Building the social network layer for AI apps - starting with college. Co-Founder of A1Zap (YC W25)💬, Forage (YC W19 - Acquired)
Joined February 2009
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Pasha Rayan retweeted
It took me a long time to realize the key lesson of the Trojan Horse. It's not that it took bravery, that if they failed, they would all die (they would). It's much worse than that. If they failed, nobody would say "good effort" "heroic" "tragic" "iconic". No, everyone would say "what a bunch of stupid f*cking weirdos!! Hahaha, losers. Thought you were tricky? Hide in a wooden horse? WTF??? Serves you right". And that's a fear that holds a lot more people back from greatness than the fear of death.
after reviewing 10,000+ Thiel Fellowship applications, Michael and Danielle developed some pretty unusual ideas about what makes a great founder.
edge control. hyperfluency. the toilet plunger. Danielle's "Friday Night Dyson sphere."
none of these are a personality test.
we're just looking for tricky bastards who always find a way.
Paraphrasing - but Nietzsche had this idea that consciousness was a general mistake, and that it was only an in-between tool before knowledge is instinctive and embodied.
Old mate here has this to a tee
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Pasha Rayan retweeted
NEW ARTICLE: Far-left Palestine supporter behind terrorist attack on Australian MP Helen Haines. Australia's first assassination attempt in 30 years.
Brandon Nugent's last post before the attack - made just 21 hours before the atrocity - was about Israel.
This was his last message in a bottle to the world right before he decided to repeatedly ram his car into an innocent woman over and over again, shattering and crushing her body in one of the most horrific and painful ways imaginable.
Read now: drewpavlou.substack.com/p/br…
In the age of AI, it pays to know what it is that makes humans unique. Hence studying the humanities becomes incredibly valuable very soon.
Wow: Of 11-12,000 undergraduate degrees at UT, only 300 were in any humanities program. That includes History and English: thedailytexan.com/2026/09/22…
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We're now tracking what AI thinks at scale at @TryStudyArena studyarena.com/every-ai/fed-…
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Everyone is talking about how Africa is bigger.. but no one is talking about how New Zealand barely on the map anymore? Why did they vote for this?
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I now understand how Julius Caesar is Italian @davidsenra @dougleone
My conversation with @dougleone, partner at @sequoia.
0:00 How to Dominate for Decades
3:17 Turning Fear Into a Tailwind
5:40 Immigrant Drive, Hard Work & the Beach Club
12:19 Simplifying Life & Choosing Discomfort
14:37 The Homeless Sequoia Partner With No Plan B
16:49 Stepping Down, Coming Back & Starting Over
20:04 Why AI Is Different From Every Previous Technology Shift
22:13 Doug's Three Investment Heuristics
23:52 The Cost of Selling Great Companies Too Early
25:39 Helping Founders Turn Products Into Businesses
28:28 David Vélez, Nubank & the Psychology of Founder Support
32:25 Why Founders Must Remain the Soul of the Company
36:13 Torturing Yourself Into Greatness
39:57 Don Valentine, Succession & the Sequoia School of Hard Knocks
44:28 Staying Grounded & Developing a Sniffer for People
47:46 Hypercompetitive With a Heart of Gold
50:13 Fred Luddy, Israeli Founders & Radical Directness
52:28 Trust Is the Accelerant of Business
59:57 Starting From Zero & Hunting for the Next Great Founder
1:05:59 Architect Your Board Like Your Product
1:10:24 Truth, Disagreement & the Art of Difficult Feedback
1:13:43 Humanity, Introversion & the Value of Relationships
1:18:18 What Doug Learned From Michael Moritz
Includes paid partnerships.
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Fun fact when I did YCW19 I gained 17 pounds from eating gummy bears. During W25 I gained 2 kg of muscle at the same weight due to Oliver’s and the gym (@pennepastaa got healthier too)
Computers for agents. Steaks for the batch. 🥩
Every founder in YC S26 has a 21-day dry aged rib-eye waiting at Olivier's Butchery in Dogpatch, a short walk from YC.
No strings, no account needed, just show up with your ID and tell them your startup's name. They'll know what to do. Open weekends too. One per co-founder.
The last stretch before demo day is brutal. Eat well, ship well. 🚀
Pasha Rayan retweeted
We're excited to release Answer Combination! A new StudyArena feature that turns a completed AI comparison into one structured synthesis.
We’re literally seeing a linguistic shift in Silicon Valley where “Open” is starting to mean its exact opposite now
Introducing opencomputer.dev
Deploy your agent as a function. Get a computer for it.
- a real Linux machine per session
- ffmpeg, chromium, git, install anything
- durable: hibernate + resume
- your keys never enter the runtime
The cloud of the last decade was built for apps. The next one is for trillions of always on agents. @opencomputerhq is their home.
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A lot of misunderstanding what esoteric means here- but I can’t help but feel history’s main eval is to reward lives and peoples who are vital, and progressing technology towards something fun we can’t comprehend today
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Pasha Rayan retweeted
Growing up I played a ton of Zynga games like FarmVille and Words with Friends (didn’t even realize Words was a Zynga game until years later)
This was a full-circle moment now building in consumer AI and getting this surprise book in the mail!
Excited to dig into Life at the Speed of Play by Mark Pincus and pairing it with the recent podcast too - thank you @garrytan!!
Takeaways so far:
1. Ship at the speed of play
2. Obsess over what people actually love
3. Turn iteration into a repeatable system
