Sarah Brooks

Operator | Investor | Structuring & Scaling Startups

[Sarah Brooks @ssbrooks5]

Very useful tool. This info is not normally easy to find.

[Tim Thimmaiah @thingsinmotion]

It's time for California's housing boom.

Many recent laws have made building homes easier across the state, but only a few know how to use them.

We're launching @infillworks to make it simple for anyone to figure out how to add new housing to existing lots in the neighborhoods we love.

[Sarah Brooks @ssbrooks5]

@Marriott 's customer support bot just sent me through so many loops I think I earned Bonvoy points. Avoiding letting you talk to a human until you give up cannot be the future of customer service. Humans deserve better bots - so painful!

[Sarah Brooks @ssbrooks5]

The best conferences involve kiteboarding, tropical cocktails, palm trees and truly inspiring and fun builders and investors. Big mahalo to Ford Street Ventures, @mercury , SNR, @CRV, and https://t.co/H6IfFt0uaK for bringing us all to Maui.

[Sarah Brooks @ssbrooks5]

It's really incredible what people can build so quickly. I fear for all SaaS businesses

[WillC @willchen500]

Harvey is valued at $11B. Legora just raised at $5.5B. I built their entire web application in two weeks and I'm making it open-source and free for everyone to use. Say hi to Mike: https://t.co/NdtTt5MSJ2.

When I got the chance to try Harvey and Legora, I was surprised by how simple they were. A thought came to mind: I could probably build something similar in no time at all with Claude. And so I did.

Assistant, project, tabular review and workflows. You get it all without vendor lock-in.

Mike offers law firms an alternative, where they own the application layer and aren't stuck with a vendor they're renewing forever.

You can try Mike in the demo on the website, or go to the GitHub link on the site to download the code and run a local version yourself.

[Sarah Brooks @ssbrooks5]

She's 15 with variety of health issues that are hard to track at a high level. This has been really helpful for me and her vets to see trends & symptoms over time

[Sarah Brooks @ssbrooks5]

Officially a vibe coder. Spent a few days having AI pull all my dogs blood tests & exams from 10 different vets across the country (and islands), put them into charts, explain trends, make inferences, track symptoms and medications.

[Sarah Brooks @ssbrooks5]

Coinbase offering BTC-backed mortgages is pretty wild to see.

Crypto mostly just sat there. You either held it or sold it (or chased yield). Now it’s starting to be treated like real collateral.

Feels like a shift from speculation → utility.

[Coinbase 🛡️ @coinbase]

Get your house and keep your crypto.

Crypto-backed mortgages are here - increasing access to homeownership for millions of Americans.

Buy a home without converting your portfolio by using BTC or USDC as collateral for your down payment.

Offered by Better, powered by Coinbase.

[Sarah Brooks @ssbrooks5]

A lot of uncertainty around AI and what the future brings but I love stories like this. I've been hearing about more and more non-experts in various fields doing the coolest stuff. I'm excited to see what else is unlocked

[vittorio @IterIntellectus]

this is actually insane

> be tech guy in australia
> adopt cancer riddled rescue dog, months to live
> not_going_to_give_you_up.mp4
> pay $3,000 to sequence her tumor DNA
> feed it to ChatGPT and AlphaFold
> zero background in biology
> identify mutated proteins, match them to drug targets
> design a custom mRNA cancer vaccine from scratch
> genomics professor is “gobsmacked” that some puppy lover did this on his own
> need ethics approval to administer it
> red tape takes longer than designing the vaccine
> 3 months, finally approved
> drive 10 hours to get rosie her first injection
> tumor halves
> coat gets glossy again
> dog is alive and happy
> professor: “if we can do this for a dog, why aren’t we rolling this out to humans?”

one man with a chatbot, and $3,000 just outperformed the entire pharmaceutical discovery pipeline.

we are going to cure so many diseases.
I dont think people realize how good things are going to get

[Sarah Brooks @ssbrooks5]

@millercwl @SolanaInstitute Awesome! Go @millercwl !

[Sarah Brooks @ssbrooks5]

@byersblake @newlimit Wow this would be awesome!

[Sarah Brooks @ssbrooks5]

Another win for crypto! DeFi broker rule overturned. This power grab would’ve choked decentralized platforms with unworkable reporting demands, stifled innovation, and pushed opportunities offshore. Now it’s up to the House and Senate to act.

[Miller @millercwl]

!! 🚀

House Ways and Means Committee just passed (26-16) the resolution to overturn the DeFi so-called broker rule.

Thank you to members who voted for moving the CRA to the House floor, recognizing the need to push back against unlawful and unconstitutional overreach by the Treasury and IRS and to protect Americans' freedom of choice in how they transact. Members of the full House and Senate will now get to vote on the CRA.

At @fund_defi, we urge all members —and all who want to establish the United States as a hub for financial innovation—to act swiftly to uphold Congress’s original intent by supporting the motion to overturn this misguided rule.

[Sarah Brooks @ssbrooks5]

And using stablecoins for weekend settlements when the 'normal' financial rails are closed - way more efficient!

[Vlad Tenev @vladtenev]

Crypto is the future. Here’s how we’re going to accelerate:

1. Offer more selection of crypto assets for our customers

2. Continue to invest in the Robinhood Wallet

3. Bring the “Robinhood Effect” to the institutional crypto market through the integration of Bitstamp

4. Explore the tokenization of real-world assets on crypto rails

[Sarah Brooks @ssbrooks5]

Woah! Living in the future

[Sundar Pichai @sundarpichai]

Introducing Willow, our new state-of-the-art quantum computing chip with a breakthrough that can reduce errors exponentially as we scale up using more qubits, cracking a 30-year challenge in the field. In benchmark tests, Willow solved a standard computation in <5 mins that would take a leading supercomputer over 10^25 years, far beyond the age of the universe(!).

[Paul Grewal @iampaulgrewal]

Re: the letters that show Operation Chokepoint 2.0 wasn't just some crypto conspiracy theory. @FDICgov is still hiding behind way overbroad redactions. And they still haven't produced more than a fraction of them. But we finally got the pause letters: https://t.co/FNYS1z1QPh 1/3

[Sarah Brooks @ssbrooks5]

Really unfortunate outcome in Lido DAO case. I expect to see a lot more DAO legal wrappers happening soon. Will be interesting to see the evolution of how these wrappers are structured

[miles jennings @milesjennings]

Today, a California judge dealt a huge blow to decentralized governance.

Under the ruling, any DAO participation (even posting in a forum) could be sufficient to hold DAO members liable for the actions of other members under general partnership laws.

It's time to DUNA.

[Sarah Brooks @ssbrooks5]

Agreed on this - both with crypto &amp; San Francisco

[Autism Capital 🧩 @AutismCapital]

🚨HOROWITZ: "The Biden regulators lied about Crypto and said "we have to protect consumers," but as they were terrorizing every compliant and legal company, they let all the crazy fly-by-night memecoins and scams run, because they wanted to destroy the industry and destroy trust in the markets."

ANDREESSEN: "There's a thing in political theory called anarcho-tyranny which means for the lawless they can do anything they want, and the compliant will be tortured to death. That was Crypto and also San Francisco and major cities -- if you're a violent drug addict you can have free reign on the streets, and if you want to open an ice cream parlor, God help you."

[Sarah Brooks @ssbrooks5]

Big congratulations to the @EverclearOrg on launching their mainnet clearing layer!! I know a lot of hard work went into this 💪👏

[Everclear @EverclearOrg]

Everclear, the first Clearing Layer, is now live on mainnet beta. ���

By coordinating the global settlement of liquidity between chains, Everclear dramatically reduces rebalancing costs for solvers &amp; other actors in the space to power scalable Chain Abstraction.

Learn more 👇

[Sarah Brooks @ssbrooks5]

Interesting learning opportunity!

[Balaji @balajis]

THE NETWORK SCHOOL

We got an island.

That’s right. Through the power of Bitcoin, we now have a beautiful island near Singapore where we’re building the Network School. We’re starting with a 90-day popup that runs from Sep 23 to Dec 23, right after the Network State Conference. Rent is only $1000/month with roommates or $2000/month solo. And we have plenty of day passes for visitors.

So, go apply online at ns dot com! Then read more below.

THE DARK TALENT
As motivation, I’ve always wanted to expand equality of opportunity around the world. Because my father was born in a desperately poor country, but with the right opportunity he was able to make something of himself. Like dark matter, he was dark talent. And for more than a decade I’ve been thinking about how to give others who are similarly situated the chance to make something of themselves. That is: I’ve been thinking about how to empower the dark talent of the world.

US universities used to fill this role, even imperfectly, and I loved Stanford when I taught there years ago. But the data shows they’ve declined in recent days. And they’re just not affordable or accessible to most of the world. So, it’s time for a new approach. And thanks to Saraswati and Satoshi, I have the resources to endow a new Internet-first institution: the Network School.

The purpose of the Network School is to articulate a vision of peace, trade, internationalism, and technology…even as the rest of the world talks about war, trade war, nationalism, and statism. To revitalize democracy for the internet era, with digital polities and verifiable votes. To train the next generation to be not just leaders of companies, but inspirations for their communities. And to pursue truth, health, and wealth by leveling up our attendees personally, physically, and professionally.

Let me now describe in more detail how the Network School works, who it’s for, and how to apply.

HOW THE NETWORK SCHOOL WORKS
The Network School is for people of all ages, not just the youth. And it’s meant to be lifelong rather than one-off, with both a structured and and an unstructured component. The structured part is about continuous daily self-improvement: learning skills, burning calories, and earning currency. Meanwhile, the unstructured part is about having fun and hanging out with people of similar values.

For short: learn, burn, earn, and fun.

Learn
The first part of the Network School is about learning technologies and humanities.

As motivation, the existing model of US undergraduate education is broken. You pay $100k+ for a four year degree, and then budget nothing for maintenance over the course of your life. It’s like paying $100k+ for a new car and budgeting nothing for maintenance.

By contrast, the Network School is about continuous education. It’s for remote workers, engineers, creators and digital nomads who want to integrate learning into their lives, rather than stopping everything to be a full-time student.

Here’s how that works. We set up mini-classrooms where you can drop in to see the problem of the day.5 You solve that problem and a proctor awards you a cryptocredential, a free non-transferable NFT sent to your crypto wallet that establishes “proof-of-learn.” Often your solution will involve putting code on GitHub/Replit (to show you understand a concept), or posting content to your social media profile (to show you understand a new AI tool). And over time, these cryptocredentials actually build up a cryptoresume proving what you know.

Our initial material focuses on founding tech communities, as distinct from tech companies. As such it touches on everything from crypto, AI, and social media to history, politics, and filmmaking. It should be useful even if you’re just growing a traditional company or building a following. Over time, of course, every branch of the sciences and humanities becomes relevant when building a community. So if this initial experiment works, we can expand branch-by-branch to build a new kind of university.

But we’re intentionally starting with something simple. Our learning is about continuous education, about solving the problem-of-the-day.

Burn
The second part of the Network School is about burning calories.

Longevity is important, but 20th century communities just aren’t physically set up to maximize physical fitness. Quite the contrary: the default mode of Western society is sedentary and sugary. Those who want to escape this need to roll their own nutrition and workout program, which takes time, money, and energy.

We’re changing that. I’ve teamed up with my friend @bryan_johnson to set up Blueprint-inspired food and fitness for the entire Network School community. Bryan will be on campus to set up the program, and then his designates will maintain it on a daily basis. Like many of you, I’ve been both fit and fat at various times, so this is a product I want to use myself.

Every member of the Network School gets a daily workout slot with a semi-personal trainer, much like a group fitness class. You run and lift in the morning at your chosen time, getting a proof-of-workout from your trainer. Your group holds you accountable for showing up. Then you get a box with your Blueprint-optimized healthy meals and head to work. The whole point is to provide willpower-as-a-service, where the community6 provides the discipline.

We’re starting with the basics of running, lifting, eating, and sleeping properly. The initial goal is to hit the limits of your genetics. But if all goes well, the biotech founders that come to the Network School will eventually help us all surpass our genetic limits, to live much longer than we otherwise would.

But again, we’re starting small! And so the “burning calories” part is about lifelong health and the workout-of-the-day.

Earn
The third part of the Network School is about earning currency.

We’ll have crypto prizes of the day for open source projects, AI content creation, and microtasks. There will be $1000 bounties every day for the duration of the program, similar to the various prizes I’ve posted on Twitter and Farcaster. And community members will post their own prizes.

Next, in keeping with the overall theme of self-improvement, we’ll have office hours to help with your job, your career, your visa status, and your funding. We’re much more invested in you than a typical college career center because our interests are aligned: the more you earn, and the stronger you are financially, the more you’ll eventually have to reinvest in the community.

Finally, we’ll have visitor hours with famous visiting technologists. As my friend Sriram noticed, when investors come through Singapore I typically do a podcast with them. Many will also visit the Network School to meet attendees, invest in them, or hire them. Others will give remote talks. And you can see the quality of visitors from the speakers in our conference and podcast.

So, earning is about constant career development and the prize-of-the-day.

Fun
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, of course. So the fourth part of the Network School is about fun.

This is the unstructured component. It’s most of what you’re here for. It’s just about assembling great people in one place: positive-sum people who believe in technological progress, internationalism, and capitalism. It’s your internet friends, coming from URL to IRL. Stanford introduced the concept of residential education, but this takes it to the next level.

In fact, our initial location is very similar to Stanford. It’s beautiful and sunny, and less than an hour from a major city (Singapore) with an international airport (Changi). That means you can be heads down during the week, head into the city on the weekends for fun, and get to just about anywhere in Asia within the same day. This is convenient for the >50% of the world that lives within the Valeriepieris circle.

We’ll do some group outings too, but most of the fun will be up to you.

WHO THE NETWORK SCHOOL IS FOR
Who is the Network School for? There are four lenses on this: demographical, ideological, professional, and personal.

Demographically
As mentioned, our focus is the dark talent. The more respect you have for legacy institutions, and the more respect they have for you, the less suitable you’ll be as an applicant.

So: the Network School is for Indian engineers and African founders, for makers from the Midwest and the Middle East, for Chinese liberals and Latin American libertarians, for Southeast Asia’s rising technologists and Europe’s remaining capitalists.

It’s for everyone who doesn’t feel part of the establishment. But it’s definitely not only for tech, because a community does not run on tech alone.

Ideologically
Ideologically, the Network School is for people who admire Western values, but who also recognize that Asia is in ascendance, and that the next world order is more properly centered around the Internet — around neutral code — than around either declining Western institutions or a rising Chinese state.

For example, the Network School is for those who understand that Bitcoin succeeds the Federal Reserve, that encryption is the only true protection against unreasonable search and seizure, that AI can deliver better opinions than any Delaware magistrate, and that democracy can be rejuvenated with cryptography. It is for those who believe in technology, harmony, internationalism, and capitalism. It’s for those who want Silicon Valley without San Francisco. And for those who want to found, fund, and find not just new companies and currencies — but new cities and new communities.

Professionally
Our ideal applicant is capable of remote work, or has enough savings to support themselves while at the Network School. For our initial cohort, we’re seeking three major groups of people in particular:

- Writers, artists, influencers, and filmmakers
- Trainers, athletes, coaches, and clinicians
- Founders, engineers, designers, and investors

These are, roughly, the demographics focused on learning, burning, and earning respectively. Of course, if you fall outside those categories but still think you have something to contribute, you should still apply to the Network School.

Personally
I should mention that the Network School is a “product” that I built for the young version of myself — the aspiring young engineer. This is the community I want to live in: a technocapitalist college town, a Stanford 2.0 that’s globally affordable and genuinely meritocratic.

So, I’ll be on campus full time. Bryan Johnson and I are supervising the setup of everything from bench press to French press. And we’ll eventually be recruiting faculty in the form of content creators, fitness influencers, and angel investors for the learn, burn, and earn portions of our program respectively. But all that in due time.

APPLYING TO THE NETWORK SCHOOL
Ok, so how do you apply to the Network School?

Just go to ns dot com and click "apply." We’ve set up a simple Luma page where you can apply in a few minutes. Then, if you pass review, we’ll send a second application where you pay rent. As mentioned, our monthly rent is $1000 (with roommates) and $2000 (solo). We also have daily and weekly rates too, but short-term visitors still need to apply.

The rent gets you an air-conditioned room on a beautiful island, with internet, gym, and access to all courses and community services. You’ll still need to handle your flights and pay for your food, but we think the overall package is extremely affordable. And so the Network School could be an amazing option for individuals or small teams looking to save money, get fit, and level up while living in paradise.

I’m looking forward to seeing you there! Just fill out the application at ns dot com, also linked in the tweet below.

[Sarah Brooks @ssbrooks5]

@collins_belton @horsewater Seriously such a struggle!!

[Bitcoin Magazine @BitcoinMagazine]

"Uber is a bad idea." - Taxis

"Airbnb is a bad idea." - Hotels

"Computers are a bad idea." - Newspapers

"#Bitcoin  is a bad idea." - Banks