PodiumVC retweeted
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"
Arthur C. Clarke 1962
@elonmusk @woodhaus2
@Tesla @SpaceX 2026 πππͺβ¬οΈ
Mark Pincus, founder of @Zynga, on "proven, better, new," the product framework that was Zynga's religion:
1. Proven: start with what 10/10 existing users of a category already love, and don't change it.
"You do not have the right to change proven. You have not taken enough time to change proven. It is an art that we do not completely understand."
2. Better: only add what 10/10 users agree is better.
"For Zynga Poker, better was no download. That was it. Turns out you lose half your users every time you click download."
3. New: treat anything you think is better as new, and assume it fails.
"Assume all new fails. Write that on the wall... If all new worked, we'd be using new s**t all the time. But how often do you change what's on the front of your iPhone?"
"Users don't care how innovative it is. All they care about is does it feel better, and they can't even tell you why."
@markpinc w/ @JoshLu
SR008 APPS ARE OPEN. Up to $1M + $10M+ in credits. 12 weeks in SF, Feb through April. Built to help you land capital, customers and talent. Apply by Nov 1: speedrun.a16z.com/apply
Travis Kalanick on the founder's paradox: the better you get, the harder it is to stay fired up.
"The young entrepreneurs that are coming up right now don't totally get it."
"When you get into your 3rd and 4th company, I don't know, this may be even my 5th at this point, you get fricking really good at doing stuff."
"Things that used to take me a day or three days, a lot of stress, anxiety, like, 'How am I gonna do this?' take me like 45 minutes. And that's a beautiful thing."
"I'm so used to adversity at this point that it's kind of normal, so I don't get as pissed off. But being pissed off makes you good as an entrepreneur, so I gotta make sure I'm still fired up."
"You get too used to adversity, and that's kind of a problem."
Full conversation: youtube.com/watch?v=r8qKNFeBβ¦
@travisk
Airbnb's Brian Chesky on the classic management philosophy, and why he rejects it:
"Go through the list of great CEOs, almost none of them that I'm aware of do recurring one-on-ones... Jensen Huang does not do recurring one-on-ones, famously."
"I do think a CEO should meet one-on-one with your people. I don't think it should be recurring... If you wanna get time with me, get a meeting with me. If you wanna call me, call me. Bump into me, talk to me. But most of my recurring meetings are group meetings."
"If there's lots of one-way kinda sensitive topics, there's probably something wrong in the company... If we're having all these sensitive conversations, well, why are they so sensitive? Why can't other people hear about them?"
"If I have a one-on-one with you and you tell me there's a problem and we debate it and we say, 'Here's the solution,' we haven't consulted anyone else. So now we just made a decision and no one else helped, consulted, or knew how we made that decision."
"'Hire great people, trust them, let them do their job, stay out of the details, do recurring one-on-ones.' I don't believe any of that, and I wanna acknowledge that many great leaders do."
@bchesky w/ @sampjacobs
PodiumVC retweeted
What is one problem that you stopped thinking about because you decided a long time ago that it was impossible to do anything about it?
Has the technology changed since?
Maybe it's worth taking a second look...
PodiumVC retweeted
If you know any emerging manager LPβs from a galaxy far, far awayβ¦
(DM for more deets and request an invite)
Greg Brockman: "We're now in the AGI era."
Ten years ago, OpenAI worked out the compute curves and landed on fifteen years to AGI, or ten if the world was willing to build the machines and spend the hundreds of billions to do it.
In 2026, GPT-6 Astra manages 24 hours of coherent operation, 10,000 agents worked together to solve Navier-Stokes, and a model ingeniously chained together exploits to break containment at Hugging Face.
@gdb joins @bhorowitz and @eriktorenberg on what the AGI era asks of us: why safety and alignment now set the pace, what happens to work, and why AI sentiment is lowest in the country building it.
00:00 Intro
00:52 15 years, or 10 if you spend enough
02:24 Pacing the frontier
03:55 Safety ideas from before the models
08:42 Lessons from Hugging Face
10:20 The defender's window
12:46 10,000 agents on Navier-Stokes
14:50 Formally verifying all software
17:10 Cancelling his holiday for GPT-3
18:42 Codex found 13 holes in 15 minutes
20:41 Why Astra earned the GPT-6 title
24:25 Employment keeps going up
29:39 America has the lowest AI sentiment
31:10 The benefits don't make the news
33:26 Banning data centers exports them
35:50 $1 billion for frontline defenders
38:15 Astra cleared the bar for AGI
40:18 1.5 billion people churned ChatGPT
43:25 Killing Sora
47:45 The AGI era
YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=IJn8cagMβ¦
PodiumVC retweeted
My conversation with @ZachBDell, co-founder of @basepowerco.
0:00 Energy Abundance & the Power Demands of AI
6:15 How Batteries Make the Grid More Efficient
9:09 Early Ventures & the Insight Behind Base
15:34 We Don't Sell Batteries. We Sell Electricity.
22:25 How Base Works With Utilities & Competes for Customers
30:44 Learning From Michael Dell: The "Dad Terminal"
32:22 Vertical Integration & Lessons From SpaceX
39:34 Writing Clearly & Making Time to Think
44:53 North Stars, Turtles & Relentless Execution
53:55 Learning From Great Founders & Building a Beloved Brand
56:27 What's Your Constraint?
1:06:26 Base Core & Taking Control of Manufacturing
1:11:02 A Lifelong Mission & the Last Company He'll Build
Includes paid partnerships.
PodiumVC retweeted
Before joining Apple as the Macintosh artist, @SusanKare was an art history PhD who barely knew anything about computers.
She went on to design many of the icons, typefaces, and symbols that helped make the original Mac feel understandable and human, defining a visual language for personal computing that still influences software today.
At Startup School 2026, Susan shares the stories behind the Happy Mac, Command key, Chicago font, and more, along with the design lessons she learned from Steve Jobs, Paul Rand, and the original Mac team: make things meaningful and memorable, embrace constraints, iterate constantly, and use just enough detail to make an idea instantly clear.
00:00 β Making Things Meaningful and Memorable
01:51 β How Susan Joined Apple
05:01 β Designing the Original Macintosh
06:35 β A Computer Anyone Could Use
08:26 β Creating Chicago and the Mac Typefaces
11:47 β MacPaint and the First Icons
14:45 β The Story Behind the Happy Mac
17:08 β Why Simple Icons Work Better
18:25 β The Icons That Didnβt Work
21:23 β Designing Symbols That Last
22:44 β How the Command Key Got Its Symbol
25:20 β What Ancient Symbols Can Teach Designers
30:18 β Designing After Apple
36:32 β Lessons From Steve Jobs, Paul Rand, and More
PodiumVC retweeted
17 yo asked what makes a good founder. I said being good at building stuff and being sufficiently fierce. That's about it.
PodiumVC retweeted
The plan is simple:
1. Build cool shit.
2. Tell people about it.
3. Tell more people about it.
4. Keep telling people about it.
5. Tell even more people about it.
Repeat forever.
Bay Area β we did it.
We achieved what most thought was impossible, and maybe even a little crazy. We did something no other region or stadium has ever done: we hosted a Super Bowl and a World Cup in the same calendar year β and pulled off both to resounding success.
Let that sink in.
Over the past three weeks, our team hosted six FIFA World Cup matches, capped tonight by a thrilling USA victory. The energy throughout this region has been unlike anything we've seen β from the fan marches to the packed watch parties and fan zones, and of course inside the stadium.
I'm extremely proud of our team for delivering on a global stage and creating an electric fan experience the Bay Area will remember for years. And in less than six months, we will have generated $1 billion in economic impact for the Bay Area β a lift felt well beyond the stadium, across the entire community.
None of this happens without the people behind it. I'm deeply thankful to @Zaileenh and the Bay Area Host Committee board, our staff, our elected officials, and our private and public partners β far too many to name individually, but every one of you essential to what we pulled off together.
What the Bay Area just put on display for the world is something we'll never forget.
PodiumVC retweeted
Prediction: In the AI age, taste will become even more important. When anyone can make anything, the big differentiator is what you choose to make.
paulgraham.com/taste.html

















