Amol Deshpande

Steve Jobs had $100M at 25. Then Apple threw him out. This is a 1995 interview he gave while running NeXT, a decade after he lost Apple. The tape went missing for years and only came out after he died. He was worth $1M at 23, $10M at 24 and $100M at 25. He says he never sold a single share. Then he talks about Sculley: "I hired the wrong guy. He destroyed everything I'd spent 10 years working for, starting with me." His office was taken away. He stops himself before he gets emotional on camera. What came next: > Apple bought NeXT and brought him back > he ran Apple for a $1 salary > today Apple is worth about $4 trillion Would you have fought to get back in or walked away for good?

This letter was sent to Nvidia's board today. A first for @atreidesmgmt Absolutely share @altcap belief that this letter outlines minimum acceptable standards.

Good reminder for all founders to revisit who is on their board (see also, OpenAI coup, Uber, etc) Reset your board during good times to avoid sudden action during bad times

Brad I do! Biotech + AI will be powerful to speed candidates forward, increase enrollment speed in RCTs and, maybe the boring but vital part, fix the last mile problems in healthcare. That last part seems most tractable, consumers detest waiting in offices, want to have reliable access to digital advice and diagnostics and health care financing is a consumer crisis. These problems most closely resemble the breakthroughs and productivity gains tech has brought in customer service and fintech - and need more hype not less IMO.

Last week we brought the whole global 480 person @generalcatalyst team together in Park City for our annual retreat. We spent the week talking about our North Star: AI for abundance and agency (Abundance = things that are scarce and expensive become plentiful and affordable for everyone; Agency = anyone can build and compete, instead of a handful of companies deciding the future) We also happened to be together during the midterms. It was a reminder that capitalism is a privilege. It works only as long as people believe it's working for them too. I felt the midterms showed that people are anxious about costs, about their jobs, and about what AI will mean for their kids. Being together this week reinforced GC's commitment to being a nonpartisan force for taking founders to scale & abundance. Grateful for this team. Lots to do.

JUST IN: US intelligence reportedly believes Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had a “romantic relationship” with a woman suspected of spying for China.

the worst time to start a company is when everyone thinks it’s the best time to start a company. people naively think raising $ is the hard part of building a company when it’s actually (1) hiring world class people + (2) competing for customers both become harder for early stage startups in frothy markets. all legendary companies were started at the beginning of market cycles, not after markets became frothy.

Tokenization presents interesting opportunities beyond just stocks and treasuries. American farmers are being financed onchain. There are currently 1,424 farm loans live on @solana. Here is how it works. - A farmer needs money for seeds and equipment before planting. - @CFiAgFinance lends the money through the @alpha_ledger platform. - Each loan becomes its own token on Solana. - The farmer pays it back after harvest, in about 10 months. What onchain data shows. - 1,424 separate loans so far and each one its own token. - Loan sizes run from about $2.5K to over $100K. - This season’s loans were issued in February 2026 and are due January 2027. - Each loan has only one holder for now. Where the opportunity is. - Yield are tied to harvests, not crypto prices. - Room to open up. Bundle these loans into one pool, and everyday investors could earn from real farm credit with small amounts. - There is full visibility. Every loan sits onchain, where it can be tracked one by one. - Could be a model for other countries.

We’ve raised $1.3M from YC & Afore Capital so you never have to type or speak again. Typing is slow. Talking into your computer is awkward. Subvocal fixes both Our glasses give you the speed of speech without you making a sound or touching a keyboard. It tracks your internal speech muscles with non-contact sensing and decodes silent, almost invisible mouthing into text at more than 200 words/min. Pre-orders are now live at: subvocal.co/preorder?utm_sou…

Tony and I have explored bringing Instacart and DoorDash together on and off over the years. We kept coming back to it because the industrial logic has always been clear. Customers have 21 meals a week to figure out. Groceries and restaurant delivery each solve part of that problem. Serving customers well means bringing together the best of both. As the biggest companies in the world move deeper into this market, retailers and restaurants need the technology and service to compete. They shouldn’t have to become technology companies themselves to stand a chance. Bringing Instacart and DoorDash together can give them a stronger partner in that fight. For shoppers and Dashers, the opportunity is equally straightforward: less time waiting between orders, more time earning. I’m incredibly proud of what we built at Instacart and grateful to everyone who helped make it possible. Tony is an extraordinary entrepreneur and leader. I’m excited for Instacart to be part of a founder-led company again, and I can’t wait to see what these two teams build together. @t_xu @DoorDash @Instacart

Three @MenloVentures LPs are set to make $1B+ each from the Anthropic IPO. @mmurph explains how they raised a $500M+ SPV at a $18B valuation without being allowed to show a single financial: "Out of that LP meeting, a bunch of our LPs said, 'This is fabulous that you're in this company. Can we co-invest with you?' Before you knew it, there was a couple hundred million of interest. We'd never done an SPV before. But this was a special company, and we wanted to lead the round. We couldn't do it out of our $750 million fund. We could do $50 or $100. But we couldn't do the rest. So we said, 'How about we take capital from our fund and our LPs, put this whole thing together, and make a proposal to lead the round?' As history would have it, we were definitely a little over our skis. You get a lot of people interested. But when you shake the trees, some things fall out and some don't. There was a scary period for about 30, 45 days where I was like, 'Oh my God. I think we've over-committed here, and we may not pull this off.' What I didn't realize up front: Anthropic was supportive, but they said we couldn't share any financial information. You're asking people to invest at an $18 billion valuation, and you can't show any financials. We could say what last year's revenue was. But we couldn't do any forward projections. That's a tall ask for big state pension funds. A bunch of them said, 'Look, we just can't responsibly do that as a state pension fund.' But I can tell you that three did. And they've all made well over a billion dollars at the last round valuation. Fortune favors the brave."

i invested $5k in a startup 2 months ago for 1% equity. now they’re raising a $3m seed round, and the lead investor thinks my 1% stake is too much for such a small check. the founder and i are trying to figure out what to do. the interesting part? the founder was willing to give 1–2% for $5k–$10k. if you’re a founder, how would you handle this? would you stand by the deal you made or renegotiate to keep your next round on track? is this a dealbreaker for you? i’ll share how this ends later.

Hot take: If a VC directs you to their EA, calendly, agent, etc… they’re not going to invest.

It's very clear that in the AI Game of Thrones, NVIDIA is the Iron bank of Bravos Regardless of who sits on the Iron throne, the Iron bank will get its due.

This is a fun story, I will be following... A developer bought a Denver office building for $24.5M and planned to convert it into 116 apartments... They emptied the building of its commercial tenants, but then interest rates rose and financing fell apart, and so the bank foreclosed. Selling a 100,000 sqft office building with 100% vacancy is generally tough, so it sold for only $2.7M ($27/sq ft, with no debt being assumed!) to a young developer. He is forgetting about the apartment conversion (you can't afford it with the debt prices now anyway) and plans to get office tenants in by charging ridiculously low rents... he plans to charge tenants only $5/sq ft/year in base rent... imagine getting a 10k sqft office for $4k/mo (+operating expenses)! I hope it works out for him, what a price!