Leadership
115 tweets
tech bro obsessed with "storytelling" but hasn't read a book in the last 5 years
BREAKING: Within the past 72 hours: - Apple's AI Chief steps down - Apple's Head of UI Design leaves to Meta - Apple's Policy Chief steps down - Apple's Head of General Counsel steps down
BREAKING: Elon Musk’s net worth surges to a record $749 billion after Delaware’s Supreme Court reinstates his 2018 pay package. He is now worth 3 TIMES the second richest person in the world.
If you build it, don’t forget to publish it
Publishing your work increases your luck
I'm hiring a "talent scout" but not the "sit on LinkedIn/X all day scanning credentials" type. job to be done = produce a constant feed of interesting humans who should be on our radar. every day may bring a new focus "persona".. one day, you're scouting for invitees to Build (http://build.a16z.com) dinners and retreats hosted with/by our vertical funds (e.g. American Dynamism, Health & Bio, Infra, Apps, Consumer, Crypto, etc) the next day, it might be scouting for a New Media Fellowship cohort, high trajectory operators/experts we can drop into a WhatsApp together, people in a specific geography ahead of an IRL event, talent profiles to invite to "talent demo days" with our portfolio companies or feature in the a16z Build newsletter (https://a16zbuild.substack.com) the traditional approach to talent scouting optimizes for volume + data—where they've worked, what school, which logos. that's necessary but insufficient on its own. the real test is whether you can spot someone before they're obvious. pattern-matching on trajectory, not credentials. so, who are you? a collector of interesting humans. you thrive on being first to find breakout talent—the way some people thrive on discovering a band before they blow up. you're less "resume reviewer" .. more "human potential radar." you think in systems but don't over-index to "legibility bias." you see people for potential strengths, not lack of weakness. the work is part research rabbit-hole, part relationship cultivation, part editorial curation. you're not investing, but you're helping us build the ecosystem that will pay it forward to the next generation of great founders and operators, many of whom may go on to raise and build incredible companies. you? know them? tag or DM
a16z Build
From an eng responsible for AI tooling at a mid-sized company (100+ devs): "Our execs read a blog post about Claude Code and ask: 'why are we not all using it?' Me: well, none of you would approve going from $40/mo on GitHub to $65/mo on Cursor... Claude Code is $150/mo."
"Distribution" is NOT your competitive advantage. Your competitive advantage is, was, and will always be your own CONFIDENCE. Confidence to see the project through, actually ship it, do everything necessary to get it in front of as many people as possible, not quit too early, know when to hang it up, etc etc etc. Distribution is merely a byproduct of founder confidence. This is just something I've noticed after interviewing 1000s.
Many people underestimate how fast it is to build with AI and how difficult it is to get other people to care about what you built
The majority of the ruff ruff is people who look at the current point and people who look at the current slope.
Do hard things. Because there’s nothing better than a hard-earned win. The pain. The struggle. The grit. And then, the reward. The feeling of knowing that you paid the cost of entry for the thing you wanted to achieve. Hard things are good for the soul.
storytelling is the only way to impose meaning on abundance, coherence on noise, & legitimacy on power. strategy, ops, & capital are all downstream. without narrative control, none it will ever stick. this has been the core premise of my account. in a world of infinite output, story is the scarce primitive. whoever can compress chaos into something ppl can feel, remember, forgive, & rally around actually runs the system. this skill is worth more than the entire c suite combined.
turns out, senior engineers accept more agent output than juniors. this is because: - they write higher-signal prompts with tighter spec and minimal ambiguity - they decompose work into agent-compatible units - they have stronger priors for correctness, making review faster and more accurate - juniors generate plenty but lack the verification heuristics to confidently greenlight output shows that coding agents amplify existing engineering skill, not replace it
My 2026 AI predictions podcast with @reidhoffman—LinkedIn cofounder, Microsoft board member, and former OpenAI board member: Reid’s spiciest predictions: - If you’re not recording every single meeting and using agents to amplify your work process, it’s going to feel like using a horse and buggy vs. a car. - AI becomes the scapegoat for everything—electricity prices, eggs, jobs. Most blame will be wrong, but some real impacts will also start hitting. This will make the discourse uglier. - No major AI player will have a major stumble. It will continue being a close horse race. But OpenAI will learn how to play catch up instead of always playing with a lead. - 10x to 100x more people will have their computer doing work for them while they’re out doing other things—agents break out beyond coding. - Apple continues to be behind in AI and the gap will be “stunning.” Dan’s spiciest predictions: - Programming trifurcates into three skills: traditional engineering + AI, vibe coding, and a new third thing—agentic engineering (think highly technical engineer with 4 Claude Code tabs open at once, never looking at code). - OpenAI realizes it is missing the most valuable coding market because they’re stuck in the innovators dilemma: caught between serving traditional engineers + AI, or agentic engineers. - Creation becomes the new addiction as the dopamine hit of making things with Claude Code and other tools starts to spread. AI commandments that are most likely to be broken this year: - Interpretability: We’ll allow models to communicate with each other in non-human readable formats, and it will work.—Reid - Alignment: We’ll realize that more disagreeable AI that forms its own opinions are quite useful as autonomy increases. This will be more likely as orchestrators get better—the orchestrator can deal with the pain-in-the-ass model, instead of the user.—Dan Reid’s pick for most underrated AI category in 2026: Biology. There’s a chance we find a “move 37” in bio this year. Watch below! Timestamps: Introduction: 00:00:52 The future of work is an entrepreneurial mindset: 00:02:20 Creation is addictive (and that’s okay): 00:05:22 Why discourse around AI might get uglier this year: 00:09:22 AI agents will break out of coding in 2026: 00:17:03 What makes Anthropic’s Opus 4.5 such a good model: 00:24:18 Who will win the agentic coding race: 00:28:46 Why enterprise AI will finally land this year: 00:36:13 How Reid defines AGI: 00:43:16 The most underrated category to watch in AI right now: 00:55:33
I just nearly fell into a 50-year-old trap: waterfall. "I'll plan everything upfront, feed the spec to the LLM, ship it all." But specs→code isn't like a compiler. Some questions only get answered in code. Note to self: Validate the risky parts first.
As a startup founder you’ll 100% go through long periods where nothing feels like it’s working and the key is to just keep going.
My conversation with Patrick O'Shaughnessy (@patrick_oshag), founder and CEO of Colossus & Positive Sum. 0:00 The Joy of Championing Undiscovered Talent 2:21 How One Tweet Changed David's Life 5:07 The Upanishads Passage That Shaped Patrick's Worldview 8:34 Growth Without Goals Philosophy 10:40 Why Media and Investing Are the Same Thing 28:41 The Search for True Understanding Through Biography 31:04 The Daniel Ek Dinner That Launched This Podcast 34:28 Making Your Own Recipe From the Ingredients of Great Lives 39:11 The Privilege of a Lifetime Is Being Who You Are 48:25 Bruce Springsteen's Battle With Depression and Self-Worth 53:21 Clean Fuel vs Dirty Fuel: The Source of Your Ambition 57:03 Professional Learners: The Unfair Advantage of Podcasting 1:00:18 Relationships Run the World 1:06:30 The Origin Story of Invest Like the Best 1:08:05 Building Colossus: Why Start a Magazine in 2025 1:14:01 People Are More Interested in People Than Anything Else 1:17:32 Finding Jeremy Stern and Hiring Through Output 1:23:40 Learn, Build, Share, Repeat 1:30:07 The Daisy Chain: How Reading Books Led to Everything 1:30:32 Red on the Color Wheel: Sam Hinkie's Observation 1:37:13 Finding Your Superpower and Becoming More Yourself 1:42:57 Repetition Doesn't Spoil the Prayer: Teaching as Leadership 1:46:02 Life's Work: A Lifelong Quest to Build Something for Others 1:49:51 The Ten Roles Game and What Matters Most 1:57:03 Husband, Father, Grandfather: The Roles That Endure 1:59:48 The Kindest Thing: Tim O'Shaughnessy and Meeting Lauren 2:05:11 Conclusion Includes paid partnerships.
