Andy Thompson

building things that matter @ Craft Talent | ex @uber @replit

[Andy Thompson @arthompson]

Today is my birthday.

I am now on the last lap of my 30s. Might be past the halfway mark if we're being real about it which was a fun thing to sit with this morning.

I have seen way too many "X things I've learned at X age" posts. They all sound the same. And I honestly don’t know if I’ve learned 39 truly unique things worth writing down.

What I do have is a list of things I still want to do. The things I think about after the kids are asleep and my wife has dozed off halfway through Landman.

I want to run a 6-minute mile again. This used to be easy and the fact that it sounds hard now is exactly why it needs to happen.

Gotta stop pretending that being a "former athlete" is a fitness plan. It's not.

Pick up the guitar again.

Learn piano from scratch. This one might be delusional but it's staying on the list.

Actually reach fluency in Spanish. It was my wife's first language and our kids should grow up bilingual without it feeling like some big project. I'm the bottleneck here and I know it.

Continue teaching my kids to be deeply proud Americans and deeply proud of their Mexican heritage. Flags flying on the Fourth. Ofrenda built together every Día de Muertos.

Tend to our garden. Like actually tend to it. Not just plant stuff in April and act shocked when it's all dead by June.

Build something with my hands that isn't a slide deck.

Be my kids' memory of a happy childhood. Everything else comes after that.

Capture more. More photos. More videos.

Coach every team they'll let me coach. Even the ones where I have no idea what I'm doing.

Protect Sunday dinners. Game nights. Pizza Fridays. Traditions strong enough that our kids will fight to keep them when they have their own families.

More time with my wife. And not "more time" in some vague aspirational way. I mean real, phone-in-the-other-room, undistracted time. We hit ten years of marriage this year. The next ten should be louder.

Keep showing up at Mass. Even the Sundays where we are running to and from youth sports games. I converted to Catholicism last year and it wasn't a casual thing. It was about sharing my wife's faith, walking with our kids as they start Catholic education, and choosing something rooted in tradition and community that's older and sturdier than me. I don't talk about this much publicly. But it belongs on this list more than most things here.

Pray more. Scroll less.

Read the thinkers who actually wrestled with doubt, not just the ones who made belief look easy.

Drink more water. Less alcohol.

Get regular bloodwork.

Spend more time outside. Literally just more time in the sun.

Build something I'm proud to put my name on.

Worry less about what other people are building.

Mentor someone younger who's figuring it out.

Work with founders building things that matter. Not just things that raise. Feeling pretty fortunate to already be doing a lot of this today.

Get better at saying no to work that doesn't fit, even when the check is good. Especially when the check is good.

Provide for my family with money AND with time. Not one at the expense of the other.

Write more. Not for reach or impressions. Just to think more clearly.

See my kids grow in their confidence, doing things we’ve taught them.

Read more books.

Finish more books.

See more of these great United States.

Get my kids into the outdoors early. Hiking, camping, fishing, whatever sticks.

Stop taking my phone with me to the bathroom.

In fact, be less addicted to my phone in general.

Show up for my friends. Not "mean to" show up. Actually show up. The gap between those two things gets wider every year.

Write real letters. On paper. To people who matter.

Quit the thing where I get fired up about a new hobby for two weeks and then quietly abandon it.

Get better at doing nothing with the people I love. Not everything needs to be optimized or productive.

See the Jaguars win the Super Bowl. Ok this one might be a bit more out of my control, but hey, manifestation is real.

Ideally, I’ll also look back at this list next February and have a lot less to check off.

39 is a weird age. Not old. Not young. I just feel... aware. You stop telling yourself you'll get to it eventually and you start picking what actually gets your time.

It’s ok to admit you don’t have it all figured out, even at 39, but I know what matters to me. And I think that's enough to build on…

[Andy Thompson @arthompson]

@nickco Gracing your DMs with face pics 🤝

[Andy Thompson @arthompson]

🇺🇸 Happy Birthday, Beautiful 🇺🇸

[Andy Thompson @arthompson]

@KevinEspiritu Paint daddy

[Andy Thompson @arthompson]

@joshpuckett Umbro quarter zip kits, Xara bags, Tony Meola muscle keeper shirts, wynalda sidewinders, original silver predators… just to name a few artifacts surely buried somewhere in my parents garage… some of us 90s kids do indeed know ball

[Andy Thompson @arthompson]

@Austen For all the deserved praise of Tillman’s free kick, it was his consistent clever passing that blew my mind. Back heel king.

[Andy Thompson @arthompson]

@HadickM Incomprehensibly terrible call

[Andy Thompson @arthompson]

Poch singing country roads 🥹

🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

[Andy Thompson @arthompson]

@travisk @MTanguma 🔥🔥🔥

[Andy Thompson @arthompson]

@RobertJohns I dig. Let me know if you need a new front man.

[Andy Thompson @arthompson]

@ericabrescia Pleasant Hill reporting for duty👋

[Andy Thompson @arthompson]

@RobertJohns Ohhh I need to know the answer to this

[Andy Thompson @arthompson]

@andrew__reed It’s called a French press..?

[Andy Thompson @arthompson]

@River Best ever

[Andy Thompson @arthompson]

@camdoody @AskariDefense @rob_zedd Bad ass

[Andy Thompson @arthompson]

@tadeodonegana @tastelabs Vamossssss

[Andy Thompson @arthompson]

@lisawehden @tastelabs Rockstar indeed 🔥

[Andy Thompson @arthompson]

What this team has already accomplished in such a short period of time is unlike anything I've ever seen... and they're just getting started 🚀

If you dream of making AI more creative, more beautiful, consider applying today!

[Thais Castello Branco @ICML @thaiscbranco_]

We’re excited to introduce Taste Labs.

Our mission is to end AI slop. We’re building the data and infrastructure layer to give AI models and agents taste.

And today we’re coming out of stealth, announcing our $18.5M seed funding, co-led by @CRV and @AmplifyPartners

AI has nailed objective domains and made it easy to generate anything. But it still feels off. Now, the challenge is judgement. What fits, what feels like you, what’s GREAT. This requires turning a fuzzy, subjective domain into something we can measure and codify. We’re starting with design.

There are two sides to cracking this, the foundation model layer and the agent layer:

- We’ve already been working with the top frontier labs to evaluate and improve their models, crafting the right post-training data and RL environments.
- We’ve also been working with app-layer companies to build the context and verification tools for their agents to produce better, more on-brand, more creative outputs.

We want a future where AI feels right.

If you’re passionate about this mission, join us!

[Andy Thompson @arthompson]

@andyjschoonover 🧡🧡🧡