Common Magic

So fun to join @Kieranleehill #20Angel pod for frank chat on angel investing + my new fund @_CommonMagic If there's one thing I've put my 10k hours into, it's answering; "what IS community?" Listen + tell me what you think of my current definition 🔥 open.spotify.com/episode/6kw0K8…

We think Europe needs more pro-European, pro-tech, pro-abundance, pro-optimism propaganda. So we made it. Posters, t-shirts, hoodies. Full-on propaganda. We've been handing them out at robotics meetups and clubs all over Europe for weeks, and people love them. Why we are doing this: Europeans know more about the companies in the States than the ones right here at home. We need to change that. Time for propaganda. Every poster features a real European company: 🦾 Allonic is braiding humanoids. A completely new approach to building robotic parts. If it works, a number one company worldwide, right here in Europe. 🚜 Voltrac, the electric autonomous tractor (we made a whole video about them). 🏗️ Automated Architecture (AUAR), doing micro-factories for wooden houses.  🪨 Gondor Industries, a stone mason company using robotics. And many, many more to come. This is the first of many drops. More launching in the next few weeks, including flags, EU posters and more. 👉 Get yours at prototype-shop.com For Europe 🇪🇺🔥 PS: If you're organizing a robotics event or meetup, have a student club or hacker space, comment or message us and we'll send you a swag box.

A UK AI startup has just raised a £2.8m pre-seed to make planning applications faster and more accurate. This is exactly what we need to get Britain BUILDING. The planning process is one of the biggest bottlenecks in getting things built in the UK. The team at Xylo have built agents that are massively reducing the workload of planning agents, enabling their work to get faster and more accurately. It has been working with, and building the technology alongside, Leeds City Council. Today it has announced a £2.8m pre-seed led by CapitalT, with backing from @sarahdrinkwater, SVV, @tinyvc and Endurance Ventures. LETS GO I LOVE to see AI companies build tools that can have huge public benefits and Xylo is one. Congrats @Dermot_Oriordan and Habs Isabelle Kim!

In this episode of Going Solo, @ry_paddy sits down with @sarahdrinkwater, GP at @_CommonMagic; a pre-seed fund launched in 2023 that invests in products with community at their core. Before Common Magic, Sarah built one of Europe's most influential startup communities as head of Google Campus London and had been angel investing for many years. 01:22 - The joy of being a solo GP 03:07 - Organisations as world models 05:46 - The energy required to raise a fund 08:56 - Community as a core thesis 11:22 - "Brand" for solo GPs 14:35 - Getting out of the VC-shaped box 18:15 - Why this, why now? 19:57 - Investing like an angel 24:20 - The hardest problems are social 29:00 - Do one thing really well 35:52 - The valley of death for European VC 39:54 - Outsiders make great first-time GPs 43:00 - The world in 10 years 43:50 - Shoutouts to @MayaBakhai and @FinnMurphy12 46:04 - The joy of many careers

Can robots build new towns — and other blue-sky thinking ft.trib.al/8zOtZkQ

Launching @sault_ai today, with a mission to increase the economic capacity of AI agents. Starting with ability to give your agents pocket money! Agents are unbelievably capable now, they can plan, execute, write code, but the moment they hit a paywall everything stops, the automation dies and a human has to step in.

Imho, solo GPs probably won’t need a traditional CoS in the same way going forward, because most ops workflows (scheduling, CRM, admin coordination, etc.) will get heavily streamlined through agents/workflows over the next few years. I think EMs will increasingly need what I’d call “gravity makers.” I don’t even have a precise JD for these ppl yet, but you kinda know them when you meet them. Usually they are: > hungry college kids or young operators actively rejecting the traditional 10-year career path > choosing venture intentionally, not because it’s “cool” > obsessed with curiosity, focus, execution > terminally online and monitoring the market daily > consuming information from X/Substack/@tbpn/@MTSlive + old books/research papers at the same time > hunters, not planters: they roll up sleeves and go online + IRL to find the most interesting founders before everyone else > deeply plugged into emerging communities and niche ecosystems > building media, distribution, automations, workflows from day one even with almost no resources > AI-native and constantly experimenting with tools/workflows > good at turning raw info/data into actual insights > developing taste and chasing authenticity > good writers who can articulate observations that later become contrarian theses > able to jump from “build a Notion LP portal” to “make a G Sheet + Claude fund model” in the same afternoon > low ego, humble, trust the process And with the right GP, these ppl eventually become force multipliers that make 1+1=3 instead of just 1+1=1.5. Because in a world where competition for access among funds is insane, the most important thing from day one is building enough "gravity" that the best founders naturally come to you first. All of this probably sounds blurry and hard to define. But ppl who are deep in the ecosystem probably know exactly the type I’m talking about.

Today Ethos announces our $22.75M Series A led by @a16z, with participation from @generalcatalyst, @xtxmarkets, @MattEvantic, and @_CommonMagic. Ethos turns what you know into recurring income - matching your expertise to expert calls, research, AI training, fractional work, and full-time roles. 35,000 people are joining Ethos every week. People are making $10,000 every month on Ethos. AI shouldn’t replace you. It should make you irreplaceable. Build your profile at askethos.com.

Today we're coming out of stealth at Modern Relay with $3M from @PointNineCap , @emergelab, @AminoCollective and @_CommonMagic alongside exceptional angels including Charlie Songhurst, Michael Boehler and Thomas Clozel. We are building the context graph for AI-native orgs: the source of truth for company data, policies, decisions and the logic between them. Humans and agents share the same state in which they coordinate work, with changes branched, reviewed, and merged before they land. So knowledge actually compounds. Omnigraph is the open source engine underneath: an agent-native graph database with git-style workflows, vector/fts search, and typed queries. We believe intelligence is a solved problem. The next decade belongs to the companies that make their world models agent-accessible. And we're here to enable them.