Neil

Building AI Tutors for Kids @afterschoolai. Forbes 5 Under 5. ALL14 @alliance. Formerly @apple, @google, @facebook, @proofofplay.

[Neil @neilkth]

@paulg You should pick up a JLC. It was by far the most accurate watch in my collection, beating out my watches that cost 4X as much. (Not that price is at all correlated with accuracy…)

But my collection is more concentrated in a few brands than yours; eg. I’ve never owned a Zenith.

[Hōrōshi バガボンド @KatanaLarp]

https://t.co/h9C7YZeCx3

[Neil @neilkth]

Happy New Year!

[qw @QwQiao]

there’s a common view that card networks (visa, ma, etc) should get disrupted by new rails such as as stablecoins because they charge merchants an absurd 3% fee.

the reality is card networks keep a v small portion of this fee. assume a typical $3 fee on a $100 purchase, about

- $1.8 goes to the consumer (as card rewards)
- $0.45 goes to the issuing bank (the consumer’s bank)
- $0.6 goes to the acquiring bank (bank of the merchant)
- $0.15 goes to visa/ma

this is one of the most remarkable examples of incentive alignment:
- consumers keep a lion share of it as incentives to continue to use the card
- issuing bank is incentivized to acquire customers for the network
- acquirer is incentivized to acquire merchants for the network
- visa/ma keep a tiny portion but they get to scale the network at virtually 0 marginal cost
- merchants pay for all of this as they have the least bargaining power

easily one of the strongest instances of network effect we’ve seen in the history of businesses

[Neil @neilkth]

Happy Thanksgiving! 🍁🦃

[Neil @neilkth]

@arian_ghashghai Your other post in a way explains the phenomenon: the investment has been derisked in the sense of their ability raise capital was more unknown before and now is more known. Is that a derisk that is proportional to the valuation jump? Well, that’s a subjective analysis…

[Neil @neilkth]

@ItzSuds @endowment_eddie @HarryStebbings @maxaltman Any chance you’d be open to sharing the template of that spreadsheet? I’m curious to learn how you track your investments.

[Neil @neilkth]

@jonathanzliu It’s the current meta but wasn’t always the case.

Also I think only works if you’re hard paywalling up front, and skews towards more productivity/b2b apps.

I don’t think a 30 step onboarding will go super well for a freemium game, for example.

[Neil @neilkth]

@PackBropagated Haha, what’s a Roogler? I hadn’t heard that one…

[Neil @neilkth]

@jxnlco 🙋‍♂️

[Neil @neilkth]

@heyricharnold 1. Flat button (black)
2. Subtly raised button (white)
3. Flat button (grey)

...why.

[Neil @neilkth]

@ankurnagpal I’ve always found market cap to GDP comparisons weird because the former is a measure of net worth (sorta) and the latter is a measure of cashflow (sorta).

[Craig Weiss @craigweiss]

every founder has two companies: the one they’re building, and the one that's in their head

[Neil @neilkth]

@BobbyThakkar Hahaha, I need this! How can I get one? (In NY.)

[Neil @neilkth]

@kellyjgreer @CrucibleCap @doublezero @GigaEnergy_ @get_hydrahost Sure, I’d love one.

[Neil @neilkth]

@lessin Since I'm a watch guy, just out of curiosity, what did you get?

[Neil @neilkth]

@hthieblot AI Tutors for Kids

https://t.co/TZUlomGS2C

[Neil @neilkth]

@kayvz Awesome to see @mimestream mail in someone else’s dock! 😃

[Alex Klein @alexklein0x]

running a nyc gp search has been a reminder of how far the ecosystem has come. oai, cursor, thrive all in soho, flatiron still a gem for tech. city feels white hot right now.

6x growth in active vc firms since 2010 (2+ direct seed or series a investments) isn’t just noise, it’s a shift. sf still has the density (4x increase), but nyc feels different this time.

s/o to the anchors: @RRE (1994) @insightpartners (1995) @Lux_Capital (2000) @usv (2003) @alley_corp (2007) @FirstMarkCap (2008). laid an excellent foundation.

the breakouts: @ThriveCapital @BoxGroup @PrimaryVC @Work_Bench @645ventures

one to watch: @stellation. what @pboyce has built so far is impressive and the window for ems who can get it right is very real.

v2 is for other emerging funds + solos in nyc. i have a handful in mind but curious who else out east is raising or deploying fund 1 or 2 right now, esp in ai?

(graph below: nyc vs bay area growth curve)

🧵 below.

[Neil @neilkth]

@fern @cursor_ai Try Claude Code! @hifariz and I both switched.