The earlier you internalize this, the better: as a founder -- especially at pre-seed/ seed -- you are in a state of accelerated senescence. The expected outcome of thousands of pre-seed investments made in a year is *instant death.* The second you quit your job and the wire

Good morning! Continuing my pre a16z speedrun 🧊 demo day tradition of getting shots up before the pitches. See you all at DD!

. a16z speedrun 🧊 Demo Day was a movie. Founders crushed it, the team crushed it, the vibes were immaculate. Feeling proud and tired and happy, but more importantly grateful to get to work alongside the best team in the biz.

Choose your leaderboard wisely: what you measure is who you are Everybody keeps score in some way Some people track workouts. Others track which countries they've visited, their sleep quality, time with family, date nights, calories etc This is true in startups too. Some

Talking to a SR005 team tonight. They just launched and didn't have time to put together a clean dashboard, so they shared a snapshot of how their marketplace is going... 80% D1 retention GMV from $0-->$3K/day in 2 weeks Cash flow positive Insane user love This... is PMF?

We tell founders to put in the work and try to find warm intros to investors they'd like to work with: I got a LI message this AM from someone who *interviewed* at the co I was at in *2011* (I didn't personally interview). They were recommending their *neighbor* for a16z speedrun 🧊

Hell of a reminder in here to just keep building, keep building, keep building. Before PMF, after PMF, repeat for multiple product lines. Congrats Alex Bouaziz and the whole team!

no granola this morning, now superhuman is down. monday trying to send me a message that i'm working hard to ignore

Caught up with the team this morning. Up to 25K MAU (and 17K DAU!!) Me: what the hell guys that's crazy The team:

You mad geniuses Eckler ✦ Wiz 👨‍🚀

Being talent greedy is a key trait of great organizations. The founders I most admire and enjoyed working with have all exhibited this.

The downside of lacking talent greediness is talked about often. B players hire C players etc. But talent greediness compounds upwards too. The best people have infinite options and tend to understand that talent density + ability to learn and be their best selves is everything.

SF friends - where can I find an early morning pickup basketball run that *starts* between 5-6:30a?

The answer was the Presidio Y

Well that’s certainly one form of personalization…

A few observations from mobile DAU and downloads estimates for ChatGPT vs. Gemini: 1/ Gemini had a huge influx of downloads in late Aug + early September (nano banana, Gemini integration into chrome) but that pop has already started to drop. 2/ ChatGPT DAU plateauing at ~350M

Guild Wars was my favorite MMO by FAR. I got some crap about this when I interviewed at Blizzard. It is VERY cool to see the game back online, and even better that it was made possible by a a16z speedrun 🧊 company (cc Brandon Dillon Foge Wan Kenobi)

I stopped being able to wear airpods as soon as they changed form factor from simple plastic to having ear tips. I get all the benefits of noise cancelling and comfort etc etc but none of the ear tips fit my weirdly shaped ears (and I've tried a LOT, repeatedly) Advice?

We asked a16z's investors for their takes on the biggest problems builders will tackle in 2026. Here's part 1 of Big Ideas 2026: a16z.news/p/big-ideas-20…

Excited to share that I’ve joined a16z as an Investment Partner. I’ll be focusing on early-stage investing as part of a16z a16z speedrun 🧊, where we invest $1M in new startups and help them scale. I first got to know a16z when I joined Lyft in 2019, where the firm was a major