Chris DeVore

Professional troublemaker | Pacific Northwest partisan | Founder + Managing Partner @founderscoop

[Mitt Romney @MittRomney]

Churchill could have shortened WW2 by years if he had just “done a deal” with Hitler. George Washington could have done a deal to end the American Revolution. Zelenskyy is in good company.

[Brian Hall @IsForAt]

"What am I going to do when the White House switches off my Claude, Codex or Gemini? Nothing, I'm already on Mistral (Ukrainian POV)"
https://t.co/SvJbDAq0MN

[Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @Noahpinion]

When I say "under Trump, the U.S. has switched our alliance from Europe to Russia", I am not exaggerating for rhetorical effect.

[Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @Noahpinion]

Teddy Roosevelt on American identity

[aviel @aviel]

There has never been a bigger gap between what is technologically possible and what the world understands to be possible.

For AI-native builders, the world has fundamentally changed. Things that once required months of effort and millions of dollars can now be built by one or two talented people in hours or days.

Business leaders outside the AI bubble know that AI can radically change their business, from how they run it to what they offer their customers, but they have no idea where to begin, or even who to trust to help them find out.

I don’t blame them. AI is accelerating so fast right now that if you aren’t actively building and learning at the frontier, your entire strategy is almost certainly built on wrong assumptions.

To use an analogy from history, right now some people are flying jets across the country while others are still dying of dysentery on the Oregon Trail.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

Today we’re launching Foundations Design & Engineering (FDE) to bridge that gap.

Over the past two years, Foundations has grown into a community of 300+ committed AI builders across Seattle and SF. Increasingly, the scarce resource for many of them isn’t the ability to build.

It’s finding great problems worth solving.

FDE is our attempt to connect these two worlds.

For existing companies eager to embrace AI, FDE should feel like magic. You express a business problem in plain English. We analyze your problem through an AI-native lens, assign the right team in our community to solve it, and help you get to the best outcome for your business as quickly and cheaply as possible.

No armies of junior consultants. No incentive to maximize billable hours. Just founder-grade technologists applying hard-fought lessons from the edge of what’s possible today.

Sometimes the answer is a few hours of expert help or a product that already exists. Sometimes it’s a full build. Sometimes it’s “the tech isn’t there yet, let’s find another way”.

You have problems. We have builders looking for them.
Let’s make the connection.

https://t.co/OGfMEsuVwm

[Ian Sefferman @iseff]

So I know Cognition doesn’t care about Little Ole’ Me, and this is just my story, so take it with a grain of salt, but here’s why I don’t think all these crazy scaling revenue numbers by coding agents are going to stick:

We’ve been happy Devin users for a while. Really like the product, and like the company. Still do! This isn’t shade at Cognition, and I’m not upset with them, just a sample of why I worry about the competitive landscape for these cos.

Anyway, our usage grew to >$100k run rate or so. I think one or two of our users even received an email congratulating them for being Top 200 users of Devin.

As usage grew, we added more capabilities and needed a BAA (layman’s terms: an agreement that says they are HIPAA compliant). This required an Enterprise contract (why a piece of paper requires extra money is a topic for another discussion, but it’s very normal…) so we started talking to their sales team.

Basically, we were going to ~1.5x our spend in order to get the BAA. Honestly, that was fine with us. We like Devin!

Our only request was to pay quarterly (already a big concession from our existing monthly payments, given our relatively small size). They declined, unless we committed to EVEN MORE usage.

Before responding, I decided to see how difficult it would be to set up Hermes to do the equivalent work as Devin, and to see what the costs were. I’d host it in our infrastructure and only use providers we already have a BAA with.

Two days.

That’s it. It’s functionally 100% equivalent. Maybe slightly better in some ways, slightly worse in others. We spend a little bit of time futzing with it, but we did that with Devin, too.

The cost is roughly 25% of Devin.

So, two days for $100k or so per year savings. All because they didn’t want us to pay quarterly.

At some point, other companies are going to catch onto this, too. So congrats on this milestone, but keep finding more ways to provide value and keep customers happy. It’s hard to compete.

[aviel @aviel]

@crashdev and I have been leading seed rounds into Excel replacement startups since before I went bald and have lost money every single time … until the team at @GetRowZero got it very, very right. We can finally end our watch.

Thanks guys for letting us be part of your journey!

[jward @webriots]

I'm gunna put some AI in your ledgers in a big way.

[Brian Hall @IsForAt]

Seattle friends - this is amazing. I cannot think of a group of Seattle business leaders ever coming together to have to just say "for chrissakes Seattle get your crap together" (and cite Bellevue and Southcenter as the examples it can be done).

as I look at this, and read this winsome cheerleading piece https://t.co/YNDV8ZRzC1

all I can think is - I think I can outlast these people who are screwing a great thing up (esp. Mayor, Governor) and get Seattle back to greatness again.

[Logan Bowers 🏗️ 🏘️ @loganb]

Making the city hostile to employment, see employment decline, then funneling money to politically connected corporations is the most predictable grift.

[Ben Hunt @EpsilonTheory]

Bessent’s I-am-the-house resting smug face and the Mad King’s $5k vote-buying ravings will be my lasting memories of this moment.

[aviel @aviel]

I love what @jacobcolker is trying to do here and he almost gets there, but misses one key point.

Seattle IS great. But it may not be YOUR great. And frankly, if you're someone like me (a libertarian-leaning VC), right now it definitely isn't. And that's okay!

People flock to different cities to "find their people". NYC, SF, LA... it's obvious why. But Seattle? It's for quality of life. It truly is.

Yes, we have some of the greatest companies in the world here, but it's despite our ethos, not because of it. The rise of MSFT attracted a generation of psychos who prioritized building over everything else. Amazon, and AWS specifically, attracted folks who would rather work on something at global internet scale than go hiking or to their kids soccer game. There's a reason why so many people talked about how "toxic" AWS culture was while others said it was the best place they ever worked by a wide margin..

But that was NEVER Seattle.

Those were things that happened DESPITE Seattle. And that's ok! Yeah, prioritizing compassion over a safe park for your kids or extra $$$ for a trip vs. increased taxes to allow you to subsidize services for others may not be your jam, but it IS Seattle's.

And that's okay.

My take? We do need less imposter syndrome. But that requires self-awareness first. Let's be the best Seattle, not something else.

[aviel @aviel]

Thank you @alexatallah @cclark and @louis_g_v for letting Founders’ Co-op and the https://t.co/Twr562xt46 community follow along with your journey since the seed.

Ya’ll are absolute beasts and deserve all of your success. Unfortunately, I will now be forever disappointed in any other investment’s IRR 😂🥇❤️🙏

PS: @seawatts drinks are on you next time

[Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @Noahpinion]

Idea for Democrats: Just nominate candidates who DON'T think they live in "the heart of Empire" and that their mission in life is to destroy Thanksgiving and football and the Fourth of July

[Prabha Dublish @prabhadublish]

a patient verifies their identity once.

in a couple clicks, @hubblehealthai assembles their medical records from across their providers for your AI agent to use.

we connect into EHRs and HIEs, and leverage browser and voice agents so you don't have to do any work.

[Diego Oppenheimer @doppenhe]

https://t.co/h3eaWusepx

[GeekWire @geekwire]

The code AI forgot: https://t.co/PKj38zxMoa raises $2.55M to put agents to work on device operating systems https://t.co/D47IG4mXGx

[Crémieux @cremieuxrecueil]

It's remarkable how this looks like an inverted rents vs. permits chart

Places that permit many apartments have lower rents. Places that permit lots of power generation have lower electricity prices

Places that fail to permit things have higher both!

It's not the data centers!

[Chris DeVore @crashdev]

"There is zero representation from entrepreneurs, the startup ecosystem or anyone building the industries of the future. The mayor of Cleveland remains better plugged into our startup community than any politician in Washington." - not too late to fix @GovBobFerguson, ask @aviel

[Charles Fitzgerald @charlesfitz]

Good news: Washington's governor is feeling the heat on the state's economy.

Bad news: He's got a ways to go on discerning cause and effect.

I examine the new governor's new economic development committee on @geekwire

https://t.co/cK6cQdLHwA

[Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @Noahpinion]

Yes. Crime and public disorder are the main problem afflicting America's cities. Fix those, and a whole realm of better possibilities opens up.