contrary to what i used to believe, the further i go in life / business, the more i crave giving and receiving authenticity

overheard in silver lake: the only real things in life are land and time

In "Confession" episode 2, Dara Khosrowshahi reveals a mistake from years ago that still bugs him. He opens up about hitting rock bottom as Uber CEO. Dara and I are cousins and share many stories from growing up together. I love his candor and humility. Enjoy!

I knew Satya Nadella long before he became Microsoft CEO. He was my boss after Microsoft bought my startup in 1998. In the debut of my podcast, "Confession," Satya shares lessons about empathy, courage, and taking on risk as a leader. And I make a confession of my own. Enjoy!

Neo backed Mecka in our seed so we’ve seen them operate at this level of excellence first hand Support, beyond obligation, naturally means founders give back, sing your praises to new founders and want to maximize your aura to create legends

Smart. I think it’s in everyone’s interest (including early investors) to follow suit.

It's a rainy Sunday in NYC, so I'll jump in. Excellent post from @conconconling and an admirable approach to pro rata rights from @neo. They have earned their status in the market and are likely able to take this stand without losing their ability to follow-on in winners, and deservedly so. The increasing concentration of capital in venture markets makes the pro-rata issue harder to solve, as there is a well-founded fear that giving up these rights will inevitably privilege megafirms over boutiques. The large platforms have the most leverage and the sharpest elbows, and their participation is required to achieve the desired outcome. We at @shinecapital use pro-rata rights as a signal of our intent rather than a contractual guarantee. We want entrepreneurs to understand our approach: namely, that we seek to concentrate capital in exceptional companies, and we have the will and means to do so. While this may seem obvious to some, the more venture consolidates, the more important it is to stipulate one’s position early. Asking for these contractual rights and having the discussion necessary to secure them is currently the best opportunity to communicate and signal one's investing approach to entrepreneurs clearly. All that said, @neo's conclusion is undoubtedly true: pro rata rights are earned, not guaranteed, irrespective of whatever an investment contract stipulates. Anyone who has been in VC long enough (👋) knows this to be true. While contracts signal intent, successful entrepreneurs always hold the cards, and fund managers must play the long game rather than optimize for the short term if they want to compound their reputation positively over time. One note to entrepreneurs, if I may be so bold. Your earliest backers believe in you before it is obvious. When they are right, they win by doubling down, but they need your help to do so. While large firms often try to muscle their way around your cap table, they will, in my experience, capitulate to your desires for the same reason we all should—over the long term, reputation and integrity trump all. So when someone supports you early, with money and time, please consider going to bat for them on allocations. It matters a lot, and you have more control than you may realize in determining round construction. The pro-rata issue is a classic collective action problem. Until the industry as a whole agrees to give up these rights, it will be very challenging to get individual firms to do so, especially those with the most to lose. This reminds me of the noble effort my @sparkcapital partner @bijan successfully led to largely eliminate non-competes for founders. It involved both bottom-up participation and top-down legislative work. With the right effort and leadership, it is doable. In the interim, all parties must understand that rights are a signal, not a guarantee. Transactions are messy and require prudence and compromise. Entrepreneurs are the tip of the spear in venture capital, and our job is to serve them rather than put our interests ahead of theirs. We designed @shinecapital to align as closely as possible with the entrepreneurs we are privileged to work with, including how we handle pro-rata rights in complex transactions to ensure our entrepreneur-partners can achieve their objectives. I, for one, am happy to join the effort to eliminate contractual pro-rata rights if and when it reaches critical mass amongst the larger venture platforms. This is a great opportunity for leadership. We are standing by. 🫡

Today @MeckaAI is announcing a $60M Series B from @sequoia to accelerate the advent of general purpose robotics This brings our total funding to over $120M to become the data and deployment layer for physical AI Read more below 🧵

Built something fun, excited to open-source it today Agent outputs are unreliable. An output can match a valid JSON schema but its semantics can still be wrong lore adds deterministic guardrails to validate agent output against the rules and state of your world

Are robots ready to accelerate science labs? We created the WetLabs Benchmark to test 9 critical tasks, from easy to hard, and let 3 leading models take 20 attempts per task Astra leads but it comes close...

hosting a private robotics dinner with @jasontheutopian of @MeckaAI in sf on weds 9/23 if you are curious about building at the frontier of data and deployment for physical ai, dm us! 🤖🧤

@appliedcompute is the best actual Post-training/Finetuning company I came across in a long while. No relationship with them - just feel like people doing good job deserve a shoutout.

blue is our favorite color 🥶

one day you’re just super close friends. a few months later you’re cofounders. and before you know it, you may go from hating large events with speakers to speaking at large events yourself 😌

Sapien is the engine behind the world’s most important companies. Today, we’re announcing our latest fundraise at a $180M valuation. We build systems that learn how complex businesses work, enabling financial & operational optimization for the people who build everything else.

think really highly of so many of the contrary vps I've met -- seems like an incredible community for college students interested in startups!

growing up in china, i listened to loads of mandarin / cantonese ballads, which is the predominant genre there and casts this melancholy undertone over life although i've rotated out of that over the last 10 years in the u.s., re-listening to those songs brings back more than nostalgia it's oddly comforting how they collapse time and stitch my current self back to my roots, even though sometimes they feel lightyears apart -- the continuity reminds me that i'm real and didn't end up living in someone else's body

quitting your job / incorporating a business entity makes you a founder, that’s easy but being a CEO means finding joy in making potentially uncomfortable self-discoveries to constantly improve -- that’s very hard!