Ron Pragides 

Led pre-IPO Eng teams: @Salesforce @Twitter @BigCommerce • Eager to build another great company.

[Ron Pragides  @mrp]

🎓Steve Jobs commencement speech @Stanford — June 14, 2005

“I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.”

https://t.co/1Ow0nuPVZR via @YouTube

[Ron Pragides  @mrp]

🎓@sundarpichai @Google commencement speech @Stanford

[Ron Pragides  @mrp]

2026 YTD HIGH-LOW $IGV
(TOP 30 RANGE) via @a16z

Never Sold Off
• Datadog: 104% $DDOG
• Fortinet: 87% $FTNT
• CrowdStrike: 77% $CRWD
• Palo Alto: 73% $PANW
• SentinelOne: 45% $S

Partially Recovered
• Atlassian: 65% $TEAM
• Unity: 60% $U
• ServiceTitan: 51% $TTAN
• Zeta Global: 48% $ZETA
• GitLab: 48% $GTLB
• Workday: 48% $WDAY
• Elastic: 47% $ESTC
• ServiceNow: 46% $NOW
• Rubrik: 46% $RBRK
• Oracle: 45% $ORCL
• AppLovin: 43% $APP
• AppFolio: 38% $APPF
• Nutanix: 37% $NTNX
• Gen Digital: 34% $GEN

Went Down, Stayed Down
• Intuit: 56% $INTU
• HubSpot: 52% $HUBS
• Zscaler: 48% $ZS
• Pegasystems: 44% $PEGA
• UiPath: 43% $PATH
• Guidewire: 41% $GWRE
• Procore: 38% $PCOR
• DocuSign: 38% $DOCU
• Open Text: 37% $OTEX
• Adobe: 36% $ADBE
• Trimble: 35% $TRMB
• Tyler Tech: 33% $TYL

[Robinhood Comms @RobinhoodComms]

Our CEO Vlad Tenev shared the following note with our team at Robinhood today:

Robinhoodies,

We’ve made the difficult decision to say goodbye to some of our team members today. Those departing are being notified, and we’re offering them full support through this transition, including severance. These are good people who helped build the foundation we stand on today, and I am deeply grateful for their contributions to Robinhood.

I want to be transparent about why this is happening now. Robinhood’s business has never been stronger. But to achieve the massive scale of our mission, we cannot default to operating as a heavily-layered organization. We must be a lean, hyper-focused team where every single individual is empowered to make a massive impact. Our execution is strong today, but our ambitions require us to continuously raise our own bar. To achieve that, today we are flattening our org structure and reducing our overall team size by 10% of headcount.

Because our financial position is strong, we are making this change proactively. The goal is to maximize our talent density and ensure that our culture is defined by an absolute elite performance bar and a superlative commitment to our customers. This transition creates even more opportunities for our most talented people to grow and take on greater responsibility. We will also continue hiring strategically, investing heavily in top-tier talent, and utilizing frontier technologies to push our execution even further.

I know it can be painful to say goodbye to teammates. It is the hardest consequence of committing uncompromisingly to our values of being “Lean & Disciplined” and demanding “High Performance.”

[Ron Pragides  @mrp]

@CBSNews 🪞

[Ron Pragides  @mrp]

.@HillaryClinton made a “terrible mistake” by running for election in 2016.

Another Democratic nominee would have defeated @realDonaldTrump had the party held a competitive primary.

[Ron Pragides  @mrp]

.@HillaryClinton made a “terrible mistake” by running for election in 2016.

Another Democratic nominee would have defeated @realDonaldTrump had the party held a competitive primary.

[CBS News @CBSNews]

Hillary Clinton said former President Joe Biden made a “terrible mistake” by running for reelection in 2024, arguing another Democratic nominee would have defeated President Trump had the party held a competitive primary.

“He made a terrible mistake for himself, his legacy and for the country,” Clinton said. “... I think it was a terrible miscalculation on the part of President Biden.”

[Ron Pragides  @mrp]

@Stanford “I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation.”

STEVE JOBS

[Ron Pragides  @mrp]

🎓Steve Jobs commencement speech @Stanford — June 14, 2005

“I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.”

https://t.co/1Ow0nuPVZR via @YouTube

[Ron Pragides  @mrp]

@charliebilello SpaceX Sales: $19 billion
SpaceX Net Income: -$9 billion

[Ron Pragides  @mrp]

“How SpaceX Makes Money” @EconomyApp

[Ron Pragides  @mrp]

@austinxwalker @garrytan The State of California

[Ron Pragides  @mrp]

CALIFORNIA — spending more while producing less of what its ordinary citizens need.

“The frustration is real and justified. California is one of the most dynamic places on the planet. It has Silicon Valley, Hollywood, world-class universities, extraordinary agriculture, ports, talent, and natural beauty. But it is a case study in how a rich society can spend more and more while producing less and less of what its ordinary citizens need.

The paradox of California today is a successful economy attached to a failing model of governance. Consider the fiscal record. Since 2000, California’s population has grown by roughly 15%, but the state’s general expenditures have grown more than 200%, from $78 billion to about $248 billion. General spending per person has risen from about $2,300 to about $6,300. The number of state employees has grown by more than 50% by one count. Does anyone think that California government and its benefits have gotten 200% better in the last 25 years?

Housing is the central failure. California has long spoken the language of compassion while building a system of exclusion. Alisya Finley writes in *The Wall Street Journal* that from 2021 to 2024, the LA metro area, with nearly 13 million people, issued only 118,000 building permits for new homes. Atlanta, with about half that population, issued 163,000.

California has made it too hard, slow, and expensive to build. The result is predictable: home prices soar, rents rise, workers commute farther, homelessness grows, young people leave. And people *are* leaving. Over the past seven years, the state has lost a net 1.9 million people through domestic migration. For generations, people moved to California to pursue the future; now, many middle-class people are leaving because they can't afford one.

Or look at education. For years, California schools had a plausible excuse: they were underfunded. Total spending on education through 12th grade has more than doubled since the early 2010s, and per-pupil spending by 2023 was well above the national average. Yet the results remain dismal. In the 2024 Nation's Report Card, California was 43rd in 4th-grade math, 39th in 4th-grade reading, 36th in 8th-grade math, and 38th in 8th-grade reading.

Homelessness tells the same story in a more painful register. A 2024 audit revealed California had spent $24 billion on the problem over a five-year span. Yet in 2024, California reached a record high in homelessness: almost 200,000. Homelessness did decline by about 3% from 2024 to 2025, but the state’s expansive, expensive, and elaborate homelessness aid complex has not proven to solve homelessness in any significant way.

California’s headline prosperity, generated in good part by a few industries like high tech, masks weaknesses underneath. Job creation has been sluggish. In 2025, California essentially failed to add any new jobs on net. Private industries outside government and government-supported healthcare actually shed jobs, according to the Center for Jobs and the Economy. The state is using public spending to paper over private-sector stagnation.

Nowhere is this more vivid than Los Angeles, where Hollywood—the city’s defining industry—is in slow-motion collapse. The effects are being felt not by celebrity actors and influencers, but the carpenters, costumers, sound engineers, camera operators, editors, drivers, caterers, dry cleaners, prop houses, and small businesses that once formed one of the world's great industrial clusters.

[…]

For years, Democrats in California have governed without any real competition. The recent primary results suggest that even in deep blue territory, voters are restless. They’re not becoming Republicans, but they are asking a reasonable question: why does a state with so much money, talent, and promise make life for ordinary people so hard?”

@FareedZakaria @CNN

[Ron Pragides  @mrp]

billion

[The White House @WhiteHouse]

"Iran has agreed to never have a Nuclear Weapon! Also, the story that the U.S. is paying Iran 300 million Dollars is Fake News, put out by the Dumocrats!!!" - President Donald J. Trump

[Ron Pragides  @mrp]

@WhiteHouse “billion” versus “million”

[Ron Pragides  @mrp]

O’KEEFE: The Iranians are saying that they're going to have access to a $300 billion reconstruction fund. True or false?

VANCE: That’s the sort of thing they *could* have access to, funded by the Gulf Coast Coalition, so long as they honor their end of the obligation […] the Iranian media, especially the hardline media, they’re going to talk a lot about what they get, without talking about what they give.

@edokeefe @CBSNews @JDVance @VP

[Ron Pragides  @mrp]

The Agentic Economy: Payments, Commerce & AI-Native Platforms

@alanxdu – Partner @M12vc
@ChiZhangData – Founder/CEO @GoKiteAI
@kleffew94 – GTM Lead @coinbase
@gaganmac – VP Product @circle

(Hosted by @EntreConnectUS at @AWSstartups in SF)

[Milo Smith @mil000]

“dropped out”, yet desperately wants the accolades from the system you left

[Ron Pragides  @mrp]

@VCBrags Many such cases

[Sky News @SkyNews]

Trump's Iran war is one of the greatest strategic blunders in US history.

Analysis from Sky's @DominicWaghorn ⬇️ https://t.co/lrwck9jgJP

[Ron Pragides  @mrp]

@ProjectLincoln @EricTrump 🧐

[Ford News @FordJohnathan5]

BREAKINGNEWS: Art of the deal. Iran says Trump agreed to 300 billion to rebuild Iran. 24 billion in frozen assets to be released. Iran claims some of that money has already been handed over. Jesus this is a mess. 🚨

[Ron Pragides  @mrp]

“None of this would be cause for criticism if the decision to attack the Islamic Republic were to leave the US in a substantially better negotiating position than it enjoyed before the start of hostilities.”
@MarcChampion1 @opinion

[Bloomberg @business]

Trump's deal with Iran looks like a return to the pre-war status quo, only with Iran in a stronger negotiating position, writes @MarcChampion1 (via @opinion) https://t.co/oQmy9tL2hO

[Ron Pragides  @mrp]

@TheRealThelmaJ1 Add 300 billion dollars to that

[Ron Pragides  @mrp]

O’KEEFE: The Iranians are saying that they're going to have access to a $300 billion reconstruction fund. True or false?

VANCE: That’s the sort of thing they *could* have access to, funded by the Gulf Coast Coalition, so long as they honor their end of the obligation […] the Iranian media, especially the hardline media, they’re going to talk a lot about what they get, without talking about what they give.

@edokeefe @CBSNews @JDVance @VP

[Ron Pragides  @mrp]

@WhiteHouse @EmmanuelMacron Vance discusses the Iran deal

[Ron Pragides  @mrp]

O’KEEFE: The Iranians are saying that they're going to have access to a $300 billion reconstruction fund. True or false?

VANCE: That’s the sort of thing they *could* have access to, funded by the Gulf Coast Coalition, so long as they honor their end of the obligation […] the Iranian media, especially the hardline media, they’re going to talk a lot about what they get, without talking about what they give.

@edokeefe @CBSNews @JDVance @VP