James Ulan 🗽

Agree that the model companies are likely to buy AI infra and dev tools startups. Potentially in security too. Can see model cos buying key vertical specific startups in areas they're focused on like finance. But I don't think this will be as frequent as dev tools and AI infra acquisitions.

If the next decade’s value really is concentrated in a handful of hyperscalers and model companies worth tens of trillions each, where do you think their next hundred multi-billion-dollar acquisitions come from? Companies building value around AI infra, tooling, and end-user adoption at the edges right now, fundable today at seed valuations. That’s where I’m focused, and it’s exactly why small funds still matter.

@andruyeung Northern and north western Catskills is pretty remote. Great hiking. Good state parks. And beautiful rolling hills. Some small towns there. chatgpt.com/share/6a10512a… If you crave water, Maine. The further North you go the more remote.

Looking for recs. Remote, distraction-free destinations to do a “think week.” Want to immerse myself in reading, writing, and creative thinking. Has anyone done this before? Where did you go?

I see a lot of lazy SpaceX articles and analysis talking about the company’s mediocre growth. This work misses the mark. The value of SpaceX will be driven by FUTURE revenue growth and margin. These will be driven largely by Starlink and their compute business. Starklink satellite launches and thus revenue could accelerate as they get their largest rockets up and running. Starlink’s TAM is massive as it includes the global mobile phone services market as well as Internet services market. And if they can build data centers in space with their own chips and thus significantly better unit economics than AWS, GCP, and Azure, you’re looking at a few trillions in enterprise value. Still, $1.5 trillion is too expense for me given scientific and execution challenges. I’d buy it at half that.

Would you rather buy Anthropic at $1 trillion or SpaceX at $1.5 trillion?

@Trace_Cohen In 2011 Mamoun’s Falafel in the village sold $2.50 Falafel’s. Also, Halal cart food.

What’s your favorite NYC food secret or cheap eat!?

New way of eating gold fish our 3 year old is testing out. Load up the water / gold fish mix and take a swig.

Imagine a world in 10 years where healthcare billing, payments, and price checks (yes price checks) are mostly handled by AI. If you've delt with the healthcare system in any material way this will be absolutely glorious.

@Scaramucci Man, this misses the point. Be good to people so you make their day a little better. Be good to them so you don’t make their day worse. Don’t be good to them because of your own self interest.

I was an uptight 32-year-old who'd just left Goldman. Barely any money when I started my own business. So naturally my pompous little ass joined the Harvard Club — I wanted people to know I went to Harvard. Four years of breakfast meetings, prospect after prospect. Meanwhile Joaquin is busing my table every morning. We'd chat often and I tipped well. One day he comes over and says — Mr. Anthony, you manage money, right? We've had a personal injury situation. My family just came into $35 million. You've always been kind to me. Would you manage it? The guy busing my table had a higher net worth than I did. Be good to people. All of it comes back around.

How easy is it to put teleoperated robots on the moon?

Agree. We’ll be flooded with content as AI gets better. Can already see it in startup blogs where they’re optimizing for SEO and AI SEO. But without high quality unique inputs (deep insights, unique and original perspectives, data) the content will be bad. Really bad Readers will be completely turned off from and allergic to this content an so they’ll seek authentic human authors with useful, differentiated insights.

AI is reducing the marginal cost of creating content, code, and analysis. That makes signal, trust, and judgment more valuable, not less.

@bryantchou Was your child okay?

SF voters! CA voters! Don't get Connie Chan bring her anti-police policies to the state. she has been terrible for residents in my community. NO response from her office when my child was abducted by a crazy homeless person outside a preschool in 2022!

new summation pod with @dmitry140, Perplexity’s Chief Business Officer. we get into how Perplexity Computer started as one Slack channel, why curiosity (not capability) is now AI's scarcest resource, and what every new hire will ask in interviews 6 months from now. youtube.com/watch?v=TyeNSj…

@auren @dmitry140 Love this. More AI operators!

@bryantchou @garrytan Stoked to see you go live. Congrats on taking the plunge, Bryant!

Back at it. At the mothership. Grateful to be amongst the world's best and brightest founders at YC. @garrytan as group partner. He was also Webflow's group partner when we both had less white hair. Can't wait to show ⬜⬜⬜⬜ to the world

Did someone say robots?

Let's go Auren! Would love to hear from @garrytan on what he's applying to YC that he learned from Initialized. And long-term plans for YC. Leaders at Anthropic who don't speak much. Ideally folks at their new consulting arm. Two insiders, one bullish, one bearish, on the feasibility of data centers in space. Someone from one of the world models that has already started commercializing.

we just climbed to the 34th most popular technology podcast in the world. woo hoo! any great suggestions of guests that you would love to hear from???

@garrytan I worked at BJ's in high school. There was no Kodawari there. Though looking back we were proud of the creativity of our burgers. The primary Japanese word that embodies an uncompromising dedication to quality and doing good work for its own sake is Kodawari (こだわり).

I went to BJ's Restaurant last night with my kids. The bathroom was disgusting. The front of house was kind but sloppy and slow. The food upset my stomach and I woke up at 4am this morning because of it. Whoever BJ is, they probably aren't a real person, because everyone acted like nobody's name is on the door. I studied the management history of BJ's. The original founders left after the seventh location. Then it was sold to their accountants. Then it went public. Then the CEO resigned last year after 19 years and was replaced by an interim board member from Darden Restaurants, who was then replaced by a "Chief Concept Officer" promoted to CEO. The CFO also quit. Roaches behind the takeout counter in Coral Springs. Rodent droppings and mold in the ice machine in Pembroke Pines. An "F" retention score on Comparably. Glassdoor reviews that say "management turnover is high... that should say quite a bit about the company culture." Seven layers of management between the person cooking your food and anyone who owns the outcome. General manager reports to area director reports to regional director reports to regional VP reports to SVP of Operations reports to the COO (who started in January) reports to the CEO (who started last year). 218 locations. Founders long gone. Managers rotate every 18 months. The kitchen is run by compliance checklists, not pride. A dirty bathroom is nobody's personal failure because it's nobody's personal restaurant. This is the stewardship crisis in America in one building. In Chinese restaurants, the 老板 (laoban) is there. He tastes the food. He watches the kitchen. His family's reputation is the business. The restaurant is clean not because of health inspectors but because his name is on it. Haidilao built a $30B hot pot chain with less than 10% employee turnover. Servers can give you free dishes without asking a manager. Why? Because they're treated like stewards, not interchangeable parts. The West replaced stewardship with professional management. MBAs who optimize spreadsheets for people they've never met. CEOs who've never touched the product they sell. Politicians who sign the bills and spend the people's money but never checked the money built anything that helped the people they claimed to care about. Founder mode isn't new. It's the oldest idea in Chinese business culture. We just forgot it. The best founders I fund at YC are natural stewards. They own the outcome. They're in the kitchen tasting the food. They care about the bathroom. Most of society's problems are a stewardship crisis. Not a lack of resources or technology or intelligence. A lack of people who give a shit because their name is on it.

Surprisingly impressive performance from Anthropic's excel plugin. Very intelligent. Not slow. Asks great clarifying questions. And most of all, output is solid.

@judegomila Would be interesting if they all slowly converged around 2 hrs.

It's all about minmaxing.