Engineer, Founder, VC. Lettuce Grow Farmer, GP @StructureVC, Investor in Zero Waste, SaaS & Marketplaces & Good Humans. Mascot of Life. OBI LIFE.
San Francisco, CA
Joined June 2007
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- Following3.1K
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Jacob Shea retweeted
My amazing dad, Bill Draper died yesterday. He was the best! We were so lucky to have him with us as long as we did. I know he touched many of your lives.
Jacob Shea retweeted
I get LOTS of questions about deploying DSPy programs, so @isaacbmiller1 and I built dspy-cli: a tool that serves DSPy programs as HTTP APIs with Docker config, OpenAPI specs, MCP support, and more.
Here's a quick intro:
Jacob Shea retweeted
"Context is the Defensible Moat: A generic LLM is a commodity; your business context is what makes your application defensible, because domain knowledge is the most valuable asset." - Yuanzheng Zhu, Instacart
Couldn't agree more.
Customizing AI systems with the internal knowledge of how a company works is the core of great AI software.
tech.instacart.com/building-…
Jacob Shea retweeted
We asked @ttunguz (Partner @theoryvc) about the value of data and feedback loops in AI.
"Initially, there's a lot of value in having access to proprietary data like YouTube or GitHub Copilot with initial access to GitHub. I think over time the more valuable and rare data asset is the feedback loop."
"This is also particularly true for distillation. Deepseek was hitting a bunch of APIs and copying really quickly."
"The larger the number of users you have and the greater the telemetry, the better the advantage."
Jacob Shea retweeted
New episode! This time with @jaentwistle, CEO of @wander who earned 200k on his waitlist alone. Impressive idea and even more impressive founder.
Full breakdown of how he's scaling here:
01:40 The Idea For A Efficient Vacation Rental Management Platform
05:42 The Business Growth Strategies at Wander
07:05 Solving The Supply Problem
11:53 Transition to Third-Party Inventory Strategy
20:17 Transaction vs. Subscription Revenue Models in Software
27:48 Visionary Hiring Culture at Wander
29:58 How Exceptional Service Elevates Wander's Customer Experience
Jacob Shea retweeted
We just led the $4.5M seed round of Potato. Because we at @drapervc believe that accelerating science, and unlocking runaway knowledge production, is a bigger unlock than the internet itself.
@readysetpotato 🥔 is building autonomous AI scientists: agents that can read research, form hypotheses, design experiments, and run them across code and chemistry.
This is how we 10x the pace of life sciences research and unlock discoveries that would’ve taken decades - at a fraction of the cost.
This is end-to-end, closed-loop science.
Faster, cheaper, and infinitely scalable.
→ Literature reviews, automated
→ Protocols, generated
→ Experiments, executed
→ Results, reproducible
Potato is already powering research at MIT, Stanford, Harvard, Caltech, Berkeley, and beyond.
Congrats to Nick Edwards, PhD (@Nick___Edwards) and Ryan Kosai (@rkosai). Your vision has the potential to redefine how humanity discovers.
Read more via GeekWire:
geekwire.com/2025/startup-ai…
Jacob Shea retweeted
MCP 🤝 OpenAI Agents SDK
You can now connect your Model Context Protocol servers to Agents: openai.github.io/openai-agen…
We’re also working on MCP support for the OpenAI API and ChatGPT desktop app—we’ll share some more news in the coming months.
Jacob Shea retweeted
When people (usually LPs) tell me how capital intensive hardware is I ask them how much their favorite software company has raised. I'm glad someone made the table. It isn't that hardware isn't capital intensive, it's that software is regularly _even more_ capital intensive.
Jacob Shea retweeted
There's a new kind of coding I call "vibe coding", where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists. It's possible because the LLMs (e.g. Cursor Composer w Sonnet) are getting too good. Also I just talk to Composer with SuperWhisper so I barely even touch the keyboard. I ask for the dumbest things like "decrease the padding on the sidebar by half" because I'm too lazy to find it. I "Accept All" always, I don't read the diffs anymore. When I get error messages I just copy paste them in with no comment, usually that fixes it. The code grows beyond my usual comprehension, I'd have to really read through it for a while. Sometimes the LLMs can't fix a bug so I just work around it or ask for random changes until it goes away. It's not too bad for throwaway weekend projects, but still quite amusing. I'm building a project or webapp, but it's not really coding - I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy paste stuff, and it mostly works.
Jacob Shea retweeted
You don't need to pay $200 for AI.
We're launching Open Operator - an open source reference project that shows how easy it is to add web browsing capabilities to your existing AI tool.
It's early, slow, and might not work everywhere. But it's free and open source! 🔗👇
Jacob Shea retweeted
Do Emerging VC Fund of Funds make sense for LPs despite the extra fees?
FoFs provide diversification, access to quality managers, and ease the burden of due diligence—yet many investors question whether these benefits outweigh the fees and loss of control.
Looking at PitchBook data from 2010-2020, the dispersion among sub-$250M venture funds is massive—4200 bps between top and bottom deciles. So, picking the right managers isn't just about returns; it's about avoiding underperformance and uncompensated risk.
In my blog (linked in comments), I break down 3 ways investors can build EM portfolios, and the economic realities of each. LMK what you think.
3 approaches
DIY approach
Hiring an in-house professional
"Hiring" a FoF manager
Jacob Shea retweeted
1) I was recently asked by another GP how equal develops its theses, so I wanted to share some light on this process
This isn't JUST about developing a thesis, its about developing a "Prepared Mind", which is the core of what we do at @EqualVentures 🧵
newsletter.equal.vc/p/how-eq…
Jacob Shea retweeted
Tonight's Lookout Livestream talked about dealing with the aftermath of disasters, and about maintaining mental health through the long slog of recovery. Here is a clip. The rest of the stream is up on The Lookout, here. the-lookout.org/2025/01/12/t…
Jacob Shea retweeted
Next week’s Climate Capital Summit is set:
• $600B of climate capital managed by the speakers
• >$300B of the U.S. federal budget dedicated to climate managed by speakers
• CEOs representing >$60B of market capital presenting
• >$1T of climate capital managed by attendees
Jacob Shea retweeted
Announcing Patron's $100M Fund II
We’re excited to announce Patron Fund II, a $100M seed-stage fund dedicated to supporting founders building for the next generation of consumers. This new fund is shaped by our experience as early builders and investors at Andreessen Horowitz, Riot Games, and Discord, along with insights from the past three years since launching our first fund.
Our journey has made it clear that tomorrow’s most transformative companies will serve the hundreds of millions growing up on platforms like Roblox and Discord. Games have always been at the forefront of consumer tech adoption, and we’re dedicated to supporting visionary founders who use this gaming lens to build venture-scale businesses across all verticals.
The name Patron reflects the kind of firm we strive to be—one that offers unwavering support to founders. With our experience scaling category-defining companies, we bring unique expertise in designing products that engage people for thousands of hours, while guiding founders through every step of their journey.
We exclusively lead seed rounds to stay deeply involved from the start through to scale. As patrons, we empower builders to create something lasting.
If you’re a founder who shares this vision, we’d love to connect.
Amber, Brian, & Jason