Let me re-introduce myself. My name is Henri Pierre-Jacques and I am co-founder of @HarlemCapital, a fund backing the next generation of winners. My mission is to build rooms that didn't exist before. Not more seats at someone else's table, entire rooms. I was fortunate to have mentors who looked like me early in my career. That visibility changed what I believed was possible. Many never get that opportunity. You can't be what you can't see so I share my story in case someone else needs to see it. What room are you building?

How do these stores make money anymore with everything from deodorant to toothpaste to boxers being locked up? I want to go to the stores less and buy way less when I do go. Really terrible user experience

What I find most fascinating about exceptional founders isn't just what they've built, but the experiences and habits that shape how they operate. Getting to hear these stories and understand the people behind the companies is still my favorite part of investing.

LA for 24hrs 😎 Santa Monica still has it

Sunday word Prosperity isn’t about how much money you have. It’s having everything you need to fulfill what God has called you to do. Work hard, put God first, save for a rainy day, live within your means, and enjoy what you have. The goal isn’t just to accumulate wealth, but to use it well and give generously.

Beach day with my little man 😊

We do pizza Fridays as a family and I love seeing how happy my son gets. Such a small tradition but big moment for him The other day traditions include Swimming Saturdays Lollipop Sundays Soccer Mondays Guacamole Tuesdays What are others doing for small weekly traditions?

So 3 builders walk into a miami bar… @thesolonangel @hpierrejacques

Loved diving deeper with @stacyspikes oh his incredible journey building @MoviePass, being fired and then buying it back. The ultimate founder story.

Let's talk about something VCs rarely talk about publicly: our failures. The reality of venture capital is that most investments won't return the capital we put into them. Yet if you follow VCs online, you'd think every company is going from $0 to $100M in revenue or becoming a unicorn overnight. There are three types of investment failures, making less than you invested. 1. Shutdowns. This is the most common. Companies run out of runway, struggle to find product-market fit, attempt several pivots, and eventually decide to shut down. Often, this process takes much longer than it should. As investors, we sometimes recognize the likely outcome before founders do, which is understandable given how much founders have personally invested in their companies. 2. Acquisition below a 1x return. These are often acqui-hires or smaller acquisitions designed to find a home for the team and give founders a chance to move forward. Occasionally, these deals can turn into meaningful returns if the acquiring company's stock appreciates significantly. But most of the time, they represent an investment that didn't work out financially. 3. Fraud. This is the most frustrating and damaging category because it's fundamentally different from the first two. I've personally experienced two situations involving founder misconduct over the past decade. It's always shocking with diligence, references and multiple investors this can still happen. I thought it was always a lack of diligence when it happened and then I realized some people are just good at being bad. What concerns me most is how little the industry talks about these situations. I've seen founders involved in serious issues go on to raise money again, sometimes without new investors ever contacting previous investors. There are legal and confidentiality considerations, but the lack of information sharing creates opportunities for the same problems to repeat. Periods like now with an abundance of capital and intense competition can often encourage bad behavior. The reality is that most of our investments won't produce the outcomes we originally hoped for. That's the nature of taking risk in venture capital. Even the best investors get plenty wrong, and a high success rate isn't necessarily the goal if it means avoiding the risks required to generate exceptional returns. Yet our industry overwhelmingly celebrates the winners while staying quiet about everything else. We encourage founders to embrace failure, learn quickly, and be transparent about what isn't working. Shouldn't we hold ourselves to the same standard? If we're going to celebrate the wins publicly, we should be willing to discuss the losses too.

Congrats to Deon and team on the launch of Espa personal agent!

Sunday word We all want God to direct our steps, but how often do we let Him direct our spending? You have to attach discipline to desire. It doesn’t take much faith to give God what’s left. It takes faith to give Him what’s first You can give without loving, but you can’t love without giving

My friend paid $500 for a twin bed in Manhattan. NYC really needs to let @Airbnb back in, this is getting out of hand 😩

I cohosted a dinner last night with Anthropic here in Miami, called Building Hard Things. The focus was on founders in hard tech, healthcare, regulated industries, etc. Great conversation with $3B+ of company valuations at the table. It's exciting to see the ecosystem grow over the last few years to host dinners like this frequently. Very excited for Miami's future!

What I love about social media is that it can get you access to people you wouldn’t have met otherwise. I posted yesterday, saw a comment from someone that resonated, sent them a DM and we just had a 60 min zoom that was supposed to be 30 mins. I learned a ton and we just vibed out. When you produce content that is interesting for people, it leads to conversations, which leads to relationships over time.

The political ads and text messages are fully ramped up ahead of mid terms…

There is a confidence gap happening in venture capital right now. On one side, you have new portfolio companies growing at a pace we have never seen before. Companies are going from $0 to millions in revenue seemingly overnight, and the biggest AI companies are creating value at a scale that can make almost everything else feel small. I saw a chart recently showing that Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX alone could potentially generate more returns than decades of tech IPOs. Whether the exact numbers play out or not, it puts the scale of today's biggest winners into perspective. On the other side, many investors still have significant value tied up in companies from the previous cycle. Some of those companies are still growing 2–5x year over year, but they're struggling to raise capital, founders and employees are tired, and the path to the next round or exit isn't always clear. Eventually, the new companies may grow enough to outweigh the old portfolio, but we're in this weird period where both realities exist at the same time. That's creating a confidence problem for both investors and founders. You can have a company growing 5x and still feel behind. You can go from $0 to $3M to $10M and wonder why you're not moving fast enough because every week you're reading about another company going from $100M to $1B. As an investor, you can have a portfolio that is objectively performing well and still question whether it matters if you don't own one of the 3, 5 or 10 companies that ultimately define this generation. The extreme outcomes at the top are distorting our perception of what good looks like everywhere else. I don't think that means the other companies don't matter. There will be generational companies worth $10B or $25B that never become trillion-dollar companies. There will also be great funds that don't own one of the three biggest winners of this cycle. AI is here to stay, but I don't believe today's growth rates and valuation increases will continue forever. At some point th market will reset, like every cycle eventually does. The hardest thing right now is staying focused when everyone around you is talking about the outliers. For both founders and investors, the answer is the same: don't let someone else's outlier change your definition of progress. Keep building, keep investing and keep surviving. The goal isn't to win the headlines today. Its to still be building when the cycle turns. Thats where the next generation of great companies will come from.

A note to founders to not try to convince investors of your thesis. You want investor who get it, agree and will be advocates through the ups and downs

Welcome to the era of buying votes…I truly can’t believe half the stuff that is tolerated in politics now. Forget the sides, stand for democracy