Andy Rankin

Co-Founder @ArrayCo, Prev Sapho Acq @Citrix, Investor: @baseten @WishShopping @Opendoor @Addepar @TheAthletic @PremierLacrosse @AMPRobotics Ex @RedpointVC

[Andy Rankin @arankin]

Wish you tweeted this in 2020.

[Bill Gurley @bgurley]

Also - it’s never been enforced. The underwriting bank would have to sue for breach of contract. I asked AI for “best example” of lock-up breach lawsuit. It couldn’t find one. Try it yourself. Find a counter point, PLEASE share.

[Bill Gurley @bgurley]

If someone is telling you, you are subject to a lock-up agreement, and your firm signed nothing with the lead underwriter, they are either lying or misinformed. Lockups are a silly contract with underwriter (primarily to help engineer a secondary). Prove me wrong. I’ll correct.

[Sean Francis @musingmymind]

RIP to a real one

[Stephanie Palazzolo @steph_palazzolo]

New: Inference provider Baseten is raising $1b at a $11b valuation. That’s 2x+ more than its valuation from 3 months ago.

The round follows strong revenue growth: the company grew from $200m to $600m in ARR in Q1

w/ @Katie_Roof

https://t.co/cqDi4EEtSz

[Rohit Mittal @rohitdotmittal]

A company that raised $17M and hit $4.5M ARR sold last year for around $100k.

I reviewed it for acquisition during the company's bankruptcy.

The trajectory:
- $17M raised
- Peak: $4.5M revenue, 50 employees
- At bankruptcy: $1.7M ARR, 4 employees, $1M cash in the bank
- Founders had already walked away

This was a real business. By my estimate, it could have grown to $25M in revenue. They were in a great market, with reasonable retention (which could've been improved), and had a brand built over 4-5 years.

Going into Series B, the founders felt they had to look ready to scale to $100M. So they spent like a $100M company:
- Expensive software on long-term contracts
- Hires the business didn't need
- Optics over execution
- Lost focus on customers

When the Series B didn't materialize on the terms they wanted, they checked out emotionally. Then they checked out physically.

That's why people say most startups don't die from competition, they kill themselves.

And then the bankruptcy lawyers made it worse. They were paid a fixed fee without any upside for a good outcome. The remaining team (4 members helping with the transition) had no upside either.

Long-term contracts and legal bills burned $100k/month while they tried to find a buyer.

Until it's business as usual and the customers are paying, it's worth a lot more.

Starting asking price: $1.5M–2M (1x revenue).
Final sale: ~$100k. Just the code. Customers had churned, revenue had gone to zero.

Acquisitions that start at a fair price only close when founders are still in the building, pushing to get them done.

The minute they check out, it goes down to zero fast.

[Andy Rankin @arankin]

Simple. It always works to tie two turkeys together and call it an eagle. 🦅

[Jesse Tinsley @JesseTinsley]

Or option number 4:

Merge a few ~$2m revenue businesses together and bypass the whole “no mans land” of scaling from $1m -> $10m revenue.

[Cinema Tweets @CinemaTweets1]

The Jerry West documentary that just dropped on Amazon tonight brought me to tears. I’m stunned at how well-made this documentary was & I’m more stunned by the life this man lived. You don’t need to be a basketball fan to draw inspiration from Jerry West. What a documentary.

[Jon Gruden @BarstoolGruden]

Look at this box from one of the oldest colleges in the United States... founded in 1769!

The Dartmouth College BIG GREEN are rockin and rollin' in the Ivy League and they have some great gear!

Thank you Coach McCorkle and @DartmouthFTBL for this awesome package!!

[Terrence Rohan @tmrohan]

VCs earn more with a $1B fund that returns 2x (poor) than a $200m fund that does a 5x (exceptional).

That is the root of everything that is wrong with VC today.

[Andy Rankin @arankin]

You can just meet a crazy kid in a biergarten. Insane growth and execution.

[Tuhin Srivastava @tuhinone]

Baseten’s day 0 bet was that inference was the technology that would enable the best user experiences AI could deliver–fast, smart, reliable, secure. And that those experiences would rely not only on a handful of giant general intelligence models, but millions of specialized models built by companies for their specific customers and use cases.

Whether you’re a doctor, developer, lawyer, mechanic, researcher, construction worker, marketer, etc, you’re accelerated by specialized tools worthy of your craft. To me, this is one of the most meaningful promises AI can deliver on.

We’re starting to see it now. Many of the main-character AI companies on the application layer are built on highly-specialized models for highly-specialized workflows–Abridge, Clay, Cursor, OpenEvidence, Hebbia, Mercor, Notion–these businesses are booming because customers love specialized tools.

There are probably hundreds of custom models in production today. Soon, there will be thousands and then millions. All enabled by a high-performing inference layer.

Inference has emerged as one of the hardest problems in modern AI systems. Delivering reliable, low-latency experiences requires deep coordination across distributed infrastructure, kernel-level performance, and software ergonomics—even world-class teams struggle to do this well. As a result, as consumers and developers, we’ve grown to accept sluggish performance, frequent downtime, and inconsistent quality across both application companies and model providers.

Meanwhile, the demands on inference are accelerating: AI adoption is trending towards ubiquity with reasoning models that are orders of magnitude more compute-intensive. This will only increase as more companies catch on to the virtues of owning their end-to-end IP rather than relying on black-box model APIs on shared infrastructure. Whether we can realize the impact of this generational shift will depend on our ability to serve these models reliably at scale.

We knew we could make the technology work, but the biggest delight of it all has been seeing what our customers do with it. The (many-model) future is bright.

[Andy Rankin @arankin]

@martin_casado @ThufirHawat @MichaelRabil got that demon.

[Andy Rankin @arankin]

@paulswaney3 Integration

[David Senra @FoundersPodcast]

“I’m addicted to winning. The more you win, the more you want to win.” —Larry Ellison

[Brian Armstrong @brian_armstrong]

One of my favorite lessons I’ve learnt from working with smart people:

Action produces information. If you’re unsure of what to do, just do anything, even if it’s the wrong thing. This will give you information about what you should actually be doing.

Sounds simple on the surface - the hard part is making it part of your every day working process.

[Andy Rankin @arankin]

@thisguyknowsai send

[Andy Rankin @arankin]

@justindross I’m sure it didn’t hurt you were working at @Addepar under another young gun with a decent memory, @JTLonsdale. F we are old.

[Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin @jasonlk]

Caught up the other day with a founder that had an M&A offer that would have made him $130,000,000 in 2022

Today, they can’t raise another round and are a bit stuck

Just a reminder how thin liquidity is in 99% of start-ups

It’s there, and then, oftentimes, it’s gone

[Dom Cooke @domcooke]

This is one of my favorite Peterffy stories that didn't make it into the profile.

In 1982, Peterffy was out to dinner on the Upper East Side with a friend. When they walked into the restaurant, three men at a table near the entrance spotted his friend and invited them over.

All three worked in show business. Peterffy knew none of them. One was Aaron Russo, the music agent and film producer. Another was Melvin Van Peebles, the filmmaker.

After ordering, Russo turned to Peterffy. "So what do you do?"

Peterffy explained that he was a trader, but he'd injured his knee and couldn't stand on the floor anymore. So, he'd hired attractive women to execute his trades. They took instructions over the phone and relayed them to specialists on the exchange floor.

"You mean anybody could do this?" Russo asked.

Peterffy shrugged. "Theoretically, yes."

Russo put his hand on Van Peebles's shoulder. "You mean Melvin here could do it?"

"I think so."

"I'll make you a $10,000 bet," said Russo. "You hire Melvin. If he lasts a year, I'll pay you."

Peterffy agreed.

Van Peebles went through Timber Hill's two-week training course, learning to take Peterffy's instructions and relay orders to specialists. Then he was sent to the American Stock Exchange floor, where he quickly gained popularity. He spent a full year trading for Timber Hill and did a fantastic job. Peterffy collected Russo's $10,000.

A year later, Russo produced Trading Places, the Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd comedy about a wealthy broker and a street hustler whose lives are switched as part of a bet by two rich financiers.

The film earned $120 million in its first year.

[Brett Berson @brettberson]

When a VC says they want to pre-empt your round and then asks you to come into a partner meeting and talk to a bunch of customers, they’re not actually asking to pre-empt; they’re asking you to run a fundraising process with one potential bidder.

[Endowment Eddie @endowment_eddie]

Whether investing in a company or fund, I see tons of memos that call out key person risk as a primary consideration.

That is bananas. I want as much key person risk as I can possibly find. The absence of key person risk means you’ve already lost.