Refactor

Hard tech seed VC firm, led by @zalzally.

[Zal Bilimoria @zalzally]

Thank you, @TBPN. 10 years. 5 funds. 1 employee. Let’s go. 🎙️ #BetterCallZal

[Zal Bilimoria @zalzally]

Congrats to @AndyBeck and the entire @Path_AI team on today’s Roche acquisition for up to $1.05B! A heartfelt thank you for allowing @refactor to come along for the ride with you. 🙏🏽💪🏽

[Zal Bilimoria @zalzally]

Congrats to @Astranis on their massive Series E financing! We're going to be launching dozens of satellites to serve commercial, government, and defense customers in the coming months. 🛰️

@refactor led the seed back in the day, and is beyond impressed with the execution of this team. 💪🏽

[Zal Bilimoria @zalzally]

The new Yuzu Mandarin Spindrift is delish. Stocked at the office. Come visit. @refactor. 😎

[Zal Bilimoria @zalzally]

SpaceX just launched its 1,000th Starlink of 2026. Today. April 14.

LEO is now a crowded, commoditized neighborhood.

The interesting real estate is higher up — MEO and GEO — where a handful of players (hey @Astranis) are serving entire countries with a single small satellite. Underrated trade.

[Zal Bilimoria @zalzally]

My resting heart rate (RHR) in the Don’t Die app, pulling data from my Oura.

Check out my delta vs the community that @bryan_johnson is assembling in his awesome app. 💪🏽 My @eightsleep is driving the recent improvements. 😴🥶

[Zal Bilimoria @zalzally]

Coming soon: a @refactor stealth startup that will safely and effectively remove environmental toxins (such as microplastics) from our bodies.

[Zal Bilimoria @zalzally]

"No one has ever successfully turned water into rocket fuel, not for a spaceship of any significant size. A startup called General Galactic (@gengalactic), led by a pair of 20-something engineers, is aiming to be the first." 🚀@refactor = proud investor! https://t.co/eq0HkXqh7s

[Zal Bilimoria @zalzally]

Astranis builds micro GEO comms sats. Whether you’re an airline, govt, or independent company, officials and execs are waking up to the realization they need to control their own data streams to create top-performing teams, happy constituents, and make the best decisions. 💪🏽

[Zal Bilimoria @zalzally]

Neuronal computing ≠ neural computing.
Amazing company officially launching next month.
Stay tuned.
😎

[Zal Bilimoria @zalzally]

I did the EXACT opposite 14 years ago for a Top 10 mobile and tablet app...and it resulted in one of the most successful app launches ever.

Back in summer 2011, I was Head of Mobile at Netflix. As the PM, all phone and tablet apps were my purview, and usage was skyrocketing across dozens of UIs from Apple to Android, mini phones to phablets, iPads to tablets, etc.

But, the app I inherited was just the existing desktop app (w/white bkgd below) riddled with 100s of bugs and feature requests for those multitude of UIs. No easy swiping of titles, horizontally or vertically. Browsing was beyond challenging on any touch interface.

I made the unpopular decision to halt all work on the old app and built an all-new universal app for all interfaces with our small eng team. My team invented the “Continue Watching” row, which all streaming apps later copied, and focused on creating a beautiful browsing experience, getting users into content as fast as possible. The more streaming a user did, the higher likelihood they would retain as a member = both were/are key metrics to optimize for all Netflix PMs.

In our A/B test, we put ~200k users in the old app and 200k in the new app. Usually it would take a few months to see statistical significance. In only a few weeks, we saw a massive jump in both metrics (streaming hours and retention) and turned it on for ALL members this week 14 years ago, a few days before millions of iPads, tablets, and phones were gifted and activated nationwide, many of which had Netflix pre-installed.

Summary: there are multiple ways to move the needle on a product, and one of those is to simply start from scratch, take the interim pain of unhappy users on an old app, and give the world what it truly wants. 💪🏽

[Zal Bilimoria @zalzally]

The US is running out of explosives. We used to get them from China and Russia. Can't anymore.

This is an energetics crisis of massive proportions. Defense primes and startups are gonna be SOL without a US manufacturer in place.

More to come... 😎
https://t.co/iDDIypl63g

[Zal Bilimoria @zalzally]

Sensor-fusion AI will refactor how critical industries operate. Founders blending messy, multi-modal signals—vision, lidar, radar, force, vibration, acoustic, chemical, thermal, and inertial signals individually telling different truths at once—are the ones with real moats.

[Zal Bilimoria @zalzally]

PSA for those who are locked in and building today:

Act I: Software ate the world.
Act II: AI is refactoring materials, molecules, & machines.

This is @refactor's wheelhouse: 1st lead check for your hard tech company building in the US. 💪🏾

#bettercallzal

[Zal Bilimoria @zalzally]

Yes, that’s a matcha latte. I’ve mostly moved from coffee to matcha. 😋

[Zal Bilimoria @zalzally]

@TheHackersNews community is hilarious. YourChoice, working on the world’s first male non-hormonal oral contraceptive, is on the front page (#30) this evening… with some pretty wild comments. 🤣🤦🏽‍♂️

https://t.co/4nmh63ecTT

https://t.co/bVCNh3jwGZ

[StepStoneVC @StepStoneVC]

With $11M in Seed funding, #RemedyScientific is tackling PFAS cleanup and transforming contaminated land into valuable real estate. StepStone platform manager @refactor, joined the round to scale its automated remediation tech. Learn more here: https://t.co/yxvtubExZK

[Zal Bilimoria @zalzally]

Better Call Saul is a Top 10 all-time TV show.
#BetterCallZal is a Top 10 all-time VC tagline.

[Causal Labs @_CausalLabs]

We’ve raised $6M to build AI physics models to predict and control the weather.

Big thanks to @KindredVentures, @refactor, @BoxGroup, @factorialcap, Otherwise, Karman VC, and our wonderful angels.

Come help us solve the world’s most difficult problems. We’re hiring!

[Zal Bilimoria @zalzally]

Thanks to @Samirkaji for having me onto his podcast! 🙏🏽

I shared how I grew up in Indiana 🌽, my dad’s PC biz 🖥️, my decade as a big tech PM🧑🏽‍💻, the move into VC @a16z, why I stayed a solo GP👨🏽‍🚒 at @refactor, & my ❤️ of $50M funds💰for solo seed GPs. 💪🏽

https://t.co/iSo7MGLP1n