Alex Kwon

i’ve raised millions in my past 3 ventures, from greylock, sequoia, a16z, spc, and others, but i’m convinced that times have changed. bootstrapping to pmf prior to raising the first round is the way (if you even need it). why? the ideal time for raising money is when you don’t need it. then it’s a real business discussion: - money aside, what is the value add? - is the delusion big enough to justify venture backing? prior to pmf, you get rushed. at some points you feel like a snake oil salesman selling the fluffy dream and begging for money. it did feel like that for me at some point. it wastes a lot of time. fundraising is a pure supply and demand game. it can be a fun game to play but only if you got something solid in your hands. *exceptions: ventures that absolutely need a lot of capital upfront e.g. hard tech, space tech,

testflight may take longer than i thought. i first want to use it daily myself, and see if i can indeed use it everyday. i'm the ideal user who builds apps, and want to post daily on instagram/tiktok/youtube to acquire users for what i build. so for now testflight is on hold, but if you really wanna try reply so. grok.com/imagine/post/1…

hmm some of my latest tweets are not showing on my profile anyone else experiencing this?

Remember when Claude tortured you with usage limits, mythos drama, huge bills, unreliable data retention policy and told you you are not “safe” or rich enough to use the most frontier intelligence and must be dumbed down to the lesser version coz they said so? That world is over. - fable is now provided forever with no mythos bullshit - codex gave so many usage resets and subsidy - for the first time ever, enterprises can choose to keep their own data safe, and say no to terms they don’t like - application developers can choose to not get wiped out by Claude(don’t give them data) and can make margins We have made more progress in the past few weeks than the last year. We got there not by the Dario god deciding that’s a better policy for humanity. We got there because of open weights. Open weights gave us options and competition drives progress.

#1 issue whenever i wanna post content: idk wtf to post. 🦅 added AI generated teleprompter that lets you lay over you voice on top of the content you easily make and edit. @grok generates it to combine the most viral tweets in your interested category. result: ⤵️

Had a coffee with a friend who raised multiple times from Sequoia, Greylock, and serval more tier 1 VCs and we talked about capital raising Was awesome to hear some perspective on capital raising from a founder instead of a VC I combined it with some advice I got from other venture backed friends years ago for IG video that did well so I’m sharing here 3 things I learned: 1. Your TAM slide is made up. Everyone in the room knows it. The simpler the deck, the better. Just big vision and team. 2. Fundraising is dating. If a VC invites you to an in-person meeting, tell them you’re too busy. Create scarcity. (This advice came from a diff friend while I was raising years ago actually. 3. I pitched VCs a $200M business last year. They said “that’s cute.” Fund economics need billion dollar outcomes now. SpaceX changed the math. Early stage the actual KPI? Vibes. Aura. Whether they believe you’ll figure it out no matter what.

app polish 89% complete. testflight first batch: 69/69 full

only one of the co founders should pitch. i was writing some angel checks at one point and FOUR co founders joined the first call. intro of each person ate up 20 minutes, and i had no idea wtf their product was. all co founders showing up to every investor call is a very bad use of their time given the team size. it pauses the entire dev/marketing efforts which is more important than pitching. only bring them if asked in the final pitch rounds.

if i were a fresh grad, i’d do this. - convince a cracked best friend to build something dope that both of us are obsessed with - go to sf - retardmaxx and aurablast and raise reasonable pre seed from sf - fly out to bali/thailand for hyper affordable: gym nature food office in one - lock the fuck in - not leave til pmf

will actually double down here: imo SF is explicitly the *wrong* city for 90% of seed-stage startups to relocate to (from my experience with globally distributed founders): > "we're going to SF" because "available resources" is often an unknowing attempt to paper over the cracks vs solving actual business issues > a modestly-funded seed-stage startup that isn't already well-connected in SF (or carries serious cachet) is highly, highly, highly unlikely to hire the best talent in SF (everyone and their grandmother is trying to hire the best SF talent, and they will likely have "better" options). more likely, you will overpay for mid-rank talent (at best) > many fresh founders move to SF and become disillusioned by the noise, and often the herd talks them out of pursuing their original, idiosyncratically good idea (and they pivot to align with the noise) > bye bye runway (slash your runway due to increased expenses with questionable upside. being nimble is a feature of an early startup, and slashing runway kills it).

this toy i made is helping me post YouTube shorts every single day now. reply for testflight ⤵️

@jeiting unfortunate truth. btw jacob, i love revenue cat! almost getting to the paid plan with my apps. just wanted to say thanks for such wonderful product

@startupoppa Many such cases

a decade ago i saw an ex-apple hipster founder who raised a huge round from tier 1 VCs. i went to the startup's happy hour and they presented their 6 months worth of work. "this x-staff engineer from fb crafted this beautiful upper nav bar design from scratch. it's perfection itself." his tone was steve jobs, but the deliverable was.. well.. just a fucking nav bar. pre pmf startup spending six figure $ on senior engineer to perfect a nav bar detail is so overkill that i don't even know what to call it. at the time i was a total noob (still am) and admired the "craftsmanship" but now that i think about it, that mindset was the very trigger for their downfall. ~perfection is good but not on a non-needle moving component of the product.

@mogustine i got an image that broadly looked like it and with manual and grok rendered it!

@rachael__nelson half by me half by grok!

@startupoppa GROK MADE THIS?!

why are people asking if it’s okay to start over at 25? i think it’s okay to start over whenever you want. that’s kind of the beauty of life.

made this app to make myself post on youtube daily through gamification. time to fuck around and find out as i prep the launch. but tired now so gonna relax and go out with some friends. pause your cooking and go enjoying your saturday too friends. peace ✌️

@raphaelschaad @eve_bouff @Life360 @alexkehr right, just that some subtle pros/cons btw timeline/map choices for primary social interaction real estate. alex likely has good insight around the topic

@startupoppa @eve_bouff @Life360 @alexkehr Instant-follow Alex! Thank you! Wrote my MIT thesis on a novel concept of Socio-Spatial maps and I think … every good story starts with a map!

I’m almost certain a map-first new social network would work. Tap into the latent behavior of GenZ naturally sharing their location and supercharge socio-spatial interactions. Connect it with trends like IRL dating, run clubs, sauna meetups etc; an AI-powered Zenly 2.0 of sort.

daily gamified youtubing. yapping and building in parallel to feel it out. part of me thinks there’s something here, part of me thinks i might be the only dau. status: conflicted

@kingkongbtx just playing around, ty for the kind note king!

dude builds a new banger app everytime i read the timeline i feel like you're missing rewards @startupoppa on this app

hear me out. if what i say clicks with you, you are invited to the private beta. 61/69 users on the waitlist now. ⤵️ reply: “toy”