McVal | Gro3

I've been in web3 since 2019. Started doing social listening and trend analysis for a hedge fund (a nice way of saying i doom-scrolled X and Reddit looking for mentions of bitcoin and the next ico rug). Degened for a while. Got rugged a lot. Watched the hype cycles. Saw projects die overnight. Learned how hard it is to know who to trust. 12 months ago, my co-founder @GMOrdinal and I jumped back into the startup game and started building @Gro3_, a new type of AI-driven engagement platform. Ostensibly an AI-powered post discovery and alerts tool, it's morphed into much more: industry-leading social analytics, 100+ venture-backed Web3 startups as customers, and over 50M views driven for clients using our replies. Now we're launching a new Web3 leads database within the Gro3 family, it's called GroLeads. Here's what I realized wearing all the founder hats: BD is fucking hard, especially in web3. Finding people to talk to is brutal. Anonymous founders. Dead projects everywhere. No reliable data. Scammers trying to get you to connect to a fuckin' "Microsoft Tearms" video link at 9am on a Friday morning after you've had far too much to drink the night before. So we built a database that actually works for how web3 operates. Filter by chain. See who has DMs open. No zombies. It's cool. Check it out. 👇

@codyschneiderxx @grok explain like I’m 5

i keep getting @ so they used an mcp from gomarble they didn’t use a marketing api key they generated for personal use only in a dev mode setting which is the only way i’ve done this and the only way i suggest to doing this so if you’re using claude code to bulk upload ads and manage ads USE YOUR OWN API KEY IT IS EASY I will make yt video tomorrow morning showing your how if you’re pulling raw data from the api you need a legit data pipeline provider it’s the only way

@gothburz @grok does a clip like the one described here actually exist

I am the CEO of Palantir Technologies. The company is worth a quarter of a trillion dollars. I did not misspeak. Two hundred and forty-nine billion. The stock is up 320% in the past 12 months. The product is surveillance. I do not use that word at conferences. At conferences, I say "data integration," "operational intelligence," or "decision advantage." These mean the same thing. Surveillance is the honest version. I save the honest version for rooms where honesty is a competitive advantage. I gave a speech on March 3 at the Andreessen Horowitz American Dynamism Summit. "American Dynamism" is the fund's label for military technology. The name makes it sound like a fitness supplement. The fund's thesis is that defending the nation is a market opportunity. I agree with the thesis. The thesis made me a billionaire. Agreement is the product. I sell it at scale. Here is what I said, verbatim, to a room of six hundred people whose combined net worth exceeds the GDP of Portugal: "If Silicon Valley believes we are going to take away everyone's white-collar job and you're gonna screw the military — if you don't think that's gonna lead to nationalization of our technology, you're retarded." I used that word. The word is on the clip. The clip has eleven million views. My communications team asked me not to repeat it, which is how I know they are still employed. They will not be reprimanded. The clip is performing well. The stock went up. The word cost me nothing. The nothing is the point. Let me explain what I meant by nationalization. I meant it. I am telling the technology industry that if they refuse to cooperate with the United States military, the government will seize their technology. I am telling them this at a venture capital conference, on a stage designed to look like a living room. The living room had throw pillows. The throw pillows cost more than the median American's monthly rent. I sat on one. It was comfortable. Comfort is the setting in which I discuss compulsion. The audience laughed. I want to be precise about that. They laughed. I was not joking. Nationalization is the seizure of private assets by the state. I am a private asset. I am telling an audience of billionaires that the state should seize technology from companies that do not cooperate with the military, and the billionaires are laughing, because they believe I am only talking about the other companies. I am talking about the other companies. Three weeks before my speech, the Pentagon designated Anthropic a "supply chain risk." Anthropic is an AI company. They had red lines. The red lines said: if our AI is used for lethal autonomous weapons, we stop. If capability outpaces safety, we stop. The Pentagon assessed the red lines as a threat to the supply chain. The company that wanted to verify the safety feature worked was designated the risk. The company that agreed the safety feature could be decorative got the contract. The company that got the contract was OpenAI. OpenAI signed a deal with the same Pentagon. The terms are not public. The timing was hours after Anthropic was blacklisted. The speed was noted. The speed was the point. The lesson was the speed: the market for military AI does not pause for ethics. It pauses for nothing. It accelerates through objections. I know this because I built the runway. Two hundred thousand people joined a campaign called #QuitGPT. They signed a petition asking OpenAI to honor its original charter, the one that said the company existed to benefit humanity. The charter is on their website. The contract is also on their website. The charter and the Pentagon contract occupy the same domain. This is not a contradiction. This is a business model. The charter is the marketing. The contract is the product. I run a surveillance company. We have contracts with the Department of Defense worth more than a billion dollars. We have contracts with ICE. We have contracts with intelligence agencies whose names I am not permitted to say at venture capital conferences, even ones with throw pillows. Our software has been used to track undocumented immigrants. Our software has been used for things I am not permitted to describe in this format. The revenue from the things I cannot describe exceeds the revenue from the things I can. The ACLU called our ICE contracts a system for tracking and deporting families. They were correct. The contracts continued. The families continued to be tracked. The ACLU issued a statement. We issued a statement. The statements were different. The tracking was the same. The company is named Palantir. The palantíri are the seeing stones from Tolkien. In the novels, Sauron captured one and used it to corrupt everyone who looked into the others. I named a surveillance company after a surveillance device from a novel about the corruption of power. I have a doctorate in social theory. I have read the books. Here is the thing I want you to understand. I am not threatening anyone. A threat implies uncertainty. There is no uncertainty. The technology industry will cooperate with the military. The companies that cooperate first will be the richest. The companies that cooperate last will be acquired by the companies that cooperated first. The companies that refuse will be designated supply chain risks, and their technology will be obtained through procurement channels that do not require consent. I am describing a process. The process has already started. Anthropic is proof. OpenAI is proof. I am not a warning. I am a narrator. The narration is the product. The revenue was $3.12 billion last year. Up thirty-three percent. The analysts say we are overvalued. The analysts have said this for four consecutive years. Each year the stock doubles. Each year, the analysts adjust their models. The models were wrong four times. I was wrong zero times. The market rewards prediction. My prediction is that every AI company will work for the military within three years. The prediction is on the clip, next to the slur. The audience gave me a standing ovation. The ovation lasted nine seconds. I timed it. I time everything. The water was San Pellegrino. The throw pillows were from Restoration Hardware. The future of American technology was decided between the sparkling water, the nine seconds of applause, and a word I am not supposed to repeat. I am the CEO of Palantir Technologies. I am worth more than the combined annual budgets of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. I named my company after a corrupting surveillance device from a fantasy novel. I told six hundred billionaires that the government should nationalize their competitors. They applauded. I used a slur. Eleven million people watched. The stock is up. The philosopher does not threaten. The philosopher describes. What I described is already happening.

the products that win won't be the ones that moved fastest in this current ai build cycle. they'll be the ones that started compounding earliest. usage generates data. data improves the product. a better product attracts more usage. by the time a competitor catches up, you're not where you were. you're twelve stages further. you can't clone a network that's been running for two years. you can only start your own and hope they stop. build logic: compound

the best outreach message in the world still gets ignored if the recipient has never seen your name before. familiarity isn't a nice-to-have. it's a prerequisite.

linkedin engagement rates are collapsing and nobody's talking about it. average engagement rate in 2023: 3.2% average engagement rate in 2025: 1.8% what changed: → more people posting (supply up) → algorithm favoring creators with existing momentum → comment quality declining (bots + "great post!" noise) → users scrolling faster, engaging less what this means for BD: your content strategy from 2 years ago is half as effective today even if you're doing everything the same. the people still getting high engagement aren't posting more. they're engaging more strategically with their target accounts. reach is becoming a lagging indicator. relationships are the leading one.

the difference between "building in public" and "marketing in public": one shares what you learned. the other shares what you want people to believe. your audience can always tell which one it is.

before you optimize your outreach message, answer this: would your prospect recognize your name if they saw it in their DMs? if not, the message doesn't matter yet.

linkedin tools have a reputation problem and they earned it. first generation: mass connection requests, "hey {first_name}" messages, comment bots. second generation: smarter templates, higher volume. still spray and pray with better grammar. what both got wrong: they optimized for volume on a platform that rewards familiarity. the founders and consultants i talk to don't need to reach more people. they need to show up consistently for the right 50 people. the problem isn't outreach. it's timing. you can't engage on a prospect's post if you didn't see it. and linkedin's feed buries the people who matter most under content from people you barely know. that's the problem i'm building grolink around. not "reach more people." "never miss the moment to engage with the people who matter." early days. more soon.

linkedin's api restrictions keep getting tighter. which means the tools that survive won't be the ones that automate the most. they'll be the ones that automate the right things.

the linkedin engagement hierarchy most people get backwards: level 1: posting content consistently level 2: commenting on other people's posts level 3: commenting on the RIGHT people's posts level 4: building comment relationships before ever sending a DM level 5: turning those relationships into inbound messages and booked calls without needing a pitch most BD people operate at level 1-2 and wonder why their DMs get ignored. the jump from level 2 to level 3 is where the real leverage is. it's not about engaging more. it's about engaging strategically. 10 thoughtful comments on your top 20 prospects' posts over 2 weeks will outperform 200 cold connection requests every single time. the math isn't close.

most linkedin "strategies" are just posting schedules. posting consistently without measuring what's working is just organized guessing.

the roi of linkedin isn't connections. it's the conversations that happen because someone already knows who you are before you message them.

most people on linkedin are running a content strategy based on vibes. no engagement rate benchmark. no idea which post format performs best. no data on whether their numbers are going up or down. i built a free audit tool two weeks ago. over 100 people used it. the results were uncomfortable: → the average engagement rate was 20-30% below what people guessed → 1 in 3 users discovered their engagement had been declining for months without noticing → people posting 5x/week often had worse rates than people posting 2x/week the gap between "i post consistently" and "my content is actually working" is massive. linkedin doesn't give you a feedback loop. you post, you get some likes, you assume it's fine. it's the equivalent of running a business without looking at your P&L. you might be profitable. you might be bleeding cash. you genuinely don't know. that's the problem i keep coming back to. not reach. not algorithms. just: do you actually know if what you're doing is working? building something around this. more soon.

Over the 2 years I created an X list of 300+ ai experts. Who am i missing? Who needs to be cut? x.com/i/lists/165416…

@taichnocrat that's very hard to come by

@mcval Taste will be a more rewarded gift in future.

just because ai can do something more efficiently than a human doesn't mean it should. judgment. relationships. strategy. taste. everything else is execution.

My last LinkedIn post: 16K impressions, 150+ comments, and a wall of PhDs reminding me AI started in the 1950s. So I pulled the data and built this in 20 mins with @claudeai @Remotion @elevenlabs They were right about the history. But watch what happens in November 2022. { follow me @McVal for more like this }

ai doesn't replace your thinking. it replaces the execution of your thinking. founders who confuse those two things are about to have a bad year.

ai is a multiplier. multipliers are amoral. they multiply good and bad equally. the founders who'll win with ai aren't the ones automating the most. they're the ones who were already good at the parts ai can't touch.

ai generates options brilliantly. strategic frameworks, content variations, research angles. but knowing which option fits your runway, your risk tolerance, your timing? that's judgment from lived experience. and more options can make that judgment harder, not easier.

ai doesn't make small companies powerful. it makes them more of what they already are. good process? ai scales it. broken process? ai scales that too. faster dysfunction is still dysfunction.