James Win

tale as old as time, this cringe VC who ghosted me when I was building my first company spammed my inbox 10x for my next one. back then I was an honest young founder who actually put in the time to build a relationship with them. they probably completely forgot about our first convo. to any young founders: how someone treats you when you're a nobody is who they actually are. keep track. one day you'll be the one they're chasing.

if you’re branded, you can raise $100M+ for your seed round in a single week if you’re unbranded, you may struggle to raise even $2M why? 80% of VCs add negative value, and 80% of VCs are lazy. they ask claudette to pull a list of who’s on your team, then sit in IC enumerating your wunderkammer of IOIs and Ivy Leagues and ex-lab folks, and everyone gets starry-eyed, enchanted by the billions branded teams surely guarantee. enchanted by the thrill of throwing massive checks whilst doing hardly any DD, because, certainly, that’s irrelevant, and these people will figure it out, right? right. and so you run wild with the money. you store it in a grotto and show up at the doorstep of the neoclouds, the governments, the enterprises, with an unlimited rope of credit tied to an origin no one can quite explain some of the branded people will make it & rule the world. some of them are thrilling, brilliant, hilarious people, and for that, I’m happy to support and stand in awe of their success. but they shouldn’t be the only ones allowed to make it. many of the most talented & ethical visionaries I know are stuck in dead ends despite wanting to found, because they are illegible to capital. the unbranded genius has depressingly jagged societal intelligence. she is more awake to the rules of people games than the branded cadre, and yet she is never given a seat to play the unbranded genius is an opsec purist who only chats on signal the unbranded genius is invited to more exclusive parties in her field than many of the branded people, and yet VCs underwrite her network as irrelevant the unbranded genius is told to curate a public persona to seem smart to the salesmen of money. but she has an aversion to being perceived, so she operates almost entirely offline, where no one can ever know who she is or what she’s up to in the valley of automation, she is alone in the unquiet darkness. I extend a branch to pull her up, but every time, without fail, it snaps, and I’m forced to watch her fall into the valley’s maw. she gets chewed up and spat out, but she’s a genius and she’s strong, so she reassembles the bits of herself. but every time she does, it’s groundhog day yet again. and so i'm left asking: how do we brand people without logo stacking? I can’t keep watching unbranded geniuses fall. it’s becoming too much for the soul.

went to visit a friend who’s a ceramicist and works in a studio with no phone signal in a tiny yorkshire village. he doesn’t listen to podcasts or music, only occasionally uses the radio, and when I asked him what he thinks about all day he just said “well, pots mostly”

LPs will be choosing between: -A16Z gaming fund VII (10b, fund VI underperformed S&P) -“Mykonos Capital” (300m, ex Goldman Sachs Harvard grad whose relevant experience is 6 years as a principal at NEA) -“Paperclip” (100m, ex Anthropic engineer anchoring with 20m of his own capital made through backing Cursor’s A) I don’t think this is a hard decision

there is no moat

so i have been in the sf tech scene for a couple of months now, and i learned the games that ppl play 1. land a $3M lab order in 2 weeks, *26 = ~$80m as the annual revenue 2. schedule all orders to be signed in the same month, and multiply the best month by 12 3. sign $5M LOIs with friend's companies and batchmates. they sign one back (also happens at scale with large labs/compute) 4. buy github stars at 6 cents each the last company that swapped invoices with a partner reported $220M - and it's bankrupt now sad that it's a whole gresham's law game right now and if you dont play you just get downvoted

literal hardest role to hire for rn and every ai startup wants someone > chronically online (knows trends) > has taste & can create (new media) > understands ai & technical > can execute with quality (operator) such a small niche of folks who can do this