Amol Deshpande

Entrepreneur, Divergent Investments, Healthtech, edtech Co-founder at FBN Former KPCB partner

[Amol Deshpande @ad42878]

@byersblake is right.

I joined kpcb a few years after @vkhosla had left to start @khoslaventures. Greentech era.

My interactions, as a super junior guy back then, was that Khosla actually respected entrepreneurs more than some of the dumbass VC’s.

[Blake Byers @byersblake]

Im sorry you were traumatized by Vinod falling asleep in your meeting. But he founded one of the pioneering companies of the modern computer industry (Eric Schmidt worked for him there), has the highest ever multiple and IRR at exit in Kleiner Perkins history ($7B return on $3M invested in only 3 years) and while everyone was investing in SaaS throughout the 2010s, Vinod was funding the first round of companies building battery tech, rocket launch, fusion, genomics, carbon tech and a little AI research lab called OpenAI. And he did this while hitting grand slams and raising multi billion dollar funds. He is one of the truest VCs to ever do it.

[Amol Deshpande @ad42878]

Are you all familiar with bozo multiplication? Hire 1 bozo they hire 2 and those 2 hire 4 and the 4 hire 16… can’t have bozos in a startup. #entrepreneur

TikTok https://t.co/bf04Lnj1es

[Amol Deshpande @ad42878]

Check out middleseatentrepreneur's video! #TikTok https://t.co/JCmpjHNzHg

[Amol Deshpande @ad42878]

Standard. I’m not kidding. This is and has been standard in vc for decades

#entrepreneur #venturecapital

[GREG ISENBERG @gregisenberg]

I was once pitching in a board room at a top 3 VC firm for a $15M Series A.

12 people in the meeting. One of the GPs fully fell asleep. Out cold for 30+ minutes. Nobody acknowledged it. Everyone just kept going.

I kept presenting my Series A slides to an unconscious man in a Herman Miller chair and somehow that was considered normal. That's venture capital.

You might fly across the country to perform for people who may or may not be conscious.

It's a dance.

And sometimes you lead and sometimes you follow and sometimes your partner is unconscious.

If you're raising right now, just know: every founder has a story like this. The process is weird. The power dynamic is weird. You're not crazy for thinking it's weird.

No one talks about it because they want to continue raising. But I'm happy to stick my neck out there.

It is weird.

[Amol Deshpande @ad42878]

Autonomy is coming and it can’t come soon enough. I swear @Uber and @DoorDash are getting worse by the day. Might be the lack of labor or the cuts.

[Amol Deshpande @ad42878]

Pre tax, pre option exercise… after tax and option exercise 2-20m… low end can’t even buy a house in ca …

[Samuel Spitz @samuel_spitz]

Everyone I know in SF who’s not at OpenAI/Anthropic is freaking out about how their friends are about to make $5-50M with these IPOs

[klöss @kloss_xyz]

imagine you’re Travis Kalanick

you built Uber from nothing into a $70 billion company and changed how every city on earth moves

then in the worst three weeks of your life, family tragedies hit, and five of your investors hand you a letter demanding you resign

so you step down

the board replaces you, your successor and board sell off the self driving division you created, the thing you believed was Uber’s entire future

gone

$4 billion to Aurora

the mainstream media tries to write your obituary: toxic culture, bad leadership, and a cautionary tale

silicon valley moves on
as they always do

but you don’t

you don’t really forget

you go quiet, completely quiet

you take $150 million and buy a ghost kitchen company called CloudKitchens

you raise over a billion dollars, hit a $15 billion valuation, build a company with thousands of employees

and nobody even knows the name
eight years in stealth, employees aren’t even allowed to put your company on their LinkedIn

then today you rename the company Atoms, and it’s not a kitchen company anymore

it’s a robotics company

1. food
2. mining
3. transport

your first move?

acquiring Pronto

the autonomous vehicle startup

built by Anthony Levandowski, the same engineer you originally swooped away from Google to build Uber’s self driving program

oh and he went on to deploy 100+ autonomous trucks for one of the largest materials companies on earth

now he’s coming back to work with you
and the reports say Uber itself

the same company that pushed you out, is now backing you to go after self driving harder than Waymo

the guy they removed is the guy they end up needing

poetic justice

your framework aka everything in civilization is mined or grown, manufactured and moved

you call it the golden age

your manifesto ends with three words:

“I never left”

eight years of silence

then this

but here’s what people keep getting wrong about your situation

everyone wants to call it a comeback or a revenge story

it’s neither

you just went quiet and built for eight years while everyone who wrote you off had stopped paying attention

that’s not revenge, that’s just what true builder obsession looks like

most founders would’ve stayed bitter

most would’ve written a book and done a podcast tour, most would’ve taken the $2.5 billion in shares and disappeared off to a beach or Epstein’s island

you didn’t do any of that
you just kept building

and now the same people who pushed you out need you again

so whether you love him or hate him

the most dangerous person in any room is the one who goes quiet yet never stops building

karma is real

welcome back Travis

[Amol Deshpande @ad42878]

Does anyone else feel @Uber and @lyft are getting worse? Both the tech and experience?

[Amol Deshpande @ad42878]

Glyphosate directive is national security. Keep PRC and its affiliates away from:

- chemical production
- seed genetics
- proprietary farm data
- farmland
- ownership is companies that posses these assets

many with PRC connections that invest here and own

[Amol Deshpande @ad42878]

The nba sucks … I just can’t watch it after the glorious NFL season

[Amol Deshpande @ad42878]

The “open to work” banner on LinkedIn has the opposite of the intended impact for the user…

[Amol Deshpande @ad42878]

Half of the Winter Olympics sports exist to get rich kids into college

[Vivek Ramaswami @vivekramaswami]

hundreds of VCs removing “SaaS investor” from their bios

[Amol Deshpande @ad42878]

Perfectly stated by @scottmcnealy … as a parent if a kid who actually has autism, the whole elite families or kids getting more test time by saying they are disabled. It’s become a game.

[Scott McNealy @scottmcnealy]

Stanford students are perfectly schooled to be in government. Good at gaming the system, no shame, horrible values. Defund Stanford and the rest. https://t.co/ZEt7SOlY1v

[Amol Deshpande @ad42878]

To all my conspiracy theory friends; you were right

[Amol Deshpande @ad42878]

So I have the @CNBC app. It’s like $300 per year for pro. Last 3 times I clicked in this morning it’s “commercial break”. What’s the point?

[Amol Deshpande @ad42878]

Amazing go bears!!

[Amol Deshpande @ad42878]

Larry summers has to be the sleaziest person in history. It doesn’t take much to be president of Harvard

[Amol Deshpande @ad42878]

La cosa nostra and the nba? Do the heads of the 5 crime families meet via zoom these days?

[Amol Deshpande @ad42878]

I actually like this guy watch the whole interview it’s pure comedy @CNBC defending the hedge fund guys tax status

I'm not dropping out of the race, says Republican NYC mayoral candidate ... https://t.co/UV0lHOiTCP via @YouTube