Will Robinson | Alliance

Director @Alliance | PhD Game Studies | Former Crypto Auditor | Join us by applying at

[Imran @lmrankhan]

Why do founders choose Alliance over others?

We’re backed by Founders Fund, Jump, Jane Street, Hudson River Trading, Susquehanna, and many of the sharpest investors and founders in tech and finance. Our focus is frontier tech, where finance, crypto and AI intersect. We’ve built a network designed to help our founders win.

We’re not a startup factory. We’re not funding hundreds of companies per batch. We select 20–30 teams and spend our entire time working on the hardest problems we can solve. We operate our program as one unit, one family.

We’re New York City first. We believe New York has a unique advantage for founders density, ambition, culture, talent, and diversity of thought. It’s a city that rewards builders and challenges out of box thinking. Less groupthink.

We’ve helped our founders achieve unicorn status and win, you’ll have a strong network of alumni teams to learn from like Rain, Pendle, Debridge Kamino, USDai, Pump, Ostium, 0x and others.

If you’re looking to build something that matters and want to win, apply to Alliance.

[Will Robinson | Alliance @DangerWillRobin]

@DavidVorick Yes, sadly Claude is nowhere near as cool as AlphaGo learning Go from first principles from scratch ideating over its play over and over.

[Will Robinson | Alliance @DangerWillRobin]

Reminds of AlphaGo beating Lee Sedol, teaching us all how to win.

In AlphaGo’s case, it would shrink the possibility space by selectively feeding pieces that would never lead the opponent to victory, but the opponent couldn’t resist taking.

Here Claude’s Charizard goes brrr.

[Aaron Miles @_aaronmiles]

@StephenKentX This was its team in the elite four 🤣🤣 Balanced teams are for losers. Over leveled Charizard go brrrrrr

[Will Robinson | Alliance @DangerWillRobin]

8/
Now the challenge is the last mile.
Even with perfect AI context, you still have to read the room/zoom, build trust, and pass the Turing test.

For now.
Our surrogates will eventually do a better job maintaining trust, while also doing the impossible work of holding the map.

[Will Robinson | Alliance @DangerWillRobin]

1/
The “era of the ideas guy” is real and powerful.
But I keep thinking about the era of the people person.
Because for a lot of us, the actual job has been holding human relationships on behalf of the company.
I’ve been the living Rolodex.

[Will Robinson | Alliance @DangerWillRobin]

7/
The ideas guy era lets one person orchestrate ops at scale.
The (augmented) people person era lets one person maintain relationship capital at scale.
Suddenly the connector role doesn’t have to degrade as the network grows. The map stays accurate and queryable even when it’s far bigger than any single brain can hold.

[Alliance @alliance]

We asked @usv's Nikhil (@uninsightful) one question: why NYC?

0:25 How Nikhil joined USV
1:15 Showcasing the USV office
1:54 Lessons learned from @fredwilson
2:50 SF vs NYC from a builders perspective
3:46 USV's investing approach
4:40 NYC's culture & lifestyle
5:42 NY is the place to get customers

[Mark Carney @MarkJCarney]

Today, our government introduced new legislation to protect our kids online. Canada's Safe Social Media Act will hold social media and AI platforms accountable, make them safer, and restrict access to social media for children under 16.

More and more kids are suffering from anxiety, depression, self-harm, and exploitation. To keep our kids safe, we have to ensure that our laws keep up with technology.

[Alliance @alliance]

This is the story of four proteins that can rewind aging, and the $4 billion racing to put them inside a human being.

For a century, biologists treated aging like a rusting car. Parts wear out, damage piles up, no reverse gear. A small group now argues that's wrong. Much of what looks like permanent damage, they say, is really a software problem, and software can be rewritten.

Every cell in your body carries identical DNA. What makes one a neuron and another a skin cell is a second layer of information sitting on top, telling each cell which genes to run. The heretical claim is that aging is the slow corruption of that information. And in 2006, a failed orthopedic surgeon named Shinya Yamanaka found four proteins that can retrieve it.

His recipe could take a fully specialized cell and walk it all the way back to a blank, become-anything state. It won him a Nobel. Then scientists found something stranger. Turn the factors on briefly, not long enough to erase a cell's identity, and old mice get younger by every measure, and live about 30% longer. A heart cell stays a heart cell. Just younger.

The boundary with cancer is razor thin. Run the factors too long and you manufacture tumors in bulk. The whole trick depends on not finishing.

Now the money has arrived. Bezos backs @altos_labs. Sam Altman seeded @RetroBio_. Brian Armstrong co-founded @newlimit. David Sinclair's Life Biosciences got through the door first. In January 2026, its eye therapy became the first cellular reprogramming treatment ever cleared for human testing.

The realistic prize isn't immortality. Nobody's living to 300 on an eye injection. It's compression of morbidity, squeezing the sick, declining years at the end of life into a shorter window. The question has finally narrowed. Not "can a cell be made young?" but "can a patient be made well?"

By the early 2030s, we'll know.

Read @QwQiao's essay on the Yamanaka factors below.

[Alliance @alliance]

NYC always, Knicks in 4.

[Will Robinson | Alliance @DangerWillRobin]

I think both sides can agree that @HunterBiden is a man of convictions.

[Will Robinson | Alliance @DangerWillRobin]

I found a morel nearly the size of my head. Madness. It’s a bit dry but it looks like the bugs didn’t find it somehow

[Deconflict.com @deconflict_]

Yesterday, Deconflict CEO Malik had the honor of briefing Senate staff on how the Clarity Act could strengthen law enforcement capabilities and enhance protections for the American people.

The legislation includes several important tools, including application of Bank Secrecy Act and sanctions requirements to digital commodity brokers, dealers, and exchanges, a coordinated information-sharing framework that brings together DOJ, FBI, DEA, and trusted private-sector entities, and updated authorities to better support law enforcement and prosecutors in combating illicit finance.

This is exactly why Deconflict exists: to help law enforcement surface information, eliminate silos, and dismantle criminal organizations faster. Our mission is to strengthen real-time collaboration between public and private partners so agencies can act sooner, reduce blind spots, and better protect the American people from fraud, money laundering, and other forms of financial exploitation.

The Clarity Act also goes beyond information sharing by addressing digital asset kiosks, non-decentralized finance trading protocols, distributed ledger application layers, digital asset seizure authorities, and risk management standards for digital asset intermediaries, all of which reflect a more comprehensive approach to illicit finance prevention.

It was an honor to be joined by @raincards CLO Christopher G., DCG’s Kyle S., and @BlockchainAssn Lindsay Fraser.

[Aptos @Aptos]

Aptos is powering settlement for global stablecoin payments.

Today: Announcing a regulated B2B stablecoin corridor pilot between MENA and Africa with @Daya_HQ and @HashKeyMENA, settled natively on Aptos. Next: Asia and beyond.

One chain for every market.