Tom Lombardozzi

Inspired by @packyM's recent essay, I have been constantly looking for startups that are reinventing industries. @tryoffdeal and @UseCorgi are two of the better examples. Taking from @ganeumann's essay on containerization, I explained why these companies need to keep building.

@davecyen kind of like this batchpro.co

The YC software team is undefeated. For investors, you now get personalized lists based on your interests and past investments. They’ve also recently released YC Agent, chat with founders, a feed for new launches and announcements, and a CRM built-in to the investors portal. Keep cookin @ycombinator

Since 1990, rates have been below 3.5% for roughly 1 out of every 10 weeks. 3% rates were the exception.

The @posthog install with AI workflow may be one of the best product workflows I've used in a long time

@yuris @ycombinator See them all here: batchpro.co

The latest YC batch made me update my priors on build speed. YC batches are a quarterly snapshot of what technology makes possible, and it's clear something materially changed over the last 3-4 months. W26 teams are shipping _much_ faster than F25 and prior.

Great piece by Matthew here

Dropping this at 3pm on a Friday is incredible

If only we didn't start 2-647-1 at home we would be in a wildcard spot.

@credistick Feels like this could be a bear case against investing in most YC startups

Hot categories have a seductive halo effect. LPs increase the available capital, the volume of comps grows, fundraising friction falls. Capital flows, everything goes up and to the right. In these moment, most managers seem to forget that the job of venture capital is managing risk. If venture was a perfect market, all investors would have access to roughly the same returns regardless of stage. But they don't, because it isn't. Earlier investors consistently deliver better returns than later investors because they are able to exploit how inefficiently the market prices risk. Simply put, properly managing more risk means generating greater returns. "Venture capital and buyout funds with more idiosyncratic risk exhibit higher returns. For venture capital funds, the quartile with the lowest idiosyncratic risk has a quarterly alpha of -1.09%, the highest an alpha of 2.52% per quarter." The Price of Diversifiable Risk in Venture Capital and Private Equity, by Michael Ewens, Charles M. Jones and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf "More risk", in this context, means investing in novel ideas, moonshots, scientific breakthroughs. Frontier technology. Outliers. Idiosyncracy. It does not mean jumping on a hot category where idiosyncratic risk is eliminated by herd dynamics. "Legible to capital" = alpha erosion. Obvious to idiots.

You can tell which landing pages are built by AI and which aren’t today. I’d pay $300 for a brand designer to spend 30 minutes on a call with me and give me fonts/color/elements I should use on my side projects.

Feels unnecessary but okay

Exciting opportunity in the high-finance world, but also curious if this can leak down to the active trader world.

@shayanshafii @gentlycarved Hi, I'd like to report a murder

Normally don't respond to stuff but this one feels worth my time. A few things: 1) I'm 30 2) I was the resident music critic for the Michigan Daily from 2015-18, where I actually wrote a national award winning essay on Kanye's music catalog as it pertains to various schools of architecture <michigandaily.com/arts/music/yee…> 3) I also wrote the official review for The Life of Pablo <michigandaily.com/arts/music/lif…> 4) I spent a day with Lil Yachty and wrote a profile on him in 2016 before he had really crossed over <michigandaily.com/arts/music/lil…> 5) Lastly, I also had my own music blog called Lettermans from 2018-2024, which was recognized by Complex Magazine and Pigeons and Planes. It was here that I published Lil B's first and most comprehensive interview in years, alongside folks like Benjamin Edgar and Egon Alapatt. There was probably a ~10 year stretch of my life where folks recognized me more for my music and culture work than for my work in tech. Very funny how a job and a few tech twitter jokes can change that. You could have figured this out by Googling me but I won't hold that against you. Enjoy the likes.

It’s really funny to me when tech compares anything to music, culture etc. like you really don’t even know what you’re saying. you’re saying nothing. also you’re like 19 what do you even know about kanye west

@charu1603 @ycombinator @FenrockAI @MichaelFenrock batchpro.co/company/fenroc…

🥁 And we're live on @ycombinator! Fenrock AI (@FenrockAI) is building back office AI agents for banks. Process loans in minutes. Resolve customer complaints in seconds. Investigate 10x AML and fraud cases per analyst. 💰 My cofounder @MichaelFenrock built Apple's first privacy ML and invented novel techniques to train ML models without exposing private data. I've previously founded and scaled a healthcare startup to 6M users and 100 employees. We also built one of the first ai agents ever. Grateful to serve the backbone of our financial infrastructure! ycombinator.com/launches/PeY-f…

Read more about Smack above. Investors in Smack include: @asenkut (@felicis), @gsands (@costanoavc), @MrChrisMorales (@p72vc), @elizabeth (@ScribbleVC, @BloombergBeta, & more.

Along my research, I found @smackaistack (founded by @andymarkoff) who had just raised Seed and Series A funding. They are building specialized models trained on synthetic warfare environments grounded in real-world physics and adversary tactics. This will be the intelligence layer that can power decision making in seconds instead of days.

America is winning the next arms race. I've been watching the defense technology space be built out for the past few years, and consolidated my thoughts below. Some leading voices in the space I'm following: @MichelleVolz (@pax_ventures) @KTmBoyle (@a16z) @zebulgar (@foundersfund) @wolfejosh (@Lux_Capital) @JTLonsdale (@8vc) @barisakis (@humancapital)

@daltonc @Standard_Cap learn about YC winter batch here: batchpro.co

A message for YC W26 founders