Jake Chapman 🇺🇸🚀 ✨🇺🇸

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Jake Chapman 🇺🇸🚀 ✨🇺🇸

Jake Chapman 🇺🇸🚀 ✨🇺🇸

@vc

Working at the nexus of national security & VC. Father to a superhero. Lets live forever and travel the stars ✨ Partner @marque_vc & Adjunct @randcorporation

San Francisco, CA Katılım Haziran 2015
2.2K Takip Edilen24.2K Takipçiler
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Jake Chapman 🇺🇸🚀 ✨🇺🇸
1/ Here is how the abomination that is the AT-ST came about. Spoiler alert, it comes down to compromises & mission creep. "Initial Requirement: We need a small dropship deliverable armored sentry tower (ST) for forward operating bases with space for 4 sentries" An early sketch:
Jake Chapman 🇺🇸🚀 ✨🇺🇸 tweet media
Jim Sharkey (@madscienceskill)@madscienceskill

Now that Andor has given us a glimpse inside the Empire’s bureaucracy and military industrial complex, I want a “Pentagon Wars” style movie about the development of the AT-ST and the corners that were cut which resulted in it becoming easy prey for a bunch of Ewoks! #StarWars

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Jake Chapman 🇺🇸🚀 ✨🇺🇸 retweetledi
Visegrád 24
Visegrád 24@visegrad24·
Iranian regime propaganda channels start threatening Ukraine with ballistic missile strikes by Iran. The threats come after Ukraine struck 2 vessels in the Caspian Sea last night which were used for transporting military cargo between Russia and Iran
Visegrád 24 tweet media
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Jake Chapman 🇺🇸🚀 ✨🇺🇸 retweetledi
Jake Chapman 🇺🇸🚀 ✨🇺🇸
@NickPinkston Everyone who knew about Epstein’s activities and hung out with him or supported the activities should receive swift justice. Not everything has to be about Trump and my distaste for Reid has nothing to do with him being a democrat. Your whataboutism here does you a disservice.
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Jake Chapman 🇺🇸🚀 ✨🇺🇸
Everyone thinks they’re an above average driver. Every VC thinks they’re an above average picker. It’s only true for a tiny fraction. To be above average requires one of the following 1) Analytical asymmetry (same data as everyone else but you are better at understanding the implications) 2) information asymmetry (you have more/better data than everyone else). 3) value add (you invest in average companies but make them incredible through your (fill in the blank) The problem: Number 1 is laughably hubristic. Dunning Krueger in full effect. You aren’t competing against a random pool, you’re competing against a pool of pretty smart, well read, experienced people whose identity is wrapped up in their professional success. 1% or less of investors can credibly claim this and *most* work at Founders Fund or Sequoia or Khosla. (There are a handful of friends at smaller firms or firms who choose to remain under the radar who qualify but the point is that the numbers is vanishingly slim.) Number 2 is the reason VC exists. The advantage the asset class has is that investors are privy to material non-public information. In the 80s and 90s that was probably enough but now the pool of VCs is broad enough that semi-efficient pricing happens. True alpha info comes from knowing a sector better or a founder better than everyone else and like number 1 above, only a tiny percent of VCs actually qualify. I’d say 2% - 3% Number 3 is probably the most self centered delusion investors have. I’m not one of the people who thinks that VCs can’t add value but I do think it’s incredibly rare to offer difference making value. Helping resolve co-founder conflicts, supporting a key hire, making an intro to the right person at the exact right moment; all of these things can and do move the needle for founders but rarely are they dispositive and they’re offset but how incredibly value destructive many investors can be through their bad advice and over bearing interference. I’d say at most 3%-5% of VCs are different makers here. Net it all out and 5% - 10% of VCs have a real structural advantage. That’s enough for about 5% of firms to be exceptional and probably another 10% of firms to be above average (because they have 1 partner propping up the rest). That tracks with where and how the alpha concentrates in venture. Now… if you’re a VC ask yourself which one of the 3 things above you can confidently say about yourself and understand that 95% of you are lying to yourself 😂
Pavel Prata@pavelprata

a few insights after talking to a bunch of VCs and LPs this week: 1/ a large number of EMs are trying to build concentrated portfolios without any real rationale behind it. Mostly they're either chasing the prevailing narrative ("we're in an era of concentration now!"), or bending to LP mandates that demand high-conviction portfolios of just 10-15 positions and won't write a check otherwise, or simply copying the mega-fund playbook – funds that concentrate their own bets in high-capex AI labs as a way to deploy the billions they've raised. But copying the model without understanding the reasoning behind it is destructive, and very few managers can actually execute a concentration strategy well. 2/ even among the best seed investors historically, only a small share of deals ends up returning the fund. One GP pointed to USV as an example, where that figure was around 7-8%. For a strong emerging manager today, his estimate was closer to 4-5%. His core argument: in the AI era, that picking rate at seed will only get worse, since the number of companies is growing and the pace of disruption is accelerating. The implication is that LP appetite for concentration may simply be out of step with what's actually optimal portfolio construction for most seed managers. 3/ many GPs are aggressive about growing fund size from Fund I to Fund II, or Fund II to Fund III, and few can really justify it. If you raise a $25M fund and then want $50M, then $150M – that's a major red flag for LPs unless there's a clear rationale. Scaling up fund size forces one of three tradeoffs: > you dilute focus by moving into later rounds (seed to Series A) > or you increase the number of portfolio companies (without the operational bandwidth to actually manage that many, or the ability to physically write that many checks within a 3-4 year investment period, given brand constraints) > or you push for higher ownership (which isn't always feasible either, since it means either leading rounds or hunting for deals where you can pay less which nudges managers to optimize for price over deal quality) 4/ the market got very excited about the upcoming SpaceX mega-IPO, but DPI from that exit hasn't really hit yet, and the liquidity window probably won't open before year-end. It'll likely take until early next year, along with a few more IPOs, before sentiment fully shifts – though plenty of mega-platforms are already raising billion-dollar funds off the back of it (e.g. Menlo, which raised $3B thanks to Anthropic bet). But most LPs, though, are already planning their budgets around early 2027. 5/ a separate, interesting pattern: some LPs and FoFs are increasingly looking past a manager's "brand" and toward their apprenticeship lineage instead. One LP I spoke with framed it as a bet on elite apprentices – it matters less whether someone formally came out of Sequoia or Benchmark or another tie-1 platform fund, and more whether they worked closely under one specific strong partner and absorbed their taste, judgment, network, and actual underwriting craft. The logic is that VC is still fundamentally an apprenticeship business, and if an EM was genuinely "under the wing" of an exceptional investor, the LP is getting a piece of their whole school of thought. 6/ one more LP insight I heard more than once: builders tend to convert better than institutional allocators. People who've built companies themselves generally have a better feel for what a small VC fund actually offers (access, judgment, network, founder quality) and are more willing to back a manager even without full institutional packaging. Institutional allocators default to "no" more often as their decision-making is more inertia-driven and career-risk averse, so it's simply easier to go with a familiar brand than back a niche or emerging manager, so EMs often find traction faster with builders, operators, and entrepreneurial FOs first, rather than trying to look "institution-ready" to everyone right out of the gate.

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Jake Chapman 🇺🇸🚀 ✨🇺🇸
Everyone thinks they’re an above average driver. Every VC thinks they’re an above average picker. It’s only true for a tiny fraction. To be above average requires one of the following 1) Analytical asymmetry (same data as everyone else but you are better at understanding the implications) 2) information asymmetry (you have more/better data than everyone else). 3) value add (you invest in average companies but make them incredible through your (fill in the blank) The problem: Number 1 is laughably hubristic. Dunning Krueger in full effect. You aren’t competing against a random pool, you’re competing against a pool of pretty smart, well read, experienced people whose identity is wrapped up in their professional success. 1% or less of investors can credibly claim this and *most* work at Founders Fund or Sequoia or Khosla. (There are a handful of friends at smaller firms or firms who choose to remain under the radar who qualify but the point is that the numbers is vanishingly slim.) Number 2 is the reason VC exists. The advantage the asset class has is that investors are privy to material non-public information. In the 80s and 90s that was probably enough but now the pool of VCs is broad enough that semi-efficient pricing happens. True alpha info comes from knowing a sector better or a founder better than everyone else and like number 1 above, only a tiny percent of VCs actually qualify. I’d say 2% - 3% Number 3 is probably the most self centered delusion investors have. I’m not one of the people who thinks that VCs can’t add value but I do think it’s incredibly rare to offer difference making value. Helping resolve co-founder conflicts, supporting a key hire, making an intro to the right person at the exact right moment; all of these things can and do move the needle for founders but rarely are they dispositive and they’re offset but how incredibly value destructive many investors can be through their bad advice and over bearing interference. I’d say at most 3%-5% of VCs are different makers here. Net it all out and 5% - 10% of VCs have a real structural advantage. That’s enough for about 5% of firms to be exceptional and probably another 10% of firms to be above average (because they have 1 partner propping up the rest). That tracks with where and how the alpha concentrates in venture. Now… if you’re a VC ask yourself which one of the 3 things above you can confidently say about yourself and understand that 95% of you are lying to yourself 😂
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Pavel Prata
Pavel Prata@pavelprata·
a few insights after talking to a bunch of VCs and LPs this week: 1/ a large number of EMs are trying to build concentrated portfolios without any real rationale behind it. Mostly they're either chasing the prevailing narrative ("we're in an era of concentration now!"), or bending to LP mandates that demand high-conviction portfolios of just 10-15 positions and won't write a check otherwise, or simply copying the mega-fund playbook – funds that concentrate their own bets in high-capex AI labs as a way to deploy the billions they've raised. But copying the model without understanding the reasoning behind it is destructive, and very few managers can actually execute a concentration strategy well. 2/ even among the best seed investors historically, only a small share of deals ends up returning the fund. One GP pointed to USV as an example, where that figure was around 7-8%. For a strong emerging manager today, his estimate was closer to 4-5%. His core argument: in the AI era, that picking rate at seed will only get worse, since the number of companies is growing and the pace of disruption is accelerating. The implication is that LP appetite for concentration may simply be out of step with what's actually optimal portfolio construction for most seed managers. 3/ many GPs are aggressive about growing fund size from Fund I to Fund II, or Fund II to Fund III, and few can really justify it. If you raise a $25M fund and then want $50M, then $150M – that's a major red flag for LPs unless there's a clear rationale. Scaling up fund size forces one of three tradeoffs: > you dilute focus by moving into later rounds (seed to Series A) > or you increase the number of portfolio companies (without the operational bandwidth to actually manage that many, or the ability to physically write that many checks within a 3-4 year investment period, given brand constraints) > or you push for higher ownership (which isn't always feasible either, since it means either leading rounds or hunting for deals where you can pay less which nudges managers to optimize for price over deal quality) 4/ the market got very excited about the upcoming SpaceX mega-IPO, but DPI from that exit hasn't really hit yet, and the liquidity window probably won't open before year-end. It'll likely take until early next year, along with a few more IPOs, before sentiment fully shifts – though plenty of mega-platforms are already raising billion-dollar funds off the back of it (e.g. Menlo, which raised $3B thanks to Anthropic bet). But most LPs, though, are already planning their budgets around early 2027. 5/ a separate, interesting pattern: some LPs and FoFs are increasingly looking past a manager's "brand" and toward their apprenticeship lineage instead. One LP I spoke with framed it as a bet on elite apprentices – it matters less whether someone formally came out of Sequoia or Benchmark or another tie-1 platform fund, and more whether they worked closely under one specific strong partner and absorbed their taste, judgment, network, and actual underwriting craft. The logic is that VC is still fundamentally an apprenticeship business, and if an EM was genuinely "under the wing" of an exceptional investor, the LP is getting a piece of their whole school of thought. 6/ one more LP insight I heard more than once: builders tend to convert better than institutional allocators. People who've built companies themselves generally have a better feel for what a small VC fund actually offers (access, judgment, network, founder quality) and are more willing to back a manager even without full institutional packaging. Institutional allocators default to "no" more often as their decision-making is more inertia-driven and career-risk averse, so it's simply easier to go with a familiar brand than back a niche or emerging manager, so EMs often find traction faster with builders, operators, and entrepreneurial FOs first, rather than trying to look "institution-ready" to everyone right out of the gate.
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Oola Moonk's Biscuit
Oola Moonk's Biscuit@myndmaven·
@LauraLoomer There are only 11,000 member of the Communist party in the US. I think we're safe from them, dishit.
Oola Moonk's Biscuit tweet media
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Laura Loomer
Laura Loomer@LauraLoomer·
The tide is turning. Can you feel it? For a while it felt like the communists and jihadists were going to win, but big things are happening this week.
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Jake Chapman 🇺🇸🚀 ✨🇺🇸 retweetledi
Bill Ackman
Bill Ackman@BillAckman·
One of the most important speeches you will hear this year on why we are at war with Iran. Worth five minutes of your time.
Ryan Saavedra@RyanSaavedra

Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-MT) delivers an incredibly powerful speech about Iran. Watch every second of this. "Yesterday we saw the president of the United States and many others at Dover Air Force Base presiding over a ceremony that is very sacred to those of us who served, and that is a dignified return of remains from the war zone. That process happens beginning in the war zone through Dover to the hometown of our fallen heroes. I participated in many of those ceremonies myself to include carrying friends of mine off the plane. One of those is on this bracelet. He was cut in half by an Iranian EFP. This regime that we are fighting does not care about our partisan politics. They don't care who you voted for, who you pray to, or where you live. They want to kill all of us. And they don't just say it, they actually do it, and they've been doing it for forty-seven years. This is a war of choice. The Democrats are correct. It's a war of choice that was begun by a radical lunatic band of terrorists that took over a beautiful nation 47 years ago, took it over with brutality, force, and savagery. And the second they took it over, they didn't free their people, they didn't unleash the largest oil reserves in the world to build schools and bridges. They took it over to murder their own people and to spread their disgusting ideology across the world, and that is exactly what they have been doing. They don't just say it and talk about it. You don't have to believe what they say. You can simply watch what they've done. They have attacked families, women, children, innocent people. They don't just attack them and kill them, they rape them. They skin them alive on camera. They celebrate it. They honor those people who do disgusting things that we would put in jail for the rest of their lives in this country, and they do it for fun, and they pay them money to do it, and they're heroes to that nation. They've done it to friends of mine. They've done it to families who've been in this chamber. And the fact that we sit here and listen to elected officials of this country defend these lunatics who want us all dead. They want all of you dead. They want all of us dead. They don't want us to disappear with a snap of a finger. They want us to be raped, burned alive, and cut into pieces. Watch the video from October 7. That's what they want to happen from Maine to San Diego, from Seattle to Miami. They want this country turned into a burning husk of its former self, and you don't have to theorize that. That's what they do. From the 1983 barracks bombing, where 280 Marines were vaporized in a morning, from USS Cole to the Achille Lauro, to every terrorist attack, from the Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas. These are not humanitarian freedom organizations. They are death-dealing cults, and they want all of us to die brutal deaths. William Buckley was abducted in 1985, an American military officer. He was skinned alive on camera by the Iranians. American prisoners of war who were captured. They were never called prisoners of war because they were captured by lunatic terrorists, so they were not subject to the Geneva Convention. They were captured and murdered, power drills through their brains. This is in Iraq. These are families that have dealt with this, and they've never gotten a single dime. These families have never gotten restitution, and not a single president has ever stood up to them. Love Donald Trump or hate him, love his policies, hate ICE, love ICE, whatever. There's never been a single president who has stood up to Iran and hit back. For 47 years, our troops and our families have been absorbing attack after attack after attack all over the world. And their radical ideology does not stop at the Persian Gulf. It doesn't stop at Tel Aviv. They want to do this everywhere. It's a global radical ideology, and we've been fighting it for half a century. We didn't start this war. We did not, but we will finish it. And forever wars are not popular with anybody these days. Both sides of the love to attack our forever wars. And I can promise you, being someone overseas wearing the uniform, when you're fighting for your country, you don't care what party's in office, but you're fighting to defend your country, and you turn on the news and see your elected officials stabbing you in the back, telling you that you're failing, that you've failed every goal of the war, is what I just heard. Last time I checked, we've wiped these bastards out. An occasional missile strike and boats in the straits, that's not military strength. Those are the flailings of a failing empire. Those are the flailings of a nation in collapse because they deserve it. So I encourage our colleagues on both sides of the aisle, whatever's politically convenient, whatever plays well on Twitter or Facebook, think about the people who are deployed right now, standing on that wall with a loaded weapon, who have volunteered to defend our country and our way of life. Because they are there defending us in a just war, because we did not start a war with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. They started it with us 47 years ago, and their attacks have gone unanswered for half a century. It's time to fix this problem and make sure another generations of Americans does not have to fight this murderous, savage adversary."

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Christian Keil
Christian Keil@pronounced_kyle·
The secret to male friendship is mutually-assured destruction Each party must be supplied with sufficient kompromat that they know 1) defecting is impossible and 2) any opinion is therefore permissible to share
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Jake Chapman 🇺🇸🚀 ✨🇺🇸
Sex is either real or it isn’t. It matters or it doesn’t. You can’t have it both ways. There are only 2 rational options… eliminating all sexual distinction in sport or adding a 3rd league for intersex and transsexual athletes.
panzón blanco𓂆@StrawHatYakub

I will say with my entire chest that the transphobes who lament about trans people playing in sports, if they were to have grown up in the 40’s/50’s, would *absolutely* be against racial integration in sports. It’s the same arguments, just a different coat of paint

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Jake Chapman 🇺🇸🚀 ✨🇺🇸 retweetledi
WarMonitor🇺🇦🇬🇧
Iran is smuggling operatives across the English Channel in small boats posing as asylum seekers in order to conduct operations on British soil and have been intercepted by British security services-Telegraph What...
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Brianna Wu
Brianna Wu@BriannaWu·
Democrats should not attend events where Muslims pray for the murder of all non-Muslims. It is not Islamaphobic to say this is disgusting speech that has no place in a democracy.
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Rep. Ilhan Omar
Rep. Ilhan Omar@Ilhan·
I co-led a bill to give schools the resources they need to protect students from ICE’s terror. No kid should have to learn in fear. Every student, regardless of immigration status, deserves a safe, stable learning environment where they can learn and thrive.
Rep. Ilhan Omar tweet media
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Jake Chapman 🇺🇸🚀 ✨🇺🇸 retweetledi
Luke Rosiak
Luke Rosiak@lukerosiak·
🚨Ilhan Omar's SISTER incorporated her $20M USAID company using the same home address as major Feeding Our Future convicts, @realDailyWire found. The finding links Sahra Noor to the largest fraud in state history as Ilhan Omar refuses to cooperate with investigators
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Batya Ungar-Sargon
Batya Ungar-Sargon@bungarsargon·
Two days after Mamdani posted a video singling out the Jewish state as uniquely evil and telling New Yorkers to use "every tool they have" to oppose it, a man heeded his call. He stabbed two Jews coming out of synagogue with a screwdriver and screamed Allahu Akbar. The Mayor has Jewish blood on his hands.
Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani@NYCMayor

Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal.

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David Ulevitch 🇺🇸
@dmbkparker If America doesn’t sell a reactor to KSA and sign a 123 agreement with them, then KSA can and will purchase a reactor from China. That opens a door we do not want AND deprives American companies of a key economic beachhead in KSA which is a large and important market.
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Dan
Dan@dmbkparker·
If your opinion is that we should be attacking Iran because Islam will always try to destroy the west, but you are not condemning the nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia, then your opinion is just to be aligned with the administration and has nothing to do with Islam.
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