Benton Calder (@BentonCalder) header
Benton Calder (@BentonCalder) profile picture

Founder — Mondro Systems Building Mondro: a private AI for your home. Try Mondro for Mac 🔗 ⬇️

Kelowna, British Columbia
Joined April 2012
Photo by Benton Calder (@BentonCalder)Photo by Benton Calder (@BentonCalder)Photo by Benton Calder (@BentonCalder)Photo by Benton Calder (@BentonCalder)Photo by Benton Calder (@BentonCalder)Photo by Benton Calder (@BentonCalder)Photo by Benton Calder (@BentonCalder)Photo by Benton Calder (@BentonCalder)Photo by Benton Calder (@BentonCalder)Photo by Benton Calder (@BentonCalder)
Benton Calder retweeted
can't believe i got to skip all the early software development languages and just start with english
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Benton Calder retweeted
when I say "we" in emails, this is who I mean:
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If first you don't succeed, try again.
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Benton Calder retweeted
hey sam, your mclaren is only used 5% of the time. this is a terrible allocation of scarce resources. have you considered taking the bus to work
sam: local inference is a terrible allocation of scarce resources “a lot of people want local inference, and somehow they assume that the problem is solved now because we have open-source models, we're going to be able to run them on our computers, and so we're not going to need all the stuff in the data centre but from a global allocation perspective, actually it's quite terrible to have everybody, like, have a bunch of the world's limited supply of DRAM sitting in their own computer and being used five percent of the time you want maximum utilisation in the cloud if you're trying to deal with this very supply-constrained environment somehow many people's intuition is the opposite of that”
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Benton Calder retweeted
In 2026, "I built an app" is starting to sound a lot like "I made a PowerPoint."
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Benton Calder retweeted
RIP Patrick Stewart Never forget when he told Tua “you’re not built for the moment”
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Benton Calder retweeted
I am doing a project about elderly vibecoders If you are a vibecoder and over 25 please DM
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try PhotoSafe , on device only storage
my first iOS app, PhotoSafe 🎉 tryphotosafe.com I’m working on new features to add over this weekend and make it even better.
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Benton Calder retweeted
Qwen 3.8 27B is actually the most brilliant retarded model that I have ever used. 😅 It spends about 2/4 of its reasoning trace coming up with the most retarded ideas known to man, and then an additional 1/4 convincing itself that its ideas are completely retarded. It then manages, from the ashes of retardation, to arise towards the cleanest, most efficient, and bug-free implementation of any open-weight model of this size. It kinda works like American politics, in a way?!
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Benton Calder retweeted
I would too if I used Co-Pilot.
Bill Gates predicts a massive number of people will reject AI and choose to "live like the Amish."
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Benton Calder retweeted
every product i use should just be a headless mcp, that feeds into an agent, where i never have to think about anything underneath. except for our product, of course. in our product, customers love the ui and love us very much. we're special that way.
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can't be discussing butterfly shit with caterpillars
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Founders, how do you advertise for your macOS apps?
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Benton Calder retweeted
yeah i have a gambling addiction. i can’t stop betting on myself
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Benton Calder retweeted
Me trying to explain my vision to Claude for the 13th time.
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Benton Calder retweeted
We’re not sure the new Saturday Night Live writers will be able to make it to showtime! 😴
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Benton Calder retweeted
‘How are you so focused under pressure?’ Me in 1995:
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Benton Calder retweeted
Extremely, extremely real.
Marc Andreessen says the gap between what AI-native startups and incumbents think AI can do is the widest he’s ever seen: "The AI-native early stage startups have just a completely different view on what they can do with AI than the typical incumbents in almost any industry, almost without exception." "AI is just racing ahead in capability even week by week... There are going to be a lot of industries that are really up for grabs in a fundamentally more profound way than maybe has been the case in the past." "The founders are gonna have a level of superpowers coming from the use of these tools and these technologies that they just simply haven't had in the past... Had I had Astra and Netscape in 1994, like, oh my God. Like, Ben, what would you and I have been able to do at Netscape?" "Those entrepreneurs are gonna color way outside the lines. We already see this. They're not gonna think of themselves as like, 'I'm just a software company,' or, 'I'm just a hardware company,' or even, 'I'm just an AI company.'" @pmarca @bhorowitz
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Benton Calder retweeted
Marc Andreessen says the gap between what AI-native startups and incumbents think AI can do is the widest he’s ever seen: "The AI-native early stage startups have just a completely different view on what they can do with AI than the typical incumbents in almost any industry, almost without exception." "AI is just racing ahead in capability even week by week... There are going to be a lot of industries that are really up for grabs in a fundamentally more profound way than maybe has been the case in the past." "The founders are gonna have a level of superpowers coming from the use of these tools and these technologies that they just simply haven't had in the past... Had I had Astra and Netscape in 1994, like, oh my God. Like, Ben, what would you and I have been able to do at Netscape?" "Those entrepreneurs are gonna color way outside the lines. We already see this. They're not gonna think of themselves as like, 'I'm just a software company,' or, 'I'm just a hardware company,' or even, 'I'm just an AI company.'" @pmarca @bhorowitz
Today, a16z Crypto is becoming a16z Frontier. Since joining a16z in 2013, @cdixon has focused on technologies that look futuristic well before they reach the mainstream. Those themes led to investments in Oculus, Skydio, Zipline, Coinbase, Solana, and Uniswap. Frontier expands that mandate beyond crypto to back "outer planet" founders who are building new technologies and creating markets that may take years to develop. Chris joins @pmarca, @bhorowitz, and @eriktorenberg to discuss why crypto has become part of the broader tech landscape, why Frontier fills a hole in the firm's architecture, and why they'd rather be too early than too late. They also get into why the gap between AI-native startups and incumbents is the widest Marc has ever seen, how AI could pull forward 20 years of frontier technology, why stablecoins may become the way AI agents pay each other, how AI is breaking the internet's business model, and why today's 18-year-olds are about to become superhumans. 0:50 Introducing a16z Frontier 2:49 Smartphone parts to drones and VR 4:47 Backing the "outer planets" 7:11 Good ideas that look like bad ideas 10:43 The JP Morgan photo in Marc's office 15:13 Good tech ideas eventually work 16:53 AI may pull tech 20 years forward 18:18 The widest AI gap Marc's ever seen 22:06 Workers adopt AI before companies do 26:32 Old use cases vs. AI-native ones 30:08 Beyond "product manager brain" 34:45 AI can reverse engineer any hardware 38:23 The case for open source AI 46:36 How AI breaks the internet's model 49:11 VR, homebrew hacking, multiplayer AI 54:00 If you're 18, study "modern alchemy" YouTube: youtu.be/-9XQMHhpypc Not an offer or solicitation. None of the information herein should be taken as investment advice; Some of the companies mentioned are portfolio companies of a16z. Please see a16z.com/disclosures for more information. A list of investments made by a16z is available at a16z.com/portfolio.
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