people @a16z, building @speedrun | ex-@riotgames, @birdride, @ohiostate always
sea / sf
Joined September 2021
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- Following2.4K
- Followers3.7K
- Likes16.9K
Tom Hammer 🔨 retweeted
@rabois led our Series A in February. Today he's leading our Series B.
This year: 30M+ plays a day, 40M+ mini apps made, daily users up 20x+.
We made this announcement as a mini app you can play.
link.prod.sekai.chat/lYm9lR
Tom Hammer 🔨 retweeted
Last call for SR008.
apply for speedrun if you want to get access to:
> up to $1M in funding
> over $10M in startup credits
> intros to 150+ C-suite execs from the Fortune 500 & the a16z portfolio, plus a full day demoing live to buyers at AI Faire
> hiring support through our Talent Network, with 171K+ engineers, designers & product people and $0 in fees
> office access at our new North Beach HQ
> a 40-person team helping with GTM, talent, marketing & fundraising.
Mega recap of helpful resources below 👇
Tom Hammer 🔨 retweeted
hey all - update for SR008:
It's now the FINAL weekend to apply for our next residency in San Francisco. Applications close this Sunday, Nov 1 at 11:59 PM PT.
Here's the link:
speedrun.a16z.com/apply
How it works:
- you apply
- we review, reach out to get introduced, etc
- if there's a fit, we handshake and sign
- we wire our investment right away!
- plus you get access to >$10M in credits right away
- you'll onboard + start working with us immediately, have access to working out of our SF offices, etc
The official residency starts Feb 2027 where we'll have speakers, office hours, and much more. I plan to be on site and look forward to meeting many of you
You might ask- who's the best fit for this? We want to talk to you as early as possible, and that means:
- no company yet
- no deck
- no huge insight tweet thread
- sometimes not even fully committed yet
You don't need the perfect idea. We can start working together when you're iterating and getting the idea off the ground. That's the whole point of speedrun - it's our way of backing you from Day 0.
More official stuff below:
- Deadline is this Sunday, Nov 1 at 11:59 PM PT (this weekend!)
- SR008 runs Feb 1 through April 18, 2027 in San Francisco -- twelve weeks of firesides, office hours, and sessions, closing out with Demo Day on April 13 in front of thousands of investors
- Capital: up to $1M with a two-week close target, plus $10M+ in credits from 200+ partners
- Customers: SR Insiders gets you in front of 10,000+ buyers and operators, including 150+ C-suite execs, plus a full day of live demos at AI Faire
- Talent: our Talent Network of 171,000+ engineers, designers, and product people. 230+ hires so far, $0 in fees. Plus visa, banking, and housing help if you're coming from abroad
- A team of ~40 battle-tested investors and operators who help cover your gaps without adding headcount -- GTM, marketing, brand, talent, fundraising, and more
- a16z speedrun is super selective -- fewer than 0.4% of applicants get in. You'll join a tight-knit community of founders from 20+ countries who stay involved as speakers, advisors, and often each other's first customers
- Still in school or still finding your idea/team? Check out the alpha fellowship too -- up to $250K for students, recent grads, and dropouts
Tom Hammer 🔨 retweeted
how to go from a BAD @Speedrun application to a GREAT one...
I sat with @PhilippWehn (SR005) to look at his app that was rejected for SR004 w/ @Nexxa_AI & what changed when he reapplied and was accepted for SR005
- clearly identified traction
- direct founder-market fit
- no more buzzwords
- 10x better one liner
- new swagger
this was fun
apply for SR008 here!
speedrun.a16z.com/apply
Tom Hammer 🔨 retweeted
Ben Horowitz's message to early-stage founders on betting on yourself, the doubts that do the most damage, and why fear means you're doing it right:
"Your job is to make your bet pay off. You believed in yourself enough to do it. There are gonna be many times when you question that bet and you question that belief, but that gets you nothing."
"The doubts are gonna be there. Ignore the doubts. The worst doubts aren't the ones people put on you. It's the ones that you put on yourself. Every entrepreneur has them."
"I spent a lot of time with Mark Zuckerberg when he was 22 years old and he had a tremendous doubt about whether he was gonna make it."
"It's not what you feel. It's what you do. You're gonna feel scared. If your guts aren't boiling, you're not even trying at this thing."
@bhorowitz w/ @speedrun GP @andrewchen
Tom Hammer 🔨 retweeted
~1 in 3 teams we accept for speedrun are reapplicants
they use the 3-6 months between applications to:
- narrow in on a stronger idea
- find a cofounder
- get to traction
a "no" is temporary
keep building - that's all that matters
Tom Hammer 🔨 retweeted
NEW: INVESTOR ADVICE FOR APPLYING TO SPEEDRUN (SR008 EDITION)
Every cohort we sit down with our investors to hear what’s top of mind. This time @ndrewlee got in the booth with @kenanhsaleh, @emilybenn12, @seeamshahidnoor, and @tkexpress11 to talk about:
00:00 - what’s changed in apps this cycle
04:15 - team vs. market vs. traction: how we weigh them
08:14 - hot markets vs. ones that feel inevitable
10:36 - spotting the gaps the frontier models leave
13:35 - where speedrun fits in your founder journey
22:26 - how to make your application stand out
30:05 - common mistakes (AI is not your “why now”)
38:46 - the 10-min interview + co-founder dynamics
45:41 - what you get working with speedrun
SR008 apps close Nov 1. Watch the full roundtable here 👇
Tom Hammer 🔨 retweeted
ALPHA APPLICATION DEADLINE IS 12AM TONIGHT!!! Last chance to apply to the speedrun alpha fellowship, with up to $250K investment in technical students + recent grads.
👉 Alpha.a16z.com
Cannot wait to meet our next class. Could it be you 👀
Tom Hammer 🔨 retweeted
Today, I’m excited to introduce @safeworldai!
Our mission: improve robot safety for the next billion machines.
AI is moving from screens into the physical world. Robots are becoming more capable, more autonomous, and increasingly operating around people.
But more capable robots require more capable ways to test them. 🧵
Tom Hammer 🔨 retweeted
This is cube.computer:
→ a full cloud computer
→ up and running in 2 min
→ SSH in from Claude/Codex desktop/mobile
→ run builds, loops, dashboards
→ pausable, resumable, resizable
→ sexy af
Tom Hammer 🔨 retweeted
Shield AI selects Seattle area to build X-BAT autonomous fighter jet, plans to add 4,000 jobs by early 2030s geekwire.com/2026/shield-ai-…
Tom Hammer 🔨 retweeted
TypeSafe AI's Diogo Almeida with a16z's Ben Horowitz and Martin Casado on Jev, the model built to live inside software:
Diogo's elevator pitch for Jev is a simple question - where is all the automation?
AI is unbelievably smart, but outside of chatbots and coding agents, it hardly touches any real work. His diagnosis is the industry built models that generate text for humans to read, and software can't consume that output.
Jev reads natural language and returns a choice from a set of options with a confidence level assigned to each, so developers can build programs that reason about intent and make probabilistic decisions rather than relying on human interpretation.
TypeSafe's philosophy is "We build prod, not God."
0:50 "Where the f**k is all the automation?"
2:50 Jev vs. Claude Code and Codex
6:55 Jev is a classifier and classifiers are sick
7:40 Chat vs. code: is Jev a slider?
9:00 Diogo: From mathlete to Kaggle to OpenAI
12:20 "We build prod, not God"
15:55 Reliability over demos
16:55 2021 thoughts: RLHF is AGI?
20:45 Optimizing for the wrong use case
21:50 Is the real world too messy to automate?
25:00 Nobody expected the Jev launch
26:35 Three kinds of reliability
28:05 Good at syntax, bad at architecture
30:00 The inverse SaaSpocalypse
33:40 Why coding agents automate so little
36:05 Probabilistic programming returns
38:45 Jev as the UDP-to-TCP layer for AI
40:20 The 5 stages of grief for embedding AI
41:30 Utopia: AI that actually does what you mean
YouTube: youtu.be/Ut3LOjKNJaE
@CompleteSkeptic @typesafeai @bhorowitz @martin_casado
Tom Hammer 🔨 retweeted
Years ago, Gagan (@gaganbiyani) tried to hire me as an intern. It was a full-circle moment to interview him about Horowitz Andreessen Academy (@theacademysf).
Some backstory: I studied Chemical Engineering at the University of Waterloo. Waterloo is famous for its co-op program - you can't get a Bachelor's until you complete 5 internships.
Two co-ops in, I knew ChemEng wasn't my path. So I taught myself to code and set my sights on working in Silicon Valley.
A surprising number of companies were willing to interview someone with no CS degree. One of them was Sprig, with Gagan as its founder.
Once I got an offer, he got on the phone with me multiple times. He was trying to convince me to join, but what he actually did was convince me I belonged in tech.
I ended up picking a more established company (might have been my loss). But I never forgot how confident and capable he made me feel.
That's what @theacademysf is about: learning by building, and betting on capable students before they have the credentials.
Gagan spent his entire career challenging the education system. I’m so excited for him to make this bet a reality!
Interview dropping soon!
Tom Hammer 🔨 retweeted
Ben Horowitz and Erik Torenberg with Nas, Steve Stoute, and Grandmaster Caz on the Paid in Full Foundation
Caz penned rhymes that became Rapper's Delight. Even with his name in them, he got nothing.
The Paid in Full foundation honors the people who created hip-hop by making sure they're "paid in full," financially, spiritually, and culturally.
As Nas points out, money alone reads as a handout. So the grant comes attached to the honor. Each year at the foundation's Hip Hop Grandmaster Awards, pioneers are celebrated by the artists they inspired.
Caz ultimately received a five-year grant, bought a house, and left the projects. In his words: "The thing is the honor. The thing is putting you in the light that you deserve to be in."
Ben says he bought Paid in Full (the album) for $10 and got at least $5 million worth of value out of the record, with no way to pay it back.
The vision is paying the debt. Felicia Horowitz runs the foundation. She and Ben are matching donations 2.5 to 1, and every dollar goes to the artists.
paidinfullfoundation.org
0:00 Intro
1:40 The $10 album that was worth $5M to Ben
3:10 Nas: in hip-hop, you can't just give money
5:05 Why artists thought it was a scam
9:30 Caz wrote Rapper's Delight and got nothing
11:40 Roxanne Shanté: "I wanted the right award"
16:35 Dr. Dre asks to meet Kool Moe Dee and Slick Rick
18:50 Why the industry never did this
26:05 Ben: start with what's right, not what's possible
29:10 Inside the room: Grand Puba, George Clinton
32:15 The Quincy Jones Award
37:00 Scarface and Rakim talk writing for the first time
38:45 Caz: the grant got me out of the projects
43:45 What hip-hop did for Adidas, Hilfiger and Sprite
48:00 How Felicia saved Scarface's life
52:10 Quincy Jones stories, and Nas's jazz legend dad
@Nas @SteveStoute @GrandmasterCaz @bhorowitz @eriktorenberg
