What an astonishing picture. This is where the reservoir and the bridle path sit today! And these are the same buildings that sit on Central Park West to this day (except for the red one) A healthy reminder to the nostalgia-maxxers out there that we live in blessed times.

This is one of the coolest videos I've ever seen. I am SO proud to be an investor in this company. @adcock_brett continues to silence the haters daily, at some point they might run out of things to chirp about!

Goodhart’s law states that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Word got out that this is what the GOATs at Hummingbird want to see with founders, and now the alpha is eroding. Many such cases!

On Portfolio Construction There are a lot of opinions on X regarding portfolio construction in VC. I, myself, have been historically been dogmatic in my positioning on concentration. Others praise diversification and the power law of outlier outcomes. The truth is that there is no single best approach to portfolio construction, just the one that works best for you. Investing is a lot like baseball (I’ll pause for the eye roll from those who know me all to well…). There are those that hit home runs and those that hit for average. Both can be extremely valuable, but what’s really dangerous is when you think that you are something that you aren’t. No two hitters are the same, but the best hitters (and investors) find the approach that works for them. @foundersfund is an incredible firm, but out of the 500-600 investments they’ve made, it’s really 10 that matter for them. They are happy to strike out a lot because when they hit, they hit BIG. That requires broad diversification and the ability to size up, concentrating capital behind those companies. They know how to hit the biggest HRs out there and swing unapologetically for the fences. That’s very different than funds like @iaventures, which has had equally impressive returns with an approach to getting big ownership in a concentrated portfolio that demonstrates an amazing batting average with hard contact (their hit rate unicorns and decacorns from seed entry is incredible). This is still wholly different than firms like @fcollective (again, epic returns) who have diversified strategies but have focused on lower dollars cost average and smaller fund sizes, with a swing for he fences approach). They don’t lean in on the momentum of the portfolio, choosing to only swing at the seed stage where they know are positioned best as a team to succeed. While a unicorn might not move the needle for Founders Fund, it certainly moves the needle for them, making the returns from larger outcomes drive even larger fund multiples. I admire each of these firms in their own way and I’m increasingly convinced that the pattern matching / best practices of portfolio construction is more destructive than informative to performance. We’d be better off stress testing our own capabilities and going through the work to determine where that best enables us to invest. And that can evolve over time based on the capabilities of the investor and the conditions of the market I began my career as a “low and slow” hitter - not taking many swings, being very price disciplined, but connecting on a high % of companies. Seed rounds were far more attractively priced than they are today and downstream rounds were overpriced. This resulted in good enough performance for me to play this game as a professional. Today, I still focus a lot on plate discipline, but I’m more relaxed on entry pricing given the confidence I have in leaning in on the right companies and the relative pricing of Series A/B (from a risk/reward basis) to today’s seed rounds. I’m consciously choosing to sacrifice a bit of my batting average (and early ownership) to swing harder for bigger home runs. Others on my team my team have their own approach to the plate and I love that. I don’t want them to pattern match to me or to others, but rather to ensure that they invest according to the capabilities they have and the needs of the market. I want them to learn from others, not try to become something they are not. As my good friend @jakesaper once told me “Be king or queen of your own island, not anyone else’s”. We apply that deeply to our sector focus and it’s equally important to stage and sizing. We need to play OUR game…no one else’s. That’s what will result in the best results for our team members and our LPs. Know what type of hitter you and your teammates are. Build your portfolio construction around that. That’s how you will dominate the plate and drive the returns you need to in this market and those to come.

Who was the first investor in Cursor? The GOAT investor SBF of course. Alameda Research invested $200k to take half of the company’s $400k pre-seed in 2022. Its stake was sold off in FTX bankruptcy proceedings in 2023 for………$200k.