Isabelle

[Alexa Gellman @LexGellman]

should we all boycott NVIDIA gpus?

[Chris Brown @almostcmb]

OG ad tech 🤝 creator commerce

Excited to see former 14 year TTD vet and CCO/CRO Jed Dederick join @InspiredCap company ShopMy

(ShopMy is honestly too cool of a company to have/require an active X account)

[Isabelle @isabholt]

Meet Bex, my Townie. via @TownAI https://t.co/w6UzznpP6R

[Harry Stebbings @HarryStebbings]

I think @NaveenGRao is one of the most under-discussed but brilliant entrepreneurs of our time.

He is able to consistently see where a market is going and place himself ahead of it.

- Founded Nervana and sold to Intel for $400M.

- Founded MosaicML and sold to Databricks for $1.3BN.

- Raised $450M seed round at $4.5BN valuation for Unconventional.

This success has given him license to say things that few people would have the confidence to say.

- “Most software investors today are f*****”.

- “Agentic coding is overrated and uninvestable”.

- “It is completely techno-optimist to assume companies will have their own models and own their own intelligence”.

This discussion rallies against some of the conventional beliefs of the valley in a way you have not heard before.

My notes from the discussion with Naveen below. (Link in comments).

1. Are Software Investors F**ked?

Pure software investors are "kind of f**ked" because SaaS will no longer be where margin is gained. Since around 2010, cloud services let founders spin up products quickly and chase $100M to $200M markets. As applications shift toward the intelligence layer, Naveen does not see software being a huge market in 20 years.

Do you agree software investors are f***** in a much more infra/hardware centric landscape @PalmerLuckey @mttgrmm @shaunmmaguire

2. Why Agentic Coding Is Overrated and an Uninvestable Category

Agentic coding is overrated as a market because the value moves to the model provider. The harness and the IDE are not very sticky, and people move between tools fluidly. Outside of the model providers, it is a category he would not invest in today.

What is the single biggest reason why the coding agent should not sit within the model provider @ScottWu46 @matanSF

3. Is It Completely Techno-Optimist to Assume That Companies Will Own Their Own Intelligence With Their Own Specialized Models?

Owning your own intelligence takes scale. A firm like Cooley can invest to make it happen, while a mom-and-pop shop in Nebraska will buy an out-of-the-box service instead. Big players will customize because rivals using AI to supercharge their margins force them to.

4. Where Is the Value in the Robotics Stack?
The value in robotics will not sit in the model alone. Naveen invests in companies building robotics models and expects them to end up building end-to-end devices, selling the robot together with a model that does something very well.

Where will the most value accrue in the robotics stack? Model? Data? Hardware? @tonyzzhao @joshavata @bercankilic

5. Why Steve Jurvetson Is My Favorite Investor Meeting

Of roughly a thousand investor meetings, the one that stood out was with @FutureJurvetson. He geeked out on numeric representations and marked up the papers Naveen sent him like a technical colleague. In 2014, when no one had pitched a hardware startup in 10 years, he was keen to invest because he had been thinking about the space himself.

6. How American Investors Differ From European Investors

Founders in the US are given permission to think bigger. In Europe, the investor network is so conservative that a founder with a crazy idea is written off as mad, while in the US the same founder is seen as awesome for thinking big.

EF has largely moved focus to the US and SF specifically, would you agree with this @Alicebentinck @matthewclifford?

7. Why the Inference Market Will Be $10 Trillion Within 10 Years

AI models alone will be a trillion-dollar market in the next few years, and inference will reach $10 trillion within 10 years. Cutting the cost of delivering a token by one order of magnitude effectively 10Xs the market, since the base of potential uses grows more than 10X, which Naveen ties to Jevons paradox.

What does no one see that everyone should see about the inference market @GavinSBaker @lqiao @bernhardsson

[Isabelle @isabholt]

@bdistel @yext @evonbev @dyscott01 @_maxdshaw @emyang___ @0xharsh_ @jaredccohen @bennyautomatic @_nicolealonso @trywindmill This is so important.

[Brian Distelburger @bdistel]

Growing companies think their biggest problem is hiring, but they are wrong. It’s only half the story.

In reality even the best candidates will fail if they are not set up for success from the start.

I experienced this at @yext across a team of 2,500, and today, with the pull of our growing customer base, Windmill is launching the system I always wanted

An agentic onboarding system to give every new hire the best chance of being successful as quickly as possible.

@trywindmill now has over 250 customers and many of them growing faster than any companies before in human history. Our customers feel this pain viscerally. You spend millions on recruiting and closing candidates only for them to show up to an onboarding based off a couple slides and a Notion doc.

Onboarding is one of the most important things a company does. It’s a new hire’s introduction to the company culture and how it runs. And in today’s rapidly changing world, it’s harder than it’s ever been before.

Effective onboarding isn't about teaching people everything. It's about getting them to real contribution as fast as possible, with clear goals, regular feedback, and a manager who stays in the loop.

Windmill puts an AI agent in charge of making that happen for every new hire, and holds everyone accountable along the way.

We’re currently live with amazing customers like @Etched (among others) and it’s incredible to see the results. Every one of our customers I’ve shared this with has raised their hands and we’re including it as part of their subscription.

If this is something your team struggles with, we’d love to show you the system that’s helped customers around the globe onboard and ramp their teams 3x faster.

[Alexa Gellman @LexGellman]

Obligatory @AnthropicAI S-1 post: Interesting use of analogies throughout, which made me think of my own... I suspect that compute procurement will look a lot like old-school consumer goods manufacturing, i.e. we may see the bullwhip effect in action (coined by P&G in the 90s)

[Isabelle @isabholt]

@alexavontobel @InspiredCap 🔥🔥

[Alexa von Tobel @alexavontobel]

Today, our team is excited to announce @InspiredCap Fund IV, $450M in new capital to back early-stage founders.

There has never been a moment in history when more is possible. It takes just one person with exceptional ambition to take on the world’s problems and change billions of lives for the better.

[Rho @rhobusiness]

Not every milestone needs dilution.

Rho Capital is a revolving working-capital line for Rho customers.

Draw what you need.
Repay as you get paid, up to 180 days out.
Reuse it next cycle.

Non-dilutive. Decided on your business data.

[Isabelle @isabholt]

@NickAdamsinUSA I’m deaddddd this is a joke right

[Mindset Bolt @mindsetbolt]

10 deep quotes for self-care 💫

1.