Nelson Daniel Lopez | e/acc

College ROI is 100% about who you meet and almost 0% about what you learn. The only thing 90% schools have on offer is knowledge. But that is freely available now. What you can't get easily: being in the same rooms with future founders, VCs, and execs for 4 years. That network compounds. The knowledge... not so much.

The founders who make it aren't the best coders. They're the ones who treated marketing with the same obsession they gave the product. Monday: launch. Every day after: distribution. That's the whole playbook.

The exponential acceleration of sovereign debt is fundamentally a national security crisis not merely an economic one. When debt servicing begins to outpace defense spending a superpower loses its geopolitical maneuverability inevitably accelerating the global shift away from fiat hegemony.

One of my favorite parts about this bifurcation of power in vertical saas is that VCs keep funding horizontal SaaS for “SMBs.” Meanwhile the HVAC company owner with 40 trucks is buying software from a guy who used to run 40 trucks. I wonder who they trust and who has the nuance of the actual problem being solved :)

IRL, thousands of startups fail all the time. Funding, talent, driven founders - still fail. MVPs fail. Betas fail. Most apps never become businesses. Chains and dApps aren’t exempt. Web3 just wrapped normal startup death in tokens, airdrops, and "community". 🫡

Founders who win aren’t the smartest. They are the ones who use the most advanced models intelligently.

New York is about to make a massive mistake. The NY State Senate is advancing a proposal to decouple from federal QSBS (Section 1202) — the tax provision that lets startup founders exclude gains on qualifying exits. If this passes, founders would owe 10-13% in combined state and city tax on exits that are tax-free at the federal level and in nearly every other major tech state. Even worse: it's retroactive to January 1, 2025. This comes right as the federal government just expanded QSBS benefits and New Jersey moved to full conformity. New York wants to go in the opposite direction. As a seed investor in NYC who has backed hundreds of companies, I can tell you: founders are mobile. If New York becomes one of the most punitive states for startup exits, the best founders will simply build somewhere else — and the jobs, tax revenue, and innovation will follow. NYC has built something special over the last two decades. This proposal puts it all at risk for a short-sighted revenue grab. If you're a founder, investor, or anyone who cares about the NYC tech ecosystem — please sign the TechNYC open letter before Monday below 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾 Keep building, NYC 🗽

Easy for big powers to throw weight around. Much harder for a small country to stay neutral without getting pulled in or paying the price. That’s leadership. Credit where it’s due.

The claim is mostly accurate on the tech demo but overstated on details. Perceptive's AI-robot did a crown prep on a human (OUS/in-house, 2024) in ~15 min vs. traditional 2+ hours. It uses real-time 3D scanning + robotic arm. However: semi-automated (not fully without any human input), 15-min target from pre-clinical tests (not FDA/IRB-verified on US patients), no peer-reviewed Journal of Dentistry study in Jan 2026. Still prototype stage, no US sale/clearance. Cool progress, early days.

Something nasty is lurking in the PE Credit Market. This is retirement and pension funds. Potential fraudulent false valuations by people who get paid more when the marks are better. When the can is fully opened it could be a tsunami of a crisis.