Eric Manlunas

Lucky husband & proud Dad - Early stage VC - 2x start-up founder - Pathological optimist - Immigrant 🇵🇭

[University of Austin (UATX) @uaustinorg]

UATX will never charge tuition. And we will never take government money.

Here's why.

Graduates spend decades shouldering debt for hollow credentials. This debt influences every decision they make: What job to take. Where to live. When to marry. When to have children. Some will never start that company. Never take that risk. Never build what they were meant to build.

Meanwhile, universities take billions of subsidies from Washington while hoarding billions in endowments. And every year, they raise tuition.

Universities get richer. Students get poorer. America gets weaker.

Every breakthrough — every invention, every industry, every new frontier — began with a handful of extraordinary individuals free to take extraordinary risks. Washington led men into battle at 22. Carnegie was building his steel empire by 30. Meriwether Lewis charted the American West in his twenties. Sam Colt patented the revolver at 22. Palmer Luckey sold Oculus at 21. Patrick Collison founded Stripe at 22. Michael Dell began his computer business at 19. Fred Smith launched FedEx at 29. None of them spent his twenties paying off student loans.

Thanks to a $100 million gift from Jeff Yass — the largest donation since UATX was founded in 2021 — we're breaking the chains. His gift marks the launch of a $300 million campaign to build a university that sets students free.

Our bet: Create graduates so exceptional they'll pay it forward when they succeed, financing the tuition of the next generation. When our students build important companies, defend our nation, advance scientific frontiers, build families, and create works that elicit awe, they'll remember who made their excellence possible. And they’ll give back.

Other Americans will take notice. Those who believe in unleashing American talent will invest in creating more of it.

Every other college gets paid whether students succeed or fail. At UATX, if our graduates don't become essential to American excellence — and if their work doesn't inspire others to fund this mission — we're done.

Every dollar raised, every professor hired, every course taught must produce extraordinary graduates — or we fail. We've designed our own constraints: no room for bloated bureaucracies, no frivolous departments, no administrative empire-building. Our survival depends on one thing only: graduating leaders free to pursue American greatness.

The University of Austin rejects the credentialing cartel. We admit purely on test scores, rank every student, and fail those who can't cut it. The nation's brightest are coming to Austin — transferring from Carnegie Mellon, turning down UChicago, leaving Columbia — to wrestle with great books, master AI and data science, and start real companies on campus. They're choosing a university dedicated to excellence instead of collecting hollow credentials elsewhere.

Jeff Yass has shown us what betting on America’s future looks like. Now we invite you to join him.

[Bill Ackman @BillAckman]

I think we can all agree on a few things:

We have $36 trillion of national debt growing at a rapid rate, that must be refinanced and issued at a materially higher interest rate as our bonds come due and as new funds are needed.

We had a $1.8 trillion deficit in fiscal 2024.

There is an enormous amount of fraud, waste, and inappropriate spending in our government budget.

It is illegal and/or otherwise should not be permitted for our government to fund activities that it cannot do directly through NGOs and other non-profits.

@elonmusk has a proven ability to takeover dysfunctional organizations and turn them into highly functioning ones while massively reducing wasteful overhead and other spending. See Twitter.

@realDonaldTrump won the election with a mandate for eliminating wasteful government spending and ending regulations that interfere with our country’s progress.

President Trump announced during his campaign that Elon would be appointed to oversee @DOGE. In other words, the American people voted for and signed up for DOGE and Elon as its leader.

We are extremely fortunate to have one of our greatest business leaders and entrepreneurs devote a considerable amount of his limited time for free to help our country.

We are extremely fortunate that some of our most talented young people have signed on to help DOGE succeed.

DOGE is just getting started and has already identified a massive amount of waste and likely fraud, and has begun cutting a material amount of costs.

It is axiomatic that those who are beneficiaries of waste, fraud and unnecessary government spending will be the most threatened by the cuts that DOGE is making in these programs. These beneficiaries of waste and fraud are also extremely worried about the reputational, legal and potential criminal risk they will suffer by being exposed by DOGE.

The beneficiaries of government waste, fraud and inappropriate spending will protest loudly and state false reasons for why DOGE must be stopped because their careers and livelihoods are threatened and put at risk by DOGE’s success. I have seen this movie many times before, but in the corporate world.

The president has stated clearly that he is overseeing DOGE’s activities and that no important decisions will be made without his consent.

Our legal system will ensure that no laws are broken as DOGE executes on its important mission.

Other efforts over the last many decades to eliminate government waste and fraud have totally failed.

DOGE is our best hope for fixing our fundamentally flawed and highly ineffective bureaucratic system for running our country.

Elon and Trump will face enormous pressure and pushback from those who benefit from the current corrupt system.

All Americans must therefore make their voices heard loud and clear about how much they support DOGE, Elon and our president’s efforts to help our country. We cannot let DOGE fail as our country is rapidly on the path to insolvency.

Let’s not let our country down. Let’s do our part in making sure our Congressmen and Senators know that we are 100% behind the president, Elon and DOGE.

It’s the least we can do.

[Eric Manlunas @EricManlunas]

Here’s a list where @elonmusk and @VivekGRamaswamy at @DOGE can start when they begin cutting wasteful spending in January 2025. There’s over $100B on this list alone.

[Eric Manlunas @EricManlunas]

👇🏽Spot on👇🏽

[Bill Ackman @BillAckman]

As much as last night was an indictment of the Democratic Party for misleading party members and the country about the mental acuity and health of the president, the media deserve far more derision and scorn.

I and others were repeatedly criticized by the media for questioning the competency of the president. Among other false accusations, I was accused of spreading misleading videos which clearly showed Biden’s deterioration.

Do you remember the heavily excerpted and edited @POTUS Biden @60Minutes interview where the interviewer covered for the president by saying he was ‘very tired?’

@60Minutes knew.

The @nytimes knew.

@CNN knew.

@MSNBC knew.

Left wing media have had total and complete access to the president, his staff, and his administration.

They all knew, but they told you otherwise. They outright lied to you.

When Robert Hur, the special counsel who deposed the president, said that the president was not fit to stand trial and therefore chose not to bring charges, the media described him as a tool of the Republican Party and character assassinated him.

When the @WSJ recently published a several-thousand-word, carefully researched, front page piece on the president’s mental and physical health, it was described by left wing media as outright propaganda.

Now consider who has been feeding you propaganda.

A favored technique of some of the most evil leaders in history was to mislead the people by constantly repeating the Big Lie.

The Big Lie is so audacious that people accept it as truth because it is repeated so often that how can it be that something so important and material could be an outright falsehood?

In this case the Big Lie was our president’s fitness for office, let alone a second term.

A media organization is not supposed to be a branch of the Democratic Party.

The media have a profound obligation to tell the truth to the American people, particularly about something as critical for the country as the president’s mental and physical health.

People very close to me, my closest family and friends, trusted the media on Biden until the @CNN commentators finally owned up to the truth about Biden last night.

For months I have been accused by many friends and family of being misled by an @X-based ‘right wing echo chamber.’

The sad reality is that one of our most important institutions, the so-called ‘Fourth Estate,’ fourth only after the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners, has destroyed any remaining credibility it has.

Consider how your perception of @POTUS Biden and @realDonaldTrump has been manipulated.

The media can no longer save itself.

A suggestion. Rely on empirical data as much as possible. Listen to what someone actually said, rather than a headline summary or article about what someone said.

Get your news from people who have a track record of telling the truth, people who do so at significant personal cost like whistleblowers.

I follow broad constituencies on @X on multiple issues. That has led me closer to the truth. Citizen journalism has been a much more accurate representation of reality.

Thank you @elonmusk for saving this platform. It gives us a fighting chance to save our democracy.

[Eric Manlunas @EricManlunas]

@msuster Great response! 👏🏼

[Eric Manlunas @EricManlunas]

@CameronWolfe Hope is a beautiful and cruel thing at the same time!

[Eric Manlunas @EricManlunas]

@sama is a stud! The announcement of him joining @Microsoft just added ~$56B in their market cap in a day. A drop in the bucket for a $2.8T market cap business but hey…$56B is >5x of what MSFT invested in @OpenAI which I understand are mostly @Azure credits anyway.

[Eric Manlunas @EricManlunas]

The majority of billion-dollar startups in the U.S. have at least one immigrant founder. Here is where those founders are from. https://t.co/Q6btOCdAIN via @visualcap

[Bill Ackman @BillAckman]

A world where public health officials are mistrusted is a more dangerous world. We need to restore this trust. Trust emerges from transparency, accountability, and ultimately from positive outcomes from the policies implemented.

In the fog of the Covid war, many mistakes were made by our government and our public health officials. That is to be expected and needs to be acknowledged.

But if we are to regain faith in our public health system, we need to understand what mistakes were made, and hold accountable any conflicted bad actors who caused harm.

Vaccines have saved millions of lives. A world without polio, small pox, and tetanus is a healthier, happier, and safer world. This does not mean, however, that multiple Covid vaccines should have been administered to every human being regardless of their age or condition during the crisis.

We also need to be particularly careful about assessing the risk and reward of the vaccines we give minors, particularly young children and infants as they cannot provide informed consent.

Had we listened to the skeptics of our government’s approach to vaccination or extended lockdowns for all, rather than censoring them — for example, those who suggested that the vaccine be principally given to the aged and those with co-morbidities and not to healthy children, or had we followed the recommendations of the Great Barrington Declaration — many lives may have been saved with reduced negative long-term effects on the economy, the education of our children, and our citizens’ mental health.

The opportunity for learning from our mistakes begins with transparency and accountability. Providing an open forum for the most aggressive and vocal critics of our government’s vaccine and other Covid policies to share their views and to be responded to by our most credible experts to address their concerns would be a big step forward in advancing the discussion and enabling learnings from our past mistakes.

I was, however, mistaken in encouraging a debate between @RobertKennedyJr and @PeterHotez as based on my further research Hotez does not appear to be a credible advocate for vaccine policy in light of the repeated inaccuracies of his public statements during the crisis and potential conflicts he may have.

What about RFK you might ask? RFK is not a scientist, but he has assumed the mantle as one of the most aggressive critics of vaccine policy, and he is extremely articulate and has a highly visible public profile as a presidential candidate. These are all qualities which make him a excellent choice for an antagonist in the vaccine discussion.

We can find better experts than Hotez who can help advance the discussion and address any of RFK’s potentially mistaken claims or reasoning.

And it should be a discussion rather than a debate. The goal should not be to determine who won or lost, but rather to advance knowledge and understanding.

Let’s not censor, dismiss, or run from responding to those who challenge authority, conventional wisdom or even our current scientific understanding, as doing so only serves to destroy confidence in our system, our government and our nation.

[Eric Manlunas @EricManlunas]

@Samirkaji @sheshmat I’m grateful for and a fan of what you (@Samirkaji) and @sheshmat built for the venture community…thank you! I’m rooting for the survival and continued independence of @firstrepublic 🤞

[Eric Manlunas @EricManlunas]

@elonmusk = 100 - @BBCWorld Reporter = 0
This should become a training video for all news reporters.

[Layah Heilpern @LayahHeilpern]

This a is MUST watch. @elonmusk calls out the state media BBC for their lies and misinformation. Watching Elon defy the establishment is the entertainment I didn’t know I needed.

[Eric Manlunas @EricManlunas]

Whoa! In as much as I believe in giving someone the benefit of the doubt, this may have been fraud from Day 1.
https://t.co/DPEYXajb7n via @PitchBook

[Ian Cassel @iancassel]

Investing is 5% intellect and 95% temperament. It's a test of how well you can sit quietly when your emotions are screaming at you to do the wrong thing.

[Eric Manlunas @EricManlunas]

Will people worship SMB owners in a down cycle?

[Anish K. Mitra @anishkmitra]

Startup losing $100M/year:

"backed by visionary venture capitalists, we are an obsessed team of tinkerers who are redefining life on Earth, one revolution at a time."

Small business making $10M/year:

"this is a laundry mat"

[Eric Manlunas @EricManlunas]

And yet the official inflation data is just slightly above 7%. 🤷🏼‍♂️
https://t.co/6Brinkt4N9

[Eric Manlunas @EricManlunas]

Shouldn’t this headline instead be written like this?
“⁦@Microsoft⁩ gives ⁦⁦⁦⁦@LSEGplc⁩ enough capital in exchange for 4% of London Stock Exchange so LSEG can now afford to pay ⁦@Azure⁩ for the next 10 years.” https://t.co/McgARfXn9T

[Eric Manlunas @EricManlunas]

The Unbearable Uselessness of Crypto by Andrés Velasco @ProSyn https://t.co/QdiUJbWAFZ

[Eric Manlunas @EricManlunas]

While all scams don't start as such, this one may have been a scam from the very beginning. https://t.co/Hxl8DSXgWa

[Eric Manlunas @EricManlunas]

Wow…from $0 to $32B back down to $0 in 39 months. I wonder who will play Sam Bankman-Fried in the upcoming movie. #FTXCRASH #FTXbankruptcy

[Eric Manlunas @EricManlunas]

You’re a good human @JeremieFrimpong!

[Danny Deraney @DannyDeraney]

The cost to be a decent person is $0.00.

Jeremie Frimpong accidentally kicked a ball in the stands and immediately came to the rescue.