John Henderson

Partner @airtreevc. Friend to founders. DMs are open.

[John Henderson @johnhenderson]

If you've got a problem you can't stop thinking about, we'd love to hear from you. https://t.co/h6WIwDkb9M

[John Henderson @johnhenderson]

Today we're launching Frontier - @airtreevc's residency for founders working out what to spend the next 10+ years working on.

We provide $250k on an uncapped SAFE to give you time to walk the idea maze.

[John Henderson @johnhenderson]

And we'll curate a small room of exceptional peers who'll help raise the ceiling on what you think is reasonable to attempt. No curriculum. No demo day. It's never too early. Pre-idea is fine. We're backing the person, not the deck.

[Paul Graham @paulg]

The only thing worse than having the CEO knee-deep in building stuff with AI is not having the CEO knee-deep in building stuff with AI.

[Lucréce @DesLucrece]

Most people quit after 3 bad months.

The people we admire kept going through 3 bad years.

Consistency doesn’t feel powerful when you’re in it. It feels embarrassing, repetitive, and invisible.

Until one day it doesn’t.

[John Henderson @johnhenderson]

@DesLucrece 🎯

[Aaron Levie @levie]

If I were a college career counselor or in career services, I’d quickly be figuring out how to get students to understand these forward deployed engineer jobs exist and how to get them.

The requirements are a mix of deep technical skills, often CS majors or minors. You must be great at understanding problem solving, how to have systems thinking, and have a strong business acumen. The kicker, of course, is to make sure you’re very deep in AI agents; you need to have fluency in coding agents, MCP, CLIs, Skills, and so on.

Hundreds (thousands?) of technology companies will be hiring for these roles, same with any consulting and IT services company, and the vast major of mid-size and large enterprises will be hiring for this talent internally as well.

One great example of opportunity for highly technical talent out there.

[John Henderson @johnhenderson]

Keep an eye on @Sachin_Shah_ and @_AdamMiller_. They were way out ahead on the importance of tech media and they're getting better and better. Another great documentary 👇

[Sachin and Adam @Sachin_and_Adam]

We profiled the most hyped energy startup in America. Exclusive look inside the $4B startup, Base Power, with co-founders @JLopas & @ZachBDell

A former SpaceX engineer & a Thrive capital investor, rebuilding American energy dominance. Trying to do what SpaceX did to NASA and Anduril to Lockheed. But for energy.

Yep, a lot of ambition. So, what do they have to show for it?

0:00 Meet Zach & Justin: Raising $1.3B To Fix America's Grid
1:16 How The Grid Came 4 Minutes From Collapse
1:56 Zach: Why The U.S Desperately Needs A SpaceX for Energy
3:25 Justin Explain's Their Home Battery Installation
4:14 Why Thrive Capital Bet on Zach & Justin (feat. Avery Klemmer)
5:16 How Justin & Zach Met? (Anduril Factory Tour)
6:32 Zach’s Secret Co-founder Test on Justin
7:20 How Base Build Their Competitive MOAT...
10:34 Justin: “Everything you do more than once is a factory”
11:17 Zach: This Is How To Raise $1.3B from Tier-1 Funds...
13:38 How to Build An Elite Team & Culture
14:26 Zach: "I'm Never Stoked To Fire People, But..."
15:33 The Personal Cost of Being An Entrepreneur
16:35 Energy, China and America’s future
18:22 Unpacking The Chip on Zach's Shoulder
19:13 Zach: “I Am Not the CEO This Company Needs in 5 Years”
19:49 Sachin & Adam: Our 3 Biggest Takeaways

[Chris Dixon @cdixon]

The CLARITY Act has now passed out of the Senate Banking Committee with bipartisan backing and moves to a full Senate vote - a historic moment for crypto entrepreneurs and American consumers.

Crypto is not a red or blue issue. It is about whether the next generation of financial and internet infrastructure gets built in the United States.

Thank you to @SenatorTimScott and @SenLummis for your leadership on the committee, to @BankingGOP, @Sen_Alsobrooks, and @RubenGallego for their support, and to all of the staff who have worked tirelessly to get to this point.

It’s time to pass CLARITY.

[Leigh Jasper @leighjasper]

‘Blindsided’: Start-up anger grows over CGT changes https://t.co/n8ObaMMIJm

The government’s proposed massive doubling of capital gains tax will be a disaster for Australian innovation and venture. Tech founders and investors will leave Australia in droves.

With the Aconex sale to Oracle for $1.6b, around $400m in tax was paid in Australia by the shareholders of Aconex. If I were paying double the current capital gains tax, I for one, would have stayed in Silicon Valley, rather than coming back to Australia to list Aconex on the ASX. On the sale to Oracle, I would have paid all my capital gains tax in the US, not Australia.

Overtaxing capital gains in venture capital will simple force founders, entrepreneurs, execs and investors to leave Australia for lower tax countries such as the US. The whole country loses, with less investment, less innovation, less jobs, less wealth creation and ultimately less tax paid in Australia.

This is what you get when you have a treasurer (and nearly 100% of the government) that has never taken the risk to start a company, or been anywhere near business in their life.

[Kyle Chan @kyleichan]

This Chinese humanoid robot just shattered the world record for a half marathon, finishing in 50 min 26 sec.

This video shows its crash just meters before the finish line where it had to be picked up by a team of humans. The robot is from Honor, the smartphone maker and Huawei spin-off. This robot was teleoperated while others were autonomous. It seems like all the robots had battery swaps along the way.

[Sundar Pichai @sundarpichai]

Hello. How are you? Thank you. I love you. Please.

Some of the most frequently translated phrases of the past 20 years!

Google Translate began twenty years ago with a mission to help people understand one another, regardless of the language they speak. What started as a small experiment has become a global tool that helps over 1 billion users every month.

In that time Translate has evolved from simple pattern matching to true understanding. In 2006, it relied on statistical machine learning to look for patterns in small word clusters. By 2016, we pioneered a shift to neural networks to move beyond literal word-for-word translations, and today we’re using our powerful Gemini models to make Translate even more helpful.

We are moving from text to fluid, real-time conversations. With our latest models, you can even use your headphones as a personal interpreter that preserves your original tone and cadence - it’s an amazing experience!

One of the interesting things about AI is that as we make progress, we begin to take it for granted. If you met a person who could translate across a hundred languages faster than any human can, you would be so impressed. Today, one product does that for nearly 250 languages, and we kind of just shrug.

Being able to say thank you in 250 languages is not something I take for granted. So to the 1 billion who use Google Translate - merci, dhanyavaad, arigatō, gracias, and thank you! Let’s see what the next 20 years will bring.

[John Henderson @johnhenderson]

@rossdawson I didn't - sounds good!

[John Henderson @johnhenderson]

Sitting in the Qantas lounge about to fly to the US. Serendipitous timing ahead of some investor conversations - this just dropped in The Economist overnight. https://t.co/nnZLtWiiQI

The article is a good read, but it undersells the opportunity.

[John Henderson @johnhenderson]

@tdrobbo 💅

[John Henderson @johnhenderson]

Those operators are now founding and funding the next wave, and the quality (and growth rates!) of AI-native companies coming through our pipeline at @airtreevc is a step change from anything we saw even a couple of years ago.

[John Henderson @johnhenderson]

What it doesn't capture is what's happening on the ground right now. The first generation - Atlassian, Canva, Afterpay - didn't just build companies. They built a talent base.