Jon McNeill

I’ve been in stealth mode for the past year doing a new thing for me — I wrote a book!! Scott Cook and @WalterIsaacson separately challenged me to write a book about the secret sauce behind Tesla's success. It’s titled “The Algorithm.” The book will be published on March 24, and you can preorder The Algorithm today: dvx.ventures/the-algorithm

Former Tesla President @jonmcneill breaks down China's strategy to dominate the global auto industry: Every five years, China selects five industries to enter and dominate. They subsidize ~100 market entrants, and let competition play out. That gets whittled down to the top 3–5 winners. In this case: BYD, Geely, and NIO. Then they consolidate capacity under those winners—effectively handing them the infrastructure built by the entire field—and tell them: your job now is to export and dominate these markets. "So—they've gotten subsidies to get started, subsidies to operate and now they're getting capacity for free. And they've proven themselves as the winners in a hyper competitive market. And now they go enter the rest of the world where the competitors are soft." "That's their formula, and they run this formula across all kinds of industries: solar panels, TVs, bicycles, and electric cars. It's a very powerful flywheel."

Easter Egg alert! Signed copies of The Algorithm on the front rack at Barnes and Noble 5th Ave.

@dharmesh Wow.

Woo hoo! Thrilled to share a sneak peek of HubCode -- The Vibe Coding Tool for HubSpot. I talked about this a few weeks ago (which feels like forever). Been cranking on it and am ready to show you the actual app now. Link to video in the comments. Or, just type video.hubcode .com in your browser (it takes you to YouTube). Some notes: 1) This requires no terminal -- runs completely in the cloud. 2) You can vibe code both app cards and full apps that live inside the HubSpot web UI. 3) Generated apps can access data within HubSpot (of course). 4) SUPER EXCITING: Apps can reuse any of the public agents in agent .ai (there are 2,000+ of them). This makes your apps super-powerful because you can access all sorts of data and services. And, you can build your own private agents and access them too. This gives you access to all the major frontier models (GPT, Opus, Gemini), and a bunch of really useful data sources and a ton of other capability. Go to agent .ai to see what's available. The demo shows pulling YouTube videos related to a company right into the app card. 5) You can paste in screenshots or other visuals as part of your vibe coding process (if you haven't done this before, it will feel magical). The HubCode app runs on the agent .ai platform and is in private beta (because this one's going to take some testing and iteration given the power and flexibility). To apply, just go to hubcode .com. This is an early "proof of concept", but will be iterating on it maniacally as I get user feedback. Let me know what you think. All thoughts, ideas, feedback and wishlist items appreciated. FEEDBACK IS A GIFT. Thank you for your support.

@sendilpalani Congrats Sendil - enjoy some well deserved time for yourself. What a great run!

After seventeen incredible years, my latest chapter at Tesla has come to a close. Words won’t do justice to how fulfilling the experience has been, but I’ll try anyway: Tesla barely survived Christmas 2008. I started a few days later in our Finance team, under an ongoing “Tesla Deathwatch”. I slept under my desk in San Carlos, CA at least once, and I wasn’t the only one. There are many companies with hard-working and talented employees, but few have the level of commitment and collaboration of the Tesla team. In retrospect, this should have been an obvious predictor of the successes that would follow. This is as true today as it was in 2009. To my former Finance team: You are heroes within a company full of heroics, given the full-body workout that is your daily job. Take an Accounting or Finance textbook off the shelf and flip to a random page - Tesla is undoubtedly manifesting the underlying concept in the real world. From selling hardware and software under various business models, managing assets of all types (including digital ones), to pursuing continuous investment into an ambitious future throughout the world, you make the impossible look easy. To my colleagues across the rest of the company - I am grateful for the time that you have spent to educate me, including during my stints outside of the Finance team. You have started with one of Tesla’s strongest advantages - the strongest talent across engineering, manufacturing/operations, and customer-facing functions - and have turned it into an unstoppable force via your “one team” attitude. For me, late-night sessions on topics ranging from the physics of a brake rotor to the training of a neural network proved more valuable than any classroom experience that came before, and made the company stronger as a result. Going to work is not supposed to be this much fun. @elonmusk : A heartfelt thanks for your endless love of humanity, and for demonstrating the power of thinking from first principles at all times, about all things. When Abundance is achieved and money ceases to have meaning, these lessons will be the most valuable commodity in our economy. To the outside world, who may not have experienced the above first-hand: Remember that Tesla’s mission is so ambitious and complex that any narrative about the company is naturally an oversimplification. Seek the truth about the company at all times. And support it in any way that you can! There are few higher callings/better uses of your time.

@nrmehta @lestertoes Nick, I'm so, so sorry

@lestertoes I feel for you and you captured a unique part of the suddenness. I wrote this a few days ago about my daughter's death.

cw: suicide when my dad ended his life three years ago, my mom put all his stuff in boxes and rented a storage unit. we haven’t been there since and i went there today and i realized all the unfinished things suicide leaves behind. the boxes were full of his clothes, but-

@SpiceP0dcast @bhalligan ^this. First meeting close rate is incredible. Wiz is live during the first meeting. Demo is live on client systems and shows vulnerabilities. Client has choice to keep it turned on or to shut it off. You can guess what they choose. Genius sales motion.

Mostly they collapsed the process of PoC'ing into full experience of using the product as fully operational. "Wiz can be rolled out in minutes via an agentless, API-centered approach that immediately starts scanning workloads and providing full cloud visibility." I saw them selling from 'the other side' (from AWS) and it was very different than any other supplier.

What are the most innovative plays going in enterprise sales (GTM) these days? Who is doing them?

@sundeep Amen.

If a company wants to win in enterprise sales, the CEO needs travel. This is a positive signal.

@dafrankel 100% agree w this

A few supersized venture funds have been in the news lately, posting eye-popping results. - 2–3× DPI on $1B+ funds - Tens of billions in cash returned to LPs - Plenty of TVPI still to be taken Not long ago, many people were skeptical these funds would work, that they could work. They were dismissed as fee machines, too large to outperform the market. The very best of them have proven those critics wrong. Their model works, at least for their LPs and GPs. However, what’s good for sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) isn’t necessarily good for founders. Pensions funds, SWFs , university endowments, and other large institutional LPs have specific needs. The defining one is scale. These LPs manage tens of billions of dollars. That reality shapes everything. Their models require diversification. VC has historically been a great asset class for capturing upside from technological disruption. However, at their scale, these fiduciaries can’t dabble. They must “deploy.” The only exits that will move the needle are those that have the potential to be added to indices. - $100M exits don’t matter. - A $1B exit barely registers. - The median market cap of a startup that went public in the 2010s (n=166) is ~$2.3B. That would barely make a dent in most of these funds. Only the very largest exits are worth entertaining. Large venture firms respond to these incentives by raising behemoth funds. They aim to find/fund the diamonds in the rough and apply pressure to make them shine. There is nothing at all immoral about this model. However, by the numbers alone, it’s not a great trade for founders. If you’re building one of the dozen or so generational companies of a given vintage, this model works incredibly well. Unfortunately, most startups have to grind and struggle, and a system optimized for producing index-scale outcomes is, by definition, indifferent to everything below that bar. At Founder Collective, we have definitely made trade-offs & first and foremost, they favor founders. I’m aware of how self-serving this reads, but our economic structure supports it. We’ve appeared on the Forbes Midas List nine times. We’ve backed over two dozen $1B+ companies.  And we’ve kept all our funds to date under $100M. That choice carries a cost for sure. We’ve left tens of millions of dollars in fees, and who knows how much carry, on the table. We don’t do this out of charity. We want to back startups like @shieldaitech, @WHOOP, @suno, @Uber, @Coupang, and @TheTradeDesk, which are worth hundreds of billions of dollars, collectively. We want to back founders who reshape markets. However: Our business model doesn’t require startups to do so in order to be successful. There’s a George Merck quote I love: “We try never to forget that medicine is for the people. It is not for the profits. The profits follow, and if we have remembered that, they have never failed to appear.” Substitute founders for patients and that's a good summation of what we believe.

@gstuto @bhalligan Spot on. No notes.

Boston doesn’t have a talent problem. It has an early-stage behavior problem. Recent posts from @bhalligan and @jonmcneill surfaced something I’ve felt for a long time. I wrote something longer on how we fix it. 🔗 @giuseppestuto/note/p-184871981?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=6ilbbr" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">substack.com/@giuseppestuto… Founders shouldn’t have to move west to learn how ambition, risk, and early conviction actually work. We can bring the best of both coasts together if we’re intentional about it.

@bhalligan Deal - Put me in coach!

Love this. No notes. I’ll put something out in the next couple of days. I think “we” can make progress on “some” of this stuff relatively quickly. A bunch of folks are grinding on it behind the scenes. I’m personally moving from calling out the problems (s lot) to try to fix the problems. Let’s team up, my friend!

I've been cautious about weighing into the discussion on the Boston ecosystem, but with people I really respect, like @bhalligan opening the door, here are some of my observations. I don't believe this is about taxes or housing costs (they are both way higher in the Bay Area). With experience in both Boston and Bay Area ecosystems, my take on where Boston needs to close gaps are: 1) VC Risk appetite -- this is so starkly different between markets, it's stunning. We'll show one of our seed companies to multiple Boston VCs and get very detailed questions on sales productivity, sales motion, etc - basically risk mitigation questions. It's seed and these are companies growing 100% with millions of $'s in revenue. We show them to SF VCs and the questions are about the team, how big can this be, and terms are on the table in the first meeting. This has to get fixed -- no amount of adding YC or others to the ecosystem will address the lack of VC aggression in Boston. West Coast VCs -- come east, the market is large and vulnerable to your competition!

@bhalligan Love this!

There’s a lot of movement since this original X post. A bunch of folks are working on things that should help create the very fertile ground for a whole new generation of Boston tech startups to rise. Here are some things I know about. 1. There are conversations w both YC and South Park Commons about cranking up here. We’re at the right level and there’s interest. I’m hopeful one of them steps up. Given founders of 17 of the top 50 ai companies went to school here, I think it’s a good idea for them. 2. @sequoia is doing two new things in Boston. (a) We are spinning up a “Starter Series” where we connect high potential students in Boston to Sequoia, other founders, etc. & (b) We have an opening for an associate/analyst/principal type and I’d like to find that person here in Boston. I’d like someone w a technical degree who went to school in the Cambridge ecosystem in last few years that is outgoing. If you’ve got the perfect referral, hit me up on DM or LI. I’m strict on the profile, so please keep it tight as my inbox runeth over these days. 3. @A16Z is programming a bunch of content in Boston. 4. We are talking to the government about making Boston an even better place to live and thrive for those founders. The average age of a Fortune 50 AI founder is 28, so we need to make it great for that crowd. We had a good first call with the mayor and are scheduling a meeting with the governor. Hats off to them for reaching out. Housing costs, transportation, & fun, oh my. 5. The @Whoop folks were already working on and just launched the "Massachusetts AI Coalition" which is going to bring ai talent to Boston and be a major convener in the city. HubSpot has signed up to be part of this as well as @Suno, @Lovable, @Draftkings, @Wayfair, @Klaviyo, @circle , and a bunch of the next gen startups. Big big props to @willahmed & @Durkin. 6. MIT is working on some amazing new stuff that’s not ready to be talked about yet. 7. Some good signals from @epaley about revisiting the non-compete & non-solicit rules. 8. Discussions with the existing early stage incubators are happening. 9. The Patriots won their first playoff game in 7 years and the Red Sox signed an excellent pitcher. A lot more convening. A lot more west coast energy. #FertileGround Most of this is being done by other people. Since I started all this trouble I thought I’d just document all the great stuff that folks were doing. Thanks everyone. If you’re in Boston and doing amazing stuff that I missed that will help it be a place where the next 28 year old ai superstar founder starts her company, put in the replies.

3/ Pre-orders are open now: dvx.ventures/the-algorithm

2/ So I removed the constraing and created a routine that became critical for getting in the zone. Sitting down to write in the same place every day gave me structure. Every time I sat down in that chair, I knew what I was there to do.

1/ The most important thing for me when writing The Algorithm was this chair. I’m not a natural writer, and waiting for inspiration to hit became a constraint.

@Brian__Gong @benchling @Wayfair @klaviyo @suno Wasabi, Flywire, Rapid7, Akamai, Vertex, Cambridge Mobile Telematics (CMT)

What are the biggest VC-backed startups with ties to Greater Boston? First names that come to mind are @benchling, @Wayfair, @klaviyo, Drift, and @suno

I'm certain that this list is incomplete, so please add your thoughts. We're very lucky to have @epaley on the case in Massachusetts and need entrepreneurs in MA get behind his efforts.

6). Ambition: both founders and VCs in Boston need to default to building big, change the world companies with world class talent. Settling for singles and doubles does not provide the wealth compounding necessary to grow the ecosystem.