FAVRIT

Angel. Builder. Sharing advice for founders and early-stage bets.

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

I'm 75% more productive than I was two years ago.

All thanks to our incredible interns.

At @DraperVC, we get around 200 pitch decks a week. That's a lot of founders, ideas, and decks to vet.

Last summer, a group of interns built a feature on our website that let founders submit their deck and get AI-generated feedback before it ever landed on my desk.

The AI catches things like inadequate market size or lack of a competitive moat.

Now we're working on something where we use AI to comb through our data lake of hundreds of thousands of companies and replicate what I actually look for in a founder.

Turns out that it’s really difficult. There are so many intangibles when you’re evaluating a person, but we’re getting there.

I've learned that AI doesn’t make me want fewer people on my team. On the contrary, it makes me want more. Every person with AI becomes a much bigger version of themselves.

The interns doing market research now do it better and faster than anyone I've seen before.

The more you use AI, the more you realize what else you can use it for.

Thanks to Inc. for covering. Check the comments for the full story.

[Johnny Utah @johnnyutah]

Decided to reread @jack message. A different approach and done with care, Jack should be applauded.

This will happen across corporate America and globally.

This statement is the ‘why’…

but something has changed. we're already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company. and that's accelerating rapidly.

Expect rapid change- learn to use the tools in the market today’s - I’m certain you must get on board fast or risk being left behind.

[Naval @naval]

New podcast on AI (full episode). Links below.

A Motorcycle for the Mind

0:00 If you want to learn, do

2:13 Vibe coding is the new product management

6:49 Training models is the new coding

10:13 Is traditional software engineering dead?

13:07 There is no demand for average

14:12 The hottest new programming language is English

18:36 AI is adapting to us faster than we are adapting to it

22:56 No entrepreneur is worried about AI taking their job

26:46 The goal is not to have a job

29:49 AIs are not alive

32:55 AI fails the only true test of intelligence

36:49 Early adopters of AI have an enormous edge

39:37 AI meets you exactly where you are

43:02 Always leverage the best intelligence

44:37 If you can't define it, you can't program it

49:37 The solution to AI anxiety is action

[Brian Armstrong @brian_armstrong]

One of my favorite lessons I’ve learnt from working with smart people:

Action produces information. If you’re unsure of what to do, just do anything, even if it’s the wrong thing. This will give you information about what you should actually be doing.

Sounds simple on the surface - the hard part is making it part of your every day working process.

[Top 1% Men @dtop1percentmen]

Bookmark this for later.

[Ray Dalio @RayDalio]

The 80/20 Rule states that you get 80 percent of the value out of something from 20 percent of the information or effort. (It's also true that you're likely to exert 80 percent of your effort getting the final 20 percent of value.) Understanding this rule saves you from getting bogged down in unnecessary detail once you've gotten most of the learning you need to make a good decision. #principleoftheday

[Naval @naval]

“Die empty.”

[Jay Alto @theJayAlto]

there are essays, and then there are "violently shift your entire perception of reality" essays

[Ray Dalio @RayDalio]

This is a requirement. Being considerate means allowing other people to mostly do what they want, so long as it is consistent with our principles, policies, and the law. It also means being willing to put others ahead of your own desires. If the people on both sides of an argument approach their disagreements in this way, we will have many fewer disputes about who is offending whom.Still, judgments will have to be made and lines will have to be drawn and set down in policies. #principleoftheday

[Ray Dalio @RayDalio]

One of the hardest things for people to do is to objectively look down on themselves within their circumstances (i.e., their machine) so that they can act as the machine’s designer and manager. Most people remain stuck in the perspective of being a worker within the machine. If you can recognize the differences between those roles and that it is much more important that you are a good designer/manager of your life than a good worker in it, you will be on the right path. To be successful, the “designer/manager you” has to be objective about what the “worker you” is really like, not believing in him more than he deserves, or putting him in jobs he shouldn’t be in. Instead of having this strategic perspective, most people operate emotionally and in the moment; their lives are a series of undirected emotional experiences, going from one thing to the next. If you want to look back on your life and feel you’ve achieved what you wanted to, you can’t operate that way. #principleoftheday

[Ray Dalio @RayDalio]

In my own life, what I want to give to people, most importantly to people I love, is the power to deal with reality to get what they want. In pursuit of my goal to give them strength, I will often deny them what they "want" because that will give them the opportunity to struggle so that they can develop the strength to get what they want on their own. This can be difficult for people emotionally, even if they understand intellectually that having difficulties is the exercise they need to grow strong and that just giving them what they want will weaken them and ultimately lead to them needing more help.

Of course most people would prefer not to have weaknesses. Our upbringings and our experiences in the world have conditioned us to be embarrassed by our weaknesses and hide them. But people are happiest when they can be themselves. If you can be open with your weaknesses it will make you freer and will help you deal with them better. I urge you to not be embarrassed about your problems, recognizing that everyone has them. Bringing them to the surface will help you break your bad habits and develop good ones, and you will acquire real strengths and justifiable optimism. #principleoftheday

[Ray Dalio @RayDalio]

Two people who collaborate well will be about three times as effective as each of them operating independently, because each will see what the other might miss--plus they can leverage each other's strengths while holding each other accountable to higher standards. #principleoftheday

[Ben Lang @benln]

Marc Andreessen’s career advice for the AI era:

[Ray Dalio @RayDalio]

In 10 years, the US government will be $55-60 trillion in debt (which will be 7-7.5 times government revenue) because there will be $25-30 trillion of additional borrowing. That amounts to about $425,000 of debt per American family.

When I calculate the supply and demand for this debt, I don’t see enough buyers to buy the debt the US needs to sell, which will cause big problems.

We can avoid the worst-case scenario, but we need to act now.

To learn more, I encourage you to read my new book, How Countries Go Broke: The Big Cycle.

#raydalio #principles #economics #debt

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

Carta is reporting that solo founder companies are skyrocketing, especially bootstrapped ones.

Many VCs are more hesitant to fund solo founders.

But we are always open to it.

AI is making solo founders incredibly capable.

Everyone can be a designer, engineer, etc. Entrepreneurs don’t need a large team for many new businesses.

With emerging tools, it’s possible to start and scale a business solo.

There's still magic in collaboration, so solo founders should expect to grow their teams over time.

The best entrepreneurs know when to go solo and when to bring in complementary skills.

We don’t wait until a founder has built out an entire team…any VC can do that.

Not to mention that the wild, obscure, and truly ground-breaking ideas that we like to bet on lend themself well to an outsider with a laptop.

We don’t wait around for other VCs to validate our thinking. When we see a great entrepreneur (solo or with a team)… we move quickly.

[FAVRIT @FavritIO]

Security matters.

Reminder- do not click on links.

[Mehdi Farooq,CFA @MehdiFarooq2]

One minute I was prepping for a Zoom call. Ten minutes later, large part of my life savings were gone.

It started with a message on Telegram from Alex Lin — someone I knew. He wanted to catch up.

I shared my Calendly link.
He booked a slot for the next day.

A few minutes before the call, he asked to switch to Zoom Business “for compliance reasons” — said one of his LPs would be joining - Kent (who I also knew)

Given we were doing a lot of treasury deals and there was genuine LP interest, it didn’t seem out of the ordinary.

I joined the Zoom. No audio.
But I could see both of them. They messaged in the chat: “Can you hear us?”
They told me to update Zoom to fix the audio issue.

That’s when it happened when I update.

Six wallets drained (my fault for not keeping things more buttoned up)

My laptop compromised completely.

Years of savings - gone in minutes.

I found out later that Alex’s account had been hacked.

And the worst part?While my wallet was being emptied, the hacker kept chatting on Telegram like nothing was wrong.
He even joked: “Let’s catch up at SG”

It was surreal and completely Violating. But in the darkest moment, whitehat hackers stepped up — complete strangers offering help when I was at my lowest

Turns out I was compromised by DPRK affiliated threat know as dangrouspassword

Attaching the video moment with the hacker (which was fake)

[FAVRIT @FavritIO]

@kevindegods Great thread- purpose is the driver that will lead to success.

[Kevin Henrikson @kevindegods]

Everyone thinks I'm living the dream life...

• 3 full-time staff running every single aspect of my life
• Can travel whenever I want
• 8 companies built

But every successful person eventually faces this same dark truth:

[Kevin Henrikson @kevindegods]

Your 40s will destroy your happiness.

You'll work 60-hour weeks while your kids need money and your parents need care.

Ray Dalio calls this the "midlife squeeze" - and it breaks most people.

His leverage strategy that changes everything:

[Ray Dalio @RayDalio]

Someone who doesn't have much can be more generous giving a little than a rich person giving a lot. Some people respond to the generosity while others respond to the money. You want the first type with you, and you always want to treat them generously.

When I had nothing, I was as generous as I could be with people who appreciated my generosity more than the higher levels of compensation others could afford to give them. For that reason, they stayed with me. I never forgot that, and I made a point of making them rich when I had the opportunity to do so. And they in turn were generous to me in their own way when I needed their generosity most. We both got something much more valuable than money--and we got the money too.

Remember that the only purpose of money is to get you what you want, so think hard about what you value and put it above money. How much would you sell a good relationship for? There's not enough money in the world to get you to part with a valued relationship. #principleoftheday