Cofounder/CEO @HiHello 👋 Cofounder @CartaInc 🥧 Chief Firestarter @K9Ventures 🦮 OG Pre-Seed Investor @lyft @twilio @auth0 @lucidchart @everlaw @forethought_ai
Palo Alto, CA
Joined April 2008
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Almost every meaningful event that occurs in the world has happened because humans connected. In an unromantic sense, the progress of humanity has been built on real human relationships. Is this all about to change because of AI?
Dr. Manu Kumar 👋🏽 retweeted
Effective Immediately, all organizations using PHP for their systems are advised to be prepared for an update addressing two critical vulnerabilities. PHP is widely used for web applications. These vulnerabilities often provide a direct path to the server's file system or database. If an immediate update is not feasible, it is recommend that organizations take the system offline until it can be fully mitigated. NSA will follow up shortly with more specific guidance.
Sometimes startups are like Churchill's supposed line about Americans: you can always count on them to do the right thing, after they've tried everything else.
I am not the fastest reader. I hear the words as I read them, and that slows me down. So I learned how to skim and connect the dots between concepts as I skim.
With AI, being able to read fast has become a superpower. My son has this superpower, and I always marvel at the pace at which he can read.
Now when I see a long-form article, I keep wishing there was a way to just download it into my brain (high bandwidth) rather than feeding it word by word through my eyes (low bandwidth).
We'll get there too.
Dr. Manu Kumar 👋🏽 retweeted
Lots of VCs kindof sound like this: "Your basketball team doesn't have a moat, any healthy human can throw the ball into the basket thingy. "
People who have not run companies before don't understand how much the team matters more than some imagined structural moat.
Dr. Manu Kumar 👋🏽 retweeted
About pre-seed/seed
Real Madrid can buy almost any established star in the world. That doesn’t mean they are automatically the best academy for discovering a 15-year-old before anyone knows his name. Those are different muscles.
Pre-seed and seed aren’t Series A with smaller checks.
But calling ourselves specialists isn’t enough. Only the best will survive!
Dr. Manu Kumar 👋🏽 retweeted
Categorically vote No on every new city and state tax on the ballot in California.
There is no funding shortage. It’s just fraud.
California is losing at least $50 billion a year to fraud, so even under the most optimistic assumptions, the “wealth tax” will only collect enough to pay California’s fraud budget for 7 months.
I didn't know it was International Sloth Day until a sloth showed up in my own email signature, warning me not to let my follow-up move like one. Marketing updated the banner once, and now it's on every email everyone at HiHello sends. Speed to lead matters. 🦥
Dr. Manu Kumar 👋🏽 retweeted
Saved you some time!
Here's how I filled out my 2026 California General Election ballot:
Governor: Steve Hilton
Lieutenant Governor: Gloria Romero
Secretary of State: Don Wagner
Controller: Herb Morgan
Treasurer: Jennifer Hawks
Attorney General: Michael Gates
Insurance Commissioner: Ben Allen
Superintendent of Public Instruction: Sonja Shaw
Prop 1 ❌
Prop 2 ❌
Prop 3 ❌
Prop 4 ❌
Prop 5 ❌
Prop 37 ❌
Prop 38 ✅
Prop 39 ✅
Prop 40 ❌
Prop 41 ✅
Prop 42 ✅
Prop 43 ✅
Prop 44 ❌
Don’t wait for Election Day! Drop off your ballot NOW and spend the next two weeks getting everyone you know to do the same.
Dr. Manu Kumar 👋🏽 retweeted
I was born in Paris. And it pains me to see how decades of delusional policies and tragically upside-down incentive systems rewarding losers instead of good people are now resulting in what can only be seen as the fall of the Republic.
Dr. Manu Kumar 👋🏽 retweeted
Dior had no faith in the French police to protect their store so they brought in their own security team to protect the flagship store in Paris tonight
Tesla and Porsche both announced new vehicles. The Tesla can fly and do backflips while the Porsche CEO says the motor that powers their new model is “still a secret” 🤦🏽♂️
Such a boneheaded move by @amazon to block bots for shopping. The reduction in friction will actually cause people to order more, not less.
Dr. Manu Kumar 👋🏽 retweeted
Many of the super high valuation early stage rounds that are announced have 2-tiered structures. Large firms have adopted the strategy to artificially inflate valuations and the perception of success and traction (king-making) and at the moment it is working for founders. For example, we will invest $10M at $100M and $50M at $1B. They are buying 15% ownership with $6OM, so the effective valuation is $400M, but the announced round is at $1B. That is all fine, except the lead is investing at $400M while the existing investors are asked to do their pro rata and invest at $1B. It will be interesting to see how this plays out over time.
Dr. Manu Kumar 👋🏽 retweeted
American capitalism’s quality of life is so high that a sitting Senator considers a hot sauce merger to be a matter of national importance.
Hellmann's mayo
McCormick spices
Cholula hot sauce
Frank's RedHot
What do these products have in common? One company could soon control them all.
I have concerns that McCormick and Unilever's $45 billion merger could increase YOUR grocery prices.
Dr. Manu Kumar 👋🏽 retweeted
Grok Voice 3.0 is now the world’s leading conversational voice model
SpaceXAI’s Grok Voice 3.0 is the new leading Speech to Speech model, debuting at #1 on the Artificial Analysis Speech to Speech Index at 86.9, while also being competitive on latency
Grok Voice 3.0 is @SpaceXSI 's successor to Grok Voice 2.0, a Speech to Speech model available through the SpaceXAI Realtime API at $0.08 per minute. We evaluated Grok Voice 3.0 with the Rex voice through the SpaceXAI Realtime API.
Key takeaways:
➤ Speech to Speech Index: Grok Voice 3.0 debuts at #1 at 86.9, ahead of GPT-Live-1 (Astra, medium) at 83.2, Gemini 3.8 Live Extended Thinking (High) at 82.6 and GPT-Live-1 (Sol, low) at 80.1. It is up on Grok Voice 2.0 at 81.3 (+5.6 points) and Grok Voice 1.0 at 73.7 (+13.2 points), released just under six months ago. The Index averages Speech Reasoning (Big Bench Audio), Agentic Performance (Tau Voice), Arena Preference, and Task Success Rate
➤ Speech Agent Arena: Grok Voice 3.0 ranks #3 in preference at Elo 1070, behind Gemini 3.1 Flash Live Minimal (1100) and Gemini 3.8 Live (1088) and ahead of GPT-Live-1 (Sol, low) at 1057, and #1 on Task Success Rate at 94.8%, highest on the board, just ahead of Grok Voice 2.0 at 94.6%. Grok Voice 2.0 trails at Elo 1011
➤ Tau Voice: Grok Voice 3.0 takes the #2 spot on our Tau Voice benchmark implementation at 71.6%, behind GPT-Live-1 (Astra, medium) at 74.5% and ahead of Gemini 3.8 Live Extended Thinking (High) at 68.6% and GPT-Live-1 (Sol, low) at 59.3% - up from 56.5% for Grok Voice 2.0
➤ Big Bench Audio: Grok Voice 3.0 scores 98.5% on audio reasoning, ahead of Gemini 3.8 Live Extended Thinking (High) at 97.7% and Grok Voice 2.0 at 97.2%
➤ Speed: Average Time to First Audio on Big Bench Audio is 0.81 seconds for Grok Voice 3.0, well ahead of GPT-Live-1 (Sol, low) at 1.24s, GPT-Live-1 (Astra, medium) at 1.34s and Gemini 3.8 Live Extended Thinking (High) at 1.35s, though slower than Grok Voice 2.0 at 0.70s
➤ Cost: Grok Voice 3.0 costs $4.80 per hour of input audio, the same as Grok Voice 2.0. That is above GPT-Live-1 (Sol, low) at $4.47 and Gemini 3.8 Live Extended Thinking (High) at $3.50, cheaper than GPT-Live-1 (Astra, medium) at $5.83, and ~2.2x cheaper than GPT-Realtime-2.1 High at $10.75
Congrats to @elonmusk and the @SpaceXSI team 🚀
See below for more detail ⬇️
A fun little AI video to accompany my article about The Leaky Bucket at Every Company, why it matters even more now that AI is here, and how @HiHello's Professional Presence and Lead Capture Platform solves this for our customers with amazing outcomes!
Today, AI makes information abundant and nearly free. It can draft, summarize, and analyze faster than any of us can think. But it can't look you in the eye across the table, shake your hand to seal an agreement, or put a hand on your shoulder and tell you it's going to be okay. It can't share a meal with you or get on a plane to be there in person. Those moments carry weight because a person chose to spend their time, their presence, and their reputation on you.