Greatness always has severe adversity in the background. You can be a victim of your circumstance, or a hero of your circumstance. @jalenbrunson1 is a hero.
I donโt think I have ever been this excited about a non @warriors Finals. ๐ฝ๐ฝ๐ฝ
You can work 5 days a week and succeed as a startup.
Mercury has done that from day 0 and we are valued @ $5.2bn 7 years after launch.
I have been an entrepreneur for 20 years and raised 3 kids while doing it.
The point of success is to have a great life not just a startup ๐
A day in the life of a VC in 2026:
9am: Board meeting. My main value-add is aggressively pushing for Anthropic/OpenAI usage in non-engineering functions. Briefly ponder how I became an SDR for foundation model companies.
1pm: Lunch with another VC. We discuss how startups can find "blue ocean" away Anthropic/OpenAI. We conclude we should probably just invest the rest of our funds directly into Anthropic/OpenAI.
3pm: Pitch meeting. Me: "Do you run on Anthropic or OpenAI?" Founder: "Both." Debating internally whether a company reselling Anthropic/OpenAI with a 10% gross margin is a good investment but hey, at least they're in the "token flow".
4:30pm: Deep due diligence. I ask Claude if it plans to build this exact startup natively in its next release. Same to ChatGPT. They both say yes. I pass on the deal.
6pm: Urgent call from a portco CTO: "We need an intro to upgrade our Anthropic tier!" I immediately agree to help them spend more of the venture dollars we just invested in them, on Anthropic.
8pm: Brainstorming next guests for the podcast. Thinking I should probably just try to get some folks from Anthropic and OpenAI.
Listen to how many times the CEO of @cloudwalk says โcustomerโ and โproductโ throughout the course of this interview. That obsession has led to 100%+ growth on >$2.5B of gross revs and >$300M of Net Income. Obrigado my Brazilian hermano @luisbebop
https://t.co/OvADe6NADa
Fonseca d. Novak Djokovic 4-6 4-6 6-3 7-5 7-5
JOรO BECOMES THE FIRST TEENAGER IN HISTORY TO BEAT NOVAK IN A SLAM.
The 2nd player in history to beat Novak from 2 sets to 0 down.
The first in 16 years to do it.
Novak was 289-1 when leading 2 sets to 0.
Down 1-3 in the 5th set.
Facing 2 break points to go down 3-5 in the 4th set.
Utterly UNBELIEVABLE what we just witnessed.
Heโs into the 2nd week of a Slam for the first time.
The longest match of his life.
The longest match Novak has ever played at Roland Garros.
โ 1st top 5 win
โ 1st Roland Garros R16
The talent, hunger, & belief to shake up this sport as we know it.
BORA CARALHO.
๐ง๐ท๐๐ง๐ท
N of 1 operator and friend. A lot of businesses are trying to follow her but you just cannot replicate @jackiereses vast set of experiences across both Fin and Tech!
Sheโs also my most newly converted @nyliberty super-fan which is fitting coming from Baba!
BREAKING: Inside Lead Bank - $56M Investment Now Worth $1.5 BILLION
Jackie Reses is on an iconic run.
@Lead_Bank is the $1.5B tech-first bank powering Stripe, Walmart, Ramp, Affirm & Revolut
Backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, Greycroft, ICONIQ, Khosla Ventures, Ribbit Capital, Zeev Partners, plus Larry Fink, Rob Goldstein & Larry Summers personally.
CEO & Co-Founder Jackie Reses (@jackiereses)
We cover:
- Sitting on Alibaba's board with Jack Ma, Joe Tsai + Masayoshi Son
"Masa would come in & be like, 'Yes, it shall be blessed.'"
- Taking an HR role at Yahoo, then turning it into Chief Development Officer
- Jack Dorsey: "He'll sit in meetings & not say a word. There's real wisdom in his ability to 'just zip it.' "
- Why she's skeptical of the de-banking narrative
- Building Lead to $280M in revenue with no sales team
๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐
(00:00) Jackie Reses, CEO of Lead Bank
(01:06) The swiss army knife of Silicon Valley
(02:46) Inside the Alibaba boardroom with Jack Ma and Masa
(05:23) Being one of the only Americans on Alibabaโs board
(10:29) What Jack Ma and Masayoshi Son are really like
(12:32) The biggest lessons Jackie learned from Alibaba
(15:12) From Goldman Sachs to Silicon Valley
(17:44) Why Yahoo hired a PE investor to run HR
(22:53) Yahoo was a hot mess
(25:33) The deal that recovered billions for Yahoo
(26:31) How Jack Dorsey recruited Jackie to Square
(29:53) Three engineers, three days, one crypto platform
(33:51) What Jack Dorsey is really like
(36:13) Being Jack Dorseyโs HR lead during Twitter chaos
(40:03) How to spot real innovation vs hype
(42:21) Why debanking is a myth
(48:10) Why buy a 100 year old bank
(51:23) Growing a bank with no sales team
(54:11) The APIs powering the future of finance
(56:03) How AI is transforming banking
(57:07) The JD Vance connection
(58:39) What it feels like inside the White House
(01:02:53) The biggest misconception about government
(01:04:21) Why Lead Bankโs culture feels different
(01:05:35) The next chapter for Lead Bank
One of our portfolio companies ranks their VCs each quarter by number of customer introductions in the board deck.
Simple, but highly effective at creating accountability and fostering friendly competition among investors.
Ironically, one of the companyโs largest shareholders, a $20b AUM multistage fund ranks last almost every quarter.
"I don't believe there was debanking. I think it's a crock of shit. An absolute crock of shit."
โ @Lead_Bank CEO @jackiereses
"There's 5,000 banks in the United States. We have a lot of red states. Are you telling me that in lots of red states, including where my company is headquartered, Kansas City, Missouriโthose banks were not willing to bank, for example, conservative companies?"
"What debanking actually means is that banks transitioned out of offering crypto products or risky products like adult entertainment or something like that."
"That's legit. That happened to lots of companies. But that is not systematically debanking. That's choosing not to invest in the industry."
"There might be cases where a bank decides to not include executives in a particular industry, or they choose they don't want the risk associated with something. That is their prerogative, and banks can make decisions based on their own reputational risk."
"Thankfully, you have 50 states and 5,000 banks, and there are plenty of people who would take a pro and con of each side of those judgments, and be able to offer services to many of those people who say they were excluded from the banking system."