building @frontrunvc | finding startups early
detroit
Joined September 2019
- Tweets2.2K
- Following7.5K
- Followers3.8K
- Likes28.9K
JG retweeted
people who left @OpenAI, @SpaceXSI, @stripe and @Tesla to build something new in stealth on X:
1/ @hyhieu226: ex-openai and xai technical staff, google brain researcher, imo silver medalist.
2/ @rochi5ha: 5 years engineering at rippling, then stripe.
3/ @bradbartelt: openai grove incubation, first employee at a16z-backed meridian.
4/ @nickperkins94: tesla battery engineer, then 7 years at form energy.
5/ @vivianphung: ex-instagram feed engineer, founded snowball tools, ceo of dora.
flagged on @frontrunvc stealth discovery lane. 🥷
JG retweeted
the ai data gold rush is real. we found the next one at 1 follower, before its first post.
@thegeneraldata: self-improving environments for industrial engineering. teaching ai how industry works from real operational data.
founder: @nicholastorabi co-founded qorelo and raised a $3.7m seed at 19. ex-antler, ex-deutsche bank.
sep 14: account created
sep 14: linkedin flips to "founder at stealth ai startup", flagged
sep 27: @nicholastorabi flagged at 22 followers
oct 14: @thegeneraldata flagged at 1 follower
oct 21: still under the radar 🫡
I’ve had 3 diff people tell me they are 100% sure this “fastest to $1B annualized revenue” is 3 diff companies.
Very likely more than 1 data co has recently hit that mark, many of which are on Pavlov’s List.
Many more will get there in the next 6mos.
Total data spend is >$15B.
some new ui on @frontrunvc.
pick a startup, see exactly who in your network is following it. one click to dm the founder.
thanks to @cabralorenzo and bencho for the network graph component 🔥
JG retweeted
imagine your X timeline was only new startups your network just followed.
find the founder. DM them. without ever leaving the feed.
would you want this? @frontrunvc
imagine your X timeline was only new startups your network just followed.
find the founder. DM them. without ever leaving the feed.
would you want this? @frontrunvc
JG retweeted
VCs are just now asking to fund companies that help teams own and build their own models.
we wrote about this on july 30th. 10 startups, all flagged on @frontrunvc.
here's 5 more flagged on @frontrunvc since then 👇
1. @orchestradotai = trains specialist models on your team's own work.
→ founders @lluismanrique @aamirpoonawalla. @ycombinator S26
2. @explabsai = open source AI gateway that turns your traffic into a model you own.
→ founders @silennai - @ycombinator S26
3. Zorbe = company-owned models across text, vision, speech and video.
→ founders @yash_iyer21 and @SadaniPranay.
@speedrun 007
4. @bryel_labs = your in-house AI lab.
→ founders @KJHMiao - @ycombinator F26
5. @riften_ai = routes every AI request and builds the models your company owns.
→ founder @carlstauffer_ - @ycombinator S26
Who’s building this? I want to back founders helping companies build specialized models on their own data. $500k checks. We move fast.
1 year ago i made my first github contribution
never written a line of code in my life before that
6.5k+ contributions later i'm running a software business that makes money (@frontrunvc)
for all the doomers saying ai will take jobs, it's also creating new ones that never would've been available to someone like me 🫡
We were able to fine tune an open weight model (Qwen3.5-9B) on proprietary internal data at @coinbase, and it out performed frontier models, at much lower cost and speed, for a specialized task (fraud prevention in this case).
I think we'll see more of this pattern inside companies. The frontier models are amazing generalists. But increasingly you'll see specialist models out perform on more narrow tasks, either working on teams, or by themselves.
We're making it easy to fine tune models internally for our employees. We even have a skill for it in our internal harness that makes it easy to spin these up and start training them:
"/fine-tune-and-serve-llm I want to fine-tune Qwen for payments risk review. help me get started"
I imagine we'll have some backend services that could be replaced entirely by this new architecture.
i made a visual of what @frontrunvc looks like under the hood.
@typesafeai just raised ~$870M led by @a16z at a $7.5B valuation.
@frontrunvc flagged it 96 days ago, at 40 followers.
40 followers to 165k. nobody watching to $910M raised.
launched a model
accidentally served trillions of tokens a day
29.4% of the fortune 500 showed up
raised a really big series A from @a16z
it's been 3 weeks
we would like to sleep now
a 60 million dollar frontrun 🫡 @frontrunvc
$0 to $60M in 3 months. Everyone wants to know who it is.
it's @sfdata.
@frontrunvc flagged it 56 days ago & @kenanhsaleh was the first tracked account to follow.
founders, both ex-@mercor: @brandonguo @faizsiddiqii
apr 16: @brandonguo flagged
jul 17: 17 tracked accounts on the founder
aug 14: @sfdata flagged at 35 followers
oct 1: production traces and the future of data posted on their website
oct 7: $0 to $60M in 3 months tweet.
oct 8: its @sfdata 🫡
ayooo @RatheeJaisal. #1 in the US? someone come humble me. 🫡
JG retweeted
@underdogai announced its round today, backed by @a16z, @khoslaventures and @HummingbirdVC.
On @frontrunvc, the signal started 19 days before. 👇
sep 13: flagged. 8 tracked accounts followed on day one.
sep 14: 13 tracked accounts.
sep 21: 19 tracked accounts.
sep 28: 23 tracked accounts. 497 followers to 1,331.
oct 2: round announced. 25 tracked accounts following.
when tracked accounts pile in on one company, a round usually isn't far behind 🫡
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.
q3 update @frontrunvc 🫡
- jul 1: $3.3k MRR
- sep 30: $6.3k MRR
nearly doubled in a quarter. here's what drove it, what didn't work, and what's next 👇
