Hien Dao

Deep Tech Investor. Lover of history, football, board games and sparkling debates.

[Hien Dao @hireen99]

@itsTimWijaya I dont disagree on the general direction, but also depends on what kind of traction. YC startups’ definition of tractions and revenues is sometimes very mind-blowing.

[Sam Padilla @theSamPadilla]

After 2+ years in the robotics data space, we are shutting @Eidon_AI down.

The thesis was right. But the business is brutally hard.

We close this chapter by open-sourcing everything we built and sharing lessons for anyone venturing into the space. https://t.co/pyL9IkjQPT

[Khoa Vu @KhoaVuUmn]

AI is finally taking over economist's job. It's all over.

[Esckla @esckla]

Un compañero le está preguntando al profe de Economía sobre blanquear plata

[Dan Gray @credistick]

Previously (see quoted post), we looked at how pre-IPO scale effects the future success of venture-backed companies.

Quick recap:

Raising more private capital, and generating more revenue, are both correlated with WORSE outcomes for companies after going public.

This is likely because opaque private markets favour raw scale over a complex picture of health, so companies grow in a fragile, one-dimensional manner.

A few people asked what this means more specifically for VC returns.

The question itself is interesting, because it separates VC returns from the long-term success of the companies they back. A sign of the times.

But, it's a fair consideration — a VCs fiduciary duty is to their LPs, not to founders.

Of the original sample of 143 recent IPOs, there are 83 with available details about the first priced round and the last round prior to going public.

The first and last rounds are examined independently to determine whether early investors benefit disproportionately from larger exits, versus the relatively poor blended return.

For the sake of this analysis, we're looking at share price 6 months after IPO, the usual time when insiders can sell (including LPs that took shares as distributions in kind).

Splitting these IPOs into buckets by capital raised, there is a clear negative correlation for the quality of returns from the last round.

- For companies that raise less than $150M, the last round returns just less than 3x.

- For companies that raise more than $1.5B, the last round returns just less than 1x.

The first priced round typically does well, although the two best categories raised either the most or the least. There's not as clear a correlation here.

- For companies that raised less than <$150M, the first round returns 149x.

- For companies that raised more than $1.5B, the first round returns 209x.

[Hien Dao @hireen99]

@arian_ghashghai Honestly idk why people are against what you clearly articulated. I can definitely see what they saw in Roy as a founder. Maybe for the wrong purpose but he’s great. And a16z made a small bet on something they believed in, which is the core function of VC. No moral, but right job

[William “Big Willy” MacMillan @WilliamMac67]

“She’s out of your league”

Don’t you know everyone meets in the FA cup?

[Ave Maria Vandalina 💓😈👾🧛‍♀️ @KolyasBarnabas]

Как выглядит инфляция на самом деле

[Miguel Delaney @MiguelDelaney]

EXCL: there is growing concern at just how much of a record transfer window was paid for with private credit, at a time of real pressure for such markets

The state of the game report is anticipated to outline a huge liquidity problem in English football

https://t.co/2s97gNpHE2

[Jukan @jukan05]

I really love this quote from Dell’s earnings call.

[Hien Dao @hireen99]

@oliviasolon @sidlowe Your confusion comes from you assuming a large majority of people have the intellectual prowess to desire “the celebration of human achievement”.

No, most people don’t have that. Now, also take into account newer generations being raised on brain-frying short videos from birth.

[Purely Green @worldclick56]

The most beautiful station in the Southern Hemisphere.

[Kam #8🏁 @Culturecams]

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[Hien Dao @hireen99]

@atShruti There's no universal best practice, but I guess the reasonable read is this: an warm intro will at least secure your deck getting looked at (and likely a meeting), but it comes with the caveat of "hmm, I wonder why are they intro-ing this company?". Not good or bad,but a question

[alli @sonofalli]

if your girl:
- drinks a lot of water
- causes drama
- remembers everything
that's not your girl, that's a data center

[Amjad Masad @amasad]

18x improvement in intelligence per joule in 16 months.

[Dario Amodei @DarioAmodei]

2/2 Second, on the messaging around AI.  I do not agree that my messaging has been disproportionately negative.  In fact it has been about equally balanced between risks and benefits: I’ve written one major essay about each, and even in interviews where I discuss the risks, I make sure to frequently mention the incredible benefits as well as proposing possible solutions to the risks (short clips from my interviews that end up on social media tend to be disproportionately negative, as that gets clicks).  In fact, I wrote Machines of Loving Grace because I didn’t feel the AI industry was painting an inspiring enough picture of how the technology could radically transform the world for the better.  The bulk of the essay is devoted to refuting skepticism of AI’s potential in health and biology, and showing why I think it will actually be possible to cure most human disease in ~5-10 years, as crazy as it may sound to ordinary people and frankly to biologists as well (I used to be one!).  And, if you read my most recent essay (Policy on the AI Exponential), I discuss concrete proposals for how to streamline the FDA process to make sure the deluge of AI-accelerated drugs isn’t slowed down by the regulatory process.  I feel the urgency here: I lost my father to Hepatitis C only a few years before the development of direct-acting antivirals (sofosbuvir), which cure 95% of patients and probably would have cured him.

I do agree that the public has a negative view of AI (and that this is a big problem), but I don’t think it is primarily caused by me or any other AI leader warning about AI’s risks.  I think it is fundamentally a crisis of trust.  I think that ordinary people don’t trust companies, governments, or the tech industry and always suspect that we are cooking up some new way to screw them over.  The causes of this go back decades and AI is just the latest iteration of it.  I don’t think that a glitzy marketing campaign with a positive spin (which some have advocated that Anthropic do) is the way to win back that trust — at this point, saying that AI will cure cancer is more a cliche than it is inspiring, and most people think it is deceptive.  The thing that will work is *actually curing cancer*.  I think by far the most accurate criticism of AI companies including Anthropic is that we haven’t yet delivered on our big promises to benefit the world.  That is totally on us, and I think it’s the criticism you should be making, instead of all this stuff about messaging and marketing.

We are however doing our best to fix this: Anthropic is ramping up its efforts very quickly in biology and medicine, and we hope to have incredible results in the coming years and some early glimmers in the coming months.  When we’ve actually accomplished something real, the whole world will hear about it, as loudly as possible, you have my word on that.  But until then I don’t want to make empty promises, and in the meantime I feel compelled to speak honestly about the very real risks of AI and how to address them.  Honesty is the right thing on the merits, and in terms of public credibility and trust it is no worse than, and may in fact be better than, an approach that ignores or distracts from risks which people instinctively understand are real.

[Matt Loszak | Aalo Atomics @MattLoszak]

The father of the fusion bomb also invented the world's safest nuclear reactor fuel; one that's physically incapable of melting down.

And yet, almost nobody's heard of it.

Here's the story of Edward Teller and his forgotten invention: Uranium Zirconium Hydride 🧵

[Hien Dao @hireen99]

@tsf_podcast Wait, what’s the plan here? Raphinha false 9? Because Gordon and Adeyemi dont replace the 3 strikers (Lewy, Ferran, Rashford) they lost this window.

[Andrew Côté @Andercot]

The three fastest-growing categories of startups:

- "We fit inside a standard shipping container"
- Is the SpaceX of industry Y
- Giant flag in office