Daniel J Hunter

Today we’re announcing SPC Fund IV: $575M to help founders find their life’s work. A decade of guiding founders through -1 to 0 brings @SPC to $2B in AUM and, more importantly, a 1200 member community of the world’s most talented technologists. We strongly believe that: → The person comes before the idea. At -1, generational founders are often busy reading, prototyping, discarding, and earning the right to their own conviction. → Ambition is social. The people you surround yourself with in the early days play a big part in inflecting your ambition. → Patience compounds. It is better to work on something you have deep conviction in rather than simply sprint at the first idea. The quiet months we protect at the beginning have produced three funds in the top 10% of their vintages, and companies like @baseten, @GammaApp, @render, @GoodfireAI, @LumaLabsAI, and @profound. We are proud to have worked with all these founders in their -1 phase and beyond. While we defined -1 to 0, we're no longer bound by it. Fund IV allows us to partner with companies well beyond launch. We're doing this now because we've never seen a wider gap between what's possible and what's being attempted. Intelligence is abundant. The cost of trying ideas keeps falling, and problems that seemed insurmountable a few years ago are quickly becoming solvable. To our members, to the founders who trusted us before anyone else did, and to the LPs who had conviction in our own -1 journey: thank you. This milestone belongs to you as much as to us. To the builders looking to find your life’s work: let’s get started.

Every founder I meet worries about missing this moment. The best worry about wasting it. There’s a difference. It’s a waste to ignore how much the world has changed. It’s a waste to think you can capture value with pure software the same as 5 years ago. It’s a waste to build something small. We have seen the shift slowly and then very quickly at @spc. Here’s who we want in the Founder Fellowship now: hardware tinkerers, mad scientists, obsessives, biohackers, people who build nuclear reactors in their basements. People who want to get their hands dirty and touch grass and atoms. If you are only building software, then please (for your own sake!) have a thesis that all your friends laugh at you about. Heresy is the price of ambition. Then put yourself in the right environment to maximize your ambition. (Apply by August 2nd)