Rak Garg
@rak_garg
It’s like Zack with an R. Bay native 🇺🇸🇮🇳. Product lad turned partner @BainCapVC. Investing in AI, developers, infra, & security. Grew up @Atlassian
Sitting next to a Databricks engineer on Caltrain who's crushed three Celsius cans, is typing with the fury of a thousand Devins, and has not made eye contact once. This is what dreams are made of
This is from our early-stage conf on raising a great A. I'd replace traction with growth today. Security is the exception. AI/Traction = cruising AI/No traction = find a vibe capitalist Not AI/Traction = all steak no sizzle, old-school VCs Not AI/No Traction = tough spot :(
The toughest round to raise right now? Series A. Unless you’re growing like crazy or a hype-y AI company, most multi-stage VCs are skipping A’s and doubling down on seeds and growth rounds.
you are terminally online if you know about more than 5 of these - - TBPN - high agency - hegelian e-girl - claude code - labubu - grok 4 - prime intellect - kalomaze - that guy who claims to have implemented auto fill in OTPs - mechahitler
you are terminally online if you know about more than 5 of these - - TBPN - high agency - hegelian e-girl - claude code - labubu - grok 4 - prime intellect - kalomaze - that guy who claims to have implemented auto fill in OTPs - mechahitler
enough about forward-deployed engineers we need more forward-deployed angels was thinking about this because one of our angels Umesh Khanna (@forwarddeploy) has just been pulling up on Sundays and going deep with us on the product problems we're dealing with, designing growth…
You sign a ChatGPT Enterprise contract and this is what happens
This looks like every principal and partner at Bain Capital
"Attention Shift" launches today. It's a podcast for communicators. From the White House to Fenway Strategies, renowned speechwriter @codykeenan reveals how great speeches are made. Hear how structure, emotion, and intent turn words into impact. 🎧podcasts.apple.com/podcast/attent…
And thus YC was born
If I give you $1m, and you give me the $1m back, we’ll both be at $1m ARR
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT INDUSTRIAL SABOTAGE This morning, @Reuters published a BOMBSHELL article about clandestine subcomponents that have been discovered INSIDE American power grid equipment built in China. Here's what you need to know: 1/
Incredibly eye opening, mildly (very) existential evening with @BainCapVC and friends, for @PatrickMcGee_ new book. Amazing to hear the intentionality and depth with which this has been written. Can’t wait to dig in. (Zoom in for some great juxtaposition 🤌 shot on 😉)
Have a startup? Love samosas? Come join @rak_garg, @GauravBhogale and I in San Fransisco on May 27th! 👋 @reply
Excited to share that Structify has raised a $4M seed round, led by @BainCapVC & @8VC! We’ve been heads-down training our model & building our UI—and we’re just getting started. 🚀
Derek the work wear guy needs to have a talking to with every middle aged dude in a blazer and brooks running sneakers at RSA
At ICLR Singapore and there are legit 10 guys crowded around a ripped researcher near the Meta booth asking about his lifting and protein routine. Jacked RL bros are the final precursor to AGI 💪🏋️♂️
Samsung's out here putting AI into laundry machines and most enterprises still can't figure it out
asked ChatGPT to make a picture of me and jfc it thinks I ask for 60% at the seed and do 8 months of diligence on every deal
This feels like a big step forward. For usability testing to market research to medical front-office and more, reliable, low latency, reliable voice agents are a major unlock. Congrats to the homies @moinnadeem @NikhilKMurthy!!
Meet Phonic, the next-generation speech-to-speech platform focused on reliability We’ve all gotten stuck speaking on the phone to an AI that doesn’t understand you At Phonic, we’ve rethought the whole stack from model training to voice evals to compound systems for reliability
Agree. APMs were a ZIRP. The bigger trend is that you either build, sell, or grift. Designers & PMs now write code and queries themselves, engineers talk to (and sometimes embed with) customers, etc. Just build. Titles matter less now than they ever have source: was an APM
PSA - if you can code, becoming a product manager straight out of college is like, the dumbest career decision you can make everyone I know who did this is now basically nontechnical. also it's trivial to make the engineer -> PM transition later
you guys I just overheard a girl outside a Starbucks in Palo Alto yelling at her phone because her boyfriend broke up with her and said he got an offer at OpenAI and has to lock in
Nothing like Saturday morning tacos w/ smart people!
Huge thanks to everyone who came to our event with @BainCapVC! Follow us to stay informed about future events!