New episode of the This Is Not Advice podcast... and this one surprised me. Kelsey Shwetz is a painter, and professor at Columbia and Pratt. I know her through teaching (to be specific, she teaches me to draw!). I thought I understood what she did. I did not.

Book talk next week... about how people, throughout history, have claimed to use technology to predict the future. From oracles to AI, if you will. And how we can understand this, to assert our own power. With Oxford philosopher of technology, @carissaveliz.bsky.social luma.com/8nefmidq

Before @jodikantor.bsky.social became a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, she got kicked off her college newspaper. So she knows it's not a straight line. And we're hosting Jodi on Wednesday, April 1 at 10am PT to talk about her new book... How to Start: Discovering Your Life's Work.

If you want to understand a whole occupation from snout to tail, a how-to that you can apply to your work, whatever it may be... that's what we do on the This Is Not Advice podcast. The episodes are... long. Prepare yourself :) open.spotify.com/episode/2eu4...

I need to tell you something, and please hold your eyerolls. A venture capitalist started a podcast. I know, I know… hear me out. open.spotify.com/episode/2nk8...

Heard this term for the first time today on a call -- Waymo redlining. How self-driving cars avoid low-income areas, or the companies avoid offering services in those areas, which tend to of course be communities of color. www.reddit.com/r/waymo/comm...

What if technology didn’t feel so… hollow? Some friends and I just released a manifesto about a world where tech leaves us feeling nourished (along with an evolving list of theses about how we can build it) resonantcomputing.org

All of you are deliberately mischaracterizing what Sarah Hurwitz was saying about Holocaust education. Do better.

Is your startup too small / young / cash-strapped to throw a holiday party? We're throwing one for you... Startup Festivus on Fri 12/5 in SF, now in its 11th year. 🎉 Ask to join, or share it with your favorite founder: bit.ly/StartupFesti...

Hard truths. also.roybahat.com/in-startups-...

Founders are our customers. Our North Star metric, by definition, can’t be “capital returned to our LP.” So what is it? (🧵)

In a world with AI, what will it take for people to thrive in their jobs? The only way to find out is to try. The first step: unveiling the National Academy for AI Instruction, a teacher training center led by the American Federation of Teachers, with support from Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic.

Another announcement: Mike Moritz’s SF Standard makes their first acquisition (and Mike’s first personal acquisition ever?), Charter — where the future of news meets the future of work. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/30/b... (🧵)

Typically, when a VC says they’re being transparent, it’s right before they admit they’re investing in your competitor. “Just to be honest…” TBPN asked me what it means to run the “most transparent venture fund”, and it comes back to who our customers are. (Founders!) To us, transparency means:

“Meet your founders where they are” took me to TBPN, to announce our new fund. While Fund 5 is the first fund we rang in with a gong, it’s also the same as Funds 4, and 3, and 2 and 1… fresh capital in service of our customers, the founders. 1/2

Special place in not-quite-hell-but-close for people who add an extra space after the Zoom link in the Google Calendar location IYKYK

Yes, Bloomberg Beta has a new fund to invest – our fifth. Radical change.

Unsure who needs to hear this but the new season of Ginny & Georgia is almost as good as Andor

I usually skip making a big deal of anniversaries. (I’m… terrible at celebrating?) Bloomberg Beta turns 12 today. (Teenage overconfidence will come next year.) Does that mean anything? Well, yes and no.

"Startups selling their product to startups" often ends in a phenomenon I call the customer cul-de-sac. 1/

The new Pope’s two things seem to be AI and labor unions. Seems like he’d make the perfect VC — and we’d be happy to make space for him as a GP. I bet he’d do well on TBPN.

“Which AI model should I use?” is like asking “What will my child be good at when they grow up?” Let me explain… because somebody asked me that question at an AWS event recently, and it’s a fair question. 1/

My favorite thing about Andor is the Rebellion doesn't text its supporters 10+ times a day.

Here's what all startup founders and venture capitalists in AI can learn from the appointment of the new Pope -- an American! -- today:

Tomorrow, I’ll be talking with Nobel winner Daron Acemoglu about how we can make better AI, at Stanford’s Data on Purpose event — and our conversation’s open to anyone to register at the link below. 1/4

Most people think VC stands for “Venture Capitalist” -- nope! It stands for Vibe Coder. Showing off a project I made in 15 minutes, on a plane, on my mobile -- thank you Replit. 1/

My main takeaway from the Australian elections is we need to start running muppets

At the kid's college fair. Asked the rep from Elon University if it's gotten weird

my favorite posts are the really good ones with no likes or reposts, maybe it never would have gotten the attention it deserved but here I am, communing with a superior intellect, the tree has fallen in the forest but I have heard it

Might set up a text auto-responder that answers every text STOP, because my friends will understand that's just for stopping all the political fundraising text spam

In my head at every dinner these days harpers.org/archive/1941...

Who are the most patriotic VCs?

“It’s up to all of us to fix this” Listen to Obama eloquently speak to the role and value of democratic institutions. You may have not just say you are for something, but sacrifice something, for a principle. www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8jPCTgN/

"San Francisco today is the capitol in the Hunger Games."

When you go online and see someone you once considered a pal use the word "globalist"

An AI where I can talk to a journalist's past articles

An AI that can read all my emails and texts and answer "how are you"

As Trump approaches 90 days, how’s your freedom going? Economic? Social? Still think big government is your problem? Seeing the difference between good and bad government yet?

Wow who could’ve guessed that this would happen It’s almost as if USAID was a pillar of American soft power and influence in the world It’s almost as if it was entirely predictable that America’s adversaries would work to fill the void left by USAID’s destruction

"Right now, I would give more money to ActBlue to cut off spam fundraising emails and texts than I would to fund the DNC." Smartest political donor I know (aka my wife)

Venture tip: the more specific the “Request for startup”, the more desperate the VC is to fund the thing. 1/

I’ve been waiting almost 10 years for the billion dollar, one-person startup. Okay, okay. No one wants to hear the VC who says “I was talking about <that concept> 10 years ago!!!” 1/

Every year, we hold our firm’s day of service. We bus founders and friends to the country's first high school for entrepreneurship -- the Phillip J. Patiño School of Entrepreneurship in Fresno. It’s one of my favorite days of the year. 1/

These firms -- Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, Cooley (representing Jenner) -- have courage. When you hire a law firm, would you rather have one that buckles under pressure or one that stands up straight?

I love my job in customer service. Yeah, you read that right. 1/

You know he didn't type this. Dude literally hit cut and paste and put this in a groupchat.

From like 2014-2016 I remember complaining that the world was too boring. I shouldn't have done that. Next time remind me to be grateful.

To find and support startups, we weave together a lot of threads -- what we're thinking about, what founders are telling us, TV shows we watch, what we read, what we write. So, every few weeks I write a little (don't call it a newsletter) thing to summarize that. I've written about things like: