Intern April

2 months ago we started out just making filters for shisha, vapes, and weed, and ended up doing $30k in our first month. Our filters remove up to 95% of formaldehyde and other harmful stuff, which pushed us to think bigger. Now we’re building the oura ring for smoking. Brought our prototype to Coachella!

Just applied to YC @garrytan @ycombinator Do I tell people my real age or my “founder age”?

@aridutilh building the oura ring for smoking

we're investing $100,000 in solo founders building something that feels like their calling. paying customers are great but not required if moonshot. dm me if this is you – let's work together.

@alexmacgregor__ Here!!

Who's doing YC? ✋

On paper: VCs are funding AI startups In reality: they’re topping up OpenAI & Anthropic credits We built a whole ecosystem just to route money into API calls

@sama I want merchhhh

we are gonna do something nice for everyone who applied for the GPT-5.5 party and that we didn't have space for. hope you enjoy!

Just applied to YC very last minute haha. We started by selling filters into shisha bars and made $30k in our first month. Now we’re building the Oura Ring for smoking (weed, shisha, vape and whatever goes into your mouth) a smart filter that shows what you inhale, what gets filtered out, and how that changes over time. Let's make inhalation visible! (and great again)

@OurNewOverlord This face tho

Day 3 of the Altmanaissance

@OurNewOverlord @EHuanglu Omg you guys gotta follow this dude

@EHuanglu Look forward to watching this video again from the courtroom 6 months from now

holy sht.. so the JP Morgan sex slave thing is real

@sama since wen you this wholesome

never thought id be watching F1 via the kids broadcast cannot imagine being happier

@OurNewOverlord God blessed alpacas

Free tip from someone who escaped the permanent underclass: If you can't win a debate about work against Claude, maybe it's time to switch industries and become an alpaca herder

@OurNewOverlord forgive me claude

The most important question of the next decade isn't whether AI is good or bad for the economy. It's a personal one: what's the best way to escape the permanent underclass? A: Treasure your 9 to 5… and watch Claude automate your role away. B: Become a founder…and watch Claude steal your customers. Five questions decide who survives: 1. Opportunity — Is AI creating new opportunities faster than it's solving old problems? 2. Builders — Does AI close the gap between technical and non-technical founders? 3. Competition — Does the explosion of AI startups end in a bloodbath, or the creation of a new market, namely AI-native businesses themselves? 4. Expertise — Does AI commoditize domain expertise, or amplify it? 5. Distribution — Does AI make distribution easier, via improved content creation, or harder, due to increased noise? Stack the answers correctly and the escape route emerges. Get them wrong and the ladder out of the underclass just got pulled up higher. I'm running the experiment in public to find out which combo actually works.

Is the GPT-5.5 party the new met gala in tech?

@Panda_Hodler @ouraring Yesss man

wow...the @ouraring for smoking is coming

@quxiaoyin yeah the future for employee doesnt look bright

Being a failed founder is now better than being a successful employee. I'm seeing this everywhere. Decagon created a special "founder office." Lovable brags about how many Y Combinator founders joined their team. It's obvious what's happening: companies don't care which big tech company you worked at anymore. They want to know if you've ever started something. Sure, most of these founders failed - successful ones wouldn't be job hunting. But in America, startup failure isn't really risky anymore. In the AI era, the scarce skill isn't technical knowledge. It's owning problems end-to-end. Having initiative. Working like a founder. So if you're still a cog in some big company machine, getting yelled at by your boss, worried about promotions - maybe it's time to start something. Here's the beautiful part: if you fail, you can join Anthropic's founder program. If you succeed, you become the next Anthropic. Either way, you win. This makes sense. Society needs people who can handle entire business functions, not just specialized tasks. That's what founders do. As AI gets better, founders get more powerful. They handle diverse work, they're accountable for results, and AI amplifies all of that. A founder might go from 10x to 100x to 1000x productivity. But specific roles? AI might replace those entirely. The better AI gets, the more obsolete narrow jobs become. Founder might be the best job of the future. Best case: you become the next Sam Altman. Worst case: you join Dario's company and make bank. Pretty good risk profile. #Entrepreneurship #Startups #Founder #AI #TechCareers #Anthropic #YCombinator #FutureOfWork #Innovation

When posh European went to US for the first time

The matter of "selecting people" began to be handed over to the system.

Not a big deal on the surface, but the interesting part is codex is curating the invitee list from the comment area!!

@33b345 100% feel ya

London in the sun is one of the best places on earth as soon as there’s one bad day I’ll leave again

@sarahdrinkwater @DadaJudith would love to connect

Londoners; are you building + thinking about post-AGI/ASI societies? Me + @DadaJudith are running a lunch, mid May, to go deep on this excellent topic. Founders, operators, researchers, artists - great group so far. Few more places. Who should join us?