Alex Avery

Building: @SierraPlatform Learning: 🏄🏼‍♂️👨🏼‍💻🥖🧘🏼‍♂️🪚 Past: Founder @gotgather (acquired) @stanford @StanfordGSB

[Alex Avery @alavery2]

Voice agents feel magical…until you benchmark them.

In τ-Voice (read "Tau Voice"), voice agents perform significantly worse than text agents with the same tools.

Here's what's going wrong...

[Sierra @SierraPlatform]

Voice is quickly becoming the default way we interact with agents, but natural conversation brings a new set of challenges like interruptions, background noise, and accents. Voice agents need to handle all of this while still completing real tasks. Existing benchmarks only measure these skills in isolation – not whether voice agents can do both at once, under realistic conditions.

τ-voice tests agents in realistic voice conversations – and it's surfacing real, fast progress on real tasks. In just 8 months, pass rates jumped from ~30% to ~67%, and voice agents now retain ~79% of text capability, up from ~45%.

Learn more: https://t.co/GqXvotW36P

[Christian Keil @pronounced_kyle]

"Dating a model" can mean one of two very different things, depending where you live in California

[Ashlee Vance @ashleevance]

More than 70 pecent of the end-of-life lithium-ion batteries in the US flow through Redwood Materials to be recycled into their base elements. Redwood is now the largest Cobalt producer in the US, as a result.

We spent a day with Redwood's CEO JB Straubel to see the whole operation in action. https://t.co/IdadswB8Dl

[Brittany Busse, MD @brittanybussemd]

When my son was 4 months old, I discovered an app called Solid Starts (you can also find them on Instagram).
It was started by a mom whose son has numerous allergies and is run by a team of experts (MDs, NDs, speech and language pathologists) with the goal of introducing allergens and whole foods to babies early and safely.
Please check it out!

[Vijay Iyengar @vijayiyengar]

https://t.co/B3aaJ9VVjE

[Alex Avery @alavery2]

this is the way

[Sheel Mohnot @pitdesi]

@emilyinvc Just use PT year round

[Sachin Agarwal @agarwal]

Tomorrow is Election Day, and the stakes are incredibly high.

This is the sixth major election @GrowSF has participated in over the last four years. In the previous five, voters helped drive real change: recalling the School Board, recalling the District Attorney, flipping Supervisor seats, and electing a pro-growth majority to the SF Democratic Party.

Tomorrow is different. For the first time in years, winning mostly preserves what we've already achieved. Defeat puts it at risk.

Lose a seat on the Board of Supervisors and the Mayor's job gets harder. Lose a seat on the Board of Education and students pay the price. Pass Proposition D and we'll make it harder for businesses to stay in San Francisco, putting jobs at risk.

This will be a low-turnout election, which means every vote matters more. Please make a plan, vote, and remind your friends and family to do the same.

[Alex Avery @alavery2]

Once in a lifetime opportunity

Act now!

[Ben Springwater @benspringwater]

Share a sauna with me! 🥹 My dear friend @LGAjots is selling his charming historic studio cottage. We share a yard and sauna, <200 ft from Alamo Sq. Posting this with Geoff's permission to see if we can find someone in network first. Reply for more info & private tour.

[Alex Avery @alavery2]

If you’re a fan of @AcquiredFM and in NYC, come on by!

[Sierra @SierraPlatform]

Something we're excited about:

June 24 · NYC · @btaylor + the hosts of @acquiredfm

The AI Paradox — what's real, what's hype, where we’re headed.

5:30pm, New York. Space is limited. Reserve your spot here: https://t.co/zUXvyUcIOv

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

This has quietly been a miracle month in medicine.

In the last 5 weeks we’ve got news on:

- retatrutide, the triple agonist GLP-1 from Lilly, basically melting fat and body-wide inflammation at record levels
- RevMed’s new pancreatic cancer drug showing unprecedented abilities to extend life
- small trial of a one-and-done PCSK9 gene editing therapy for slashing LDL cholesterol
- Mayo’s AI-assisted radiology showing vastly improved cancer detection
- this new therapy for metastatic solid tumors

This stuff is at varying levels of evidence. Retatrutide is ~100% on its way, other stuff needs more clinical trial data. But put it together and we’re maybe on the verge of majorly reducing the mortality of heart disease and cancer, the two leading causes of death in America.

[Bret Taylor @btaylor]

Sierra just hit $200M in ARR. It took seven quarters to get to $100M, and only two more quarters to add our next $100M. Proud of the team and very grateful to our customers and partners.

[Sierra @SierraPlatform]

Applied AI is about jobs to be done, not tokens to be consumed. Token usage may be a reasonable short-term proxy for adoption. But long term, success comes from outcomemaxxing, not tokenmaxxing.

It's why we took an early bet on outcomes-based pricing: pay for the value delivered. A mortgage completed, an order returned, a customer saved, a claim settled, a basket size increased.

The future of applied AI won’t be measured by consumption, but by outcomes achieved.

[Alex Avery @alavery2]

@muratkuralnedus @bentossell quantity makes quality

[Alex Avery @alavery2]

@blader agreed

[Alex Avery @alavery2]

Feels more inline with what I've experienced.

Congrats on the new benchmark @datacurve!

[Alex Avery @alavery2]

Congrats on an epic career @Amazing_Brick

So much fun seeing you dominate in Paris.

NO ONE throws the ball harder.

[USA Water Polo @USAWP]

Congratulations to 3x Olympian and 2024 Bronze Medalist Alex Bowen on his retirement from Team USA! Bowen made his Olympic debut in 2016 and finished his career on the podium in Paris.

"After more than a decade with Team USA, I'm stepping away from the game that has given me so much. Representing this country has been the greatest honor of my life. From competing on the Olympic stage and bringing home a bronze medal, to seasons spent playing abroad that challenged and shaped me, every step of this journey led me back to the pride of wearing the USA cap," Bowen said. "Water polo shaped who I am, discipline, resilience, and a deep love for team and country. But my greatest role is one I have just begun, being a father. And the same heart, commitment, and passion I gave to this sport, I now give to my family. To my teammates, coaches, and everyone who stood by me, thank you for being part of this journey. I carry you with me into this next chapter. The pool will always be home, but now, so is something even greater."

"Alex Bowen is the ultimate grinder and someone that bought into what we were trying to accomplish from day one. It's hard to think about doing this job without Alex Bowen, he's been with me since my first summer back in 2013 through three Olympic Games," Team USA Head Coach Dejan Udovicic said. "Bowen worked tirelessly to improve his game and grew into one of the most elite scorers in the world. He committed to living and playing in Europe year after year and got better for it, rising through the ranks of elite European water polo. I'm thankful for his commitment to USA Water Polo and am excited for him and his family in this next chapter of life as a new dad."

We'll be honoring Alex and his career at a Team USA match coming up on July 1 in his hometown of San Diego, CA. More details coming soon!

MORE: https://t.co/ywjphz2N4z

[Allen Chen @allenschen]

https://t.co/N3TUiWZuif

[Alex Avery @alavery2]

More here: https://t.co/8ZKxDzHdpp

[Alex Avery @alavery2]

Feels more inline with what I've experienced.

Congrats on the new benchmark @datacurve!

[Alex Avery @alavery2]

@scaling01 creativity is making disparate connections and having a feel for how they’ll play out.

seems like LLMs will be able to do a fairly good job brute forcing this until they pick up enough intuition to not even have to.

[Alex Avery @alavery2]

forgot this was even possible

Mayor Dan doesn’t stop

[Daniel Lurie 丹尼爾·羅偉 @DanielLurie]

Thank you to Caltrans for completing the repaving of 19th Avenue ahead of schedule. These improvements will benefit residents and visitors alike, and we appreciate the collaboration to reduce impacts on the community during construction. 19th Avenue is now fully reopened.

[Alex Avery @alavery2]

@dwarkesh_sp @CJHandmer about anything (or everything) on https://t.co/30xe7bhfTz