The progression of building Applied Research Organizations and how venture capital may be changing science and research development forever
The Venturification of Research & The Resulting Prisoner’s Dilemma
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Robotics FOMO, Scaling Laws, & Technology Forecasting
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Observing what the rapid rise of conviction in AI disrupting robotics says about technological forecasting, company building, and investing in 2024.
The Shifting Dynamics & Meta-Moats of AI
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Analyzing where we are in the current AI cycle and navigating the meta-moats over the short to long-term that impact company building.
Expected Value In Crypto & Building Infinite Blockspace
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I recently re-read three fantastic (and imo canonical) older crypto posts that shaped a lot of how people think about value capture in crypto (Fat Protocols, Thin Applications, and Crypto Tokens and the Coming Age of Protocol Innovation). via Power Laws & Normal Distribution in Crypto The original fat protocol thesis is well understood in terms of L1 value accrual, but it also meant that you...
Collective Intelligence, Multi-Agent Debate, & AGI
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What magical trick makes us intelligent? The trick is that there is no trick. The power of intelligence stems from our vast diversity, not from any single, perfect principle. Marvin Minsky The Frontiers of Increasing AI Performance There has been a lot of work done on pushing the performance of machine learning with the structure of transformers + scaling in the past few years. Alongside this, AI...
AI Agents, Product Velocity, & User Interfaces
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I kind of thought of the UI as the product and then machine learning came along and the Machine learning was there to sort of help the UI and that shifted completely. Now AI is the product and the UI is there to to help the AI to capture better signal. — Gustav Söderström, Co-President, CPO & CTO at Spotify, Source It’s very clear that some version of the future includes a world where...
Category Creation & Capital in technology
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I believe one of the most damaging pieces of advice to proliferate in the tech world over the past few years has been “being early is indistinguishable from being wrong”. There are many reasons why this is true in theory but as I’ve talked about for years, at this stage of technology development and penetration, whether you’re a technologist or capital allocator, if you’re not too early, you’re...
Open Source AI Business Models & Brand Moats
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How business models differ in Open-Source AI versus traditional OSS + thoughts on how Brand Moats are increasingly important in AI broadly.
The Importance of Founder Pedigree In Emerging Technologies
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When an area becomes consensus but is still somewhat novel or hard to parse for investors, they often try to distill companies into very clear-cut and easily “findable” metrics in order to make decisions. In many cases, this wave of chaos, rapid change, and complexity pushes investors to retreat into discussing a constant in startups; Founders. And as one searches for Founder-Company...
The Dark Forest of R&D and Capital Deployment in AI
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AI companies today find themselves in multiple cycles of R&D and commercialization, making an implicit bet that the millions or billions of dollars spent on R&D will eventually lead to market domination and massive scale years from now. This pushes these companies into a dark forest they must navigate
Narrative Cycles & Conviction in Technology
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What tracking changes in narratives tells us about conviction, depth, and emotions during times of exuberance and volatility
Company Building in the Curiosity Phase of AI
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Navigating go-to-market, product, and customers during the most dangerous phase of an emerging category.
Power Laws & Normal Distributions in Crypto’s Future
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Power laws rule everything around us. This is a core principal of what we have largely come to learn in a world dominated by this narrative, which has also helped proliferate the concept of Asymmetric Upside. Within traditional tech/Web2, due to the compounding nature of moats (most notably network effects) and duopolistic markets, it is often assumed that outcomes follow a colloquial power law...
Talent, Value Distribution, & Liquidity in Crypto Protocols
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the greatest trick valley vc's played was to make employees believe their options were worth the tradeoff in present income, lifestyle, liquidity and flexibility of employmentcrypto fixes this— Meta DAOdas (@mdudas) November 7, 2021 There has long been discussion and divisiveness on startup equity in crypto. Most recently signified by Mike Dudas’ tweet above surrounding how crypto...
Adjacent Governance: The future of power, strategic positioning, and existential threats in a decentralized world
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In technology, the concept and cycles of bundling and unbundling are well-understood. Historically what we have seen is that at very early stages, unbundling occurs, until some early primitives and use-cases are understood, which then results in bundling often due to necessity to level set a user experience or to kickstart true usage. As a given platform matures, unbundling then occurs to...
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