Arjun Dev Arora

Now: Format One; Prior: Expa, 500Startups, ReTargeter; Passionate: startups, venture capital, learning, people, music, philosophy & life.

[Arjun Dev Arora @ArjunDArora]

Liquidity is returning in a big way to the broader startup and venture ecosystem. I vibe coded a website as folks start to think about their Bay Area centered giving. Tons of great multi-generational institutions that make SF special. Check it out!

https://t.co/iPiV8usGk3

[Arjun Dev Arora @ArjunDArora]

Yes, we have seen some big exits recently.

No, it’s not been enough to balance out the VC market as a whole. Hopefully that's coming soon.

[Arjun Dev Arora @ArjunDArora]

@joshephraim I agree, I think we will see a lot more towards the end of Q3 and in Q4 2026 as some liquidity returns (and GPs prepare for the large wave of 2027 liquidity).

[Arjun Dev Arora @ArjunDArora]

Is this the SpaceX effect? New VC fund formation is up.

[Arjun Dev Arora @ArjunDArora]

Holy vibe coding insanity.

The share of businesses crossing $1 million within a year of going live on Stripe is 30% higher for the 2025 cohort than for 2023, and roughly three times higher than for 2019.

Way to go founders!

[Arjun Dev Arora @ArjunDArora]

It’s about time.

cc: @mrexits

[Arjun Dev Arora @ArjunDArora]

Startup formation has consolidated so hard back in the SF Bay Area it’s hard to imagine that there was a time when the region's domination was in doubt. It just proves how powerful network effects truly are.

[Tristan @pollock]

Are you building the next era of industrial technology?

We'd love to help you scale.

https://t.co/MLNx7gZfLD

[Arjun Dev Arora @ArjunDArora]

The variation on this chart is a huge surprise. Mexico and Germany both take the same % of their allotted vacation although the number of days are very different.

[Arjun Dev Arora @ArjunDArora]

Anthropic spending 2.3x its payroll on compute is just a wild stat.

https://t.co/NCkiNvNg6v

[Tomasz Tunguz @ttunguz]

Anthropic spends 2.3x its payroll on compute. About $2m per employee per year against ~$500k all-in comp.

The rest of the software market spends 0.4x. The median spends nothing.

Three scenarios bracket where the gap lands by 2029. 🧵

[Arjun Dev Arora @ArjunDArora]

@IanRountree Huge congratulations! 🎉

Excited for the next 10 years (and beyond)!

[ian @IanRountree]

I started Cantos a decade ago with a $4.5M fund 1 and delusions of associated grandeur. I called it “cantos” dreaming that I might partner with founder-heroes whose impact would propagate through time, remembered as legends.

10 years might have jaded me but it’s quite the opposite. Now I KNOW the future can be shaped. Our portfolio founders have shown me—so our ambitions are as grand as ever.

May your deeds echo a thousand years.

🏛️

[Cantos @cantos]

We have two exciting announcements today as Cantos turns 10…

First, we closed our new fund earlier this year. Canto IV is a $70M fund purpose-built to lead pre-seed and seed rounds. We oversubscribed, wanting to keep it right-sized for being a founder's most aligned first partner.

Second, we launched our new look with help from our friends at @asimov_co! Cantos is so-named as an ode to epic poems, where grand stories are written in "cantos" rather than chapters. We view founders as the protagonists of today's epics and seek to back those whose deeds become the stuff of legend. Our new website is a testament to the scale of their ambitions, with visions from a future they will have shaped.

Resonat in Æternum 🖋️

[Arjun Dev Arora @ArjunDArora]

The SpaceX IPO created the first real public market comparable for frontier AI. For the first time, investors can work backwards from a public market valuation instead of guessing forwards from private funding rounds.

The range from the analysis from Pitchbook is quite wide, but the guidance is useful for investors interested in this area.

[Arjun Dev Arora @ArjunDArora]

Excited for the release of "Above the Line"! Check it out!

https://t.co/EfIxYCsl0u

[Arjun Dev Arora @ArjunDArora]

Having seen surveys of this type many times over years, the top reasons for failure remain consistent. Either the product doesn’t work. They can’t sell it. Or they can’t get along. Financing is rarely the issue that brings a startup down.

[True Ventures @trueventures]

It is with profound sadness that we share the news of Om Malik’s passing.

It’s difficult to state the impact that @om had on all of our lives at True.

Om was the first Founder we funded when we started True. In our Presidio office, Om discussed his idea for a new type of media company. That idea would later become GigaOm.

Om was a brilliant Founder, an amazing teammate and Partner at True, a prolific writer, a gifted photographer, and a sage and valuable advisor to so many in the technology ecosystem.

Om was brilliant, thoughtful, humorous, profoundly kind, and deeply curious. He was also relentless when he had an idea or story. Om was brave - he never shied away from sharing his views or pushing for the truth.

We were very, very lucky to call Om our Partner and friend at True for these last many years.

For today, we simply encourage you to take a moment to remember this beautiful soul and great thinker who was in our midst. He would ask us to slow down a bit. Om would want us to think deeper, express our love for one another a lot more.

Above all else, Om wanted us all to retain our humanity and care for each other in our brilliant quest to rebuild the world.

We love you Om.

Team True

https://t.co/0fHDlkwcx6

[Mamoon Hamid @mamoonha]

You were one of a kind.

You lived with heart and soul. You wrote with heart and soul. But more than anything, you had an uncanny ability to make everyone you met feel special.

You were a best friend to so many because you showed up. You listened. You cared. You gave so much of yourself to others.

The world lost one of its best. May you rest in peace, my friend.

Love you. I’ll miss you dearly more than words can say.

https://t.co/gIWyeYDbUv

[Arjun Dev Arora @ArjunDArora]

No, you’re not crazy. There are less deals happening but more money flowing into the VC ecosystem than ever before.

[Reza Khadjavi @rezakhadjavi]

Introducing @runneth, the AI brain for Marketing.

It's like having your own mac mini in the cloud.

Seriously. We built infrastructure to give *every* customer their own dedicated virtual machine.

[Arjun Dev Arora @ArjunDArora]

Given all the volatility in the SpaceX stock prices, I thought it would be useful to dive into Pitchbook’s sum of the parts (SOTP) valuation of the business.

If you look at this chart you might assume the $1.67 trillion median valuation is effectively a floor? Maybe, or maybe not.

There are four key business units valued at:
• Launch: $26.6B
• Starlink: $455.1B
• AI Infrastructure: $1.18T
• X: $7.7B

But, look closely and you’ll see that the AI business accounts for more than 70% of the company's value. For that to hold, AI demand needs to remain strong, major compute contracts stay in place, and investors must continue assigning meaningful value to AI infrastructure revenue.

The market is no longer debating whether SpaceX can launch rockets. It's debating how much of the future AI stack it will own.