nikhil
@uninsightful
investor @usv | go dubs
obvious point but worth restating: on a 3-7yr horizon AI progress creates three enormous areas of 2nd-order opportunity: 1. energy: ai makes the demand for cheap (and clean!) power even more insatiable. eventually energy is intelligence's main bottleneck 2. crypto: at the…
obvi this is wildly fascinating for the uno reverse aspects but also interesting b/c these are PMs. to date, the active poaching had almost entirely focused on research/eng/execs says something about where we are in the ai talent war cycle and what companies currently believe…
BREAKING: Claude Code PMs Boris Cherny and Cat Wu have returned to Anthropic after a brief stint at Cursor.
no this Cursor/Anthropic thing is way different. this all happened in the span of a week or so not 5 years this is much more like the time Deandre Jordan left the Clippers and verbally agreed to join the Mavs but his Clippers teammates literally held him hostage in his own home…
whoever came up with the motion cues / dots on phones for motion sickness really cooked
babe wake up new Kwok post just dropped (first in 4 years!)
New essay up. The HALO Effect - notes on the new“Hire and License Out” deals being done by AI companies, most recently Windsurf - why they are not killing the social contract of SV - what happens when your people are worth more than your company - SAFEs for all things please
we've essentially unbundled acquisitions lol 1. specific talent leaves for large lab / bigtech 2. "shell" co gets acquired by someone with less FTC risk (non-mag7 tier) this is the sports equivalent of a 3-team trade, but it can't be coordinated in conjunction b/c legal risk
huge dub for Cognition. they got: - 85m ARR biz with sticky-ish enterprises - elite remaining talent at Windsurf - 100m in cash from balance sheet and probably paid < 15% of their equity at their $4b valuation
Cognition has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Windsurf. The acquisition includes Windsurf’s IP, product, trademark and brand, and strong business. Above all, it includes Windsurf’s world-class people, whom we’re privileged to welcome to our team. We are also honoring…
the "lisbon is just a better SF" meme honestly understates things everytime I visit it feels more true
incredible how many businesses in europe basically operate entirely via whatsapp now (vs apps/web) this is only going to get more extreme with ai (bots in the chat) whatsapp feels fairly undermontenized for not being in the flow of all this value (yet)
yes need this asap does anyone actually think this payout will screw over vested equity? if so, would love to take the other side of that bet (I have zero inside info)
Someone make a prediction market on the deal's terms when all said and done will have dividend be pro rata to cap table. i want to see that market
if there is a clear reason that these deals (Windsurf, Scale, etc) are bad for investors & employees, it would be TAXES dividends to the cap table get paid as income (ostensibly) whereas in a standard acquisition equityholders would only have to pay long term cap gains and…
a lot of hand-wringing about these types of deals (Windsurf, Scale, Character, etc etc) but they seem pretty fair to all parties involved (everyone gets paid) and are clearly just FTC workarounds
PSA: everyone often wins in these deals. The optics of it is Lina Khan’s fault. If you were a Windsurf employee, it was as if your shares were bought at $2.4B AND you now run the company with your fellow employees so you can make more money. Chill.
whether for form or function, everyone in the US nowadays is comfort-maxxing Hoka/On are good examples as they’re relatively hideous but wildly comfortable 2019 and prior, every active environment (gym, running path, etc) was 80% adidas/nike now they’re all basically 80%…
It’s incredible how basically overnight On Clouds replaced Nike and became the go to daily shoe
“truth seeking” is the new “thinking from first principles” an idea that is both admirable and important but a term that will get memed into cringeness and unusabilty
Soham seems insanely cracked and possibly the goat interviewee hahah
tweeting from europe is funny cuz anything sent before like 3pm local time is going to an audience of approximately zero ppl
there’s a real opportunity for someone to become the @wojespn of the ai talent wars so much activity and not enough insider stories being reported real-time