Sam Sugarman

VC/Angel Investor | Ravens | ✡️

[Sam Sugarman @SamSugarman3]

Janik Sinner is an incredible tennis player. Incredible sportsman too

But if he had to play 10-15 years ago when Federer, Djoker and Nadal were active, there’s no way he’d have more than 1 major title

[Sam Sugarman @SamSugarman3]

The lack of urgency by the USMNT is so tough

[Sam Sugarman @SamSugarman3]

How is Nike not already sponsoring this moment?

Amazing / humble interview post match too.

[Sam Sugarman @SamSugarman3]

“USVC told me …that the company was aware and approved”

But really they convinced a shareholder to allow a single layer LP swap without company approval.

Would be tough if USVC’s tweet gets their ownership position cancelled.

[Packy McCormick @packyM]

Book says let sleeping dogs lie here.

Don't amplify and it'll blow over. These things have a way of sneaky fucking with your reputation though.

First things first, I love Anduril, and I love Matt's ongoing "call out SPV sleazeballs" series, particularly when I'm not the target of it. I had a lot of fun writing that deep dive on Anduril with the company, and have held them up as the Prime example of a Vertical Integrator.

Also, [leo clip] i'm not fucking selling. I wouldn't and didn't "sell a slice of my SPV to USVC."

USVC told me another fund had offered their LPs liquidity via USVC (directly to LPs, not GP selling a slice), that the company was aware and approved, and asked if they could offer the same thing to mine. I said yes. Should have confirmed that the company was cool with it, but a couple of texts was the extent of it.

One (1) LP hit the bid and so USVC replaced them in the SPV. They did the transaction directly. I didn't sell anything - whether Anduril shares, management, or carry. I made $0 on this.

Matt said they had no visibility on my fees and carry: 0 and 20, direct investment, not stacked, pretty vanilla.

Again, love Anduril, and even love this crusade, but funds letting new investors buy out LPs who want liquidity is super common, don't require the approval of every company in the fund's portfolio, and i'm sure some funds invested in Anduril have let their LPs sell their LP stakes in the fund to new investors.

Should Ankur have tweeted about it? God no. Poked the bear, sliced our hand and put it into the water next to Jaws. Tweeting about Anduril SPVs is like saying "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" into the mirror but you get Matt Grimm instead of Beetlejuice.

Anyway, long Anduril, pry my shares from my cold dead fingers, etc... thank you for your attention to this matter.

[Sam Sugarman @SamSugarman3]

10/10

[Nike Basketball @nikebasketball]

Sleep well, NY.

[Sam Sugarman @SamSugarman3]

SpaceX opening trading at $175 PPS ($2.3T).

Elon’s a trillionaire.

[Sam Sugarman @SamSugarman3]

Only thing that could stop the Knicks is the Portnoy jinx.

[Dave Portnoy @stoolpresidente]

Congrats to the Knicks on the NBA title. Tonight was no fluke. They are better than the Spurs. Brunson is better than Wemby.

[Sam Sugarman @SamSugarman3]

5th set may have been the best he’s played on clay.

He’s dialed in.

[The Tennis Letter @TheTennisLetter]

Frances Tiafoe’s reaction after coming back from 2 sets to 0 down to beat Faria and reach the Round of 16 at Roland Garros.

Points to the ground.

Big scream at the end.

Big Foe is hyped.

🇺🇸😤😤😤

[Sam Sugarman @SamSugarman3]

Sums up the Anthropic situation perfectly.

[hari raghavan @haridigresses]

https://t.co/Ywcsiu8iAJ

[Sam Sugarman @SamSugarman3]

Ravens made a mistake here

[Trevor Sikkema @TampaBayTre]

Locked in. Snatches the hat without breaking stride. Didn’t give a shit about the posing mirror. Reloaded his arms like Henry Cavill in Mission Impossible

King

[Sam Sugarman @SamSugarman3]

Is Revolut really worth Anduril + Cursor + PayPal + Ramp combined?

[Financial Times @FT]

Revolut aims for $200bn valuation in stock market listing https://t.co/iNS6iIuVIo

[Sam Sugarman @SamSugarman3]

Is Medvi just the world’s greatest dropshipping store?

No infrastructure, no MOAT, just distribution…

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

Anthropic just ran the SaaS pricing playbook so cleanly that most people won't notice until their credit card statement arrives.

Step 1: Double usage limits for free over Christmas (Dec 25-31). Step 2: Double them again for two weeks in March as a "thank you." Step 3: Recalibrate everyone's baseline expectations upward.

Step 4: Today's announcement. Faster session burn during peak hours. The weekly cap stays the same on paper, but your 5-hour windows now drain quicker when you actually need them.

I spent $45 on Extra Usage today alone. Not because I wanted to. Because I was mid-workflow on a newsletter and the alternative was stopping for hours. That's the conversion event Anthropic is engineering.

The December doubling was framed as a holiday gift. The March doubling was framed as gratitude. Both were market research. They proved the infrastructure could handle 2x load during off-peak, then used that data to justify tighter peak-hour rationing. The 2x promo was a load test with good PR.

Thariq says ~7% of users will hit limits they wouldn't have before. That 7% is the highest-willingness-to-pay cohort. They're the ones who will click "buy extra usage" instead of switching to ChatGPT. Revenue per user goes up without touching the $20 sticker price.

This is the same move every mature SaaS company runs. Keep the base price friendly so nobody churns. Introduce metered overages so your power users self-select into higher spend. Salesforce, AWS, Snowflake, Twilio. Every infrastructure company eventually discovers that usage-based pricing on top of a subscription captures 3-5x more revenue per account than flat tiers alone.

Anthropic just figured out their version. The $20/month Pro plan is the front door. Extra Usage is the real product.

[Sam Sugarman @SamSugarman3]

Someone please tell him…

Stabilized rents >> less supply >> worse for everyone.

[Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @NYCMayor]

Who decides whether or not stabilized rents are raised? Meet the Rent Guidelines Board.

Here's what you should know about the board and how to make your voice heard.

[Sam Sugarman @SamSugarman3]

VCX by Fundrise feels like a scam.

If you want Anthropic, buy Amazon.

If you want OpenAI, buy Microsoft.

Better ownership of the LLMs per dollar spent.

[Sam Sugarman @SamSugarman3]

This must be a TPG tech adjacencies deal.

[Compound248 💰 @compound248]

OpenAI looks increasingly desperate.

It is offering PE firms 17.5% preferred returns to buy into B2B joint ventures between the PE firm and OAI.

The JVs would use OAI’s engineers and most advanced models to customize deployments for the PE portfolio companies (and other businesses).

Expensive money.

[Peter Burns @PeterBurnsESPN]

Why on earth was Florida pressing up 2 with 10 seconds left?

Absolutely baffling.

2 doesn’t kill you, how do you put yourself in a position to give up a 3?

[Sam Sugarman @SamSugarman3]

Florida deserved to lose.

Up 2 with 8 seconds left, calls a timeout and their coach gives a 0/10 defensive play call.

Iowa wins on a wide open 3.

[Sam Sugarman @SamSugarman3]

JOHNNIES!

Pitino is back.

[Sam Sugarman @SamSugarman3]

March Madness kicking off with an all time trick play.

Gg Tucker.

[Tucker Carlson @TuckerCarlson]

When you discover the CIA has been reading your texts in order to frame you for a crime.