D’Arcy Coolican

Harebrained schemes. Building.

Prev: Investor @a16z. Founder @FrankTrusts
Forever: Tortured fan @MapleLeafs

[D’Arcy Coolican @DCoolican]

1/ If you’re a founder you’ve probably heard someone say “oh, I’ve seen this idea before - it didn’t work” or “isn’t this just like that other thing that person/company X tried?”

[D’Arcy Coolican @DCoolican]

@andrewarruda i dont know a single successful founder that doesn't have a list

[D’Arcy Coolican @DCoolican]

@anistotle_ money can't buy what he is doing

[D’Arcy Coolican @DCoolican]

dude is living every founder's wet dream

[Sam @futurenomics]

Anthropic’s last round was apparently a bloodbath behind the scenes. A GP at a prominent fund had dinner with Dario three times before their allocation was slashed to zero. At least four other tier-one funds got pulled at the last minute.

Their crime? Passing on the Series B, the hardest round Dario ever had to raise (led by Spark). In venture conviction is all that counts.

[D’Arcy Coolican @DCoolican]

@kwharrison13 when i was a vc the hardest part was trying to figure out how to adjust and learn in absence of real feedback.

biggest mistake i saw was people cementing or optimizing their thinking and process based on interim data points (markups, "hot deals", hype)

[Ryan Hoover @rrhoover]

Announcing Weekend Fund IV, backed by operators and founders (and maybe you).

When we raised Weekend Fund III, we did something different.

Toward the end of our raise, we announced the fund in public and accepted applications from LPs.

Our goal was to make early-stage venture more accessible and align ourselves with an army of operators and founders to help us and the startups we back.

Over 1,000 people expressed interest to join and hundreds did, but there was a problem. Legally, only accredited investors could participate as an LP. Accreditation laws are well-meaning but limit access to the majority of consumers.

With WF IV, @vedikaja_in and I are doing something different.

Like before, we’re onboarding engineers, designers, researchers, data scientists, salespeople, and other domain experts as LPs in the fund. But this time at a larger scale with USVC.

AngelList recently announced USVC, a new kind of fund that’s accessible to everyone, including the non-accredited. It holds positions in private late-stage companies like xAI, Anthropic, OpenAI, Sierra, and Vercel. I personally invested.

Today, they just announced their investment in Weekend Fund IV, one of the first early-stage funds added to their portfolio.

If you’re interested in being a part of Weekend Fund and getting exposure to generational startups mentioned above, visit usvc [dot] com.

Of course, don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose.

Investing in startups is risky and you may lose all your money. USVC shares are illiquid with no guarantee of repurchase.
Consider investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses carefully before investing. Read the prospectus: usvc [dot] com/prospectus.

Also, USVC is currently limited to US citizens. They’re working to open the fund to other geographies.

Lastly, my DMs are open. :)

[D’Arcy Coolican @DCoolican]

@RobinGainer @cohere ����🙏🙏

[D’Arcy Coolican @DCoolican]

can anyone connect me to someone @cohere for something urgent? 🙏

dms open

i am trying to spend lots of money on their product, but it is proving difficult

[D’Arcy Coolican @DCoolican]

@bram

[D’Arcy Coolican @DCoolican]

seems like the tech zeitgeist is turning away from pure growth / $0-$100M in 45 seconds / momentum is the moat stuff to what true network effects look like now

ive had more intelligent conversations about this in the last 3 days than in the previous 2 years.

nature is healing

[D’Arcy Coolican @DCoolican]

as the cost to produce software gets closer to zero, the value of a true network increases exponentially

i guess im a boomer now, but im shocked at how few AI apps companies actually care about / understand network effects

[Aashay Sanghvi @aashaysanghvi_]

https://t.co/LuGVG1Yjet

[D’Arcy Coolican @DCoolican]

i can go on a long rant about what makes a good seed investor, but easier to just say that if you have the chance to work with @semil and @aashaysanghvi_, just do it. we did.

excited to see them keep going.

[Semil @semil]

[brief update]

we have a new set of funds for @haystackvc

announcing haystack 8 plus more, but it's really about my teammates @aashaysanghvi_ & @DivyaDhulipala

thank you to all of our frequent ecosystem co-conspirators, our LPs, our co-investors, our founders. i'm very grateful 🙏 and this is the most fun role in the world!

https://t.co/BwjSh5NXio

[Sam Blond @samdblond]

1/ Sponsoring events can have a huge impact on customer acquisition and brand. Most companies do it wrong, though. Here’s how to have the biggest impact sponsoring an event without breaking the bank:

[D’Arcy Coolican @DCoolican]

@jaltma this is cool to see. benchmark is lucky to have you!

[D’Arcy Coolican @DCoolican]

the value in great companies has always been in the network they build, not the software they build.

it's just becoming more clear as cost of software goes to zero.

[D’Arcy Coolican @DCoolican]

as the cost to produce software gets closer to zero, the value of a true network increases exponentially

i guess im a boomer now, but im shocked at how few AI apps companies actually care about / understand network effects

[Kyle Harrison @kwharrison13]

The annual Contrary Research Tech Trends Report is here.

350+ slides on everything from computational intelligence to lunar bases to breakthroughs in biologics to AVs revolutionizing land use to the loneliness epidemic and so much more.

Full report in reply.

[D’Arcy Coolican @DCoolican]

any funds or companies I know want to sublet me a desk / office in the presidio?

[D’Arcy Coolican @DCoolican]

the most destructive part of this myth is that some founders think a vc is going to save them.

a VC isn't going to fix your biz or crown you the winner. you have to do it yourself.

the sooner you acknowledge this the better.

[D’Arcy Coolican @DCoolican]

VCs as kingmaker is complete BS and always fails.

If someone tells you it’s true, they have their own agenda.

In the end, founders decide which VCs they will make rich, not the other way around

[Jaya Gupta @JayaGup10]

AI has given venture capital a new way to repeat an old mistake: kingmaking.

The pattern from 2021 is back: a category becomes "obvious," a top-tier firm anoints its winner, and everyone else acts like the decision is final.

Sierra for support. Harvey for legal. Applied Compute for RL-as-a-service.

[D’Arcy Coolican @DCoolican]

@ericwdolan most funds taking on pretty blatant conflicts rn, so unclear if conflicts are even a thing these days

also this maybe worked when vc was a smaller asset class. even with clear conflict rules it'd be impossible to knock out even 25% of the top funds now.

[D’Arcy Coolican @DCoolican]

@pgosavi7056 I think you’ve lost the plot