Eric Newcomer
@EricNewcomer
Followers
44K
Following
46K
Media
693
Statuses
12K
Founder + author of Newcomer – a startups and VC newsletter & events company. Host summits, including Cerebral Valley AI Summit Subscribe https://t.co/ptjq4pjVS9
Crown Heights, Brooklyn
Joined April 2009
no atheists in a foxhole. no libertarians in a bank run.
Where is Powell? Where is Yellen? Stop this crisis NOW. Announce that all depositors will be safe. Place SVB with a Top 4 bank. Do this before Monday open or there will be contagion and the crisis will spread.
137
3K
20K
Sequoia invested in a $420m round in FTX at a $25B valuation in October 2021 and a consortium with Paradigm invested $400M at $32B in January 2022. And now it's selling in a fire sale? . This is a truly crazy event in startup world. Dot-com bust level event.
259
2K
12K
Continue to think Waymo is not getting enough credit for what they have accomplished. Self-driving cars are just roaming the streets of San Francisco. How are they not met with more wonder and praise?.
320
182
4K
I covered the Zenefits saga closely for Bloomberg & Businessweek and I have to say it was a moment that tarnished my view of media. I saw how powerful narratives are. It didn't make any sense to me that people like David Sacks and a16z would care so much about regulatory arcana.
42
217
3K
Sequoia Capital has held firmly onto its shares of Bird. The firm invested $139M in Bird. The position is worth just $5.6M today.
103
166
3K
I wrote in June 2021 how Sam Altman’s departure from YC had been under explored
46
230
2K
@RMac18 The people who agreed to be hardcore but then failed code review have a worse exit package than the non-hardcore people? Seems like Elon is kicking the people who defended him.
27
97
2K
Some crazy personal news: I've quit my wonderful job at Bloomberg in a pandemic to launch a subscription newsletter on startups and venture capital. I'm calling it Newcomer. Read about here:
123
140
2K
Craft Ventures predicts this downturn could last 1.5 - 2 years and thinks the correction is more akin to post dot-com than 2008 recession because this market turn is so tech-centric
61
299
2K
Twitter board member Jack Dorsey snipes at Twitter’s board
38
167
2K
Tiger Global told investors this year that it invested $1.1 billion in ByteDance at a $460 billion valuation in 2021
39
202
2K
@DavidSacks we both went to harvard but we didn't overlap. certainly i like parker and your political views are terrible.
31
14
2K
🚨🚨🚨 Coatue argued in a private presentation that it believed that Robinhood has "zero valuation support" and a "broken business model"
26
143
1K
I was terrified for my life to say anything about this before now … but Stripe has been forcibly taking a cut of my revenue since I started my newsletter.
42
28
1K
@Jason so much spin here. if this were part of a set of clearly articulated policies combatting doxxing no one would be freaking out. it's just the bans targeted at his specific problem that are ridiculous. he didn't even ban other jet accounts at first.
3
11
927
rooting against self-driving cars is one of the most hostile to human life progressive stances out there. it is insane that we let humans drive cars. it is literally one of the main ways that people of all classes die. if you ride in a Waymo, you will have little doubt that.
The torching of a Waymo car was not a random act of vandalism, as certain pundits want you to think, and it did not take place in a vacuum. In fact, it's a major escalation in the growing revolt against Silicon Valley, and may just be the beginning:.
201
87
1K
the silence from jack dorsey on all this is crazy, no?.
97
26
1K
so undisclosed future a16z partner hosts event with a16z partner where a16z portfolio company does crisis PR but it's billed as this big organic thing with Elon Musk?.
37
84
893
Airbnb ownership. Sequoia 13%.Brian 12%.Nate 11%.Joe 11%.Founders Fund 4%.Greylock 3.5%.a16z 3%.DST 2.3%.YC 2.2%.T Rowe 1%.General Atlantic 1%.
15
73
912
I commiserated this morning with Rippling CEO @parkerconrad, a likeminded political soul. He said he was game to put his thoughts on the record. “My personal view is that a lot of smart people are being very stupid and believe that Trump is going to do THEIR thing,” Conrad.
26
46
839
a friend suggested this tweet. don't give me too much credit for humor here. lol.
14
6
690
Think about how much shit the press gets from this crowd for using anonymous sources and then look at the reporting standards they hold themselves to, with far more resources than most media organizations to do fact-finding.
Screw it, cancel me. Anatomy of election fraud. I just heard from a general contractor friend in Los Angeles that in 2020 a vacant home he was doing construction on received hundreds of ballots. How is this possible?
17
33
719
Tiger's fees on this fund are quite something. The firm's management fees are on net asset value. So inflated valuations mean more management fees. And Tiger gets carry on private investments deal by deal so there's a strong incentive to find winners and shrug off losers
21
73
657
most terrifying thing I've published since going independent. but sometimes you have to go against the crowd
39
97
639
Brace yourself: analysts expect Uber to reveal a $4.96 billion QUARTERLY operating loss next week
52
270
580
my life: reminding millionaires / billionaires they can afford a $15 a month subscription.
24
8
613
@parkerconrad I do think Parker let Zenefits valuation get out of control, started missing revenue targets, and things looked precarious. But the effort to dislodge him and blame him singularly for the company's problems only left Zenefits a shell of itself.
5
12
550
For people who were there. does this feel like dot-com bust level unwinding yet?.
205
24
519
@DavidSacks Judd says Musk can do whatever he wants since it's a private website. You are the one saying free speech principles should be applied and it's hard not to point out the incoherence of that position hence the invocation of supreme court cases.
9
8
424
How do people listen to this propaganda? just listened to the 20 minute vc with Domm Holland. Harry Stebbings says he abandoned his "British charm and ego stroking" for the interview. if that's true, wow, i cannot imagine the more credulous version of this show.
22
20
499
Alphabet was too fat and happy to lead the generative AI revolution, or so said the conventional tech wisdom a year ago. The company looked like it had been caught off-guard by ChatGPT, and didn’t have the competitive culture and mindset needed to win in the “age of efficiency.”.
23
44
497
talked with @parkerconrad on the record for the first episode of my Dead Cat podcast a couple years ago
1
15
466
@elonmusk @karaswisher So there’s no roll over the money grey area here? Kind of stunning that they would get it flat out wrong.
1
19
434
Saudi Arabia discloses that it's a limited partner in Andreessen Horowitz, NEA, Craft Ventures, General Atlantic, Dragoneer, ICONIQ, Insight, and many others.
14
43
462
Tiger Global's 1st and 2nd best private funds came in 2003 (post-dot com) and 2008 (financial crisis). 2003: 10.6X DPI (distributed cash to paid-in ratio). 2008: 7.3X DPI. Unfortunately those funds were only $73M and $1B. Since 2018, Tiger has raised $26B+ to invest in startups.
13
48
457
why can't vox just say "relying on experts we downplayed the coronavirus a few months ago. if we knew then what we know now i would have written the story differently. and next time we'll cast my net for a wider array of experts".
21
42
434
Sam Altman had been given a lot of power, the cloak of a nonprofit, and a glowing public profile that exceeds his more mixed private reputation. He lost the trust of his board. We should take that seriously.
21
54
435
In classic Sequoia fashion, Sequoia was the largest investor shareholder in Bridge which sold for $1.1 billion to Stripe (another Sequoia portfolio company) and @shaunmmaguire was the only investor board member
15
30
448
OpenAI board really needs to provide facts behind the allegation that Sam Altman was "not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities" or team ouster is going to lose public opinion pretty quickly.
14
17
413
Kind of amazing the Marc Andreessen is a Facebook board member but his firm is an investor in Twitter and one of a16z's general partners is in Twitter war room.
19
19
387
Stripe is raising $6 billion at a $50 billion valuation, sources tell me.
13
31
389
Sequoia, which led DoorDash's Series A, had to invest $217 million all told to maintain a 15.3% stake in the food delivery company
11
37
390
Union Square Ventures ranked at the top of the first Founder's Choice Ranking. They also have outstanding returns. I got my hands on their fund performance from the $65B Texas public investor UTIMCO. USV has returned $1.18 billion to UTIMCO on $129 million invested.
7
28
390
partially kidding here. does feel like founder mode will be used to justify a lot of thoughtless management practices. but there's certainly a resonant gem of truth in the essay as always with PG.
5
3
382
Here's @mamoonha's track record:. USVP.Box: IPO.Yammer: Sold to Microsoft for $1.2B. Social Capital.Slack: Sold to Salesforce for $27.7B. @kleinerperkins .Figma: Sold to Adobe for $20B.Rippling: Valued at $11.25B.
14
28
381
I can't believe The Information headlined its story this morning saying “Bolt Near Deal to Raise $450 Million at $14 billion.”. it's not clear that either number is real? this is the most bizarre deal i've ever seen. very hard to believe this company is being valued by anyone at.
25
15
371
the engagement that you can get for shitposting on tech twitter relative to sharing substantive business stories is quite something.
28
16
346
if you don't do enough human content moderation then you're a careless steward of your technology. if you do too much content moderation then you're traumatizing the human content moderators.
🚨Exclusive: OpenAI used outsourced Kenyan workers earning less than $2 per hour to make ChatGPT less toxic, my investigation found . (Thread).
10
19
348
Here’s a list of startups that raised at unicorn status with single digit millions (or less) in annual recurring revenue
13
50
351
no atheists in a foxhole. no libertarians in bank run. no free speech absolutists when tesla's business interests are at risk.
4
37
304
@elonmusk you could release the information in a way that reporters could look through it themselves. many past big data investigations involved many outlets receiving access to the underlying information. your chosen reporters leaned heavily on framing, hype.
35
10
306
Substack lets writers reap most of value from their labor. but the critique is coming from the left?.
19
33
325
We were friends for a decade and then we fell in love!. Just married @SjoeW! Couldn't be happier. ❤️
46
6
336
@nrmehta totally. I've been hitting the SPAC world -- scooters, quantum, autonomous. but man SBF is supposed to the good guy in crypto world. really raises questions about what the bottom looks like.
35
8
318
Here's Sam Bankman-Fried writing his investors: "I’m sorry I’ve been hard to contact the last few days—I wish I could have been more communicative during this process, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to be;things were coming together dynamically.".
25
27
311
Here's what @rabois told me about adjusting to tech stock market turbulence . Read the rest here
8
16
303
Andreessen Horowitz spent hundreds of millions of dollars to give Parker Conrad the practice he needed to build a company that would enrich Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund, and Sequoia.
8
7
307
Bill Gurley on Uber's autonomous cars: “We probably burned $2.5 billion on autonomous. That was a waste of money." He says they should have spent it on food delivery instead.
24
71
286
"tech bro" communicates just such unambiguous (and sexist) hostility / ad hominem. the fact that so much of the reporter class and other thoughtful people have stomached it (or worse deployed it) is just embarrassing. it's such a cliche at this point.
39
15
288
Palantir is always on the cusp of turning a profit, making $1 billion and going public.
12
23
284
one contradiction of VCs warning about the market correction: . the people who aren't doing late stage deals -- Tiger, Altimeter, etc -- are being pretty quiet. but firms like a16z and Craft, which are loudly warning about the downturn, are still doing deals.
18
19
286
@MarkLevineNYC what are you doing to address NYPD officers doing this? law enforcement officials evading the law should be a fireable offense.
2
3
261
Here are the returns for one of the most secretive tech investors in late stage startups: ICONIQ Capital. The firm returned $5.5 billion to investors last year. Read this story to understand how they did it:
12
39
269
Coatue believes that the market is failing to distinguish between technology companies. Upbeat: Snap, Shopify, DoorDash, and Neftlix.Downbeat: Pinterest, Wayfair, Lyft, and Roku
8
28
259
Garry Tan centering early-stage startups as what society stands to lose without some extra depositor protections seems smart. The All-In hysteria, not so much. stoking fear & making arguments that don't line up with any ideological priors.
19
16
259
In a secret report to Altimeter's investors this January the firm says TikTok is "not material" to ByteDance's revenue. The firm estimated ByteDance had $50B in cash on hand in Q3 2023.
6
31
269
@Jason shameless framing games here. when it comes to moderation or the rule of law splitting hairs matters! that's what creates fairness. you wouldn't make the same case in a courtroom about police who broke the law getting evidence or lawyers violating oaths.
2
1
226
Where is the Twitter free speech crowd right now? @DavidSacks @pmarca @antoniogm. Twitter even seems to be stifling independent coverage of censorship of the newsletter platform that shall not be named.
7
15
241
Former GitHub CTO Jason Warner Raises $26 Million for Foundation Model Code Startup
16
23
248
Newcomer is looking for a reporter with a demonstrated track record of getting notable financial scoops who has the charisma and expertise to emcee 200-person events for Silicon Valley insiders. $200k-$300k salary.
13
48
256
This @CoinDesk story on Alameda Research could end up being a hugely important story in the history of crypto. @IanAllison123
17
53
231
can see why tech people get annoyed with "the media." feels like there's so much negative spin on the ball in this NYT Substack piece -- even though it is purportedly written in an "objective" style. would rather it were just an essay that made a clear argument.
7
7
242
saying that we can't engineer our way out of the climate crisis, or really that we shouldn't try, only fans fears that the climate crowd is more interested in trying to restructure society than actually solving the problem of too much carbon in the air.
21
22
237
Here's Fred Wilson at @usv at @PrimaryVC's NYC Summit: . "I think it's very tempting in this business to chase trends and I think it's not particularly profitable to do that.". He said idea made him want to chase crypto deals and not AI. "When the whole industry goes one way the.
10
27
243
any other country or government is free to try to create a better system for investing in new technology companies. but no one has found a better way so far. easy to criticize the status quo when the alternative is an unrealized utopia.
28
16
240
why do we have to say "lived experiences" instead of just "experiences".
23
6
224
One thing about Travis Kalanick’s departure from Uber that’s been lost in the founder mode discussion was that Kalanick left behind a number of key executives who have stuck with the company for many years under Dara Khosrowshahi’s leadership. Uber might have exited founder mode,.
9
19
239
re doordash confidential IPO filing. weird time to go public unless you need $$$ no matter what.
16
12
230
GitLab's backers made a killing. @khoslaventures stake worth about $2B. It's a more than 150X return. @AugustCapital worth about $1.6B. More than 100X return. @GVteam worth more than $900M. More than 47X return. @ICONIQGrowth $1.8 billion private stake. More than 9X return.
3
31
230
can't believe Apple ran such an out of touch commercial that treats devices Steve Jobs would have cherished as trash.
Meet the new iPad Pro: the thinnest product we’ve ever created, the most advanced display we’ve ever produced, with the incredible power of the M4 chip. Just imagine all the things it’ll be used to create.
33
23
220
Union Square Ventures tops Founder's Choice VC rankings with Bowery Capital, Bonfire Ventures, Initialized Capital, and Y Combinator close behind
11
24
210
motion to reinstate ryan breslow as Bolt CEO so that he has less free time to tweet.
8
5
209
In 2017 Social Capital’s co-founders Mamoon Hamid and Ted Maidenberg fell out with Palihapitiya. Hamid left to help run Kleiner Perkins. And Maidenberg was pushed out by Palihapitiya. (Maidenberg went on to co-found Tribe Capital.). As Hamid, Maidenberg, and others were leaving.
12
19
217
this is so sad. some AI generated site is ripping off @BusinessInsider on a scoop, beating them on SEO, and keeping the "exclusive" framing
7
35
221
Read the Bill McGlashan bit yourself. Just ctrl f Worth reading. It's crazy. Head of TPG Growth and CEO of TPG's socially responsible investing!!!.
8
70
182
Profound. Here's what TPG's Bill McGlashan says after he learns that his son is going to be photoshopped to look like a football kicker, according to court filing -->. McGlashan: "The way the world works these days is unbelievable.".
Read the Bill McGlashan bit yourself. Just ctrl f Worth reading. It's crazy. Head of TPG Growth and CEO of TPG's socially responsible investing!!!.
8
84
181
Bessemer Venture Partners is a thoughtful firm in a world of loose money.
2
20
207
X relies on the best photos from the media, key facts from the media, video from the media and then turns around and blames the media for the poor coverage while providing mostly distribution rather than fresh information.
5
26
190
Interesting slide on what metrics will attract capital in the downturn. Craft's Jeff Fluhr advocates for trading growth rate for run-rate
4
18
207
i like and respect many of Silicon Valley's Trump supporters but I think they are fundamentally deluding themselves that they're being principled when they're being selfish and shortsighted by supporting Trump
24
14
195
Coatue's hedge fund returned 82% in 2020. Then chasing that high in 2021 Coatue was one of the most prolific private investors. But its hedge fund only returned 7% that year. Then as a market downturn decimated tech hedge funds, Coatue smartly shifted to cash
3
18
194
This is the story of how Andreessen Horowitz disrupted the world of venture capital by cozying up to the media and then, how they purposefully threw that relationship away.
6
35
188