Joined January 2009
Question for the founders re: DayOne/Valar discourse. Claimed: VCs ought to "earn" their future pro-rata. Set aside whether one should follow the docs or "customary practice" Is this your experience, that you are getting a lot more than $? $ aren't 95% of what u get?
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Occasionally, a brilliant insight or key intro, great. But good employees deliver that weekly. Rarely does the fate of the company pivot on it. Am I wrong, have I just been on bad boards? If I'm not wrong, then isn't the money mostly the thing, and "earning your place" BS?
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And for the love of god, spare us the glazing famous VCs by name in order to elevate your status by association as friend of or investee of said famous VC. I know it's not intentional but let me assure you, no smart reader fails to notice the sad insecurity of such replies.
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With all the glazing in the replies I may be alone, I have no dog in this fight, but on balance this feels like the bad behavior lies more on the company. And that's reading the company's PR! There's no reason Sequoia can't make room in the new round, no reason the company can't honor the deal it signed.
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Replying to @isaiah_p_taylor
Isaiah, after everything we’ve been through together I’m surprised that you would publicize our disagreement in this fashion. But since you have created public interest in this, it is important that people should hear both sides of the story. Day One has been a major investor in Valar from the beginning, and we have never wavered in our belief that the company will be a success. This faith and support in our founders is why fourteen Day One founders have become limited partners in Day One’s most recent fund. In 2024, Day One invested in Valar’s seed round. Later that year, Valar required a seed extension after miscalculations by management regarding the capital needs of the business. Day One stepped in to provide this seed extension, saving the company in a difficult time. When it came time to raise a Series A, Valar spent several weeks on the market without success. At Valar’s request, Day One then offered the first term sheet and co-led the Series A, again saving the company during a time when deep tech startups in highly regulated industries were a difficult sell in venture capital. Then when Valar needed a Series A extension, Isaiah asked that Day One waive our pro rata rights so as to make a tenuous financing deal work out. We agreed for the good of the company. As part of these transactions, Valar agreed that, if their long-shot effort to build nuclear energy as a startup did succeed, Day One would have rights to participate in future rounds that could not be eliminated without Day One’s consent. This was a fair bargain at a time when Day One took extraordinary risks by betting against the market when Valar’s future appeared highly uncertain. Following the achievement of criticality on June 18th, our faith has been validated. Valar went from being an obscure company to a hot startup. We congratulate the Valar team on their hard won success! Of course, when it came time for Valar to raise a Series B after achieving such success, Day One expected to participate in that round – as both parties had agreed. But at this point the normally positive communications between Day One and Valar took a negative turn. Valar insisted that Day One give up all of its future pro rata rights despite the parties’ agreements, and despite four out of six major investors participating in the Series B round without waiving. This went against both the letter and the spirit of our deal, so we did not agree. In decades of investing we have waived pro-rata rights dozens of times, but no other company has ever demanded that we give up all of our rights for all future rounds. We told Isaiah we would give up a majority of our pro-rata in the Series B round so as to not make his life difficult, to which he responded “You cannot make my life difficult, I can make your life difficult.” It was at this point that we sought representation with Quinn Emanuel to protect the firm and the interests of our limited partners. Day One has since learned of a significant secondary equity sale by Isaiah from which we were excluded. Our attempts to gain insights into this through our information rights have been stymied by Valar management, who have refused to produce material documents requested by Day One. After weeks of delay on these documents, Valar management alerted us this Wednesday that they intend to pursue legal action against Day One unless we waive our legal rights forever. We have always pursued positive and mutually beneficial relationships with all of our portfolio companies. We have neither taken nor threatened legal action against Valar, and in fact we told them explicitly that we have no interest in doing so. Valar voluntarily entered into a contract with Day One, then violated that contract, and is now suing Day One. We are deeply disappointed by this recent erratic turn, but are still proud of our early and continued support of Valar. We look forward to the clarity from the courts that Valar’s management is seeking.
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USV is a legend for being thesis driven and right. Consumer/social in 2005 was contrarian, right and huge- twitter, tumblr etc. put them on the map and glad to see they’re not losing that. 2026: AI, data, energy, robots— these guys are ahead of the game again, just watch they’ll be proven right, give it time.
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Met Sigil when he was just 18 via @naval .. amazing how big he thinks and how fast he creates.
Introducing Underdog, your Private Personal AI on devices you already own Today we're announcing our backing from @a16z @khoslaventures @HummingbirdVC Anthology (@AnthropicAI @MenloVentures) @patrickc @naval @rauchg @polynoamial @Thom_Wolf @Mascobot @tszzl @OfficialLoganK and other top AI leaders Our mission is to provide free, capable, reliable and private AI to billions of people. Underdog’s Law: today’s frontier intelligence reaches your devices in six months. We’re starting with fast, capable AI that runs on consumer hardware. By co-designing models and inference engines, we’re pushing the frontier of capability, speed, power and data efficiency. Our research also spans agentic commerce, confidential inference, and how AI will reshape the internet economy. Privacy and capability no longer needs to be a tradeoff. If you believe in this future, join us. Time to build.
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🄹🄳🄷 retweeted
Anyone can get my friend’s real SSN from Claude I'm Terrified of my data in training sets. Emails in databases. iMessages harvested. Cant trust the cloud as AI is crazy good at hacking So I built Underdog for myself: on-device AI OS. Capable & 100% local. now my friends love it
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Wit Capital IPO allocations in 1998, pinged the hell out of their site. Got the GS IPO among others! Good times I miss the elation of getting a few hundred shares of an underpriced IPO and flipping them and the money mattered.
10,000 vibe coders have written Resy sniper bots and Instinct obv has shipped their version, too. What they all do is hit Resy’s services many many times looking for time-based reservation drops and availability churn associated with cancellations. That’s how they all work. There isn’t anything clever or proprietary happening. Sometimes they work. But there’s a but 🧵
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Current deal pricing requires many more $10B+ exits than we've had in the past. My instinct is to fade this, but seeing Cursor/Hugging/OpenRouter/Altruist all in the last couple of weeks...maybe? used to $20m entry, hard to swallow $2B, when most writing call option with OPM
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🄹🄳🄷 retweeted
45DF
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45DF slowly dripping out into the world, see the video for a peek at the physical component of this project, painstakingly designed and assembled by @kimasendorf
I have to admit: I managed to get my hands on a piece by @kimasendorf (commissioned by @jdh). 45DF #96 is in the vault now. I love everything about it—the unmistakable digital language of Kim, the physical object, even the wild packaging. This piece has a special place in my collection, and it always will. And maybe I played the tiniest part in how all of this came to be. That’s what many people don’t understand: if you collect for the right reasons, you’re so much more than a buyer. You can’t help but engage with artists, open doors, and support where you can. Something grows—something far more complex than what’s visible from the outside. For me, this work also stands for that complexity. Thank you, Kim. (And of course @jdh as well.)
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45DF: A new NFT project by one of the best artists working in digital today, @kimasendorf. Just deployed this morning, a project conceived and begun in May 2024! It is spectacular, scaled small or large!
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This is my third NFT commission, after tremendous projects with @MacTuitui "24 Heures" and @msoriario "variaciones del yo". All 3 projects explore themes in digital art that compel me -- disorder, decay, and time. They all evolve, unique to digital - rather than still images.
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One limitation of the first two projects was the question of how recipients could enjoy the art. The evolution and motion are fundamental but you can't make a print and hang it on your wall. @kimasendorf solved this, the result is compelling and I hope many get to experience it!
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