VP & Investor @VillageGlobal ๐ Previously building @gigascale @beondeck @thehousevc I like data, startups, earth, and it's people ๐ค From CO โท Currently CA ๐
Worth a gong indeed @feross & team @SocketSecurity! Congrats on the new round and on detecting 1,000+ zero-day supply chain attacks per week and protecting 20,000+ organizations like Anthropic, OpenAI, and Vercel. Growing revenue 500%+ YoY, Socket has emerged as a go-to security platform for AI-native companies.
@SocketSecurity is hiring!!
I am thrilled to announce Worldbuild I, a $30M fund to partner with founders when conviction cannot be outsourced.
I sat down with @alexrkonrad to share our story (link below).
We are a thesis-driven firm that focuses on the nuances, runs toward new ideas, and aims to lead with original thought.
Worldbuilders we aspire to partner with create new categories, play infinite games, and produce a gravitational pull of attention โ just as the most ambitious founders & creatives in history have done.
While quietly laying the foundations for the firm, we have been fortunate to partner with founders at the earliest stages of their journeys, including Evan at SF Compute, Paul at Browserbase, Srikanth at Truffle, Baiju at Aetherflux, and more.
Worldbuild is in many ways a culmination of my life experience and what will now be my lifeโs work. I have always found myself surrounded by entrepreneurs: my dad, my wife, my best friends; and there is nothing more fulfilling than being their consigliere and first call.
If youโre building your world, I'd love to connect.
We've been working to bring something big to The Shoals, and now, it's time. On March 20th, we'll be launching our newest facility - Factory 4 - in Alabama.
Expect:
โข 2.25M sq ft of manufacturing
โข 1,000+ jobs created
โข $2B in Private/Public investment
โข Remarks from @SenKatieBritt, @SenTuberville, @RepMikeRogersAL, @Robert_Aderholt and other senior officials
โข A private concert from our favorite rock band of all time, local BBQ, and the best entertainment Alabama has to offer
Building for America is worth celebrating. Apply for an invite here, spots limited โ https://t.co/NU2vZ0vVKW
The best agentic engineer I know by a long shot is @hTrapVader
He was a data scientist at Clubhouse when GPT-4 launched and got so deep into it that, when layoffs hit, he just kept going. He burned through a bunch of his life savings to see how far he could push the tools.
That eventually led him to Reid. He's been running Reid's AI work ever since, including building his digital twin โ Reid AI. Today he spends more than 12 hours a day using the latest tools to find the edges of what's possible.
I sat down with Parth to talk about how he thinks about coding agents, how he pushes these tools to the limits today, and where he thinks this is all heading.
Give it a listen and let me know your thoughts, links in thread
. @hTrapVader spent four months burning through his severance on GPT-4 API calls, then cashed out his 401k to keep going. He came out of that running Reid Hoffman's AI work, including building Reid AI from scratch.
He's been deep inside coding agents longer than almost anyone. In our latest episode of the podcast, Village Global Vice President @sam_kirschner sat down with Parth to talk about how AI tools have evolved, how he coordinates a fleet of them daily, and what he thinks is coming next.
A few highlights from the episode:
"The ceiling now is no longer 'can it build this web app.' It's 'does it start operating more like an organization?'"
"I'm managing 45 different agents. I'm the bottleneck. So you remove yourself, you let the agents manage sub-agents โ and the ceiling for orchestration goes up."
"AI is a power user technology. You have to be a little obsessed to get the most out of it."
Full episode link in thread.
The crazy part of this CA law is that you have to tell founders it's not mandatory to fill out. What founders will do this survey out of the goodness of their hearts?
So low response rates, potentially biased results. Waste of time for all involved and nothing accomplished
A new California law (FIP VCC) is forcing VCs to ask portfolio company founders about their sexual orientation, disabilities, and more โ all so it can be reported to the state.
We built a new system to help funds on AngelList comply without ever seeing individual founder responses.
To preserve founder privacy everywhere, we've decided to make the system available to any fund for free, regardless of who they work with for fund admin.
You can use it today: https://t.co/c4eHYXBPG7
Celine Halioua on why the fastest path to a human longevity drug starts with dogs:
"We've cured most diseases in mice. But a mouse doesn't really age the way we do. A dog naturally ages over time. A dog naturally develops dementia. They develop Parkinson's. They develop cancer like we do."
"Maybe you are willing to run that billion-dollar lifespan extension study if the probability of success is 40% instead of 9%."
"For a dog drug it's like 50 million all in from idea to approval. It is much more reasonable to fund the entire life cycle into commercialization."
@celinehalioua, CEO of @loyalfordogs on the Village Global Podcast.
We were an early investor in @celinehalioua's first round at @loyalfordogs โ when it was just her, an idea, and a "poorly designed slide deck" (her words).
Six years later: $250M+ raised, FDA efficacy and safety milestones cleared, and the largest clinical trial in animal health history.
I sat down with Celine to talk about the whole journey โ how she raised a quarter billion dollars pre-revenue, why dogs are the fastest path to a human longevity drug, and what the future of Loyal looks like as the drugs get closer to hitting the market.
Congrats to Celine and the Loyal team on the $100M Series C!
Loyal has raised a $100M Series C from age1, Baillie Gifford, existing investors, & more
this brings Loyal's total funding to over a quarter of a billion dollars
we are building the longevity pharma, starting with dog longevity. thanks @FastCompany for the exclusive ->
Holiday party for @HadrianInc last night.
First one was at a small restaurant in LA, second at factory 2, this one on battleship IOWA.
Amazing to see this company grow, canโt wait for next year on an aircraft carrier @2112Power