Last year we launched Tolan, inspired by a vision of AI that sees you and believes in you, not one that books restaurant reservations for you. Your Tolan shows up for you at 3am when you’re alone with your newborn. On your commute when you’re anxious about the day ahead. When you just finished a new show and none of your friends have watched it yet. The people who love Tolan are parents. Caregivers. Moms in Dallas and Dads in Atlanta. People who aren’t trying to optimize and be more productive, but who simply want to feel seen and supported in their aspirations. This month more than 250k people will spend time with their Tolan. Those users have exchanged billions of messages across more than 70m conversations over the last year. Today, we're announcing $30m in additional capital from @mignano and @usv, with @khoslaventures and @rabois doubling down, bringing our total capital raised to $60m. To celebrate, we made a short film celebrating some of the ways that Tolans show up :)

design is getting easier to produce. good layouts, clean interfaces, decent typography, polished motion. the baseline keeps rising, and tools keep making execution faster. almost everything is already available on the internet now. design resources. assets. templates. typefaces. references. components. systems. inspiration. access is no longer the advantage. what matters is what you do with all of it. how you combine things. how you interpret them. what you ignore. what you change. what you make your own. and most importantly, whether any of it creates actual impact. that is where the real differentiators start: craft, taste, and point of view. craft is caring enough to notice what most people skip. taste is knowing what to remove, what to exaggerate, what deserves attention, and when something is already enough. point of view is harder. it is the reason your work feels like yours. the choices you keep making. the things you refuse to do. the references you pull from. the problems you believe are worth solving. the way you interpret the same brief differently from everyone else. ai can generate options. templates can give you structure. systems can make production faster. the internet can give everyone access to the same ingredients. but access does not create great work. judgment does. when everyone can find the same resources and use the same tools, technical ability becomes less scarce. what becomes scarce is knowing how to use them with intention. the future of design will not be won by whoever has the biggest resource folder or produces the most screens. it will belong to people who can take what is available to everyone and turn it into something only they would have made. something useful. something memorable. something that actually moves the business, product, or culture forward. the ingredients are everywhere now. the difference is you.

You have a superpower you're probably not using enough. But you should be. So let's talk about encouragement! At any time, you can just shoot a friend, or even stranger, a quick note letting them know something they made or said or did was wonderful. It might take you 30 seconds to share your appreciation and let them know what it means or how it inspired you, but to the person receiving it, it'll very likely make their day if not week. That ability, to speak a few words into existence that turns into joy for the recipient and might be remembered forever, is a superpower. For one reason or another, it feels like as we age we tend to ration our praise. I think that's stupid. It should be the opposite. One of the most powerful gifts you can give to someone is to let them know you're proud of them, or that they're doing a great job, or that you're simply glad they're in your life. So whenever you think of someone, or see something they did that you enjoyed or appreciated, tell them! Be lavish in your encouragement, and make your corner of the world that much brighter today.