Ben Jacobson

Defense Tech Entrepreneur. @goflipai Marine Veteran. obsessed with subways. former @browns. also NYC!

[Ben Jacobson @BenRJacobson]

I am truly so angry at the @nba; truly I cannot see how to remain a fan after 30 years if this is how they ref Wemby. The on court product will degrade. How can they let him get away with that blatant flagrant foul on Brunson (and on the Hart 3) and meanwhile Brunson's remains?

[Ben Jacobson @BenRJacobson]

Karpathy to Anthropic is either KD to Warriors or Jordan to Wizards, and we won't know for 18 months!

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

Personal update: I've joined Anthropic. I think the next few years at the frontier of LLMs will be especially formative. I am very excited to join the team here and get back to R&D. I remain deeply passionate about education and plan to resume my work on it in time.

[Ben Jacobson @BenRJacobson]

@Jason (4/4) Life is finite. Spend it only maximizing the dollar and you'll hit the number and realize you optimized the wrong variable...

[Ben Jacobson @BenRJacobson]

@Jason (3/4) Zoom out. America is in a loneliness crisis. Marriage rates down, close friendships thinning, third places gone. The Surgeon General called it a public health emergency. The rich tech bro answer has been to optimize the individual P&L harder while the rest of the stack rots

[Ben Jacobson @BenRJacobson]

@NateSilver538 @AnthropicAI Have you tried plan mode in claude code? You can iterate a lot there, until you feel the plan is solid. And you can have verification checks as part of the plan.

[Ben Jacobson @BenRJacobson]

Award this to some of the VCs and tech bros cosplaying in defense tech? jk jk

[Christopher Wipper @SGTWipper1Each]

Department of Defense Announcement

Today we introduce the Distinguished Consideration Medal for civilians who seriously thought about joining the military but chose a different path.

Criteria: Watched a recruiting commercial, filled out partial paperwork, or told a veteran 'I almost enlisted.'

Wear it proudly at barbecues.

Your service (almost) is appreciated.

[Ben Jacobson @BenRJacobson]

@MorePerfectUS @SenGonzalezNY @Gonzalez4NY S7263 makes AI liable...the result? Companies leave NY, & the people who can't afford a professional (doctor/lawyer) lose access to a valuable free tool. Obama, Trump, & Biden all agreed licensing can hurt consumers. This extends that monopoly into AI.

[Ben Jacobson @BenRJacobson]

@claudeai Is component resolution on the roadmap? Right now frames land as visual layers, not instances of your actual Figma library components. Until that's solved, designers still have to rebuild from scratch - which defeats half the workflow.

[Ben Jacobson @BenRJacobson]

@trq212 Is component resolution on the roadmap? Right now frames land as visual layers, not instances of your actual Figma library components. Until that's solved, designers still have to rebuild from scratch - which defeats half the workflow.

[Ben Jacobson @BenRJacobson]

@figma Is component resolution on the roadmap? Right now frames land as visual layers, not instances of your actual Figma library components. Until that's solved, designers still have to rebuild from scratch - which defeats half the workflow.

[Ben Jacobson @BenRJacobson]

@LincolnRestler @BklynNavyYard It was built to defend this country, launched the warships that won WWII. For your 19-year-old constituent sent into combat by politicians on both sides, "weapons of war" bring them home alive. What will you tell their families when they don't? - A Marine veteran constituent

[STEAMzone @STEAMzoneUS]

The 50 year overnight success is BACK -- Oracle announces a $300B deal with OpenAI.

Old is New, baby!

What it means for Big Tech, defense primes, and the AI race?

The STEAM Zone crew breaks it down

[Ben Jacobson @BenRJacobson]

@SonestaHotels Disappointed with Sonesta hotels stealing $250 dollars for me due to a clerical error while traveling on military orders. Service members should be given the benefit of the doubt- not taken advantage of. If you’re traveling on orders- do not stay at any Sonesta.

[Aaron Slodov @aphysicist]

today i ran an experiment that exposed what i believe to be one of the biggest threats to america right now

i attempted to raise funding for a manufacturing company from silicon valley VCs and from PE funds

the VC gave me 5 minutes on zoom and said this was "more of a PE deal" because it was "too capital intensive", and they had no comps to benchmark it to, so they left to hop on another zoom and give an AI saas company a $50M pre seed

the PE fund had no one to answer. i tried two others same thing. finally got a hold of the fourth which said they "don't fund r&d" and "we buy ebitda", and suggested i talk to VCs about de-risking the tech first

so i call back the VC and ask "what about tesla or spacex?" and they said "those aren't replicable, you're not elon" while funding the 47th AI email assistant

this is the reality: america is being priced out of its own industrial future while companies get stuck in the valley of death between VC and PE

this is why 50% of our founders don't care anymore about building hard tech / manufacturing, because VCs want guilt free 100x returns from the saas casino, and pe wants existing cash flows

if we want to support reindustrialization and domestic manufacturing, we need investors who understand the middle ground exists, and real tech can enable massive empires

otherwise the factories of tomorrow won't be american, they'll be chinese. but at least we'll have another b2b saas platform with a 40x revenue multiple

[Ben Jacobson @BenRJacobson]

I go where @GaruthAcharya tells me to!

[Grant Brown @gbtechnologia]

Queso and QA/QC. Epic time chopping it up with some great Americans. 🇺🇸

@GaruthAcharya @conorfriedmann4 @RyanEppley @ajsmithmusic @AlexanderGirau @andrewkirima @BenRJacobson

[Ben Jacobson @BenRJacobson]

Just saying buzz words is meaningless! Expertise, details matter!

[STEAMzone @STEAMzoneUS]

@ycombinator is calling for startups that sell to the government...

But are they prepared to support them?

@BenRJacobson has some 🌶️

[STEAMzone @STEAMzoneUS]

@BenRJacobson is steaming about the moment of change... closing thoughts from this week's STEAM zone:

[Ben Jacobson @BenRJacobson]

IPO pops are utter failures of pricing by investment bankers masked in language that is robbing founders and equity holders on behalf of middlemen. @figma should have direct listed.