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recently co-hosted an Afore Capital x FirstMark founder dinner with Aman Kabeer great people and conversation, will be doing more events in nyc coming up

investors who still actively code (or at least vibe code) have a huge advantage • sourcing - hack alongside great engineers • diligence - understand infra, products, and technical concepts better • closing - technical founders are more likely to want to work with you

useful framework for personal clarity / self-improvement: "if your life were a movie, what would the audience be yelling at the screen for you to do?"

seeing a wave of startups selling to smb's, with the goal of fully automating them later • workflow automation for marketing agencies -> ai marketer • software for design firms -> ai designer • software for home inspectors -> ai home inspector, sell direct to banks

y combinator was one of the first to bet on young technical founders, versus experienced business-savvy founders (obvious now, but not back then) a16z was one of the first full-service firms - pr, talent, gtm help, "platform" stuff in general

everyone should have a place they’re a regular at a church, gym, library, coffee shop, deli, park, museum, third space, etc

i think everyone would benefit from taking an intro to design class in school almost all jobs involve creating presentations, graphics, or other things that look better when designed well

meeting lots of great founders that did debate, robotics, or sports at an elite level in high school

everyone seems to have a different definition of what "pre-seed" / "seed" actually means

open to adding a roommate or two in nyc, imminent move-in - dm if you or someone you know is interested

chatted with a friend about why tech-enabled rollups are hot (aside from being a great way for vc funds to grow aum) one thing that could be different now: vc funds treat engineers at these rollups as first-class citizens -> attracts top eng talent -> better tech transformation

recently co-hosted an afore x greylock founder dinner with Sophia Luo - thanks to rho for making it happen an an amazing house in haight-ashbury one attendee mentioned they’re in a “typewriting club” where they meet on weekends to write with actual typewriters - so cool

the best moat at the pre-seed stage is speed

“founder-market fit” is real, but many founders' origin stories seem backfilled (to sound good to investors) life isn’t always linear, many founders start companies because the timing feels right, it's not always due to a perfectly planned arc

seeing more solo founders that are able to do more with less (due to ai tools) lots of indie hackers, but also lots of founders on the venture path who are now only thinking about co-founders opportunistically

a lot of people that previously would have been a founding engineer, are just starting companies now • ai shift, many exciting problems to solve • starting a startup is easier than ever • funding is readily available • etc