Samarth Shah

Reading about CRISPR. Can’t stop thinking about AI. Rival teams. Messy politics. Big ethics debates. We’ve seen this movie before. The real question: are we at the beginning of the story with AI or the part where it gets real? #weekendread #books

@akothari @AlphaSchoolATX What did she develop?

Took my 9 year old to her first ever hackathon, and she loved it. Big thanks to @AlphaSchoolATX for organizing!

@nikunj Expand on #4 . what are the signs of conviction?

I was writing a (relatively) long essay on all my learnings of transitioning to a VC ~two years ago.. But, decided to whittle it down to a tight 11 bullet point list (some are cliches, but oh so true): 1. Get on the flight -don’t question it. 2. Deals often die on the weekends. 3. If it’s not wired, it’s not done yet. 4. Conviction is never found in the data room. 5. Naïvety is a virtue, not a weakness. 6. In early stage, pick two: founder, market, product -then believe that the third catches up. 7. The right deal at the wrong time is still the wrong deal. 8. In the land of hubris, constraints still reign king. 9. Slow no’s are worse than fast no’s. Way worse. 10. Your last deal should teach you more than your first. 11. Above all else, pick integrity. --- If you are an experienced VC, please add more to this. If you as a reader are curious about any of these, please ask questions. Grateful to have this extremely privileged opportunity!

@5harath @composio @GanatraSoham @KaranVaidya6 @itsaqd @juliafedorin Moving to SF or will travel between SF and Atlanta?

Some personal news 🚨 I’m joining @composio’s growth team as Product Marketing Manager @GanatraSoham @KaranVaidya6 and the rest of the team are some of the smartest ppl I've met, and I can’t wait to build Composio with them Stoked to do cool things @itsaqd and @juliafedorin Lastly I dreamed abt working in SF since I landed in the US 13yrs ago and with this new chapter I’m getting a chance to experience one of the greatest cities on the planet LFG 🚀

@nikunj It is getting rave reviews. What are you currently reading?

@SamarthShah_ Read twice! Need time to go watch it

Being in SF means constantly hearing the same three things (jevons paradox, goodharts law and the bitter lesson) over and over again.. Good reminder (even for me) to read more history, art and sci-fi!

@tlin1414 @paraschopra What is your new ERP and did you develop custom AI tools?

We replaced a 4-year ERP buildout with an agent-based system. 2 engineers + AI doing what we originally scoped for 8. The hiring shift: we stopped looking for specialists and started looking for people with judgment. The new bottleneck is someone who can architect agent workflows and know when the AI is wrong — not someone who writes CRUD endpoints. Headcount is down. Output per person is way up. But the role changed completely.

Curious - how has AI impacted things in your company? Particularly, on hiring and head count front. Are things different or the same?

@nikunj @veddaang How do you make it high status? Reporting to CEO directly? Any cool name for the title?

@veddaang That’s why you need to give them real responsibility and make it high status

AGREED! :) very difficult to find such tinkerers. once you do, making sure they stay is the real challenge.

@rashi_kakkar Looking forward to it!

“As 2025 comes to a close, I’ve been thinking about the arc of this year - how it felt different in a way I didn’t fully expect. After a few chaotic, blurry years, this one felt… good. ...My word for the year was unrushed. I didn’t know what that would look like - but leaning into it ended up creating more momentum than all my rushing ever did. It even led to something unexpected: after more than three decades on this planet, 2025 was the year I finally learned how to breathe properly... how to properly engage my diaphragm - to breathe deeply instead of hovering in a constant state of shallow breath..." Sharing more in my year-end essay on Dec 20! If this resonates, I hope you’ll read along on Decks and Diapers

@jigyasu_mayank That’s great! Would love to hear your view on performance comparison.

Will report back with actual performance compared to other open source and closed source models. Initial vibes seem to be good. Here it is running on my MacBook Pro M2 Max 64 GB:

(Thread) OpenAI is going back to its roots of being truly open! They have finally launched state-of-the-art open source LLM models. They've released them in two variants: - gpt-oss-120b - gpt-oss-20b Here's the blog link announcing them: 🧵1/4

@chrisman What are your sources for good, true and beautiful content?

Big open question for parents is how much “slop” content is Ok for kids to consume. I think a little slop is fine. My kids have watched Marvel movies and read Dog Man comics. But it needs to be offset by exposure to the good, the true, and the beautiful.

@shl How do you measure technical debt and how do you see it as a good sign?

Technical debt is a good sign

@RomeenSheth Also, reminded me of 2019 Wimbledon final between Federer and Djokovic.

Hands down best finals since Federer-Nadal at Wimbledon 2008. Absolutely unreal. The next giants of tennis are here. How lucky are we!

@SandeepMall Focus on what you can control and don’t worry about things outside of your control.

Someone asked an interesting question to me today. You also try to reply- If you had a short call with yourself from 10 years ago, what will you say?

@rashi_kakkar Connecting the dots across different disciplines will help develop ‘Taste’.

AI’s making creation easier than ever. As AI lowers barriers to create “Can you make it?” becomes “Should you make it?” Taste will become a superpower in the AI era. And "Taste" is not innate, it can be developed. How? Immerse yourself in stories, art, music, culture.

@Austen Who have you seen using it really well? Or rather how do they include in their daily workflow ?

Sriram is exactly right, and a couple interesting things about it: * The median person in tech knows ZERO people who are using AI well * It takes 10x as much time to be good at as people think

@deedydas Applies to other professions too.

4 things all software engineers should know.

@t_blom @paulg Which tool has moat in the age of AI? The one who innovates first/faster?

Cursor blew my mind for about 3 days. Then it started getting confused as my codebase got larger. I switched to Windsurf 20 mins ago. It handled the larger codebase easily. Since they're both VS Code forks, the learning curve was zero. These tools are amazing but they have zero moat or lock-in. Users will switch to whichever one is best in the moment.

@hvpandya How often does these companies change?

👀 Was recently discussing this with a friend in SV — The best talent in the industry is concentrated at a very small set of companies (<=5), and these companies change every 6 years. We ran this loop from 2005 and it checked out perfectly.

@levie How box leadership is thinking about it?

One big enterprise implication of AI right now is that the next generation workforce will simply not work the way everyone currently does. The companies that adapt to this will hire better and drive way more productivity. The ones that don’t will increasingly fall behind.