David George
@DavidGeorge83
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GP, Head Growth Fund @a16z | 👨👩👧👦 | “The key is not the will to win...everybody has that. It is the will to prepare to win that is important.”-Bob Knight
Palo Alto, CA
Joined December 2011
1/ Selling's much harder than it was before. Everyone is scrambling to buy gen AI while it feels like the software market is slowing down. The reality is, NN $ up for grabs has been cut in half. But based on convos w/ 30 F500 CIOs & software sellers, there are still $ to win.
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The Market That Was vs The Market That Is. Here’s how we’ve been working w/ founders to adjust as the market changes @a16z 👇🧵.
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1/ Today, @a16z Growth launched our Guide to Growth Metrics for B2B companies! @sarahdingwang @aleximm @morrisseyjoe . Why?.
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Some very exciting @a16z news today. I’m thrilled to announce that we’ve promoted @sarahdingwang to General Partner for the Growth Fund. More below on why…and welcome Sarah to this new role, I’m proud to call you my partner! .
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Excited to announce @a16z Growth’s investment in @Flexport and @typesfast! Getting goods from Point A to B is one of the most complex problems in tech, and Flexport is building the leading tech platform for global logistics. cc @BobSwan. More below! 👇👇.
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We are doubling down on @dapperlabs @rohamg in their new $305m round of funding from the @a16z growth and crypto funds. @cdixon and I wrote about it Some thoughts on our investment below 👇.
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We're so excited to be partnering with @DavidBaszucki and the team at @Roblox! More here 👇.
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One step closer to the metaverse! Congrats to @DavidBaszucki & @Roblox team on becoming a public co. Roblox is a universe of millions of virtual worlds, much more than a game. More here from our original investment: We @a16z can't wait for what’s ahead!.
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Today we're excited to share that we’re co-leading a new Series E in @TripActions from the @a16z Growth fund with @leefixel and @eladgil. We're in the midst of the global pandemic…and we’re investing in a business travel company 🤔. Here's why 👇.
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We talk gross margins with founders constantly. High gross margins are a great business feature, and often reflect moats. But high gross margins are not a moat in their own right! Moats are what drive a company’s value. more here with @aleximm
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1 / We are excited to lead @SleeperHQ's series C from the @a16z Growth fund! We believe most fans use sports as an excuse to socialize with others, not because of single-person experiences like stats or scores… cc: @andrewchen .
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An underrated part of company building for growth cos is building an effective board. This is a strategic initiative, not check-the-box for going public. My @a16z partners Jeff Stump and Shannon Barbour lay out a framework for board-building here:
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Today we announced our investment in @starburstdata. I wrote about it here: and in the thread below 👇👇👇 @a16z @sarahdingwang @martin_casado @JenniferHli 1/n.
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We’re excited to partner with @Coinswitch @CoinswitchKuber and @ashish343, along with our friends at @coinbase. The opportunity for India is massive, and we expect participation in crypto there to be among the highest in the world @a16z @katie_haun.
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Excited to be along for the ride!.
Waymo has raised $2.25 billion to fuel its driverless-car enterprise, the first time it has taken outside money since Google began to develop the technology more than 11 years ago
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Excited to share @a16z Growth’s investment in @crossriverbank and @GillesGade! CR is the full-stack infra provider that empowers every company to become a fintech company. They offer payments, cards, lending, and crypto banking to fintech companies and consumers globally. .
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4/ Burn rates are the best measure of efficient growth. We benchmarked them by company stage:
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Thrilled to share some @a16z news today: @morrisseyjoe is joining the firm as a General Partner for the Growth fund. Joe brings a unique range of experience that will be invaluable to our growth stage founders. More below…welcome Joe!.
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Excited to announce the close of our Late Stage Venture fund! We'll be partnering with entrepreneurs at later stages with a venture-like mindset and support in their company building and scaling!
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Had a blast talking to @HarryStebbings on the @twentyminutevc!.
💥 New 20VC Ep Live 💥 . World of growth investing is changing faster than ever. @DavidGeorge83 @a16z and me unpack this as well as: . Valuation mania and how to react? . Why great business models are table stakes at growth? . Why TAM lags & can mislead? .
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I travel ~50 times a year. With each trip, I dread the logistics. Which flight to take? Which car to rent? Which hotel? And then keeping up with flight delays. It's exhausting and the worst part of business travel. .
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Talk about persistence! Really proud to be investing in @ApolloGraphQL from the @a16z Growth fund. Our venture fund originally invested in the company and @GeoffQL in 2012 (not a typo!), and he’s now building the next great open source layer of tech w/ GraphQL 👇👇 /1.
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How to Think of R&D - new post on the cost item that is hardest to measure and track, but most important for tech companies. @a16z. Some highlights below 👇.
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With recent IPOs, growth stage companies are once again asking: When is the right time to go public? But the more important question is: are you ready to be a public company? My simple framework…credible growth + appropriate operating leverage + accurate forecasting 👇 @a16z.
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We at @a16z Growth are excited to share our latest investment in @unitedmasters and @SteveStoute. UnitedMasters is a record label in your pocket - giving artists distribution, tools to power artists’ careers & access to the world’s biggest brands…. cc: @bhorowitz.
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Posting an interview I did w Mark Casey from @CapitalGroup. Mark is one of the smartest, long-term public investors I spend time w. Some frameworks and lessons learned below. Enjoy! @a16z
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Huge and heartfelt congrats to @loom and @Atlassian on Loom’s acquisition! Atlassian is an extraordinary company, and the combo of Loom & Atlassian is gonna bring async video so far in the enterprise. Congrats to @mcannonbrookes @scottfarkas on getting a great team, product, and.
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TripActions is here to fix it. Excited to announce that we’re doubling down on TripActions with an investment from our LSV fund!
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Small businesses are the lifeblood of our economy, and they’re roaring back…time for modern software / services to help em reach full potential!. Excited to share our investment in @SpotOn from @a16z growth fund. Let’s go @ZachAHyman and @hymanmatthew!.
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Excited to share that @GreenlightCard announced a Series D raise, and we’re leading the round from the @a16z growth fund. They’re building the leading financial services platform for kids and families - (more below!).
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1/ Founder: “Should I take an equity round, structured equity or debt for my next round of funding?” Investor: “Give me your headline price and I’ll give you a deal.” .- Sep-22 (quick thread).
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“One app to replace them all” - we’re excited to announce @a16z Growth’s investment in @Clickup and @DJ_CURFEW. More here on why 👇.
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What @peter_lauten and I learned from looking at who captured value with the shift to SaaS & cloud, and what to watch as genAI proliferates:. Takeaways below👇👇 @a16z.
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Building an exec team is one of the most challenging, time consuming, & crucial parts of company-building. We drew on decades of experience to create the @a16z Growth team's guide to exec hiring. We cover who, when and how to hire by function, comp philosophy, tactics like.
The real difference-maker in scaling a growth-stage company? Exec hiring. Pulling from decades of a16z operating expertise, we’ve designed a playbook to guide founders through the process:
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Excited to share that we are leading @SpotOn's Series E from the @a16z Growth fund, and supporting the company in their acquisition of @AppetizePOS. We led the series D in May - more on why below!.
Small businesses are the lifeblood of our economy, and they’re roaring back…time for modern software / services to help em reach full potential!. Excited to share our investment in @SpotOn from @a16z growth fund. Let’s go @ZachAHyman and @hymanmatthew!.
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Sharing our @a16z Growth investment in @poe_platform, the multi-model AI platform from @Quora. Poe is where consumers chat with a variety of AI products and developers build an AI chat product to reach a mass audience. More on Poe & why we invested here:
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We at @a16z are excited to be partnering (again) with @Whatnot, @GrantLaFontaine and @loganhead13! Liveshopping is the future of commerce, and Whatnot is the future of liveshopping 💪.
One year from now, I predict every consumer will have been exposed to the power of liveshopping and I hope collectors of all types will love buying and selling on Whatnot. Congrats to the entire Whatnot team on raising their $150M Series C from a16z, YC Continuity and Capital G!.
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1/ How has your valuation changed? Public markets are where to look here:
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Pumped about my latest AI Revolution convo with @scale_AI's @alexandr_wang on unlocking the 3rd pillar of gen AI: data. We chat about pushing AI into its next transformational phase and his unique approach to exec hiring and talent acquisition - @a16z.
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We at @a16z are thrilled to co-lead @tackleio's Series C & continue to invest in the vision of transforming the way software is sold. Tackle is the best way for B2B companies to monetize selling through the leading Cloud Marketplaces. cc: @martin_casado .
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"It’s the decade of design, after all." Congrats @zoink and @figmadesign - we're excited to be your partners!.
"That was the decade of code. Now, we are moving into the decade of design: One where design, not just code, is at the center of product development and successful organizations.". Peter Levine on our investing in @Figmadesign and team:.
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We're excited to partner with @anyscalecompute from the @a16z Growth fund. Ray and Anyscale's "infinite laptop" is a truly revolutionary breakthrough in distributed computing and AI. Let's go @robertnishihara, @pcmoritz and Ion!.
“Ray and Anyscale empower even the leanest teams to bring AI to production and realize the business potential of AI in record time”.- Laure Fouilloux, Ricardo. ⬆️ is why we built Ray and Anyscale and our latest funding fuels that mission. Hear from our CEO.
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We're seeking to partner with the next generation of champion companies across enterprise, fintech, consumer, web3, and bio+healthcare, both inside and outside our early portfolio. As @bhorowitz said, “We believe in the future and we bet the firm that way.” Let’s go!!!.
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Awesome advice for B2B founders making the move upmarket. it's not just about GTM. It also requires tight alignment w product and being disciplined about your ideal customer profile. @morrisseyjoe 🔥.
Moving upmarket to Enterprise represents both challenge and opportunity for any SaaS company. Many founders ask: how to prepare and what to expect? I distilled key lessons from my learnings at Segment here:
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Don't let his perm fool you. @alexandr_wang shared great frameworks w me around gen AI, the founder fallacy and much more. I left my Zach Bryan hoodie at home.
We are entering the 3rd phase of LLM Development. 1st phase was early tinkering, Transformer to GPT-3.2nd phase was scaling.3rd phase is an innovation phase: what breakthroughs beyond o1 get us to a new proto-AGI paradigm.
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Huge props to grit and persistance of the team at @workrise --> great article on their evolution from upstream oil/gas pre-pandemic to high-skilled labor in wind/renewables/construction + plans to keep expanding! .
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"1) take a simple idea and 2) take it very seriously" . Congrats to Stripe on crossing $1T volume! They're still a small % of addressable market volume + have built so much product to help customers make more $. 💪🏻.
Stripe’s 2023 annual letter is here! Lots of detail on what we’re seeing across the internet economy, including a robust startup ecosystem despite the VC pullback.
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Revisiting my convo from the @IO__podcast with @thogge and @sterlingmsnow where we dove into growth-stage company frameworks and what sets great cos apart:. We also covered some recent blog posts-highlights 👇.
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.@Crossriverbank is the market leader w/ the most innovative team, tech and solutions, & a great biz model. CR powers some of the world’s biggest+best fintechs, like Affirm, Stripe, Upgrade, and Upstart. Here’s more on why we’re investing 👇cc @arampell .
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Thanks for having me! 💪🏻.
New @IO__podcast w/ @DavidGeorge83 , the head of the growth fund at @a16z 💪. -What makes an enduring company?.-How should founders benchmark eng and product orgs?.-What does a16z look for to make a large growth investment?.-Stories behind Flock, Figma, Roblox, etc. Link below!
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The time has come to stand up for Little Tech.
THE LITTLE TECH AGENDA. Marc Andreessen & Ben Horowitz.July 5, 2024. Little Tech is our term for tech startups, as contrasted to Big Tech incumbents. Little Tech has run independent of politics for our entire careers. But, as the old Soviet joke goes, “You may not be interested.
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3/ @aleximm, @shangdaxu and I wrote an explainer. Most valuable and interesting IMO are the tradeoffs of the various options. cc: @a16z Growth.
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#RIPbadsoftware. Travel and expenses all in one, w/ a ChatGPT-powered travel agent. TripActions is now @Navan. Congrats to @arielcoco, @itwig and the Navan team on a refreshing and bold new launch!.
TripActions is saying #RIPbadsoftware 🪦 with Navan. New name. New era. New category of business software: Business Software Designed for People. Here’s what’s new🧵👇.
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We now have in excess of $10b+ AUM in @a16z Growth, and have partnered with 70+ companies in 100+ funding rounds. The goal remains the same as 3 years ago, and the opp’y in Growth thru public markets has never been greater. .
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Had a great convo w @Waymo CEO @dmitri_dolgov on how they’re bringing AI to the streets! Hear from the OG in this space on his journey building AI for the last 2 decades, and how Waymo is leading the way in our latest @a16z Growth AI Revolution convo. 🚗.
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3/ If you raised at 100x revenue and you think you’re now worth 20x, you need 5x more revenue to get back to your valuation. Can you build a plan to get there with 12 months of runway, even if it takes you longer?.
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Pumped about the release of our AI hub! Hear from portfolio founders and our own best thinking here 👇👇.
The stakes are high. The opportunities are profound. From the creation of new medicines to novel ways to solve climate change, AI offers the promise of a better world. Explore our vision for the AI-enabled future:
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We back companies from the point of finding product-market fit all the way through at-IPO & when they’re public. We want to be a partner to founders every step of the way and every capital event. .
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5/ How do you know if and when to make changes? We advise planning for 3 scenarios – base, best and worst -- and outlining expense plans around each. Track where you are and be ready to adjust from one plan to another if trajectory changes:
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We started the @a16z Growth fund ~3 years ago w/ the goal of being there for founders at every step of their journey. We set out to back founders executing on big visions for emerging categories, & support them with a venture mindset & assist in company building. .
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Big congrats to @dfinzer, @xanderatallah and @BKRoberts on this milestone and a huge year, and so pumped to have @shivar onboard! 🌊🌊🌊.
Announcing Series C! We’re building the friendliest & most trusted NFT marketplace with the best selection across many chains. The funding helps us accelerate product development, improve trust & safety, and invest deeply in the web3 community & ecosystem.
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"The record button for the internet" - build @loom video functionality directly in apps! 📹🚀. Public beta here:
Introducing the loomSDK public beta: the record button for the internet 🎯. 🛠 World-class video tech.✅ Easy to implement — & free!.🎥 Users record, embed, & view Loom videos in your app.👨🎤 @Trello @MiroHQ are buildin' with it. More on @ProductHunt:
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The “$20m to $500m Question” - when and how should we layer in top-down sales to our bottom-up/product-led company? We have this convo with founders all the time as their companies reach growth stage @sarahdingwang @a16z (thread 👇).
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"We can advance to a far superior way of living, and of being. We have the tools, the systems, the ideas. We have the will. It is time, once again, to raise the technology flag.".
The Techno-Optimist Manifesto -- please read and Ask Me Anything! Post questions as replies to this xeet.
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"Axie embodies a new generation of games, where game creators are not operating from a place of fear but rather as an open, free market economy. that allows players to. own aspects of the game and benefit from their contributions. " @AriannaSimpson 💪💪💪.
We’re thrilled to invest in @SkyMavisHQ. Over the past year, the @AxieInfinity team has catapulted Play 2 Earn into the mainstream, and are completely redefining the gaming category in the process. a16z crypto general partner @ariannasimpson shares more:
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6/ See our full piece for more. And remember, downturns come with a silver lining. Some of the strongest companies are forged in the toughest times!.
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Selling customers on productivity & efficiency value drivers is more important now than ever. Communicating how your product helps customers do more with less will be key to weathering the storm in '23. Great advice from @morrisseyjoe 👇👇.
Selling in a downturn is tough. From my experience, the best thing a company can do is deliver the right message at the right time. Right now that means selling customers on productivity & efficiency value drivers. Here is my latest piece:
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Congrats @deel on an awesome year 👀💪🏻.
Today, we’re launching @Deel’s biggest product ever. So we wanted to look back at 2022 where we learned & improved by helping the world’s biggest brands scale their global teams:.🚀 $57m -> $295m ARR.💸 EBITDA positive since Sept.📈 85%+ Gross Margin.🌎 $5B+ paid to 250k+ people.
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Just got around to listening to my man @George_Kurtz and @HarryStebbings pod - loved this line, and true for so much in life - "There's a reason the windshield is 10x bigger than the rearview mirror" 💪.
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I love Clubhouse - an amazing place to learn and a replacement for a bunch of IRL social events. AC says it best - "It soon became obvious to me, as my time in the app reached more than a dozen hours a week, that Clubhouse is something special." Go @pdavison and @rohanseth!.
👇 Some news:.I've led a16z's new investment in Clubhouse and have joined the board. Essay below that covers:. - how I know founders @pdavison @rohanseth.- why we're excited to invest.- how we think Clubhouse is unique - particularly for creators!.
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Great framework for why LTV:CAC matters, and implications for valuation by @jamiedsully and @aleximm. Clean explanation of the math and why valuations between 2x and 3x+ LTV:CAC are so different.
3x LTV:CAC is the golden rule for consumer startups… but why?. @aleximm and I explore why going from 2x to 3x empowers greater reinvestment to build a compounding long-term advantage. and more than triples your valuation! 👇👇.
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Today, we’re announcing that we’ve raised $565M in series D funding. We’re also thrilled to welcome @HVR_Software to the Fivetran family.
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We're excited to back @ambientai and @shikharshrestha. They're using computer vision + AI to transform security tools, operations & outcomes, enabling physical security teams at cos. like Adobe & VMware to catch incidents in real-time!.
The most significant security incident my startup faced was a targeted, physical attack. It lasted 2 mins and took weeks to find in archived video. @ambientai uses AI to catch physical incidents *while* they are happening. Excited to be a lead investor.
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Had an awesome time w/ @adamdangelo chatting AI and what he’s building + how he plans to bring AI to the masses. Check out our @a16z AI Revolution chat! 🙌 .
CEO of @Quora & @Poe_Platform @adamdangelo argues that startups are uniquely positioned to provide a level of fault tolerance unattainable by incumbents. He & @DavidGeorge83 discuss getting AI infrastructure to the masses & its multi-model, multi-modal future.
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.@CoinswitchKuber’s product is innovative, offering users a “frozen” price for assets for 2 minutes, resulting in a more reliable and stable experience for people.
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10/ This is just the starting point. We’ll keep building out and updating our dataset, so check out the tool and let us know what you think & what you’d like to see!
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Great stuff as usual from @skupor!👇🏻.
Excited to release ep w/ @skupor @a16z on the biggest mistakes that entrepreneurs make when pitching VCs, why the majority of bridge rounds are bridges to nowhere and why VC is simply a customer service business thanks to Qs @withfries2! #startup #founder
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