Brendan Hellweg

Holly Cofounder. Formerly Baltimore Health Corps, Bloomberg Innovation Team.

[Brendan Hellweg @BEHellweg]

Long Chile theory vindicated

[Infodex @infodexx]

The US by places with similar Climates.

[Brendan Hellweg @BEHellweg]

Nudging buttercup squash

[Jonah Goldberg @JonahDispatch]

Okay let’s do this the other way around. Make a band smaller. I’ll go first:

The Beatle

[Brendan Hellweg @BEHellweg]

@ModeledBehavior Pittsburgh has the Picklesburgh festival where all the pickle vendors coordinate a temporary pickle district by the water

[Brendan Hellweg @BEHellweg]

The “wedge” is helpful for early founders as a permission structure to do something narrow and real instead of big and fake.

Founders underestimate how big of a business the wedge alone can become, and overestimate how much they can / need to predict past it.

[Pete Koomen @koomen]

The percentage of YC applications containing the word "wedge" went from <1% in spring 25 to >20% in summer 26

[Brendan Hellweg @BEHellweg]

Rarely is the question asked, are my winnings alpha or levered beta

[Financial Times @FT]

FT Exclusive: Ken Griffin’s Citadel swooped in to buy a large portion of hedge fund Situational Awareness’ $16bn public equity holdings after former OpenAI employee Leopold Aschenbrenner’s investment firm endured steep losses in the AI sell-off. https://t.co/zhSlP9yOvZ

[Brendan Hellweg @BEHellweg]

Wow this would be amazing for delivering much needed medicine to rural areas, or providing aid to a lost hiker.

[Matija Milenovic @mat_milenovic]

Introducing Rook by @Hop_Aero (YC S26): an autonomous hypersonic cargo rocket that delivers 550 lbs up to 450 miles in ~15 minutes.

It launches from a standard 40-foot shipping container and lands on unprepared surfaces—no runways or fixed infrastructure required.

[Brendan Hellweg @BEHellweg]

I think this is true - the way Holly handles remote work is being as close to the customer as possible.

Velocity comes from proximity, whether that’s the team or the customer. Having neither is no man’s land.

[@jason @Jason]

I have now learned that <10% of humans perform better working from home.

10-20% are as good working from home

75-80%+ perform better at the office

90% of founders/managers are better at leading in-office — 10% are capable of managing primarily remote teams

What’s your first-hand experience?

[Brendan Hellweg @BEHellweg]

Check out my latest piece in @CrainsNewYork!

[Tech:NYC @TechNYC]

In late May, @NYCMayor launched the Commission on Government Efficiency (COGE) with a goal of making city government "work smarter, faster, and more effectively for working people."

It's the kind of challenge @TechNYC's Grid Fellowship is designed to explore. The program gives tech founders, investors, and senior executives an inside look at how New York City government works, building a pipeline of civic-minded leaders equipped with the networks and knowledge to help make it work better.

Tech:NYC Grid Fellow @YoussefKalad partnered with Holly founder @BEHellweg on a new @CrainsNewYork op-ed, arguing that modernizing New York's civil service is one of the biggest opportunities to build a more effective city government.

Read the op-ed here: https://t.co/rTwvurvdD8

[Tech:NYC @TechNYC]

In late May, @NYCMayor launched the Commission on Government Efficiency (COGE) with a goal of making city government "work smarter, faster, and more effectively for working people."

It's the kind of challenge @TechNYC's Grid Fellowship is designed to explore. The program gives tech founders, investors, and senior executives an inside look at how New York City government works, building a pipeline of civic-minded leaders equipped with the networks and knowledge to help make it work better.

Tech:NYC Grid Fellow @YoussefKalad partnered with Holly founder @BEHellweg on a new @CrainsNewYork op-ed, arguing that modernizing New York's civil service is one of the biggest opportunities to build a more effective city government.

Read the op-ed here: https://t.co/rTwvurvdD8

[Brendan Hellweg @BEHellweg]

this is actually the ugliest ai integration i've ever seen on a website, slapped on 3 years into gen ai being mainstream, what is amazon doing

[Brendan Hellweg @BEHellweg]

My boutique proposal for DC representation is to create 50 equal mini-districts in DC that map to and vote in each state, and Senators all receive residences in their respective mini-district.

[Brendan Hellweg @BEHellweg]

@ChatGPTapp Add a voice-validated esignature capability and you’re really cooking with heat

[Brendan Hellweg @BEHellweg]

@constans S extension to Classon!

[Brendan Hellweg @BEHellweg]

“You can’t fire me, I quit!”

[*Walter Bloomberg @DeItaone]

TRUMP: EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, UNITED STATES NAVY WILL BEGIN PROCESS OF BLOCKADING ANY AND ALL SHIPS TRYING TO ENTER, OR LEAVE, STRAIT OF HORMUZ.

[Brendan Hellweg @BEHellweg]

Doesn’t matter; just make a great business

[Brett Calhoun @brettcalhounn]

Hot take: the founders writing memos are quietly eating the founders doing pitch theater.

[Brendan Hellweg @BEHellweg]

Excited to have angel invested in this one! Fantastic company with a great mission.

[Emil Barr @RealEmilBarr]

just raised $4.25M at flashpass to fight back against AI-driven unemployment

$4M in revenue last year and set to 4x that in 2026

[Brendan Hellweg @BEHellweg]

“$600k buys 10% — very rich deal”

How times have changed

[Sequoia Capital @sequoia]

In honor of 50 years of Apple, we're sharing - for the first time ever - Don Valentine's original 1977 memo for Sequoia's investment into Apple Computer. #Apple50

[Brendan Hellweg @BEHellweg]

True in govtech too

[Jen Abel @jjen_abel]

enterprise startups

tier-1 logos are the early adopters

anyone who suggests otherwise has no clue

[Brendan Hellweg @BEHellweg]

@VCBrags Know (and have been funded by) a few good ones! Can dm.

[Brendan Hellweg @BEHellweg]

Governments are the world’s largest creator of unstructured data. LLMs thrive here.

Governments are the largest sector of the US economy. The TAM is obvious.

Incumbents should be ashamed of the products they sell into government.

There’s no better place to build today.

[Y Combinator @ycombinator]

AI for Government
@t_blom

AI has made submitting forms dramatically easier, but governments still process many of them by hand.

There’s a major opportunity for AI-native tools that modernize government operations—hard to sell, but powerful once adopted.