Ben Horowitz on treating your story as your strategy, and why founders often skip writing it even though it's one of the most important parts of the job: "The story of the company is also the strategy of the company... In your mind, you're kind of adjusting that strategy a little bit at a time every day. But then a quarter later, it's actually pretty different than what you started with." "So it's really important that you keep upgrading your story. The articulation of your story. I would definitely recommend it be in written form." "Something that you can share with everybody in the company, and everybody you're recruiting, everybody you're trying to raise money from, all your constituents, every customer." "The problem that I think founders have is it doesn't feel like work. Like, 'What are you doing today?' 'I'm working on my story.' That doesn't sound like work." "Because it doesn't feel like work, people don't do it, but it's probably one of the most important parts of the job." @bhorowitz w/ @speedrun GP @Tocelot

founders: getting up to $1M in funding via @speedrun is actually the easiest part of the journey - as you start to build your product, you'll need to build your team... and I have some bad news: recruiting sucks. Most experienced founders will tell you that they spent at least half their time in the early days trying to woo early missionaries to join their cause. Your options at the earliest stages aren't great: • Agencies are expensive + generally have perverse incentives • You could do all the recruiting... but it's often too time-intensive to do effectively • Hiring an internal recruiter doesn't make sense yet... • Job postings... welcome to the nightmare of AI-generated apps! I want to give you a better option. Our goal as the Speedrunun talent team: lend you our brand and hiring prowess. Not just hollow words and advice... because advice is cheap. Sourced candidates are not. Our team of internal recruiters spends every single day cultivating relationships with world-class talent from the most heavily in-demand functional backgrounds (AI, ML, Full Stack Eng, Design Eng, Designers, etc), and then we curate and share that talent with founders across the portfolio. We're on track this year to directly place ~150 hires into speedrun portfolio companies. No fee. No perverse incentives. Just a purely aligned desire with the founders to get them exactly what they are searching for. One day there will be a solo-founder unicorn, and all this hiring drudgery might go away. Until then, you're going to have to build your team - so let our team (@nazzari, @thetalentcarver, @joegarciaisme ) help you build yours. APPLY TO SPEEDRUN >>> bit.ly/3UawfBA

The games we've long wanted, which didn't exist because they'd cost several times more to make than they'd earn back, will soon become possible. As will the games developers wanted to build, but couldn't with the resources available. It'll be a new golden age of gaming.

a few tips for @speedrun applicants: 1) brag about your team. what's the most impressive thing you've done? we look for a history of excellence - professional, academic, personal achievements, side hustles, weekend projects etc 2) founder market fit. what's your earned insight into your problem space? what gives you an unfair advantage? why will your team win vs the competition / frontier labs? 3) product validation. what have you already built? there are so many ways to quickly prototype these days. what tests have you run to validate that people want what you've built - revenue, users, waitlists etc? 4) network your way to a warm referral. this bumps you for priority review. we have >600 Speedrun founders and many more in the broader a16z network. the networking you do here reflects the work you do every day as a founder - recruiting, sales, fundraising, etc you may have noticed >50% of these tips are about the team. the most common mistake we see in apps / interviews is that founders spend most of their time talking about the product idea and not enough time on the team. whereas we base our investment process primarily on the team

SR008 APPS ARE OPEN. Up to $1M + $10M+ in credits. 12 weeks in SF, Feb through April. Built to help you land capital, customers and talent. Apply by Nov 1: speedrun.a16z.com/apply

A company I work with went from $0 -> $60M in 3 months - will hit $100M run-rate this month Fastest growing company I’ve ever seen. I don’t think people have fully grasped data as a first class citizen alongside compute and algorithms They are selling frontier data to AI labs and model developers. DMs open if you would like to chat with them

Today, I’m excited to introduce @safeworldai! Our mission: improve robot safety for the next billion machines. AI is moving from screens into the physical world. Robots are becoming more capable, more autonomous, and increasingly operating around people. But more capable robots require more capable ways to test them. 🧵

Introducing Mirai, the world’s first virtual neighborhood tour, backed by a16z @Speedrun. World models are going to change how we experience the physical world. We’re building the application layer to enable that. Our first deployment is real estate, for agents, brokerages, property platforms, and developers. Mirai turns any address into an explorable simulation of the surrounding neighborhood. Walk the streets. Visit the nearby café. Explore the park. Follow your commute. See what your day-to-day life there could actually look like before you move.