laurayd.x ✨

Partnering early early w founders @AforeVC ✨@thenewclub_fyi @Stanford @Opendoor @Princeton @McKinsey; RT tech, awesome women, customer feedback

[laurayd.x ✨ @laurayd]

five years ago, I was an intern @AforeVC and @GammaApp was just a team with an idea... Today, gamma is a $2b company with 70m users and $100m+ in run rate, and we are excited to launch the @AforeVC x @GammaApp $10,000,000 Ideas to Reality Fund.

ready to back the next generation of founders - learn more and apply - thank you @alexrkonrad for the coverage in @UpstartsMediaCo !

[Alex Konrad @alexrkonrad]

EXCLUSIVE: Gamma, the AI visuals startup valued at $2.1B, is launching a $10M fund with VC Afore Capital.

I spoke to CEO Grant Lee (@thisisgrantlee) about the "community" driven move -- and whether the tactic used by Anthropic and Perplexity can work for other, newer unicorns.

[laurayd.x ✨ @laurayd]

@DraftedAI so cool!!

[laurayd.x ✨ @laurayd]

Congratulations @rronak_ @MichaelElabd @QuantumArjun and team Trajectory on launch!!

I'm frequently asked “With vibe coding, do founders even need a technical advantage anymore?" Today with Trajectory s launch, you can see for yourself the answer!

the team has it all:
- technical
- commercial
- talent

triple threat

Could not imagine better people to work alongside, so proud to be a tiny investor and Congratulations on launch, team!!!!! @AforeVC

Let's f go! this is just the beginning 📈

[Ronak Malde @rronak_]

Today, @MichaelElabd, @QuantumArjun, and I are excited to announce Trajectory.

We are a research lab and product company building the platform for Continual Learning.

Our platform unlocks the signal already sitting in product usage, so companies can continuously post-train large-scale agentic models that outperform the frontier. @trajectorylabs

We’ve raised $15M from @Conviction, @BessemerVP, @radicalvcfund, @jeffdean, @drfeifei and more.

We’re partnering with some of the best AI-native companies: @ClayRunHQ @Harvey, @DecagonAI, @mercor_ai, @RogoAI to power their agentic systems, some of which we are already in production with.

We’ve brought together a world class research team from DeepMind, OpenAI, Apple, Meta Superintelligence, Amazon AGI, Scale AI, and an elite product team from Stripe and Figma.

AI will never again start on day one. Every correction, every retry, every edit will make products smarter. This is Continual Learning.

[laurayd.x ✨ @laurayd]

@MichaelElabd What a beautiful tribute to your work and colleagues!! Cant wait for the next chapter!! :) :) :) go @MichaelElabd !!

[laurayd.x ✨ @laurayd]

we switched up the format last week and I loved hosting this intimate single-circle fireside chat w/ 20 founders and Zack Peng (@AforeVC founder of Seel) on "finding & founding" a $100M ARR business! 🎙️

want to join the next one? @AforeVC Founders in Residence summer cohort apps just opened - in 8 weeks, go from idea to first 5 customers! learn more: https://t.co/V1yd7oGTtZ

and curious what Zack shared on his founder journey?

💡 Do you still need a unique insight: Zack had one - working as an engineer at an insurance company, he found it crazy that insurance was still being modeled off 30-year-old tabular data (e.g. how many times has this geo flooded in the last 30 years, vs. what is the weather like recently?). that belief - something better must be possible - is what got him started!

🔨 brute forcin' it...: flew to denver, spent hours in ubers pitching uber driver income risk (as a self-proclaimed introvert!! spoiler: no PMF)

🙋🏾‍♂️ Listening to first customer: "your risk analytics seems fine, but if you're really that good, I'll pay you $18 for every $20 you save me in returns...!" once you find that vocal, trusted customer, go build!

🏆 PMF is real. when you have it, you feel it. til then - change the product or change the ICP, don't get emotionally attached, and try to pivot fast! but ofc, easier said than done 🥲

if you want some help along the journey, join us for Founders-in-Residence summer cohort: https://t.co/V1yd7oGTtZ

[laurayd.x ✨ @laurayd]

@ycombinator @trysaffron @roblukan @kazumachoji @_mjyao lets kill leet code!

[Y Combinator @ycombinator]

Are you missing out on the next 10x engineer? Saffron (@trysaffron) lets companies evaluate how well software engineers code with AI tools.

Congrats on the launch, @roblukan, @kazumachoji and @_mjyao!

https://t.co/0URb7qDi5S

[laurayd.x ✨ @laurayd]

@roblukan !!

[Robert Chondro @roblukan]

Sierra just killed the coding interview. Every engineering team that hasn’t caught up is about to look very out of touch

[laurayd.x ✨ @laurayd]

who do i know working in voice AI or friend of a friend who should be included here? getting a few researchers and early folks from @cartesia @withdavidai @WisprFlow together w/ voice founders for something very fun. may expand to include gen video as well! @AforeVC

[Afore Capital @AforeVC]

If you're sitting on an idea but haven't taken the leap yet, Afore's Founders-in-Residence program was built for exactly this moment. 10 founders at a time, 3x a year. First customers, fundraising support, and a team obsessed with getting you to liftoff. 🚀APPLY NOW.

And if you want to see what Afore founders are made of in person, join us April 28 in SF for a fireside chat with Zack Peng, founder of our portfolio company Seel, and Emily Yuan from Corgi. Come hear about their journeys.🐾🦭
https://t.co/qzEddRTSuw

[laurayd.x ✨ @laurayd]

how do SOME founders find a $100M+ ARR opportunity in a sea of AI-everything...?

we are gathering a curated group of future founders next Tues for a fireside chat @AforeVC !

if youre thinking of starting a company and wondering where great ideas start...

Meet @emily_yuan_ (cofounder @UseCorgi ) and Zack Peng (cofounder of Seel) & hear how they picked a big hairy industry, found a wedge, and survived to beat out incumbents

https://t.co/iReBCM1r8j

[laurayd.x ✨ @laurayd]

thank you to all the researchers & founders who came out @AforeVC robotics night! dexterous manipulation, camera vs. tactile, tele-op eval stacks, human data quality, occlusion, and Elon stories were def on the menu tonight

this is the first of a series we're hosting - as we kick off next cohort of Founders-in-Residence in June -

if youre building / exploring in robotics + want to do so in good company, follow us here to join the next one! https://t.co/2rvNVI5RyL

@adamraudonis one for the twitter books

[laurayd.x ✨ @laurayd]

Hosting a dinner w/ Senior Researchers at top Physical AI labs - @physical_int, @SkildAI , @intrinsic (@Google ), @Tesla_Optimus, @DynaRobotics, @sundayrobotics etc. Founders - if youd like to pitch your company to researchers or have friends building in this space, feel free to sign up. (can be pre-idea/product - looking for entrepreneurial researchers) @AforeVC https://t.co/2oLlTOk9UB

[laurayd.x ✨ @laurayd]

Hosting a dinner w/ Senior Researchers at top Physical AI labs - @physical_int, @SkildAI , @intrinsic (@Google ), @Tesla_Optimus, @DynaRobotics, @sundayrobotics etc. Founders - if youd like to pitch your company to researchers or have friends building in this space, feel free to sign up. (can be pre-idea/product - looking for entrepreneurial researchers) @AforeVC https://t.co/2oLlTOk9UB

[laurayd.x ✨ @laurayd]

so excited for our 15 founders pitching today to packed house @AforeVC showcase!

[laurayd.x ✨ @laurayd]

Congratulations to @DoorDash @andyfang Aryan, Aayush, Marcus and the Metis team on the acquisition.

@gjain said it best: If there was any doubt on what student founders @AforeVC starting AI companies can do ... look no further

(that was some fast IRR!)

[Andy Fang @andyfang]

Today we are welcoming the Metis team to DoorDash as part of DoorDash AI Research.

For the past six months, DoorDash has partnered with Metis to build AI agents together, and we have been consistently impressed by their team. By joining forces, we aim to accelerate our plans on building agentic commerce and pushing the frontier of physical intelligence. Excited to share more there soon.

It’s still early innings with how AI will transform local commerce, and we’re looking forward to exploring those possibilities together with Aryan, Aayush, Marcus and the Metis team!

[Grant Lee @thisisgrantlee]

There's a hidden tax on every knowledge worker in the world, and nobody talks about it:

The design tax.

You're a strategist, a sales lead, a marketer. You were hired for what you know. But every meeting, every pitch, every proposal expects you to show up with something that looks like a designer made it.

I lived this. Before Gamma, I spent time in consulting and investment banking. I spent more hours formatting slides than the analysis that went into them.

When my cofounders and I started Gamma, we asked: what if you never had to be a designer in the first place?

Five years and nearly 100 million users later, we've refunded billions of hours of the design tax.

Today, we're eliminating it for good with our biggest launch ever.

Gamma Imagine — a powerful, AI-native visual creation tool directly in Gamma. Posters, logos, infographics, visuals from a single prompt. On brand, every time.

AI-Native Templates. Templates were supposed to save you from design work. Instead you spent the time filling them in. So we completely rebuilt the template experience. Modify a whole deck with a single prompt, with your brand and style intact every time.

Gamma Connectors. You're already thinking in ChatGPT and Claude. Now Gamma sits inside the most popular work apps in the world. No more context-switching.

You were hired for your ideas, not to resize text boxes. Let Gamma pay the design tax.

[Tim Hwang @timthwang]

Today we’re announcing that @NitraFinance has raised a combined $187 million in financing as we build the AI-native operating system for healthcare practices.

We're also announcing that Dr. Richard Park, founder of CityMD and healthcare legend, will be joining Nitra’s Board.

[laurayd.x ✨ @laurayd]

@arshdilbagi so cool!

[laurayd.x ✨ @laurayd]

any healthcare x ai or technical would-be founders interested in joining dinner w/ peers (2nd-time healthcare founders) planning round 2?

have 1 spot just open at our informally named "healthcare foundery friends" dinner next mon

[laurayd.x ✨ @laurayd]

going on a roadtrip looking for founders & new ideas... where should we go next?
@GammaApp @AforeVC

@Stanford @UCBerkeley @UCLA @usc @Columbia @MIT @Harvard