Adam Valenta | ATX📍

ATX | ☕️ 🏎 🥂

[Adam Valenta | ATX📍 @AdamValentaVC]

@henrythe9ths AI Guide

[Henry Shi @henrythe9ths]

There's a shocking fact about AI that nobody tells you: You can catch up to the public AI research frontier in just 2 weeks. Yes, really.

I've built a $150M annual revenue startup over the last 8 years and If I were to start a company today, I’d drop everything and go all-in on AI.

But like many busy software builders, I felt lost—overwhelmed by the noisy, crowded and fast-moving modern AI landscape. And I wasn’t alone.

So I spent my entire holiday diving deep into AI research—reading 30+ papers, watching hours of lectures, analyzing trends, and catching up to the research frontier.

✨ Here’s what I learned:
- You don’t need months (or years) to catch up.
- You don’t need a PhD or decades of ML experience.
- You need fewer than 20 papers and 2 weeks to understand the major breakthroughs shaping AI today.

It's because the technology is extremely nascent and most techniques that came before are no longer relevant:
- ChatGPT is barely 2 years old and Transformers are only 7 years old.
- Most game-changing discoveries happened within the last 4 years, driven by a few breakthrough ideas, scaling laws, and efficient matrix multiplication.

The biggest secret?
Many groundbreaking AI papers with thousands of citations are surprisingly simple and applied, like adding "let's think step by step" to the prompt, or simply asking the LLM over and over again to improve its answer (Self-Refine).

I realized there are tons of founders and builders in the same boat—wanting to dive deeper into AI but unsure where to start.

I've created an essential AI Guide that helped me catch up, in just 2 weeks, to the frontier of public AI research to figure out where the next opportunities and gaps were:
- Curated list of only the most important papers
- Simple explanations of key concepts
- Clear pathway to understanding the frontier of modern AI

It’s perfect for:
- Founders expanding into AI
- Builders wanting to innovate at the frontier of AI
- Investors looking to separate the signal from the noise

👇 Want the full guide?
- Like and Share this post
- Comment "AI Guide"
- I'll send you the complete guide

(ps, I’m also teaming up with @VishalVasishth, co-founder of @obviousvc with @ev (focused on large-scale societal impact companies like Twitter, Medium, Beyond Meat), to host a small meetup to discuss what's working and needs to be solved in the AI stack in SF. Message me if you're interested)

[Joshua Baer ⚙️ @JoshuaBaer]

I love it when @CapitalFactory #Dreamteam alumni come back to tell me about their new business ideas!

[Augment @AugmentMarkets]

🎉 Introducing the Augment Collective.

🤝 We're enabling members to invest in the hottest private companies with just a few clicks.
https://t.co/ng176TGSAe

[Augment @AugmentMarkets]

Join Augment’s @AdamValentaVC and @sacrainc co-founder @janerikasplund in the last hour of the 10,000-share @blockchain auction Thursday @ 11:15am-12pm PT. We'll discuss the world of blockchain and how in the world they managed to snag their domain.

[Augment @AugmentMarkets]

Our last auction for a batch of 1,000 Epic Games shares successfully sold for $475/share.

Auction #3 for @Carbon shares closes this Thursday @ 12pm PT!

[Augment @AugmentMarkets]

Mark your calendars! 📅

Join us on Wednesday at 12pm PT to usher in a new era of Augment. (Hint: mower linimums)

We are joined by @therealbeeerad from Manhattan Venture Partners, @smalter from Sacra, and Brian Smith from Multicoin Capital so... It's kind of a big deal. 👀

[Augment @AugmentMarkets]

Our last auction of 10,000 @rubrikInc shares closed successfully at $30.00/share. Let's keep it going!

Auction #2 is officially launched for 1,000 shares of @EpicGames! We have a feeling this is going to be an Epic one and the shares won't be available for a Fortnite. Hah!

[Adam Hardej @ajh3_]

We have 5 extra spots available for our LP happy hour tomorrow in NYC. If you're interested in the secondaries market as either a buyer or a seller throw an RSVP in below. Excited to bring this group together 🥳

https://t.co/kC1CRf0N2v

#techweek #lightbites

[Ali Moiz @ali_moiz]

PSA: Flexport auction in the final 2 hours now, at $5/share @sandhill_mkts

[Ali Moiz @ali_moiz]

Auctions are at the heart of all functioning markets, even when it's not obvious.

The first version of "Wall St" in the 1800s was a bunch of people meeting every Thursday at someone's office to run an auction to buy and sell shares.

Let's dive in👇

[Ali Moiz @ali_moiz]

Stonks is now becoming @sandhill_mkts 😎

Same BS content, more serious investing.

Announcing 2 new co-founders @StonkyOli (he's amazing, tech lead) and Sandy the Crane (dubious value, but team player).

Sandy was pitching earlier this week to @m2jr & @ericries 👇

[Alex Cohen @anothercohen]

I was laid off from Twitter today. I was the designer in charge of our new rebranding to X.

I learned so much in my 2.5 weeks at the company but I’m excited to see where I land next.

If you’re hiring a self taught, junior designer please DM me. Graphic design is my passion!

[Adam Hardej @ajh3_]

We are gearing up to start deploying our 3rd YC Access Fund into the S23 cohort

We lean on warm intros from portco founders but we also do a lot of research pre-demo day to make sure we're not missing out

Below are the first ~100 companies YC has announced and some fun stats:

[Ali Moiz @ali_moiz]

Our team cheers on every customer trying to pay.

Every failure is an opportunity to learn and grow.

The lesson: never give up. If your credit card doesn't work, try your wife's or girlfriend's. Only those who never give up get through.

@Stonks_dot_com @StonkyOli @AdamValentaVC @john_at_stonks @ajh3_

[John Hancock 🚀 @hancockenator]

Hosted a bunch of great people at my house last night for Flag Day. Thanks to @nickgraynews for making me do it!

Special shout to @anothercohen for playing hurt.

[Adam Hardej @ajh3_]

📙 Stonks YC Access Fund II - W23

Every YC batch we invest $50k into ~35 companies through our Stonks YC Access Funds.

I'm extremely proud of the founders we've been able to bring together and it's time for me to brag about them on Twitter.

A very long (but worthwhile) 🧵

[Ali Moiz @ali_moiz]

We're hosting a couple of in-person demo days for #techweek with @a16z

SF: Generative AI demo day, June 1st
LA: Gaming & Entertainment, June 7th

🔈 Call for startups, applications open now. Judges @andrewchen @m2jr @TimDraper & more

Tag a founder you like, links below 👇

[Adam Hardej @ajh3_]

🚀 Secondary Conference Success

We had over 450 people watching live for over 4 hours and actually finished the day with over 550 live viewers. It was a great day and we're so thankful to all our panelists for showing up to talk secondaries.

Relevant links and takeaways 👇 🧵

[Adam Hardej @ajh3_]

3 hours in... +500 people live on @Stonks_dot_com

Jump in: https://t.co/vEXdg3a63J