Lidiya Terpel🇺🇦

Growth Leader | Startups | Accelerators | ex-founder | SF & NYC

[Lidiya Terpel🇺🇦 @LTerpel]

The DC and NYC effect! No more hoodies🫠

[Lidiya Terpel🇺🇦 @LTerpel]

Day 21 in NYC: who should I be having coffee with next? ☕
They say 21 days is how long a habit takes to form, so I guess I'm official.

Two weeks of coffees with a hedge fund manager, an advisor to Canada's Prime Minister, a tokenization platform founder, a GPU investor, a PE partner, an AI world-model founder, a billion-dollar fashion fund investor, a Harvard-trained politician, and a Yale alum.

My favorite introvert moment of any day is the walk home, opening Claude, and chatting through everything I just heard. Sometimes the research runs for hours. I learn as much about myself as I do about the sectors.

A pattern showed up in what lights me up: never a commoditized market. Always an intersection, where two sectors collide, and a new category is born.

Coming from AI infra and startup acceleration in SF. Right now I'm hunting casual business conversations.

So who in New York should I be meeting? Please intro me, or DM directly if you're local.

[Lidiya Terpel🇺🇦 @LTerpel]

Last day of March. Moving to New York the next morning. So naturally, I threw an event 😅
Launching Your Own Startup Accelerator

I got a room full of GTM and Startup program leaders together in SF and broke down exactly how we built an accelerator from scratch and turned it into one of the best GTM motions for hosts & partners.

After the event I asked Claude: how many questions did I actually answer that night? Kinda remember it was a lot.
The answer: ~40.
40 questions every organizer needs to answer before launching an accelerator.

Things like:
- Who's your co-host (and are you actually aligned on goals and responsibilities)?
- How to get top founders as speakers, not operators, not VPs, actual CEOs?
- What's your vertical? (Broad = dead. Narrow = perfect.)
- Will startups actually use your credits? (Spoiler: giving things away for free doesn't mean they will.)

It's a very specific thing to know how to do well.
If you're planning to launch your own accelerator or even just thinking about it, DM me. Happy to share all 40 questions you should answer before anything starts.

Big thanks to https://t.co/sD6iFif84D and https://t.co/KrwfGSTZNy (@zachtheoldham) for hosting and co-sponsoring, and to everyone who showed up and asked the hard questions.

[Lidiya Terpel🇺🇦 @LTerpel]

Moving to NYC is not my only big change this week. I also closed my chapter at Inworld AI.
Here's a story I never shared publicly.

When Inworld's contract hit my inbox last year, I was very excited but hesitated to sign it. I wanted to be a founder, and taking a job felt like giving up on that dream. But everything was signaling that the time for the idea I was working on hadn't come yet.

Then my mom called with news. A missile had hit the Ukrainian facility where my dad worked. He wasn't there that day, thank God. But the place where he worked just doesn't exist anymore. They were shaken. Me too.

I hung up the phone, opened that email, and signed the contract with Inworld.
Sometimes stability isn't just for you, it's for the people you love.

Very grateful to the Inworld team and everyone I worked with. Turns out, life guides you in ways you would never expect.

What's next? Hopefully, another serendipitous chapter in NYC.
Hit me up if you’re here!

[Lidiya Terpel🇺🇦 @LTerpel]

New chapter: I just moved to NYC!

After 3 years in SF, my big big love and second home, I'm so excited to start calling NYC home too.

I was deep in SF's AI startup scene: AI Infra, Consumer AI, strong VC network, and I'm bringing all of that energy to New York.

I want to meet everyone here: AI founders, investors, operators, and of course, local Ukrainians.

Tag someone I should know. Or just say hi. Let's grab coffee.

P.S. Pinch me, I actually did it!

[Inworld AI @inworld_ai]

We’re excited to join the Agent Skills OpenClaw & World Models Build Day, hosted by @agihouse_org on March 14.

Our founder and CEO, @KylanGibbs, will speak about enabling voice-native AI agents and how to power them with real-time TTS, intelligent model routing, and real-time speech-to-speech infrastructure to create truly conversational experiences at scale.

The event will bring together 100+ AI founders and researchers, with speakers from organizations including @GoogleDeepMind, @amazon, @moonlake, @BenchFlow, @xai and the @LaudeVentures.

If you’re in the Bay Area, join us.
Register via the link: https://t.co/g2qs6WX3uM

[Lidiya Terpel🇺🇦 @LTerpel]

https://t.co/hUOxLqCcWQ

[Lidiya Terpel🇺🇦 @LTerpel]

Tomorrow is our Accelerator Demo Day!
Investors, this is your last call to join us.
32 Consumer AI startups, $50M+ combined ARR.
The VC list is packed with great names: Lightspeed, SignalFire, Menlo, BITKRAFT, M12, Legendary Ventures, Pear VC, AI Fund, and more.
RSVP👇🏼

[Inworld AI @inworld_ai]

Consumer AI Accelerator · Week 5 Recap

One founder optimized AI latency and increased usage overnight.
Another walked into a VC pitch with a slide titled: “Here are the 7 companies that failed in our space and exactly why.”

Week 5 was about infrastructure decisions, investor conviction, and the craft of pitching top-tier VCs.

We were joined by:
➤ @mbaierlentz (@lightspeedvp)
➤ @JoshConstine (@SignalFire)
➤ Dmytro Mindra (@Superhuman)
➤ Ilya Liasun (@Pinterest)

Below are 10 insights worth reading.

Our Demo Day · March 3 · San Francisco. Last day to register.
RSVP: https://t.co/3Wt9SD65b7

Thanks to our partners @TRMNL_4, @stripe, @BITKRAFTVC, @HeyOyster, and @CBRE for supporting and hosting our Demo Day.

See you tomorrow!

[Inworld AI @inworld_ai]

Consumer AI Accelerator · Week 4 recap

One team changed a voice in their app. Users were furious.

Another swapped models for workout generation. Completions went up 12%. No one noticed the change except in the metrics.

These are the kinds of stories that came out of Week 4, from:

➤ Founders Alexis Sursock (Luvu) and @dima_deka (@TalkpalAI ), moderated by @KylanGibbs.

➤ Investors @mps_vc (@M12vc ) and @sameer_singh17 (@speedinvest), moderated by Cheryl Fichter.

Not theory. Real decisions, real tradeoffs, and what actually moved the numbers.

8 lessons in the carousel.

[C.C. Gong @CCgong]

I GOT TRICKED into rejecting startups live on screen
-and it ended up being one of the most clarifying exercises I’ve done.

The Consumer AI Accelerator had me and @katieruthmishra at @khoslaventures react in real time to cold inbound messages: pass or take the meeting.

Plot twist was every “example” was a founder sitting in the room.

After the public triage, we went deeper and surfaced a few patterns worth sharing:

1️⃣ 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐠𝐞𝐭𝐬 𝐮𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐦𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠?

Founder > deck.
I'm looking for:
Depth on the problem and market
Clarity in how you frame the opportunity
Genuine obsession, not trend-chasing
Traction helps, but depth + clarity are what actually move us forward.

2️⃣ 𝐃𝐨 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐦 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐬 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫?

Absolutely. For our last few Seed / Series A deals, 100% came through intros.

3️⃣ 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐞𝐫?

I always use the product/watch a live demo to do a taste/quality check. Is this a generational company, or just a feature? It's critical to have a concrete GTM plan with realistic CAC and a believable path to meaningful revenue (not “we’ll turn on ads later”) in the next few years. The moat against LLMs is a compounding loop of differentiated distribution, proprietary data, opinionated product/UX, deep integrations into workflows, and a team that can iterate faster than everyone else.

4️⃣ 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐮𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠?

Extremely. The best founders are talent and customer magnets. If exceptional people want to work with you early on, that’s good signal.

5️⃣ 𝐕𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 & 𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐢𝐳𝐞?

Overreaching on price quietly kills companies. Know your metrics and your leverage. Raise enough to retire specific risks. Optimize for the right partner, not just the highest valuation.

If you’re building in consumer or AI, have a live product, and think deeply about distribution, my DMs are open.

Thanks @LTerpel for having us @MenloVentures

[Lidiya Terpel🇺🇦 @LTerpel]

@tankots, you’re officially invited to our March 3 Consumer AI Accelerator Demo Day. I think you can inspire a lot of founders to build valuable products🙌🏻

— Whispered with Wispr Flow

https://t.co/VME1IM2qsf

[Lidiya Terpel🇺🇦 @LTerpel]

I’m not typing this.
I’m whispering it in a crowded cafe after celebrating the Android launch with the awesome Wispr team.

Since I started using @WisprFlow, I barely type anymore.
No typing on Slack. No long emails. Just talking to my laptop.
It saves me 2+ hours a day. Easily!

[Lidiya Terpel🇺🇦 @LTerpel]

Respect and thank you to @tankots and the Wispr team 👏

If you’re not using Wispr yet, start today! My only regret - not starting earlier :)

Referral link 👉 https://t.co/V3ClTrF4Id

[Lidiya Terpel🇺🇦 @LTerpel]

@tankots @WisprFlow @tankots So… is the Porsche still up for grabs? 😄 With my Ukrainian accent, I’ve already spotted a few fun things in the app that could be leveled up. Honestly, some of them could spin off into their own new revenue streams for you

[Tanay Kothari @tankots]

We offered 5 people a Porsche 911 GT3 RS if they could get @WisprFlow to make a mistake

It's the fastest and most accurate AI voice dictation app that's 3x more accurate than ChatGPT, Claude, or Siri.

Today, we’re finally launching on Android. Download now: https://t.co/TJhnUhDSLv

As a part of the launch, we’re giving away 6 months of Wispr Flow Pro for free.

Like, retweet and comment ‘Wispr Flow’ to get it. Enjoy.

— Written with Wispr Flow

[Inworld AI @inworld_ai]

Consumer AI Accelerator Week 3 recap!
Featuring speakers from our growth and VC fundraising sessions: @alexmashrabov (@higgsfield_ai), @faionur (@statusgamexyz ), Jean Wang (@inworld_ai), and @jasperbrand_ (@BITKRAFTVC).

We discussed how consumer AI products actually get built, distributed, and financed.

Below are the top 10 insights from the webinars.

[Lidiya Terpel🇺🇦 @LTerpel]

@itskellysun Would love to join you 🙌🏻

[Lidiya Terpel🇺🇦 @LTerpel]

@sam_emara 🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻