NYC
Joined March 2009
- Tweets2.8K
- Following789
- Followers10.8K
- Likes9K
Pinned Tweet
In 2023 I took a 12-month hiatus to recharge after building startups nonstop since graduating college. During that period of time, I had a rule that I would only commit to something if its gravitational force was completely inescapable. The opportunity to join USV was that thing for me, but along the way I explored a variety of different startup ideas.
One of those ideas was around helping people not die of heart disease. I published some of my early learnings on this blog last October, and it was one of the most-read articles I've written. I had an idea to create a service that would help people understand their risk factors and get screened for heart disease, and then generate personalized plans for them so they wouldn't succumb to the world's leading cause of death.
Every time I told someone about the idea and what I had learned, they soaked it all up. But when I asked if they ever got the tests I recommended, they usually didn't. So I wrote up a very long treatise on how to avoid dying of heart disease, and I was going to post it on a domain I bought, myticker.com, but I never got around to it because I had moved on from pursuing the idea. But I put a lot of work into the document that synthesized a lot of my learnings and experience. Over the past year, it has made its way around my circle of friends, and I finally decided I'd try to make it legible and publish it for anyone interested.
I still think this is a problem that needs to be solved and that someone should build a company that is consumer-first and exclusively focused on helping people not die of heart disease. If you're interested in doing this, please reach out to me because I'd love to help you and share all the work I did. Someone needs to put the myticker.com domain name to work.
I also want to thank some people who helped me along my heart health journey: Harvey Hecht, James Min, @Drlipid, Arthur Agatstan, Andrea Klemes, Louis Malinow, @jwessler, @neilparikh, @smart, Alan Tisch, David Kopp and Carrie Weprin.
If you have a heart, I hope you find this helpful. And if you care about someone else's heart, I hope you share it with them this Holiday season.
Happy Thanksgiving, and don't die of heart disease!
Happy Thanksgiving, and please don't die of heart disease!
myticker.com/
Jared Hecht retweeted
BREAKING: USV Raises $900M in New Funds
$500M dedicated for early-stage, & a $400M opportunity fund
The largest fund cycle in the firm's history.
FULL INTERVIEW + HQ TOUR
For more than 20 years, Union Square Ventures deliberately kept its funds small.
I sat down with General Partners Fred Wilson (@fredwilson ), Rebecca Kaden (@rebeccakaden ) & Mike (@mignano), to break down why the firm is getting bigger now, what it's betting on, & where VC goes next.
Nick Grossman (@nickgrossman ), also a General Partner, was out of town for the recording.
@usv was early to Twitter, Etsy, Twilio, MongoDB, Coinbase, Duolingo & Abridge.
Their new thesis is that AI could obliterate entire markets.
"I was a little surprised how many of them said, 'Are you sure you shouldn't raise more?'" -- Rebecca Kaden
We cover
› Why USV raised $900M & why some LPs wanted it to raise more
› Series A checks now running $10M to $30M
› Supertake, USV's first incubation, & a seed strategy built around incubations + proprietary seeds
› The "Rebel Alliance" & the case for open AI infrastructure
› Why energy is 20% to 30% of the portfolio & one of the cleanest bets on AI
𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒
(00:00) Fred, Rebecca & Michael, GPs at USV
(01:12) USV's biggest fund ever: $900M
(02:13) TOUR: Inside USV's New York office
(07:19) An AI agent that runs your portfolio
(12:38) AI Agents won't watch Netflix for you
(14:00) USV's new strategy for the AI era
(16:54) The real cost of building in AI
(21:03) The fight over monetizing Twitter
(23:54) Why Amazon is shutting out agents
(31:02) Why smaller funds pick better
(33:40) What Series A looks like now
(40:17) Is ARR a fake metric?
(46:00) 20 years of USV's biggest wins
(51:10) Why great founders still fail
(57:46) Will Anthropic compete with its customers?
(59:54) Why Coinbase moved off Claude
(1:01:44) An AI doctor that writes prescriptions
(1:04:09) Your AI lawyer is the worst it'll ever be
(1:08:29) Who protects you from your own AI agent?
(1:11:58) Fred Wilson's been hacked 4 times
(1:13:31) Coinbase: a security company in disguise
(1:16:28) Betting on markets that don't exist yet
(1:21:16) From first-time founder to Suno
do you wish you saw something different when you look in the mirror? 🪞🙁
do you want to be stronger 💪, bigger brained 🧠, emotionally stable and happy 😎?
i have the solution for you...
you need to start a 🕺💃🪩DATA BROKERAGE🕺💃🪩
follow me for more tips on finding joy
not only is @fredwilson one of the greatest VCs of all time, he is also one of the highest integrity, sharpest, funniest, and kindest people i’ve ever known.
he will always tell you what he thinks in the fewest but must understandable amount of words possible. truth like that is not always kind, but it’s always the most valuable.
ppl like fred are far and few between. the world is better bc of him. founders are better bc of him. his wisdom and words and friendship are a gift.
watch this interview.
Writing a check doesn’t qualify you to give advice.
When @fredwilson was 29 he tried to show up to a board meeting and start giving advice. One of the founders stopped him, “come do every job in the company for a week, then we’ll listen.” So he flew to Buffalo and did it.
With @uninsightful staying at USV as an Investment Partner, I asked the two of them to sit down and compare notes on a business they entered almost four decades apart.
Nikhil is the first analyst in our program’s 20-year history that we've offered the opportunity to stay and move up in the firm.
They covered earning a founder’s trust, building conviction before your partners agree, and staying open to ideas that challenge your strongest held beliefs. They also got into where USV has been right, where we’ve been (very) wrong, and how the venture business is changing.
0:00 Preview
1:46 Why Difficult Founders Make the Most Money
5:20 Before You Give a Founder Advice, Earn the Right
11:28 @fomo: We Passed. Then Spent Six Months Trying to Get In.
20:20 Biology Is Becoming Programmable and Opening Up to Outsiders
22:49 When Knowing Less Helps You See More
26:34 How Do You Compete With a $100 Billion VC Firm?
34:45 Why Fred Would Take His Company Public
38:01 What USV Gets Wrong About Founders
40:47 The Moat AI Hasn’t Broken: Network Effects
44:33 Who Wins When AI Becomes Multiplayer?
increasingly reasonable chance the future of the consumer internet is 1) meta/muse and perhaps 1-2 other personal agents abstracting away every consumer web utility co and turning them into an api, and 2) entertainment (betting, games, short form vid and pron)
don’t love it
Jared Hecht retweeted
Introducing @Supertake Memory.
Earlier this week, we launched Supertake and shared our vision to equip everyone with the superpowers to invest in their own insights through frontier-level intelligence.
We believe everyone deserves their own personal financial agent, tightly aligned with their interests and working around the clock with the most powerful technology.
To do that right, Supertake needs to know you: your preferences, your beliefs, your intuitions, your history. The same things a world-class financial manager would learn, but only after many years.
Memory is a step in that direction. Supertake now remembers what you tell it, in every chat: your goals, your preferences, your limits, the calls you've made and why, even the nicknames you give your takes.
It carries all of that into every conversation, whether you're building a new take or checking on one, and it keeps track of where each conversation left off, so you don't have to repeat yourself. You also stay in control. Ask what it remembers, correct it, or tell it to forget, anytime.
With today's release, Supertake not only acts upon your insights, but begins to compound them.
Available for all users, right now.
My @supertake is that Supertake is going to be the future of investing.
Introducing @Supertake, a new platform that transforms your unique takes on the world into real, shareable investment portfolios using frontier AI and trading agents.
Supertake makes it easy for anyone to invest in their ideas, even if they know nothing about investing.
1/
dear @telegram
someone is impersonating me on telegram trying to set up meetings with people using @ jaredhecht
i (and other people) have tried to reach out to you via report impersonation and other channels, but nobody is responding or manning support channels
halp please
follow @uninsightful if you want the most insightful takes in tech
I took on a new role as an Investment Partner at @usv earlier this year. Shared some thoughts on why and what's ahead:
4/4 matches went to a final
set on arthur ashe yesterday
3/4 ended in a tiebreaker
wrapped at 330am
two all american matches
an american man guaranteed in the finals
absolutely epic day of tennis
just got back from a 6 day river rafting trip down the salmon river with my family
completely disconnected from the outside world
now i’m the most enlightened person on this website
ama
some key things i want to see:
1) increase housing supply
2) raise the floor on core quality of life issues, specifically healthcare and education, by wholeheartedly embracing technology and ultimately rebuilding the existing system from the outside-in
3) tax the rich more (income) and stop with stupid loopholes
4) continue to make sure the USA can be the intellectual and innovation capital of the world (ie stop with artificial ceiling ideology: bring in amazing talent, don't cap upside potential for risk taking and innovation)
5) ban social media for kids
6) follow @albertwenger's blog post for pragmatic immigration policies (linked below)
7) let states run more experiments within federal law guardrails so we learn what works and doesn’t faster
8) recognize that people abroad who want to destroy our country and way of life are not our friends, they are our enemies and we should have a modern defesne system to protect us
9) mandatory paid service program pre-college: build homes, help elderly, grow food, join military, whatever
10) pay elected officials top dollar and institute term limits for senators and congresspeople so they are truly public servants and not power brokers
link to post: continuations.com/immigratio…
if you love chess, backgammon, washington square park, and product design, especially designing gaming experiences, reach out to me ASAP for an awesome opportunity
i think about this article a lot
especially this quote in relation to @hellobiographer - you can just make things by talking about your life
Jared Hecht retweeted
“What we are witnessing is an aggressive attempt at a hostile takeover of an American institution. There is still time to stop it.”
With primaries ongoing and the DSA’s influence inside the Democratic Party growing, RDI Chairman @Kasparov63 on five things everyone needs to understand before the midterms: thenextmove.org/p/five-thing…
1238 stories
four books printed
biographer wiki launched
but most importantly, beginning to coalesce around creating a purpose-built experience for documenting your life
artifacts like books are nice, but the experience of interacting with @hellobiographer is the real reward
here is a taste of what @hellobiographer generates after a 10 minute interview about "the world around me" in middle school
just bc 10% of the things RFK says are contrarian and true doesn’t mean he isn’t a total fucking quack who is massively unqualified for his job
Lyme disease Borrelia spirochetes are 60,000 years old, they predate the first Paleo-Indians who crossed over Beringia from Siberia @YaleMed @Yale
medicine.yale.edu/news-artic…
