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

i'm hiring extremely aggressively. published research in benchmarks, or experience with synthetic data / post-training is required. min TC of $775k/year that's dwarfed by both cash bonus + equity upside. $50k referral bonus. interview -> offer in <1 week. dm if interested.

Demo Day diet consisted mainly of Sonder fortune cookies No regrets

You had to learn to use a computer. What if it learned to be you? Introducing Sonder Labs, an applied AI lab building your digital twin. Today, we’re excited to share that a16z @speedrun is backing us. Our work starts with vision models small enough to live privately on your laptop - always on, seeing what you see. The more your twin learns about your workflows, priorities, and relationships, the less you have to explain. And when it sees a way to help, it prompts you before you prompt it. Ajit and I met deploying some of healthcare’s earliest LLM systems at Anterior. Working alongside nurses, we saw early what the rest of knowledge work is now confronting. There’s already more intelligence than we know how to use. We’re the bottleneck. The tools we use capture what we produce, but lose much of what makes it ours: the iterations and rejected options behind the final result, the taste that defines what good looks like, and the intent behind our decisions. And the work doesn’t stay still. Priorities shift, workflows evolve, and exceptions become routine. Your world can’t be described once. It has to be learned continuously. Generic models are powerful, but they can pull work toward the average. We’re betting on AI that helps people become more themselves: sharper in taste, bolder in judgment, and more distinctive in how they work. Thank you to @JoshLu for believing in our bet on open-weight models way back when it wasn’t obvious, and to @_CallMeMacy and @fromevanwang for keeping our feet on the ground and getting us in front of the right people. Oh, and we’re hiring! If you or someone you know is obsessed with on-device inference, teaching models how people work, or shaping how humans and AI work together, message us.

I've been telling my story of how we turned Bump into Google Photos to new YC founders at the start of each batch. I hope sharing it more broadly inspires even a few founders to go build the future for all the rest of us. Full video in the replies.

The people’s Group Partner 👑

One theme in the YC batch I think will actually turn out to be the main theme in this age of AI: human in the loop is here Human augmentation will be much more a prime theme than human replacement A doctor with an AI can provide far better primary care than without

My team and I are so excited to be part of @ycombinator Fall Cohort working on the most important problem in the world - healthcare. Our company, OpenClinic, helps doctors launch their own digital clinics that are 99% AI and 1% doctor. This unlocks millions of latent doctor hours worldwide, bridging the supply/demand mismatch that has always plagued healthcare. It’s an incredibly tough challenge, but as a team including 3 medical doctors, we know there’s nobody better to do it. DMs open if anyone has questions!