Roger Teran

“I made something people want.” @rogerlarach 🇭🇳🇸🇻 this is awesome. thank you @ycombinator - you guys changed us

Another related fallacy is to think that you have to start a startup now because there's a boom happening now, and if you wait too long all the good ideas will have been done. I've been hearing this line for 20 years and it has never been true.

@Parisianaes1 a cochon

Who are you when nobody's watching? Me :

Unpopular opinion: half of parenting is learning to regulate yourself, not your child.

The vibes in Miami feel pretty fantastic right now. The outcomes is the best I’ve seen. Founders are getting funded. Companies are getting built. Investors are showing up. People are taking real swings. Most importantly, founders are helping each other. That part matters the most. Miami tech has always had a chip on its shoulder. For years, people asked “is there actually anything happening there?” and the answer was annoying because there was, it was just early, uneven, and hard to explain without sounding defensive. Now you can feel the compounding. A founder raises and immediately starts making intros for the next founder. Someone gets a customer and shares the playbook. Someone meets a great operator and passes them to three other companies. Someone writes a small angel check into a person who probably would have been ignored by the traditional network. That’s how ecosystems actually get built. People helping people climb. As a result: 1. The ladder here feels more open. In a lot of places, tech feels like a prestige maze. Right school, right company, right fund, right dinner, right group chat. Miami is still messy enough that the doors are not all locked yet. A kid from FIU can meet a founder. A first-time founder can get in front of angels. An operator can become a founder. A community builder can become the connective tissue for an entire scene. That’s special. 2. The energy is ambitious without being miserable. People are working hard, and it doesn’t feel like everyone is trying to win by making everyone else feel behind. There’s less “I missed the last wave” energy. More “what can I build, who can I help, and how do we make this city more legit” energy. That is a much healthier default. 3. The wins create mobility. When a Miami company raises, hires, exits, or even just survives long enough to become credible, the whole city gets a little stronger. Employees learn. Founders recycle capital. Operators level up. Angels get created. Customers become references. People outside elite tech networks get a shot. This is the part I care about the most. Tech should be one of the last great engines of social mobility. Miami still feels like a place where that can be true. 4. The best people here are still accessible. There is ego everywhere. It’s tech. Let’s be serious. Most of the newly transplanted rich folks are meeting local founders (Larry Page had the founder of an AI co over recently) & investing heavily in Miami (ie Citadel, Palantir grants). That is new. And fragile. The second an ecosystem becomes too status-obsessed, it starts eating itself. Miami has a real chance to avoid that because the culture is naturally relationship-driven. People here remember who helped them. They remember who showed up. They remember who was around before it was obvious. People will still roll their eyes at Miami tech. That’s fine. They rolled their eyes at crypto. They rolled their eyes at remote work. They rolled their eyes at Florida. They rolled their eyes at half the people who ended up building real things. Miami does not need to be SF. Miami has its own edge: immigrant ambition, sales culture, hospitality, finance, crypto DNA, Latin America access, weird builders, local pride, and a community that still feels small enough for one generous person to make a meaningful difference. That is a very good setup. The outcomes are getting better. The founders are getting sharper. The capital is getting more serious. The network is getting denser. And the best part is that it still feels early enough that anyone serious can show up and matter. Pretty fantastic vibes tbh.

when spacex was getting started, the first and last men to walk on the moon testified before congress against it. gene cernan told congress commercial space companies "do not yet know what they don't know." he said the boeings and lockheed martins were "the folks who have been working on everything we've done for the last 50 years. they know how it can be done." neil armstrong said he was "not confident" the newcomers could achieve their goals. together with jim lovell they warned it would put america on "a long downward slide to mediocrity." spacex now launches more rockets than every country on earth combined. the experts will always tell you it can't be done. build it anyway!

Quick update: not dead. $FIG Q1 results: → 46% YoY revenue growth, accelerating for the 2nd straight quarter → Net Dollar Retention Rate increased to 139%, our highest rate in over two years → Raising 2026 revenue guidance for the year Design matters more than ever.

@billclerico Awesome pic

From the archives, here's a photo of me sending my resignation email from investment banking. Note the diet sprite, financial calculator and blackberry.

17 years ago I sat in a Palo Alto garage and interviewed for YC funding — during the depths of the Great Recession. Recently, I went back to that house and talked to @paulg and @jesslivingston of @ycombinator about building things that survive. First episode of the @disasterproofHQ podcast --> youtu.be/KBjtRJSblMU

Affirm CEO @mlevchin says that it's a great time to major in computer science. "If you're ultra-deep into really understanding how software is made...if you really, really get it, you're going to be a 10,000x engineer. You will be worth your weight in gold. It's very, very powerful to be a deep expert." "I would strongly suggest that being deep is great, majoring in computer science is great (if you love computer science). This is the time to major in whatever it is you see yourself being as deep as possible. Because then you will become absolutely invaluable to the world."

People at major AI labs (using internal models) 3-4 months ahead of startup silicon valley engineers SV founders/eng 3-6 months ahead of NY NY founders/eng 6-12 months ahead of rest of world Most people have no idea how fast AI shifting as 1-2 years behind SOTA "The future is here, just not equally distributed" - Robert Heinlein

@AOC The idea that all billionaires got their money by exploiting peopl doesn't hold up to any scrutiny. JK Rowling wrote books about cheeky wizards. I invented a better way to make virtual reality headsets and games to play on them. We just made things people wanted.

The confounding factor is that virtually every big company is overstaffed by 2-4x and has been for decades. AI is the catalyst/excuse to finally fix that. Of course nobody wants to say this out loud.

Accurate

@bilalfarooqui @shashankxgs tier -1 perhaps

@shashankxgs SoftBank is a growth fund not really VC

Lots of DMs asking “who is a tier 1 VC” so in no particular order: - a16z - thrive - general catalyst - accel - benchmark - sequoia - founders fund - kleiner - first round - lightspeed - bessemer Who did I miss?

@typesfast @ConorNeu 🫡

@ConorNeu If you just say “no” every time wouldn’t you be right way more often than 86% of the time?

I'm personally invested in a company that can tell you whether you will have a heart attack in the next 12 months. With 86% certainty. From a blood test. Unreal value. They are weak at scaling. Someone please buy this and take it to the masses.

work on important problems.

@Cernovich a decade for a 50 year old is proportionally equivalent to a year for a 5 year old

Extremely concerning how quickly time moves the older you get.

This paragraph by Richard Feynman hits so hard: “Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don’t think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn’t stop you from doing anything at all.”

@brian_armstrong "The best way to do something 'lean' is to gather a tight group of people, give them very little money, and very little time." — Bob Klein, chief engineer of the F-14 program

Be boring. Live your life your way. Go to bed at 9. Wake up at 5. Eat simple foods. Go for 2 hour walks. Read 900 page books. Avoid drama. The world chases excitement. More noise. More excitement. But you chase real. Things that align with your soul. A calm routine. A quiet mind. A healthy body. A small circle. A private life. Shit that make you feel like you. Depth over noise. Always...

I’m entirely convinced that the key to life and happiness is having low expectations for things outside your control and high expectations for things within it.