Keaton Keller

@nachunja or the more obvious one: anti-trust Block owns Cashapp and PayPal owns Venmo Block not participating makes this deal (possible) purely about the bid, not regulatory approval jitters and yeah sure 40% of the company was laid off earlier this year too.

$XYZ Block was part of the Stripe's $PYPL bid in April. Then pulled out in July. I think it's a good decision. No need to distract itself with a mega M&A when it's just getting focused on its own growth plans.

@nico_laqua Vanguard did it back in the day and I like the angle Corgi’s taking here, rooting for you guys!

We believe that the etf space needs lower fees and high fees frustrate us, which is why if a vertical sector is interesting to us, we essentially re-rate the whole segment, often by launching many funds with 1/3 to 1/2 of the existing expense ratio. It’s a regulated market segment which is our specialty and we became very familiar with buffers and fixed income ETFs from our insurance business to start, and legacy incumbents’ unjustified high fees to us present an opportunity to create value. We have closed 0 ETFs and have no plans to close any in the near future. There is value in having low fee options that allow investors to express themselves. There’s more to it than that, of course, but hopefully his helps with a bit of context.

This is one of the most interesting story in investment management to me right now. I don't think many people with experience in the industry fully understands their business model, so I'm very curious of their game plan (acquisitions coming?).

@Lucas_Shaw and this is on paid/ad-supported UX? any opt-out? games/playables already are frustratingly forced with no way to disable them on the homepage

Netflix taking another page from the YouTube formula: It is adding videos from BuzzFeed, Conde Nast, Hearst and Penske Media. Get ready for lots of Bon Appetit cooking videos on Netflix.

@shai_wininger @Lemonade_Inc brilliant campaign! did you guys create it internally or with an agency?

Some background on our latest (and quite controversial) @Lemonade_Inc ad campaign. It started with a hypothesis I've wanted to test for years: our brains have learned to tune out anything shaped like an ad. Researchers call this "banner blindness." Our subconscious identifies ads by their shape and style, and hides them from our conscious mind before they even register. To bypass this blindness challenge, I wanted to try a different way to communicate with potential customers, one that doesn't look like advertising: "non-ads ads". The graffiti campaign concept was inspired by the voice of our loyal customers, who sometimes sound more like members of a movement: people fed up with "old insurance" who can't go back once they've tried Lemonade. Obviously, no one cares enough about insurance to go out and spray paint their thoughts. That's exactly the absurd part that makes this funny. We're not pretending it's real. The joke is that it obviously isn't. But what often looks simple rarely is. Creating the ads required the team to get back to design basics. We wanted it to feel like real graffiti - so no screens, or apps, or AI. Sloppy on purpose, real spray paint driven by visceral, raw work. Tag placement on billboards had to be realistic, only where a graffiti artist could actually reach - so we had to adjust the art to each billboard specifically. Areas that are too high or too far for someone to reach would stay blank. Also, for non-ads ads to work, the brand name can't be prominent. It needs to be implied, discovered slowly, never obvious at first sight. Too early to say if it works. But people are posting pictures of insurance ads and arguing about them online. Voluntarily. >>

@regulatorynerd we’d see more carrier shots taken whether exclusive or not i think if Block partnered with like a @nothing or had a hand in creating a new phone, with someone else’s brand (to start) makes the most sense. then if things work out a few releases later, they buy the Co

@regulatorynerd 100% agreed and i love their approach / past success with hardware, however, standalone phones can be expensive brands to sustain (e.g Amazon Fire Phone, Microsoft Lumia, etc). sure selling the service makes selling a phone more justifiable, however, if this were true…

Earlier this year, Jack said Cash App was going to do hardware. Wondering if the NFC payment wand is a red herring and Cash App is going to launch an Android phone.

@theneelpopat Super cool, rooting for you guys!

@KeatonInglis Team Keaton ⛳️

Golf has opened up many opportunities for me In May I will be playing 100+ holes in one day to raise money for Junior golf to have those same opportunities You can donate per hole, flat amount or per score: this week your donation is matched 1:1 Thank you for your support🙏 @keaton" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">charity.pledgeit.org/2026BenonaMara…

@jelena_noble @Stablecoin @privy_io @stripe probably my favorite event in recent memory, it was so well done

CMDX, you were spectacular!🫶 Thank you to @Stablecoin @privy_io @stripe team for putting on a fantastic first Stripe Commons for the stablecoin and fintech community to come together and have meaningful IRL conversations amid the noise.. Never been more bullish on this space!

@nadertheory Congrats Nader!

Big news! Last Friday the SEC officially dismissed its enforcement action against me and against DeSo. This was the last legal issue I had to deal with and I am now completely and totally free to innovate and build again, unhobbled for the first time in years. Three important points: 1) This dismissal was NOT a settlement. It was "without costs or fees" to me or anyone involved (extremely rare) because there was no wrongdoing and no actual aggrieved parties. 2) This dismissal was "with prejudice" (also rare). This means they can't bring any related action back against me or DeSo in the future. 3) In the SEC's own words, it was based on "a reassessment of the evidentiary record," meaning the actual facts regarding my innocence were heavily scrutinized and drove the decision. Simply put: The government made a mistake in bringing this case in the first place. The government accused me of misleading an investor who I knew I had a great relationship with, as in they backed me two separate times and I literally had breakfast with them at their house not long prior to the charge. As a result, soon after the charge I found out that not only were they not upset with me, but they wanted the government to go away as badly as I did. As I understand it, the government compelled the investor to do an interview and then took their neutral testimony and represented it as adversarial. It was an alleged fraud with no actual misrepresentation nor any actual aggrieved parties. My lawyers said they'd never seen anything like this, and I think it speaks to how dogmatically anti-crypto the prior administration's SEC was. In the coming days and weeks, I will be hopping on some podcasts to tell the whole story, and boy is there a story to tell. Stay tuned, and if you know anyone who'd like to have me on as a guest please reach out. I'm also excited to start sharing more about what my team has been working on soon. We haven't been twiddling our thumbs. For now, though, I just want to explain why DeSo is so important to me. DeSo is still the only platform on the internet where you can post content directly to a blockchain without fear of censorship, and where you can monetize your content directly with crypto (including stablecoins). It's really quite shocking how in 2026 we not only have virtually no viable alternative for this clearly-important category, but also other important efforts are actually shutting down. The world needs more people working on decentralizing social media, not less. I'm excited to finally be able to share our vision directly again, and to start bringing more people who care about freedom and censorship into our community. What we have built with DeSo is something people take for granted until they really need it, but hopefully we can convince them sooner than that. Lastly I want to say how grateful I am to everyone around me. My family, my friends, my backers, and everyone in the DeSo community. For me, this experience showed me just how trusting, loyal and caring everyone around me really is, and reaffirmed my belief that always trying to do the right thing really does pay off. We're just getting started.

@Bfaviero Huge - congrats!!

@jacksondahl @andrew__reed great pod, really enjoyed

Andrew Reed has quietly become one of the best growth investors of his generation. This is his first long form interview. I talked to @andrew__reed about conviction under pressure, what great founders look like, and how humanity and competitiveness coexist inside @sequoia. Andrew is a growth investor at Sequoia Capital, which he joined at 23. He led his first investment 4 years later into @RobinhoodApp, and he has partnered with @figma, @Klarna, @phantom, @VantaInc, @elevenlabs, @mubi, @Strava, and more. We discuss: - People over spreadsheets, every time - Why great companies often have a few metrics screaming red and others screaming bright green - Investing $200M into Robinhood during the first week of COVID - How he developed conviction on Vanta in 14 seconds - Why the hardest round to invest in is the one after you first invest - Craft as a commercial input - Writing memos through the night as a gut check on conviction - why Sequoia's extreme performance culture is empowering - What he's learned from Doug Leone, Mike Moritz, and Pat Grady Timestamps: 0:00 - Opening Highlights 2:02 - Intro: Andrew Reed 3:50 - Thanks to Notion 5:23 - Start: Humanity, Spotting Weird, and Competitiveness 19:07 - Investing & Great Founders 37:53 - Andrew's Style, Pat Grady, and Continuous Learning 47:31 - Doubling Down and Not Flinching 56:09 - Empathy on Boards, Learning the Real Business, "Expensive" Prices, and Selling 1:07:18 - Managing Ego and Becoming a Leader 1:14:08 - Craft as a Commercial Input, Knowing vs. Feeling, Preparing for Big Days, Becoming a Great Closer 1:28:39 - Sequoia Capital 1:38:57 - Don Valentine, Mike Moritz, and Doug Leone 1:51:29 - Closing Questions @DialecticPod Ep. 39: Andrew Reed - Don't Flinch - is out now, below and on all platforms.

@ryanmyher @GeniusTerminal Next level Team and dedication is an understatement - so proud for y'all ❤️

We care deeply about our community @GeniusTerminal. I've sat for 14+ hours today, answering tickets, chatting with users, and figuring out how we can provide the most value. I am so excited to build this community piece by piece.

@NWischoff Thank you so much for posting this

Lessons I've learned this year from running an early stage VC firm and being a human trying to do it all (all in the latest newsletter linked below): Don’t be too conservative: TLDR: 2025 kicked me in the teeth. We made 13 investments, met thousands of companies and feedback for myself from 30,000 feet is that we were a little too conservative. We passed a lot on great founders based on price. A few keep me up at night. Every other year that we have been investing, giving the first term sheet to a team meant a lot and our chances of winning the deal were over 90%. That was not the case this year. Moving first meant your chances were around 60%. Every blue-chip decided to swim at seed on top of the thousands of early stage funds I still know nothing about. Don’t get me wrong, I love competition, but this job is largely a math problem. Our model is 10% ownership and typically for sub $2M checks which means $30M+ post breaks our model. Not that I believe we settled at all for the deals we did do, but we walked on a handful of what I still believe to be great companies because they were priced sky high and we wouldn’t match. Sure, we lose for other reasons like not moving quickly enough/being late to the deal but price was a real pain this year. Most early stage funds decided to take 5% ownership and to do the deals, which again, if you do the math, in some cases with a large enough exit, it can return a fund, but I’m not convinced this is worth it most of the time. The best funds in the world have humble beginnings: I went on many walks with GPs at a handful of the best firms in the world today. A very common theme from all of them: they had very humble beginnings that they never talk about publicly. More specifically, many that manage billions spent a few years stitching together SPVs because no LPs believe in them yet to invest in a fund. You only ever hear the beginning of their story on podcasts to be some flashy first deal that exited massively. They skipped Chapter One. I think of my $5M fund I raised back in 2021, look at the $75M in AUM and candidly feel like a pathetic loser that will never cross the chasm. No father to anchor me, no signal from a wealthy family that grew up in Atherton. The truth is, it takes time. We are in incredible companies that need time to bake. Never be discouraged by the journey or your starting place in line. Don’t quit. No one knows what the “perfect” founder looks like: Every year I survey the portfolio, rank the companies from who is performing best and who isn’t doing well. Every year this shifts dramatically. Some years it seems obvious: top CS degrees, technical, chip on shoulder. Others make no sense. Non-technical PM founder, no childhood trauma, decent IQ and very high EQ, total dog in them. The world is headed where it’s headed, and no one knows where that is: My favorite part of this timeline we are living in is the amount of content you can absorb online. The smartest people on any given topic write incredible blog posts, sit for long interviews and let you inside of their mind. Even better, not a single “expert” is aligned on the future of AI, enterprise adoption of it, are data centers being overbuilt, if we are in a bubble, etc. Stay the course, whichever yours may be. SF is the probably best place to build, if you are in build mode: If (when) I had a billion + in net worth, would SF be my top choice of places to live? Probably not. But its the very best place to be when you are still at the peak of your career, right on cutting edge of your potential and want to accomplish incredible things. I moved back five months ago and the density of brilliant minds and your access to anyone on any topic at any moment is unbeatable. I wasted countless total days of my life on planes traveling to CA. Best way to be on a fast track (though there is no real fast track) is to get here and get in the mix on a daily basis and let things compound. Access to the best investors, the best founders, best LPs, all here. If you will do whatever it takes to win, I highly recommend the “sacrifice”. The bigger house won’t solve a single problem: I have journal entries from when I was 12 years old, living in a tiny 1200 sf home with 7 people, dreaming of the white picket fence, the big house on a few acres, THE home to host everyone I love. Earlier this year I moved my family from a home we lived in for five years that we loved, modest 3,800 sf (for Nashville), .25 acres, cute. I was having more financial success from a few personal investments and wanted something to show for it, the thing I dreamed about. We find this house across town, 8,000 sf on an acre, right next to my favorite coffee shop. This is it I told myself. I hired movers that ended up breaking 50% of our personal items, had a horrible 5 day move in. We were under tornado watch on day 6 and had to wake up our 10 month old and move him to the basement multiple nights. The house was new construction and very loud, appliances that made no sense for someone that actually cooked (tiny fridge for one, appliances that were so fancy you had to read a 500 page manual to get the over on), etc. It’s a complete mess somewhere at all times. You either spend all of your time cleaning or hiring people who never leave your house. It was a revolving door of people doing things, too many stairs for a small child and poorly insulated. It was so clear we made a huge mistake. We left our home because I wanted “more”. Needless to say, we moved to SF. I don’t know that we ever would have left Nashville if I didn’t tear us from a home that we loved, but I do think it was the right thing. No big huge fancy houses in SF or ever again! You don’t need them. The unexpected beauty of being with someone for almost 10 years: I think my husband and I can honesty say this was the most challenging year of our lives together. It’s been almost 10 years. We are both growing our own companies, moved twice, one huge move to SF with a one year old and my parents. Raising even a single child is a huge endeavor, especially when he wakes up one minute after 5am. We disagreed on a few important things this year when we are usually very aligned on values. I used to think when we first started dating that at any big intersection where we weren’t aligned perhaps we weren’t meant to be. Dating is such a funny thing, constantly evaluating the other partner on marriage material, do we have a real future together, etc. But when you make that commitment, and you spend years of trials of miles together, these forks in the road are an incredible opportunity to get to know each other again. Kids are a gift but they also ruin the closeness you had for a period of time. There are no late nights staying up talking about things anymore. I’ve had numerous moments this year where I’ve never been more sure that the one thing I’ve gotten really right in my life is who I married. 10 years grants you this silent understanding and acceptance - you have so many years of compounding proof of we will figure this out together. What a sacred gift in this life, especially when most things are so fleeting. Daily inputs will take you anywhere you want to go: I am extremely hard on myself and feel like a pathetic idiot who has accomplished nothing in my life and so I challenged myself to sit down and make a list of things I haven’t accomplished in the past that I put everything into. The short answer: almost nothing. In college, I ran 80 miles per week to go to the NCAAs and break the 5k and 6k record at my college. I did both in three years. Every job I’ve ever really wanted I’ve gotten. Every fund I’ve gone out to raise, I’ve raised. One thing I have yet to do is run a sub 3 hour marathon, but I did run 3:09 in Boston and I’ll take that for now. Sure, some small things don’t workout, but anything I’ve put countless hours, days, months into without quitting have worked out. You are what you manifest - AND what you work at daily.

@ntrlsk @hiFramework Congrats!

Thrilled to share that I’m joining @hiFramework. After many years trading volatility, I'm excited to take a longer term view on markets and people. Feel free to get in touch.

@braveben Regulatory permitting. Waymo can do driverless rides w/o a human (in CA, NV, AZ) whereas Robotaxi needs a human operator

@yo @Namecheap’s free and it’s included in the domain’s annual registration cost

NetworkSolutions charges $2.25/mo to forward your domain... I miss Google Domains, these competitors are all awful

@Keller All organic? If so, masterclass content and rightfully deserved

@parkerconrad Great pod, highly enjoyed. Thanks for the tips on your hiring process too 🙏

Brian is an incredibly talented interviewer and definitely got me chatting and spilling the tea. I'm sure Long Strange Trip is going to be a hugely successful podcast and can't wait to see the next episodes. 🙏