Derek Dolin

Connecting the world's greatest leaders across music, entertainment, and culture to the best new technology companies @a16z x @a16zclf

[Derek Dolin @DerekDolin]

1/ Big news @a16zclf! We’ve raised our newest fund: Cultural Leadership Fund III. A fund dedicated to creating generational wealth for the Black community consisting of LPs that span across the highest level of sports, entertainment, and the c-suite. https://t.co/s1zHLJCRz3

[Black Forest Labs @bfl_ai]

Martin Scorsese is an advisor to Black Forest Labs.

He's spent six decades shaping how the world sees stories. Now he's helping us shape visual intelligence with human taste and craft at the center.

We sat down with him for a working storyboarding session using FLUX.

[Derek Dolin @DerekDolin]

@venturetwins Pretty neat to see what @LumaLabsAI and @JonErwin13 + team have built with Innovative Dreams, right here in our backyard of LA! https://t.co/qD5cUpQMET

[Chris Dixon @cdixon]

The Senate Banking Committee released the latest draft of the CLARITY Act last night. The draft has significantly improved since January and reflects years of bipartisan negotiations.

It’s time to get this passed.

This bill safeguards consumers, includes important developer protections, and gives crypto entrepreneurs the regulatory clarity they need to build here in the U.S.

We’re thankful for the hard work of the Senate Banking Committee and their staff.

We urge Senators on both sides to move quickly to advance it out of Committee, to the Senate floor, and ultimately be signed into law by the President.

[Derek Dolin @DerekDolin]

@saltzman_jason @a16z Welcome @saltzman_jason ! Thrilled to have you on the team!

[Derek Dolin @DerekDolin]

@TurnerNovak 😂

[Derek Dolin @DerekDolin]

Come Speedrun with us!

[andrew chen @andrewchen]

ok - dropping big dates/news for a16z speedrun:

- starting TODAY, founders can apply for the 2026 program that runs July 27 to Oct 11 in SF

here's the link: https://t.co/opkX4cIaCF

- we will be investing up to $1M and funding 70+ companies over the next few weeks

- But there's also $5M in credits/tokens/etc from AWS/GCP/Open AI/Azure/NVIDIA/Deel/Stripe/etc. You'll also work with our amazing operating team (GTM, talent, brand, people, and more), and join our community of elite founders

- we offer a Global Founders Program for international founders, to help with visas, banking support, relo recommendations

- yes you can be solo (but better if you're further along, and have built a team). No you don't have to have an idea yet. Yes you have to know how to build (even if you're not technical)

- Also, in other news: speedun is officially moving full-time to SF. (prev it alternated SF/LA) this is for all the obv reasons

- we've continued to have an insane lineup of speakers, including the founders of Carta / DoorDash / Twilio / Figma / Zynga / Airtable / Twitch / and of course, lunch/dinners with Marc/Ben alongside a16z team - and much more

- the deadline for applying is May 17!

[Derek Dolin @DerekDolin]

Never miss the Current Thing again!

[Erik Torenberg @eriktorenberg]

Thrilled to announce our investment in MTS.

Beginning today, MTS will be monitoring the situation across technology, business, politics, and culture, interviewing the main characters of the moment all day long on X.

We’re seeding it alongside other angel investors such as Dan Romero, Packy McCormick, Soona Amhaz, Julia DeWahl, Austin Rief, Ryan Delk, Jonathan Swanson and more.

The founding team includes @ChrisJBakke @theojaffee @gbrl_dick , @netcapgirl, among others.

MTS’s initial hosts include the above as well as @MarkHalperin @creatine_cycle @amitisinvesting @labenz @JackFarley96 @jessegenet @stevesi , and more experts across tech, finance, politics, and culture. 

MTS aims to be the best place in the world to make sense of what’s happening, *right now*, and it’ll be on X. 

This was the original vision for CNN by the way. They called it “Randemonium”. The idea was, whatever the Current Thing happening in the world, put it on CNN full time, cover it from every possible angle, and keep it running until a more important Current Thing comes along.

The CNN model has to wait for something to happen IRL. But something is always happening on X. And of course, X is — and has always been, the real world. Or at the very least, it’s the place where the people who run the real world make sense of what’s happening. 

Essentially, what the hell is happening and why? The world’s an incredibly complex and erratic place and trying to figure that out is a lifetime occupation. 

Figuring that out is the occupation of MTS. To Monitor the Situation is to watch history in the making. 

P.S. MTS is looking for hosts, guests, sponsors, teammates, and other monitors to help make sense of what’s happening. Reach out if this is you, and feel free to join the MTS discord.

[mark gillespie @markgillespie]

https://t.co/Gsa0kcArYV

[Derek Dolin @DerekDolin]

@kirbyman01 @tbpn Good! Thrilled you put that in writing 😄

[Alex Immerman @aleximm]

The power of prediction markets extends beyond trading

The markets produce information - a live probability that's more disciplined than a poll or pundit

CNN, CNBC, and now Fox recognize the importance of Kalshi: a feed of what people truly believe when incentives are aligned

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

The "AI job loss" narratives are all fake. AI = massive ramp in productivity = massive ramp in demand = massive jobs boom. Watch.

[Anjney Midha @AnjneyMidha]

Stanford @CS153Systems, Week 1 (Full Lecture)

AI Scaling, Bottlenecks, and Why Compute Isn't a Commodity Yet

00:00 Compute Coachella
00:29 Simple Life Heuristic
01:08 Uncertainty Creates Opportunity
01:42 Four Bottlenecks Framework
01:51 Empirical Proof Matters
02:05 Cloud Costs Are Shifting
02:15 Verifiable vs Fuzzy Progress
02:48 Scaling Predictability Explained
03:43 CapEx Explosion in Big Tech
04:06 Chips Aren’t Commodities
04:45 Compute Scarcity Conclusion

[Derek Dolin @DerekDolin]

@a16z Pure nostalgia!!

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

It’s time to tell the story of the future.

[Derek Dolin @DerekDolin]

@walls_jason1 Love this - keep going!!

[a16z @a16z]

Alex Karp: "America has reestablished deterrence."

"That actually just happened. It's happened in the last year."

"That is a phenomenal asset that America now has that it did not have. And there are lots of reasons for it, but one—maybe not the most important—is a concatenation of the most unusual (in some cases otherwise maybe not fully functional) talent built around building something that was an absolutely scandalous, unpopular dream rejected by many people, called Maven."

"If we are going to outperform the rest of the world, our single advantage is to augment neurodivergent, highly individual people to be their absolutely unique best—and protect their First, Second, Fourth, and Fifth Amendment rights so that they don't get screwed."

@PalantirTech @KTMBoyle

[Katherine Boyle @KTmBoyle]

American Dynamism 🇺🇸

[Derek Dolin @DerekDolin]

@gbrl_dick @eriktorenberg @a16z Welcome, Gabriel! Thrilled to have you on the team!

[chrislyons @ChrisLyons]

I had an incredible conversation with the legendary @MagicJohnson on the @a16z podcast discussing his best deals, investing where no one else is looking, and building a sports empire. Grateful for the 10+ years of building together and learning from the 🐐 on and off the court.

Give it a listen 🎙️