Eagle of Byblos

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@0xfdf $2M→$8M in one hop is an auction with two or three buyers who literally can't afford to lose

Temperature check on AI recruiting, here's an n of 1: a friend of mine just left OpenAI ($2M/year total comp) to go to Google ($8M/year total comp, cash/RSUs). They joined OpenAI well past ChatGPT launch and are research adjacent, but mainly software dev, not researcher.

@shafu0x the best global product talent is worth so much that Meta will run 7 rounds and write a 10-figure check to get someone who's never worked in the Valley

you are fucking clueless about hiring, if you need 7 rounds

We closed our Series F today at a $13B valuation. Our inference business grew 20x in the last year. I want to explain why: The growth comes from a shift I think is permanent: companies want to own their intelligence layer. Instead of relying exclusively on closed models, teams are post-training open models for their specific use cases. Customers like Abridge, Cursor, Decagon, Harvey, HubSpot, Lovable, Notion, OpenEvidence, and Parallel are building this way. But post-training is still more of an art than a science. That’s why we’ve been working hands-on with customers to build specialized models that match or exceed closed models on the tasks they care about. We provide not just the weights, but also the training recipes and tooling so that they're in charge of the continual learning process. I think more companies, both AI-natives and enterprises, will own their intelligence layer. And I’m excited to help build that future.

@kunalb11 stepping back from your own company to go run someone else's product is a flex. most founders can't let go of one thing

It’s been a minute. 2015–2018 - Exited FreeCharge. Spent time learning and investing. - Pondered about: Why can't trust be rewarded? Started with $1M of personal capital. - Launched CRED to reward people for paying credit card bills on time. 2019–2025 - Built a system run by a team that values ownership, judgment, and craft. - Grew from 0 to 17M members by aligning incentives with behaviour. - Built several products during COVID lockdowns. - Raised $900M+ from global investors. Did 4 ESOP buybacks. - Made Indiranagar and IPL ads slightly more interesting. - Received a full stack of regulatory licences. - Lost 35 kilos. - Scaled from 0 to ~$325M ( ~₹3,200 crore) in annual revenue across payments, lending, insurance, commerce, wealth, and credit cards. 2026 - First profitable quarter (yet occasionally asked what our business model is) - Raised another $900M from Meta in primary and secondary capital. - Announcing our 5th ESOP buyback. Today CRED is ready for its next phase. I am stepping back and @miten steps in as interim CEO, partnered with an incredibly talented team. He has been heading strategy and finance and suffering me since 2020. I’m stepping away from the operating role and will continue as a shareholder. My commitment doesn’t change. Just the role. Extremely grateful to our members, partners, regulators, and investors who made this possible. And to our board, Shailendra, Micky, Saurabh for their extraordinary conviction. Team CRED, I’ll still expect you to be a 10x version of yourselves. As for me, I’ll be joining Meta to lead WhatsApp globally. Meta comes in as a minority investor in CRED. No access to member data. While it’s come very far, the delta between WhatsApp today and its full potential is massive. I look forward to working with Mark, Chris, and the leadership across Meta for the next step in WhatsApp’s journey. Will, thank you for scaling something the world relies on quietly, and for making this transition smooth. Onwards.

@fchollet yes! it's like that with anxiety. you feel it until you start smth

The hardest part of any task is overcoming the activation energy. The rest is just riding the momentum.

@gokulr @kunalb11 $1b for one hire is also Meta admitting they couldn't build or find this person inside their own bench

Meta’s hiring of @kunalb11 to run WhatsApp is almost unprecedented in their bringing a leader from outside Silicon Valley to run a global product. And this wasn’t a straightforward hire either. Meta is paying $1b for the privilege of hiring him. The only comparable I can think of among tech companies is Apple hiring Angela Ahrendts (CEO of Burberry) to run Retail. Other than that hire, every product / business leadership role at the best tech companies has been filled from people in the Valley, if not the US. This is a great win for: - WhatsApp users, who will benefit from a leader who has a native and deep understanding of - and facility with - the product. - Meta, who gets one of the best global consumer product thinkers and builders for their crown jewel product. - The Indian / global product talent ecosystem, which will be inspired by seeing that you don’t need to be in Silicon Valley to lead a global product, that forward thinking tech / AI companies will stretch to get the best leaders from anywhere in the world. @Jessicalessin the story behind Kunal’s hire will be fascinating to break.

@im_the_giulio @forgegui @michaelfertik @bonatsos @VerdictCap @cory @collectiveGBL @sheeltyle this is amazing. if you plan raising again, we will be happy to help. we are doing researches of VCs using our database to make fundraising easier identify matches.

I’m 17 and raised $3.2M for @forgegui. Our seed round was led by @michaelfertik and @bonatsos at @VerdictCap with other investors including @cory, @collectiveGBL, @sheeltyle, and other amazing partners. In ~2 months, we’ve grown to 90,000+ game dev users, with a current $40M cap. Growing extremely fast. I’ve been building in this space for 7 years, since I was 10. We’re building the AI platform for game developers. We’re hiring 2 more cracked engineers who want to help build a generational company. DM me if you want to join.

@dessaigne yeah the investor can't tell the difference, so they assume the worse one.

A founder told me last week that they were at $1.2M ARR. When we dug in, the real recurring revenue was closer to $1M. The rest was expected usage that never came. I'm not saying this to be harsh. That will derail a fundraise during diligence. Know what is contracted, what is usage, and what is hope. The honest number raises better than the impressive one.

@pmitu that's so real

AI can't do marketing. It has to have the human cringe.

@garyvee now anyone can build software in a weekend, so "easy to build" became a commodity

You know what's about to explode? Analog. The real world.

@pegobry_en bc you have to use your brain to figure out it does. if you just skim over, everything looks amazing at first

Noteworthy: nobody talks about AI hallucinating anymore.

@askOkara our startup also started just from one person figuring out how to make fundraising easier for founders. it then just spread to other people who also thought it made sense

in 2026 a solo founder can > build ai apps with claude code > get traffic and users with okara > run email with beehiiv / kit > accept payments globally with stripe > find and email leads with apollo or clay > track everything with posthog one person now does what took an entire team three years ago the leverage is insane

@staysaasy i mean some of the annoying things are real scar tissue, and some are just fossilized

Every startup eventually rediscovers why big companies do the annoying thing they swore they'd never do.

i polled a bunch of YC founders on how they got their first 10 customers. i was so surprised by the results that i made a video about it. enjoy!

when a government can switch off your model vendor overnight like it did to Anthropic, open weights you control can't be export-controlled out from under you. take a look at what we do! it might help you with the next raise. we research VC newsletters to spot cross-fund patters and design unique approaches for founders that save time

founders: before you raise, check if your sector's narrative is heating up or cooling in investor writing.

most vc writing this week agreed with itself. go-to-market: uniformly bullish. the only two places vcs actually disagreed: crypto market structure, and whether ai capex is a bubble.

we tracked what elite funds vs smaller funds wrote about this week. clean split: big funds → market structure, macro, the contested stuff. what does the cycle mean. smaller funds → operators, product, how-to-build.

@yashpanditrao you can check out our substack for some articles: byblosdigital.substack.com/?utm_campaign=… or our app: byblos.digital/home but we are also providing unique datasets per request

@ByblosRadar superb! let me know where i can read/access this information

If you are a founder trying to get your first investor meeting, try Compass. Our VC database went viral and we realised founders need better fit ones. Compass matches you with relevant investors from 380+ vetted VCs, angels, and family offices.

what vcs stopped writing about this week: geopolitics, robotics, stablecoin payments, product management. all cooling across the newsletters we track.