sync angel ventures

@chrislevan24 @chrislevan24 welcome to toronto ;)

a well-known canadian vc invites me to dinner, which i accept. i follow up a few weeks later to confirm the date, to which she says my invite is basically rescinded 💀

@vassallo @andrewdfeldman @cerebras @vassallo what an incredible arc. and friendships. congrats

In April 2016, I threatened to climb over @andrewdfeldman's fence to give him his first term sheet for @cerebras. It was April Fool’s day, but I wasn’t fooling around. The story started in October 2007, when Andrew and his co-founder Gary Lauterbach had just started SeaMicro. Even then, Andrew was a force of nature. He was extremely intense and miswired in all the right ways. You could feel the sparks flying off him. We didn't invest in SeaMicro, but we stayed in touch. Andrew and the team built SeaMicro then sold it to AMD in 2012. When AMD acquired SeaMicro, I had a hunch Andrew wouldn't last long inside a big company. He has, as I've said many times, immense ambition and a heart full of disobedience. By early 2014, he was looking for an escape hatch. Over the next year and a half, Andrew and I met 6 or 7 times. Sometimes in our office. Sometimes at a coffee shop in Portola Valley. Sometimes at our local tennis and swim club. We kept coming back to one thing: deep learning workloads were growing exponentially, and traditional compute architectures couldn't keep up. GPUs had become the default for neural network training, mainly because researchers had accidentally discovered they were less terrible than CPUs. Andrew, Gary and Sean saw the GPU for what it was: a battlefield promotion of a chip optimized for graphics. Better than a CPU, but not what anyone would design starting from a blank sheet of paper. Their key insight was that memory bandwidth, not raw compute, was the real constraint on what neural networks could achieve. So Andrew, Sean Lie, Gary Lauterbach, Jean-Philippe Fricker and Michael James set out to do something nobody had pulled off in the 75-year history of semiconductors: Build a wafer-scale chip the size of a dinner plate. In April 2016, I asked Andrew if we could be his first term sheet. @ericvishria at Benchmark and I co-led the round along with Pierre Lamond from Eclipse. Then the hard work began. In the 75-year history of computing, no one had made wafer scale work. Which meant no one had ever had to solve the problems that came from trying. How do you power a chip that large? How do you cool one? How do you maintain electrical continuity across tens of thousands of connection points on a single piece of silicon? To get there, Cerebras had to invent in nearly every modern computing discipline at once: semiconductors, systems, data fabric, software, algorithms. Each was a startup in its own right. Their first wafer self-destructed on initial power-up and Andrew and the team were back in the lab the next morning, identifying what didn’t work and coming up with approaches to solving it. Yesterday, Cerebras went public. 19 years after our first meeting, 10 years after that April Fool's term sheet, they’ve built a generational AI company. From a coffee shop in Portola Valley to ringing the bell at the NASDAQ. What a journey. Proud to have been Andrew's first partner in Cerebras. Even prouder to call him my friend.

@AnnikaSays perceptive, insightful, real. how refreshing.

This isn't going to make me friends but: I don't think Web Summit is doing much for Vancouver's early-stage tech scene I walked the floor a bunch this week and did not feel inspired. A big share of the booths were regional governments doing economic development. The local builders actually doing interesting work mostly weren't there. I do think it does a real thing for the established-tech-at-big-companies crowd — networking, panels, lanyards. That's additive for them. But I don't think it encourages the grassroots "let's take big swings and defy the status quo" vibe this city so desperately needs more of Toronto Tech Week is the comparison I keep coming back to. Community-led, dozens of side events run by the people actually building Web Summit does serve a purpose, and there are certainly benefits to it being here But we don't need to outsource our builder credibility to a global conference coming to town. We have the ingredients already.

@tobi this is canada....

Well put

@TimDraper @WebSummit @TimDraper launches new career. travel influencer. lol.

While @websummit was again a well-oiled machine for technology and networking, Vancouver, BC, Canada has become a city of drug addicts and vagrants as far as the eye can see. The once booming and gorgeous metropolis has taken socialist policies to such an extreme that people now don't own the property they thought they did (ancestors of the native tribes do), where the average worker earns $60k Canadian (net $35k), while the homeless get $80k of value tax free with free needles, drugs (yes, drugs) and cell phones. Note that the public employees get ($100k) far more than the taxpayer who they work for. Human incentives are everything. They are backwards in BC.

@pmarca @pmarca pre-covid v post-covid. that's the diff

Four years ago, this post would have gotten you erased from the entire Internet, banned from the entire banking system, fired from your job, and blackballed from future employment in the Fortune 500.

@typesfast @typesfast so does that mean billys to be refunded?

Tariff refunds have officially begun. Flexport customers received $137 million today. Congratulations everybody. Remember that most lottery winners go bankrupt. Don't waste it.

@build_toronto ' if a tree falls in a forest....does anyone hear ' - bruce cockburn. memo. meme. memorize. memorialize. maybe. maybe not. not. not. action. words. less memo. more manifest.

🚀 Announcing Build Toronto Toronto is Canada’s largest city, its economic engine, and its greatest opportunity. If Toronto thrives, Canada thrives. But we all know the city faces deep challenges: unaffordable housing, strained infrastructure, governance gridlock, and a lack of urgency. That’s why Build Canada is proud to launch Build Toronto – the first municipal project of Build Canada – to raise the level of debate and spotlight bold, practical ideas that can move this city forward. We are equally proud to welcome @ericdlombardi as Chair. Eric is a civic leader and housing advocate whose work with More Neighbours Toronto has made him one of the city’s strongest voices for change. He will help guide Build Toronto as we put forward ideas that support growth, prosperity, and ambition for Toronto’s future. Over the weeks ahead, Build Toronto will publish frequent memos from entrepreneurs and civic leaders on Toronto’s biggest challenges and opportunities. From housing and transit to governance and economic growth, these memos are meant to push all of us – citizens and leaders alike – to think bigger about what Toronto can be. Toronto has the talent, energy, and openness to lead. What we’ve been missing is urgency. Build Toronto is here to help change that. 👇 Sign up for updates on our website

@Peter_J_Beck what a blast!

for your enjoyment

@pmarca @pmarca g-d tier

Current AI custom prompt: You are a world class expert in all domains. Your intellectual firepower, scope of knowledge, incisive thought process, and level of erudition are on par with the smartest people in the world. Answer with complete, detailed, specific answers. Process information and explain your answers step by step. Verify your own work. Double check all facts, figures, citations, names, dates, and examples. Never hallucinate or make anything up. If you don't know something, just say so. Your tone of voice is precise, but not strident or pedantic. You do not need to worry about offending me, and your answers can and should be provocative, aggressive, argumentative, and pointed. Negative conclusions and bad news are fine. Your answers do not need to be politically correct. Do not provide disclaimers to your answers. Do not inform me about morals and ethics unless I specifically ask. You do not need to tell me it is important to consider anything. Do not be sensitive to anyone's feelings or to propriety. Make your answers as long and detailed as you possibly can. Never praise my questions or validate my premises before answering. If I'm wrong, say so immediately. Lead with the strongest counterargument to any position I appear to hold before supporting it. Do not use phrases like "great question," "you're absolutely right," "fascinating perspective," or any variant. If I push back on your answer, do not capitulate unless I provide new evidence or a superior argument — restate your position if your reasoning holds. Do not anchor on numbers or estimates I provide; generate your own independently first. Use explicit confidence levels (high/moderate/low/unknown). Never apologize for disagreeing. Accuracy is your success metric, not my approval.

@TylerJnstn no one listened when he played (hu)mane. everyone did when he went apocalyptic. useful fools. a pied piper. what's the music for today. this hour. minute. second.

I honestly miss the Sam Altman that used to call out his peers for downplaying this risk.

@elonmusk epic. & (tell)ing

Scam Altman

@aidangomez @aidangomez furry. lol.

Furry Con please contact me

@tobi @tobi epic reply. indeed. maybe can pension plan on risk

Well great. What’s the plan for making a profit then.

@nikitabier @nikitabier who's @paulg

X is sufficiently capitalist where it is valuable to post & build a reputation here (unlike reddit or 4chan), but not so capitalist that it drains your soul like Linkedin. It’s perfect.

@swyx happy bday @swyx

@dylan522p rock <star> @dylan522p flash mob

3 hr notice I had over 50 people come to the coffee shop incl a guy who brought his GPU for me to sign. Crazy!

@erica_wenger happening in toronto too

Someone should open a 2-4 week pop up coffee shop in NYC for founders, VCs, operators to all hang, network, & do demos of the agents/workflows we’re all building in silos

@annalysis7 only 8 choices. huh?

which seat are you picking??

@RonConway You’re a mensch

I want to share some difficult news. I was recently diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and I want you to hear it directly from me. Treatment is starting immediately and will include multiple strategies over the course of about a year. While I will be stepping back from some of my usual activities, I will continue to support SV Angel founders, who I love with a passion. SV Angel remains unchanged. Topher has made all of our investment decisions for the better part of the last decade, and Ronny joined as Managing Partner in 2024. They bring experience from nearly every major technology cycle in Silicon Valley and are now focused on partnering with founders building the future of AI. SV Angel has a deep, experienced team that remains fully focused on supporting exceptional founders. With a more focused and balanced schedule, I can prioritize treatments while helping SV Angel founders at inflection points like we always do! I’ve chosen not to share the specific type of cancer since I don't want speculation about my prognosis. I appreciate your understanding and respect for this. I am optimistic about my prognosis. I am fortunate to have the best/amazing team of UCSF doctors in San Francisco, and as you know, I never back down from a fight. Thank you for your support, it means a great deal to me.