that customers and shareholders place in our ability to lead. i'd rather take a hard, clear action now and build from a position we believe in than manage a slow reduction of people toward the same outcome. a smaller company also gives us the space to grow our business the right way, on our own terms, instead of constantly reacting to market pressures. a decision at this scale carries risk. but so does standing still. we've done a full review to determine the roles and people we require to reliably grow the business from here, and we've pressure-tested those decisions from multiple angles. i accept that we may have gotten some of them wrong, and we've built in flexibility to account for that, and do the right thing for our customers. we're not going to just disappear people from slack and email and pretend they were never here. communication channels will stay open through thursday evening (pacific) so everyone can say goodbye properly, and share whatever you wish. i'll also be hosting a live video session to thank everyone at 3:35pm pacific. i know doing it this way might feel awkward. i'd rather it feel awkward and human than efficient and cold. to those of you leaving…i’m grateful for you, and i’m sorry to put you through this. you built what this company is today. that's a fact that i'll honor forever. this decision is not a reflection of what you contributed. you will be a great contributor to any organization going forward. to those staying…i made this decision, and i'll own it. what i'm asking of you is to build with me. we're going to build this company with intelligence at the core of everything we do. how we work, how we create, how we serve our customers. our customers will feel this shift too, and we're going to help them navigate it: towards a future where they can build their own features directly, composed of our capabilities and served through our interfaces. that's what i'm focused on now. expect a note from me tomorrow. jack

.@braintrust is building the infrastructure for production AI. We're very excited to be backing their Series B. CEO Ankur Goyal joined a16z's Martin Casado to cover how systems engineering stacks up against the bitter lesson, why Chinese models are gaining ground faster than spending suggests, whether AI demand will eventually saturate, and more. 00:00 Introduction 03:10 What "evals" actually mean (hypotheses and the scientific method) 07:34 AI is continuous, systems are discrete 08:29 The bitter lesson: universal function approximators vs. engineering 11:58 Engineering the harness, not the model 17:47 Chinese models: high token usage, low dollar share 20:37 Why open source models aren't dominating yet 27:08 Frontier labs, infinite capital, and scaling limits 30:38 Demand-side saturation: enterprises can't absorb better models 38:47 Bash vs. SQL for agents: "the results are comical" @ankrgyl @martin_casado

Today, we’re announcing Payward’s FY 2025 financial results—and alongside them, a clearer articulation of Payward’s role as the unified infrastructure layer powering Kraken and a growing family of products, including @NinjaTrader, @breakoutprop , @xStocksFi, and future products yet to be launched. Payward enables each product to be purpose-built for a specific customer segment, regulatory regime, and use case, while operating on shared foundations: ∙ One global liquidity pool ∙ One risk & margin engine ∙ One collateral & settlement system ∙ One compliance & licensing framework Beginning in 2025, Payward has taken on a more explicit role as the infrastructure layer supporting multiple product surfaces and interfaces. Last was a year defined by execution: shipping across the entire product suite, launching, scaling, and integrating at a pace that reflected both operational maturity and long-term conviction. Growth was driven by strong core product momentum and meaningful contributions from recent acquisitions. 📈 FY 2025 highlights: ∙$2.2B adjusted revenue (+33% YoY) ∙$531M adjusted EBITDA (+26% YoY) ∙$2.0T platform transaction volume (+34% YoY) ∙$48.2B assets on platform (+11% YoY) ∙ 5.7M funded accounts (+50% YoY) ∙ Futures DARTs up 119%, driven by NinjaTrader and Breakout integration FY 2025 established a new baseline for Payward’s scale, earnings power, and long-term ambition. Learn more 👇 blog.kraken.com/news/kraken-20…

.@gokulr is one of the most prolific product builders and investors of the last 20 years. He helped build the core ads and product businesses at Google, Facebook, Square, and DoorDash, working directly with many of this generation's best founders and CEOs. He's also invested in more than 700 companies giving him an unusually broad view into how products are built and scaled. Gokul has an incredible ability to give precise and prescriptive advice on how to build products, particularly in AI, and he explains his thinking so clearly that you come away knowing exactly how to apply it. We talk about why judgment is the only thing he believes is truly AI-proof, why Zendesk and Slack are more exposed than Salesforce and NetSuite, and what AI-native startups must do to move customers and their data off legacy systems. We cover everything he's learned from building the most important ads businesses, including the only three ways an ad business can make money, and why ChatGPT may be even more powerful than Google or Facebook for highly targeted ads. He also shares inside stories from Larry and Sergey, Zuck, Jack Dorsey, and Tony Xu, about how each of them approaches product, design, and communication. Enjoy! Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 0:35 The Changing Nature of Product Development 4:09 The Merger of Product and Design 4:54 Managing Non-Deterministic Software 9:06 Judgment: The Future-Proof Human Skill 10:41 Building Durable AI Applications 16:43 The Risk to Legacy Software Companies 21:20 Sources of Stickiness in the Age of AI 23:43 Leadership Lessons from Google 27:41 Learning from Mark Zuckerberg 31:16 Jack Dorsey and the Philosophy of Great Design 35:48 The Product Manager as Editor 40:44 Three Pillars of a Successful Ads Business 49:03 Selecting North Star and Check Metrics 56:04 Hiring Functional Experts for the AI Era 1:00:06 Advice for Managing a Career 1:01:33 Evaluating Founder Authenticity 1:05:20 Best Practices for Board Management 1:11:15 The Kindest Thing

American women have never been this resigned to staying single. The challenges of finding a romantic partner have been made more complicated by a growing divide in education and career prospects between men and women. 🔗 Read more: on.wsj.com/448WoC4

We have closed another round of funding to scale production and meet demand for satellite platforms for critical projects like Golden Dome. This $200M Series C funding is led by @p72vc and co-led by @8vc, alongside @a16z, @WashingHarbour, @stepstonegroup. spacenews.com/apex-raises-20…