Tremendous

This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

More on Fundrise in this post.

If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order.

I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

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Why I Love the Most Hated People in Silicon Valley

August 1, 2025

These are the most hated people in Silicon Valley. But if you’re spending time trashing them, you’re wasting your life.

A young techie in San Francisco put up a picture of himself and pals having dinner at a nice restaurant. The caption: “went to a fancy dinner in SF and everybody went to Harvard (or Stanford).”

The photo has 17.6 million views and counting. Thousands of people are trashing them in the ugliest terms imaginable.

You don’t have to love these people. But any minute spent attacking them is a minute wasted.

You don’t know them. They don’t matter to you. And you don’t matter to them.

Yes, they went to elite universities. But that doesn’t take anything away from you.

I went to state school, University of Wisconsin-Madison. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be happy for these young people who went to colleges higher ranked than mine.

If they had failed, do I get something? Does a guy show up at my house with one of those giant checks?

No. So stop hatin’.

There’s an especially ugly element to this particular internet mob. Many of the comments about these young people are about the fact that they’re (almost) all Asian.

People hate successful Asians.

Many Asians have done well in America. And good for them!

But what if they hadn’t? Then, people would deride them as welfare cheats.

They can’t win.

Now, Can I claim to be St. Francis who’s never talked trash about someone? Certainly not.

I know I’ve said unkind and insensitive things in my life. I try not to, but sometimes I let myself slip into it.

In the end, the people I’m trashing probably don’t know or care what I think. But I still try to stop myself from this petty behavior.

Why? Because it’s a waste of life.

I’m 39 years old. Optimistically, I may have another 50 years on the planet. If scientists figure something out, maybe that’s 100, but we can’t count on that.

Why spend minutes, hours, days denigrating someone? Where does that get me?

Nowhere.

Hating some random people in San Francisco I’ve never met won’t help me.

I’m better off focusing on myself. And so are you.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

More on Fundrise in this post.

If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order.

I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

Why We Should Be Grateful for 10 Year Lockups

July 31, 2025

Figma goes public today. Seed investors were locked up for 12 years. That’s a long time to wait! But here’s why we should be grateful for lockups…

Every company goes through hard times. If we were allowed to dump our shares, we probably would!

Then, we’d miss out on enormous gains when the founder figures it out.

Figma in the Wilderness

Figma is a great example. It took founder Dylan Field over 2 years to release a product.

I don’t know about you, but if I’m an investor in a startup that’s taking that long to ship a product, I’m getting worried. “What’s the hold up? Will they ever ship?” I begin to wonder.

Of course, Figma did release a product, and it was an enormous hit. Fast forward a decade, and they’re going public for almost $20 billion.

Learning From My Top Investments

Figma is not alone in suffering hard times before becoming a major success. If I look at any successful startup I’ve invested in, it went through a rough patch.

A year of 0 growth. Loss of a major customer. Legal issues. Macro headwinds.

It’s always something. And as much as I want to think I’m a diamond hands, I might have sold my shares had there been a market for them.

That would’ve been a huge mistake. I would’ve been bailing out of the biggest successes in my portfolio.

How Long Is Too Long?

Of course, we all need liquidity eventually. I agree with Bill Gurley that companies should go public earlier, perhaps around the $100-200 million ARR mark. By that point, a company is a major success.

Going public cleans up the cap table mess of numerous share classes. It provides important liquidity for your employees and investors. And it also introduces a new level of discipline.

Without the public markets to scold him, Mark Zuckerberg might still be frittering away tens of billions on the “metaverse,” whatever that is.

Wrap-Up

Liquidity is great once a company’s a huge success. But being locked up early is a blessing in disguise.

It takes a thousand twists and turns before a company hits the big time. You see today’s success. But you don’t see all the failure it took to get there.

And during all that failure, it can be hard to keep the faith.

So the next time you look at your portfolio and bemoan the lack of liquidity, take a step back.

Being locked up can be nerve-wracking. But one day, it might put millions of dollars in your pocket.

More on tech:

Have You Seen These Valuations Lately?

The Three Metrics That Could Save Your Startup

Save Money on Stuff I Use:

This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

More on Fundrise in this post.

If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order.

I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

Watching the First AI Movie

July 30, 2025

I just watched the first AI movie, Red Panda: Firefox of the Clouds. It was fantastic! And it makes me wonder what’s next…

Red Panda is a full hour long film, made entirely with AI. Every element, from the visuals to the music, is synthetic. I spoke with the creator and he confirmed that even the script is AI-generated, although he edited and fact checked it himself.

As far as I know, this is the first AI movie of this length. And let me tell you, it’s incredibly impressive!

Don’t get me wrong — you can definitely tell it’s fake. The colors are a little too bright, the movement a little too smooth.

But if a movie this good is possible less than 3 years into Generative AI, there’s no telling where we’re headed. I expect to see completely realistic movies within the next 5 years.

Red Panda follows the adorable forest creature through its habitat in the Himalayas. You see stunning visuals of wild orchids, snow capped mountains and miniature deer.

The film also gives us a peek into the nearby villages, which I particularly enjoyed. Folks live in homes clinging to the side of mountains, surrounded by nature.

I would dearly love to visit one of these villages some day. It would be wonderful to sample a life so different from mine in such a beautiful setting.

The most realistic part of the film is the music. The traditional erhu whines in the background, sounding just like a real instrument, at least to my untrained ear.

Making this movie took the creator Crystalwizard a full two months. He used numerous AI tools, include Google’s veo-3, Runway, and Luma.

I cannot imagine the prompting it took to produce these complex scenes, like wild orchids swaying in the breeze.

Even though you can tell it’s fake, this movie is beautiful. It’s a true piece of art, and the mood is very peaceful.

I didn’t want it to end! I highly encourage you to take a look and, if possible, watch the whole thing.

More on tech:

Will Open Source Win AI?

Meta’s New Headsets: Is This VR’s Moment?

Grok 4: The Best AI Model Ever?

Save Money on Stuff I Use:

This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

More on Fundrise in this post.

If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order.

I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

Will Open Source Win AI?

July 29, 2025

Open source dominates server environments and databases. But will open source win AI?

This morning, I investigated which models are most popular among developers…

America’s Next Top Model

There’s no one place to go to definitively determine which models are most popular among developers. But one strong indicator comes from a company called OpenRouter.

OpenRouter publishes rankings of the most used models by developers. Open source models take 3 of the top 10 spots this month. All 3 are from DeepSeek.

If you look at the “trending” ranking of models that are growing quickly, almost all are open source. Alibaba’s Qwen, DeepSeek, and Llama dominate the list.

The Benefits of Open Source

An open source model may not be the absolute best model available. But if you’re building it into your app, it doesn’t necessarily have to be the best. It just has to give you the output you need.

Once you have that, you optimize for price and platform risk.

Closed source models can raise prices whenever they want. What’s more, a closed source model provider can cut me off at any time if they’re worried about me competing with them. Anthropic did this to Windsurf recently, although they later restored access.

Who wants to deal with that if you don’t have to?

Wrap-Up

Assuming you can get output of the necessary quality, open source seems like a no brainer. As open source models get better and better, I expect to see developers adopt them rapidly.

Ten years from now, I think open source AI will have won the war for developers.

What are you using in your applications, open source or closed source? And which models do you prefer?

More on tech:

The Three Metrics That Could Save Your Startup

Grok Companions — Elon’s AI Girlfriend?

Save Money on Stuff I Use:

This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

More on Fundrise in this post.

If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order.

I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

The Three Metrics That Could Save Your Startup

July 28, 2025

The startup world has a million metrics. CAC, LTV, ROAS. But here are 3 key metrics many founders aren’t looking at…

Burn Multiple

How do you know if the money you’re burning is producing any results? You won’t, unless you calculate your burn multiple.

Here’s how to do it…

Burn Multiple = (Last Month’s Net Burn) / (This Month’s ARR – Last Month’s ARR)

Let’s say you burned $100,000 last month. Your ARR right now is $200,000. Last month it was $150,000.

That’s $100,000/$50,000, or a burn multiple of 2. That’s solid for an early stage startup.

I compute this number for every investment I make. When I see burn multiples below 2 in early stage companies, I get excited.

These guys are capital efficient!

User Engagement

User engagement stats aren’t just for social media companies. One of the best predictors of churn is a customer not using your product.

If they’re not using it, sooner or later they’re going to go through their credit card statement and cancel. You want to prevent that.

If you’re selling a B2B product, a customer should be using it most business days.

Aim for 3 days a week minimum. Tools like Mixpanel or Amplitude can find this information for you.

If a customer isn’t using your product, find out why. Are they not getting value from it? How can you improve?

Those customer interviews are a treasure trove of information.

Runway

This is a simple one. But I cannot tell you how many founders ignore it. I’ve seen companies get down to a few months runway then desperately run out to raise money.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.

So how do the pros do it?

Take Rahul Vohra at Superhuman. He maintained 48 months runway at all times.

This gave him options, through good markets and bad. And while many companies that raised big bucks in 2021 died during the down market, Rahul was able to get Superhuman to a juicy acquisition by Grammarly this month!

Wrap-Up

One of the great things about having so many successful startups is that you can derive a formula for success.

No company can be reduced entirely to metrics. But if you’re capital efficient, have lots of cash on the balance sheet, and customers are relying on your product every day, you’re on the right track.

What metrics do you track as a founder or investor?

More on tech:

Have You Seen These Valuations Lately?

Housing Prices Are Ridiculous. Can Startups Help?

Save Money on Stuff I Use:

This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

More on Fundrise in this post.

If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order.

I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

Have You Seen These Valuations Lately?

July 25, 2025

Every pre-revenue startup is raising at $30-40 million right now. Making money on these bets will be next to impossible.

A year or two ago, a company with little or no revenue might have raised at a $10 million cap. Not anymore.

The price is going to be over $30 million. That cuts your upside by 2/3rds.

The Math Doesn’t Math

Here’s how I think about entry price…

The bulk of your returns usually come from a single investment. In my “fund,” I have 35 primary investments.

I need to 4x the fund to make the risk and illiquidity worthwhile. That means one of these little companies needs to go 140x.

But wait…even 140 isn’t enough.

If you’re investing at pre-seed and seed like I do, you typically lose 1/2 your gains to dilution. After all, the founder needs to raise a lot more money along the way.

So that 140x becomes 280x. Round it up to an even 300.

If I get in at a $10m cap, I need the company to hit a $3 billion valuation for the math to work. This isn’t easy, but it’s doable.

But if my entry price is $35 million, this little startup has to exit for $10.5 billion minimum. That is a very tall order.

There are not a lot of decacorns out there. It happens, but it’s rare enough that I cannot underwrite to it.

Looking In the Discard Pile

If you’re investing in B2B AI agent startups in San Francisco, everything is fully priced. Some of those companies will become huge successes, but the chance of success is already priced in.

You’ll struggle to beat the NASDAQ, and that’s after 10-15 years of illiquidity. An investment like that is not worth making.

So the place to look is in the discard pile…

I found two awesome investments this week. But they’re not in hot areas.

The first is a social media startup. Remember social media?

The second is a robotics company based not in SF but in Connecticut. Mercifully, the plague of high valuations hasn’t yet reached the East Coast.

I’m also excited about an area most investors truly hate right now: biotech.

Many public biotechs are trading below their cash in the bank. And private biotech startups are the furthest thing from hot.

But there are amazing things happening: robotic scientific research, AI models like Evo 2 and State that can help us discover new drugs.

In 5-10 years, biotech could be as hot as AI agents are now. I hope to scoop up some of the best startups before everyone else comes knocking.

I’m also interested in categories that don’t even really exist yet, like cognitive security or CogSec.

CogSec is security for our brains. Sounds crazy, right?

But patients already have brain-computer interfaces like Neuralink connected to the internet. Anything connected to the internet will be hacked eventually.

The time to build and invest in those tools is now, not after a catastrophic breach.

Wrap-Up

“You cannot lose if you do not play.”

That was Marla Daniels, a character in The Wire, one of my favorite shows. She was talking about the Baltimore Police Department. But it’s equally true in startups.

Just because everyone else is investing in AI agents in the same 4 block area of SF doesn’t mean you have to. There are amazing opportunities elsewhere.

There’s nothing wrong with dipping into that crowded pool once in a while when I see something exceptional. But the rest of the time, you’ll find me on a placid lake, fishing for the startups no one else wants.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

More on tech:

Is Biotech Having its ChatGPT Moment?

Where I’m Most Excited About Investing Now

Save Money on Stuff I Use:

This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

More on Fundrise in this post.

If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order.

I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

Housing Prices Are Ridiculous. Can Startups Help?

July 24, 2025

At $447,054, median home prices reached another record in June. Americans are priced out. But could technology save the day?

This afternoon, I’m meeting with a startup that promises to make building a house way faster and cheaper. But before I do, I wanted to research the current state of the art in technology for construction.

Here’s what I found…

Mobile Factories

One really cool approach to construction is to make houses in a factory. And best of all, the factory comes to you!

Cuby is one of the most exciting startups taking this approach. They pop up a factory on the construction site.

The mobile factory makes houses faster, easier and cheaper to produce. While traditional construction requires skilled labor, the Cuby factories do just fine with unskilled workers that are easier to find and cheaper to employ.

3D Printed Housing

What if instead of building houses, we printed them?

Sounds crazy, right? But several startups are doing this today.

The giant 3D printers extrude a material like concrete or plastic. Startups like ICON can even build multistory structures using these giant printers.

Cement is great because it’s solid, unlike a lot of the ticky-tacky wooden construction I see today.

Construction Robots

Robots are everywhere these days. I even saw one at Shoprite on Tuesday, in the aisles taking inventory!

Startups like Monumental, which I wrote about on the blog last year, are bringing robots to the construction site. Monumental’s bots can lay brick autonomously.

What’s great about this approach is it doesn’t rely on new construction techniques. You can use the methods that are tried and true.

You just have a robot doing it instead of a human.

Wrap-Up

Of all these exciting approaches, which one has the best shot at making housing affordable again?

My pick is construction robots. You don’t need novel building techniques or new materials to make this work. You just need to get a robot to do what a human is already doing.

However, I’m always open to founders showing me the future. Maybe someone has a better approach I haven’t seen yet. If so, I’d love to check it out!

Here’s the future I dream of: anyone can afford a nice, spacious house in the location of their choice. Housing goes from being a focus of anxiety to a normal purchase, like buying a couch.

The government won’t get us there. Technology will.

More on tech:

Your Next House Will Be Built By Robots

Where I’m Most Excited About Investing Now

Save Money on Stuff I Use:

This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

More on Fundrise in this post.

If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order.

I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

My Top 3 Business Books

July 23, 2025

All the greats in business studied the greats in business. Books are the best way to do that. Here are my favorites…

Founder — Founder is the story of the founder of the Rothschild banking dynasty, Mayer Amschel Rothschild.

Mayer faced bigotry that most of us could not imagine.

Like all Jews in Frankfurt at the time, he had to live in the Judengasse, a narrow, fetid, and overcrowded alley. As the Rothschild character said in the wonderful 1934 movie The House of Rothschild:

“Forbidden to own land, forbidden to learn a trade…”

Facing these restrictions, Mayer turned to banking. Unlike most bankers, he didn’t sit in his office waiting for business. He went out to his customers in person.

Many angels and VC’s sit back and wait for entrepreneurs to pitch them. Taking a page from Mayer’s book, I go out and contact them.

If we hustle, we have a chance to win.

I hardly ever read a book more than once. But I’ve read this one three times. That’ll give you an idea of how useful it is.

Angel — This is the book that got me into angel investing. Anyone who is thinking about investing in startups should read this book right away.

It’s brief, incredibly actionable, and even entertaining! In addition to being a great investor, Jason happens to be a great writer. I loved the stories from the companies he’s invested in.

Jason will tell you everything you need to know to get started. And did you know that he was the third or fourth investor in Uber? 😉

When Genius Failed — In 1994, star bond trader John Meriwether founded Long Term Capital Management (LTCM). At first, he and his partners made a fortune. But just 4 years later, his fund blew up.

The people behind LTCM were 100 times smarter than I’ll ever be. Two of them, Myron Scholes and Robert Merton, were even Nobel Laureates!

But I’ve never gone broke, and they have.

There’s such a thing as too smart for your own good. They were so confident in their theories that they leveraged their capital 30:1.

This means you have 30 borrowed dollars invested for every dollar of your own cash you put in. A mere 3% loss will wipe you out.

How could they possibly think they’d never take a 3% loss?

I can imagine — they had some complicated equation with more Greek letters than a fraternity house. It showed how they could never lose that much.

Well, the equation was wrong.

Common sense could tell you that. But sometimes we are blind to what’s right in front of us.

This book is a wonderful lesson on the dangers of hubris. I’ve read it twice, and with AI fever growing by the day, it might be time for a re-read.

Wrap-Up

Reading about major players in business, both the successful and the cautionary tales, is one of the best ways to learn. Every day, I find new lessons in these books.

You can get a lifetime of experience for a few hours of your time. If you’re not blocking out space to read, you’re really missing out on potential growth as an entrepreneur or investor.

What are your favorite books on business?

More on Fundrise in this post.

If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

Grok Companions — Elon’s AI Girlfriend?

I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

Meta’s New Headsets: Is This VR’s Moment?

July 22, 2025

Meta is developing headsets with an incredible 180 degree field of view. Is virtual reality finally about to go mainstream?

The new headsets are still in development and are not available to the public. But a new research paper from Meta gives us an idea of what’s in store…

Meta’s New Headsets

Meta is working on two new headsets, one that’s pure virtual reality and another that’s mixed reality. The latter allows you to see the real environment along with the headset’s graphics, similar to Apple’s Vision Pro.

The most exciting feature is the ridiculous field of view.

Meta’s new headsets let you see a full 180 degrees around you. Existing headsets from Meta and Apple are much more limited, offering only 95-110 degrees of visibility.

That will make these headsets much more useful in the real world and much more immersive. And while some 180 degree headsets exist today from niche manufacturers, they are extremely bulky and not practical for most users.

Will VR Ever Be Popular?

Meta’s new headsets are impressive. But I don’t think headsets like these will ever be popular.

Current headsets are heavy. They range from 600-650g for the Vision Pro to a whopping 722 for the Meta Quest Pro.

Many users complain about pain from prolonged use. Meta doesn’t say what the new headsets weigh, but they look bulky.

Let me give you an idea of just how heavy these existing headsets are…

I recently got a new pair of glasses. They’re great, except for one thing: they’re a little heavy.

I just took them over to my kitchen scale to see exactly what they weigh. They clock in at 32 grams.

I’m thinking of spending hundreds of dollars on a new pair just to save 11 grams. And I’m much more used to wearing something on my face than most people — I’ve worn glasses since I was 4 years old!

It’s hard enough getting people to wear prescription glasses they need. A friend of mine won’t wear them despite having difficulty making out road signs.

I don’t think people will wear anything heavier than glasses. That’s why projects like Google Glass are the best shot at mass adoption for VR/MR.

Wrap-Up

If I could get something like Google Glass that worked well at a reasonable price, I’d buy it. It would be great for work — I could pop up giant, virtual screens while still seeing the trees out the window.

But I wouldn’t wear a computer on my face all the time. I want to experience the real world. See the sun, touch the grass.

And I don’t want a computer in the way.

Still, I’m excited to see what Meta releases. Even if their next headset isn’t perfect, it may be a step toward an incredible product in the future…

More on tech:

Grok 4: The Best AI Model Ever?

Where I’m Most Excited About Investing Now

Save Money on Stuff I Use:

This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

More on Fundrise in this post.

If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!