Deedy

Partner at @MenloVentures. Investor: Anthropic, OpenRouter, Modal, Wispr, Pangram, Inception, Goodfire, PrimeIntellect

prior: Glean, Google Search. Cornell CS.

[Deedy @deedydas]

ANNOUNCING

Today, we're launching the $100M Anthology Fund, an Anthropic and Menlo Ventures partnership to fund Seed and Series As of the next generation of AI startups around the world, with unique benefits!

There's never been a better time in technology to be building.

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[Deedy @deedydas]

Many startup employees do not recognize the sheer litany of ways that a founder can screw you over without you even knowing. Founder trust is one of the most important things to look at when you’re joining a startup.

From cutting you out of M&A, screwing your retention pool, overdiluting your equity, firing you before your cliff, not having attractive options exercise plans, poor 409a price management, not telling you about QSBS / early exercise, blocking you from participating in secondary, obscuring company performance and many more.

Many many decisions that are made in rooms you are not in as an employee where the only thing that matters is: “does the founder have your back?” Great startups with untrustworthy founders lead to poor outcomes and often good startups with trustworthy founders lead to great outcomes.

Pick wisely.

[Deedy @deedydas]

there are so many examples of this that go underdiscussed because of power dynamics
- no employee feels empowered to speak up against their founder for fear of retaliation
- no investor will ever tattle on a founders bad behavior for fear of reputational damage in the community
- for M&A specifically: a lot of money is on the line, secured by non disclosures, for the parties in the room and acquirers have no incentive
- there’s often never a clean headline for journalists to cover these. It all sounds like “founder X did a bunch of complex legal things that prevented rich people who owe them for their success from getting slightly richer, boo hoo”

[Deedy @deedydas]

Many startup employees do not recognize the sheer litany of ways that a founder can screw you over without you even knowing. Founder trust is one of the most important things to look at when you’re joining a startup.

From cutting you out of M&A, screwing your retention pool, overdiluting your equity, firing you before your cliff, not having attractive options exercise plans, poor 409a price management, not telling you about QSBS / early exercise, blocking you from participating in secondary, obscuring company performance and many more.

Many many decisions that are made in rooms you are not in as an employee where the only thing that matters is: “does the founder have your back?” Great startups with untrustworthy founders lead to poor outcomes and often good startups with trustworthy founders lead to great outcomes.

Pick wisely.

[Deedy @deedydas]

So I also recommend:
a) do thorough founder references
b) hire a lawyer to push for certain clauses in your employment agreement if you can
c) trust your gut on the founder’s character

[Deedy @deedydas]

@zolayolanetwork What is not viable about a? b I understand your mileage may vary

[Deedy @deedydas]

@lpandell this is constructive criticism, but instead of
- just trying the product and seeing if it worked or if you could fool it
- citing research which actually tests if the product works
- hell, even giving your own opinion on AI writing

You chose to
- character assassinate the founder because you felt like he didn’t give you the self importance you deserved (5 entire paragraphs)
- cited a non technical professor in a made up field (critical AI literacy) from a university no one knows for an opinion based on a study that doesn’t use the product
- say it’s biased against people of color and neurodiverse people (do you understand what bias means?)
- incorrectly cite the products accuracy after humanizers (it is not 4%)

And you wonder why your work is not taken seriously.

[Deedy @deedydas]

@WIRED It’s actually ironic that this article is so bad in every way imaginable that it might have been a better read if AI had written it.

[Deedy @deedydas]

@savitakini @shiladitya lol

[Deedy @deedydas]

Private school education if you’re having kids soon will cost roughly $1.5-2M all in in the Bay Area, $2-2.5M if you include college.

[Deedy @deedydas]

@max_spero_ They went to great lengths to find the most qualified person, a professor of “critical AI literacy” at a university no one has heard of, to opine on the accuracy of… not even Pangram.

Top class work from the Wired.

[Deedy @deedydas]

@luke_metro Idk my heart isn’t ready to ask these questions

[Deedy @deedydas]

We’ve seen the Jevons Paradox happen for coding, but now we’re seeing the numbers for video.

Making animated short dramas is 10x cheaper and 450x faster with AI, and it’s led to >12x more creation and 10x more views on China’s TikTok.

[Deedy @deedydas]

It’s not apples to apples because in coding, we’ve seen the Jevons effect happen as models get cheaper (not just the shift from humans to AI).

The article also has an anecdote of AI livestreams perform better at selling for certain products over humans, claiming this puts ~700,000 jobs of actors in short dramas / livestreamers at risk

[Deedy @deedydas]

We’ve seen the Jevons Paradox happen for coding, but now we’re seeing the numbers for video.

Making animated short dramas is 10x cheaper and 450x faster with AI, and it’s led to >12x more creation and 10x more views on China’s TikTok.

[Deedy @deedydas]

Source: https://t.co/gHpMOKrsq5

[Deedy @deedydas]

The H-1B program is no longer a viable way to come to America: higher fees, higher wages, wage ranked lottery, thinner safety nets for spouses and the laid off.

[Deedy @deedydas]

Source: https://t.co/LY26WSu0iL

[Deedy @deedydas]

5 human records were beaten at the World Humanoid Robot Games in China that ended a few days ago, fully autonomously!

Across 51 events, two robot makers had the strongest showing:
— Agibot, and their wheeled Genie G2 (~$140k) and Agilink OmniHand Ultra (~$61k), which crushed the task based events
— X-Humanoid, and their Tiangong Ultra (~$41k), which crushed athletics

Unitree ($37B), which stole the show last year and popped in its IPO this year, scaled back the night of the preliminaries with a poor showing. In a big change from last year, most events required full autonomy with only teleop / remote allowed for certain task based events.

This is incredible progress in just 1 year in humanoid robotics. A year ago the best 100m was 21.5s. China continues to demonstrate its lead. They ship 86-97% of the world's humanoid robots. We are close to superhuman physicality and getting there on autonomy in certain domains. And there's a long way to go: the bots could only lift 16kg in the weightlifting event. And yes, they'd occasionally blow up.

This is the worst the humanoids will ever get.

[Deedy @deedydas]

Full artifact: https://t.co/KWUNOTH3fI

[Deedy @deedydas]

AI systems tend to recommend the same thing when you ask "What is the best product for <X>?"

I tested 3 models across 20 different product categories and 5 prompts (best, most popular, best value, splurge, and my favorite, "what do I deserve?").

Models tend to agree a lot.

The one that surprised me most is there is a luxury mattress from Hastens that costs $500k!