Neo

A mentorship community, builder residency, & VC fund. Retweets represent our diverse community’s voices, from students to CEOs. Apply now:

[Neo @neo]

🎙️ Watch now: podcast available on all platforms.

Episode 3: Luana Lopes Lara on “Confession with Ali Partovi”

– A $1B valuation, yet she put Kalshi’s odds of failure above 90%.
– “I'm supposed to be the optimistic one”: hiding fears from her co-founder.
– “I’m betting the company”: suing Kalshi’s regulator despite board objections.

… and much more with @Kalshi co-founder & COO @luanalopeslara.

(0:00) “Took three years. It was awful”: getting Kalshi regulated
(1:58) Growing up in Brazil and training as a ballerina
(6:01) Choosing MIT despite being told she shouldn’t
(8:03) “Ballet was never a hobby to me” and giving it up
(9:46) “Even when we were worth a billion dollars”: fearing Kalshi would fail
(22:12) Employees leaving, layoffs, and offering severance
(23:38) “You’re gonna kill me”: telling Tarek they should sue the government
(32:17) “Tarek was right and I was wrong”: the fallout from suing their regulator
(33:16) “I just feel lighter”: winning in court
(36:44) “I am gonna have to bluff”: convincing Tarek to follow through
(40:11) “You can psych yourself out of doing anything”: overthinking risk

[Max Forsey @max_forsey]

Kids love @KaleComputer

This weekend at NewKid Days SF, we demoed Kale in public for the first time. Some kids stayed for up to 2 hours drawing, asking questions, and taking photos.

Parents loved watching their kids make things, and hearing how Kale keeps them in the loop and gives them ideas on how to get involved beyond the screen

[Ron Nachum @RonNachum]

This was such an enjoyable conversation! @LubaYudasina’s podcasts are great, and I told her I learned more about myself just by being on the show!

Lots of exciting things happening @sapienai, it was great to share more of how we got here and the personal side of things!

[Eva Tuecke @evatuecke]

In just two weeks, @altaratech helped a semiconductor materials provider increase yield from 80% to 94% on a capacity-constrained production line.

To meet surging semiconductor demand, Polar Performance Materials needed to rapidly scale production of its ultra-high-purity alumina without compromising quality.

By combining more than a decade of process knowledge with Altara’s AI platform, Polar was able to translate its accumulated materials and manufacturing expertise into higher yield, greater productive capacity, faster problem solving, and substantially higher responsiveness to customer needs. Key outcomes included:

- 14-percentage-point yield increase in 2 weeks
- 1,000+ hours saved across R&D, manufacturing, quality, and engineering
- 50% reduction in innovation time-to-market

Christopher, Process Engineer at Polar, used Altara to generate data-backed hypotheses in minutes, pressure-test promising ideas, and validate the strongest ones on the plant floor. He described using Altara as “having a team of 10 more engineers across all functions next to me running ideas, simulations, and analyses in parallel.”

And this was just one project within a broader deployment across Polar’s R&D, quality, manufacturing, and process engineering teams. As Polar CEO Michael Edelman puts it: "With Altara as part of the team, our pace of innovation is faster than it’s ever been."

We're excited to continue driving outcomes like these for our customers across the semiconductor, advanced materials, and battery industries.

↓ Read the full case study below.

[Neo @neo]

Dara Khosrowshahi’s family lost everything when they moved to the US from Iran. He and Ali talk about growing up with parents who had to start over.

Watch the full episode: https://t.co/Htn7JA7KhI

[Neo @neo]

“I’m definitely not getting this job!” Satya Nadella recalls a lesson from his interview to join Microsoft.

Watch the full episode: https://t.co/562ZsMLRgn

[Erik Bernhardsson @bernhardsson]

https://t.co/nByTwj2JPX

[Neo @neo]

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi talks about hitting rock bottom during COVID.

Watch the full episode: https://t.co/Htn7JA7KhI

[Adam Khakhar @adamkhakhar]

Today we are finally coming out of stealth with a few announcements:
- Founding @thirdmomentres with my friend Jeffrey Yan: automatically improving inference endpoints (with focus on data research).
- Fundraise at $250M valuation earlier this Summer with investors including @neo (@apartovi ), @Mascobot , @adamdangelo and more.
- 0 -> 8 figures in revenue within ~6 months of founding the company. In just this past month, we won $10M+ in contracts.
- Hiring ~15 more engineers in the next 45 days. Currently based in SF, opening a NYC office soon.

Jeffrey and I are building Third Moment to do two things: (1) make it effortless for enterprises to deploy state-of-the-art AI tailored to their workflows, and (2) build best-in-class RL environments that push the frontier of model capabilities. The design of a reinforcement learning environment has an underappreciated impact on the resulting behaviors of the models trained on it.

If you are interested in pushing the frontier of ML systems and data research, reach out to us ([email protected]). Check out OpenAI’s blog post on some of our experiments in the comments.

[Neo @neo]

Dara Khosrowshahi on the importance of being honest with your team, no matter how hard it feels.

Watch the full episode: https://t.co/pkrDGNbykB

[Neo @neo]

“I gave up and that bugs me a lot”: in 1999, Satya Nadella saw the importance of Search and didn’t press hard enough for it.

Watch the full episode: https://t.co/jevunaWrkT

[Neo @neo]

🎙️ Watch now: podcast available on all platforms.

Episode 2. Dara Khosrowshahi on “Confession with Ali Partovi”

– Leaving Iran in the revolution with nothing but family
– The Priceline deal he failed to push through at Expedia
–"I lost confidence... I just backed off."
– Uber’s COVID layoffs and hitting rock bottom

… and much more with Uber CEO @Dkhos.

(0:00) “85% of our volume disappeared overnight”: COVID hits Uber
(3:23) “We lost everything the family had”: Leaving Iran to start over
(10:12) “We’re getting a second chance”: the grit to rebuild
(13:26) “It was ignorance and desperation”: rising to lead Expedia
(17:42) “Not a particularly good one”: Dara rates himself as CEO
(20:16) “But I lost confidence”: the missed opportunity that haunts him
(23:49) “I didn’t hire you to be average”: Barry Diller on taking risks
(27:06) “At first I said no”: Turning down the Uber job
(29:45) “Everyone has a bullshit meter”: Being honest with the team
(37:10) “I was trying to put off the decision”: dreading a layoff

[Neo @neo]

🎙️ Watch now: debut podcast available on all platforms.

Episode 1. Satya Nadella on “Confession with Ali Partovi”

– The interview question he still thinks about decades later
–"We won the browser war, only to lose the web"
– His son Zain and how his empathy journey began

… and much more with Microsoft CEO @satyanadella.

(0:00) “You need more empathy”: a job interview gone bad
(0:27) Welcome to Confession
(1:06) Growing up in India
(4:13) “See the world through his eyes”: the birth of his son Zain
(11:27) “I didn’t care. I didn’t listen”: failing as a manager
(16:07) “It haunts me”: lacking the courage to speak up
(19:50) “We didn’t understand that the economic value is all in search”
(26:19) Ali: “I was essentially fired… I’ve never told anyone”

[connor ling @conconconling]

https://t.co/C4qSCsGV7F

[Josh @joshavata]

Today @MeckaAI is announcing a $60M Series B from @sequoia to accelerate the advent of general purpose robotics

This brings our total funding to over $120M to become the data and deployment layer for physical AI

Read more below 🧵

[Ali Partovi @apartovi]

I'm starting a podcast, "Confession," where I invite tech veterans to share their painful lessons.

We all connect through shared pain. Hear founders & CEOs like Satya Nadella (Microsoft), Dara Khosrowshahi (Uber), Luana Lopes Lara (Kalshi), and others share their stories and lessons learned.

Subscribe to Confession on...
✅ Spotify: https://t.co/ivOCa9wYK5
✅ Youtube: https://t.co/Ofo7boNWfg
✅ Apple: https://t.co/i8SFYF1CZC

@SatyaNadella @Dkhos @luanalopeslara

[Kanjun 🐙 @kanjun]

What should the future of personal computing look like?

We built it 😈

Introducing Imbue Studio:

[Sara Hooker @sarahookr]

Important update. 🔥

Meet the @adaption_ai Grady plushie.

[Neo @neo]

We can’t wait to see what the Neo community will learn, accomplish, and share in October. 🎉

Full post here:
https://t.co/7S902TTUnX

[Neo @neo]

Cognition’s $2B raise, 100x cheaper code search, & more | Neo & Noteworthy

Check out our September recap of learnings and announcements by Neo portfolio companies and community members 💙

https://t.co/7S902TTUnX

[Neo @neo]

The team at @appliedcompute shared how a specialist model built with turbopuffer made large-scale code search 100x cheaper in its tests.