It’s an amazing time to be making games - it’s easier than ever to get started on an idea and new tech is unlocking novel content formats that players have never seen before We @speedrun are excited to meet AI-native devs building toward the new golden age of gaming!

Ben Horowitz on the two skills that will matter more than ever before in an AI world: creativity and relationships. "I think those are things that are hard to get out of today's AI in a very good way. So if you don't have instincts around those things, I don't know if all the AI in the world could help you. Whereas the grind-them-out tasks, AI is already really good at." "Do you have original ideas? Can you establish and maintain very high quality, high fidelity relationships with people off the rip? I think people don't think about that enough." "One big advantage I think that we have is we really look for that. Many just ignore that whole thing, like it's not a thing... It's a thing." @bhorowitz w/ @Tocelot

I’m very fortunate to work with the team at a16z for my entire entrepreneurial career, and can confidently say their team creates an unfair advantage to turn your vision into reality! Great partners and great ppl

Nexxa World was an amazing meetup of minds building in industrial autonomy at SF Tech Week! loved hosting this industry panel with former @Boeing CIO Ted Colbert, @BedrockRobotics COO Laurent Hautefeuille, and @Nexxa_AI CEO @PhilippWehn! my favorite nugget of founder advice from the panel - say NO to pilots where you dont have the right senior decision maker on the deal team to avoid ending up in pilot purgatory most founders say yes to every deal early on, but counter-intuitively it’s even more important to say no to the wrong design partners given how long industrial sales cycles can be

Loved hosting this fireside chat with Dylan Jadeja CEO @riotgames at the Future of Creativity event by @GoldHouseCo at SF Tech Week! Riot celebrates its 20th anniversary this year & still leads with a player first ethos - what an incredible run with even more to look forward to!

as robots move into homes & workplaces, the surface area for safety mishaps is growing quickly. at @speedrun we believe safety infrastructure will be foundational for robotics, and were day 1 investors in Safeworld founders @kwong47 @zhao__ding @Sim0Rachidi have built an incredible team spanning robotics, AI, simulation, & safety expertise. @emilybenn12 and I have been deeply impressed by their execution on one of the most important frontiers in physical AI congrats @safeworldai on their $12m fundraise! and this team is also hiring - follow them below

Mirai turns any location into an explorable simulation - already used by thousands of real estate agents🗺️ i've long been excited about world models, so excited to see great apps like this being built!

We hit $1M ARR at Speedrun this summer. But what I’ll miss most is the room: founders a few desks away, each wrestling with a hard problem of their own, and willing to let me learn from it. Bye bye, Speedrun 🫡

the truth for RTS lovers is that we are a dying breed. kids today really only play 1st and 3rd person games, and shooters are the largest genre by far. blizzard is just making what people want RTS is an elegant genre for a more civilized age

loved hosting @thejessezhang of @DecagonAI for a @speedrun fireside chat yesterday! a few of my favorite takeaways: - when doing customer calls, focus on the problem not the suggested solution. your job is to deeply understand the customer pain point and come up with the best solution - the number of genuinely great ideas in any technology cycle is small and a founder's job is to find them - but you won't know if they're truly great until you start building + talking to customers - always ask customers if they're willing to pay for something - all good markets have competition. don't try to run away from competition - buckle down and figure out how to win - early on the highest-leverage use of a CEO's time is sales - talking to customers, recruiting, etc

banners going up in SF for @Pokemon world championships this week! 50k people, sold out Moscone, finals at Chase Center 30 years in and Pikachu is still filling NBA arenas - what an incredible run! ⚡

chief of staff at an early-stage, post-PMF startup might be one of the best career launchpads for a smart young person right now. if you're a few years out of school / mba and are high hustle, high autonomy, excited about startups - DM me. we have several portfolio companies hiring forget big tech / finance / consulting - an AI startup today moves at 100x the speed of a traditional company. you'll learn faster and your scope will grow (if you're good) into responsibilities your FANG peers won't touch until 10 years in i know CoS who've built global sales orgs from scratch, stood up 8-figure data centers, run Series B fundraises. the trust & opportunities you get as a CEO's right-hand is immense - many CoS get promoted to lead entire functions as the company scales finally, shadowing a strong founder is one of the best ways to learn to be one yourself. you're in the room when the most important decisions are made & touch every part of the business - product, sales, recruiting etc. you'll also build your network across customers, engineers, investors if this sounds exciting to you, shoot me a DM!

fundraising masterclass from @travisk on valuation: "I'm always saying it's at least this and it can go up, but I start low... so it only goes up, so that everybody's pumped, leaning forward" start low, get bid up. anchoring initial price too high is a rookie mistake