Vivian Midha Shen
@vivianmshen
visiting partner @ycombinator.
part-time bene gesserit
900 Following 29.9K Followers
.@MilksandMatcha has the highest slope of anyone I’ve worked with. If you can work with her, you should do it.
A lot of my career has been shaped by people who took an early bet on me.
@vivianmshen was my first boss after graduation. Will Bryk and @ExaAILabs gave me my first full-time role as their first hire. Looking back, I appreciate how much trust it took to give a new grad that kind of responsibility.
At the time, I was mostly focused on figuring things out! Now I can better appreciate what it means to have someone give you room to learn before you’ve proven yourself.
Our team at @cerebras is hiring DevX and technical interns for the fall and spring. I’d love to help create that kind of opportunity for someone else. If you’d like to work with us, please reach out :)
(An old photo from my first NeurIPS)
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don't be captain of the slop brigade
Lazy work used to mean too little output.
Now, with AI, it often means too much and more work for everyone else.
@tobi call it "slop grenades."
A "Slop Grenade" is when you let AI produce the work and pass it on without adding any value (including checking it).
Someone else has to wade through it, catch the mistakes, and clean up the mess.
You save time and look productive but someone else pays for it.
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Incredible work by the @periodiclabs team!
We built high-throughput materials labs in Menlo Park to create a loop between experiments and models. The labs generate fresh data, the models learn from it, and then help us decide what to try next.
Using only 1,300 H200s, plus months of our experimental data, we mid-trained and RL’d an open-source model to surpass GPT-6 Astra on our analysis benchmark. We call it Neon.
This is real footage from our lab. We’re focusing first on hard problems in materials science, including superconductors, magnets, and semiconductor materials.
Read our blog posts below.
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A friend of mine works in AI and thinks bad things are about to happen. He sold his home and moved his family out the country. He said if you own a home in a walkable San Francisco neighborhood near a taqueria with good veggie options, you should sell your home right now.
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signs of a good YC end of batch party
Ten minutes before the World Trade Center’s south tower fell, a colleague saw Rick Rescorla running back into the building’s stairwell. The colleague told Rescorla to flee. “I will as soon as I make sure everyone else is out,” he said. Not long before, he had placed a call to his wife. “Stop crying,” Rescorla said. “I have to get these people out safely. If something should happen to me, I want you to know I’ve never been happier. You made my life.” Tap the link in our bio to read about the Vietnam veteran who saved hundreds of lives on September 11th, and died trying to save more. “For Rick Rescorla, this was a natural death,” his best friend said—a hero’s end.
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Almost a year ago me and my co founder travelled to SF for YC startup school.
Yesterday, we pitched Hoplite on stage at YC S26 demo day.
Funny how much can change in a year when you keep trying to do better.
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Magnets are defining the future of defense and critical industries in the US.
@metalscontent and the team of ex-MIT / NASA metallurgists at @MassMagnetics are leading the way in making American magnets at scale.
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Rare earth magnets sit inside nearly every electric motor, but 90% of the material is conventionally thrown away.
Mass Magnetics (S26) is recycling magnets from EV motors into new ones for robotics and defense, avoiding much of the capital-intensive refining required by mining.
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Introducing the YC Early Access Network.
4x a year, senior technology leaders get early looks at YC's enterprise AI companies and help shape their roadmaps.
Invite-only, by application. Fall '26 kicks off Oct 22 in SF.
Apply now:
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2 yrs ago, @arthurmensch and I shook on @MistralAI's series A at a $2B post and i joined the board to accelerate the mission of open model research
today, @MistralAI closed its $3B+ series D on a $24B post, the largest European equity raise ever
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Paul Graham: The Next Trillion-Dollar Company Will Have Formidable Founders
"The answer to your question where the next giant company comes from is it comes from the right founders."
"It's not some particular idea... it comes from the next trillion dollar founders is where it comes from. And they probably have good ideas." — @paulg
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“the caesars, the caliphs, the tsars -
they conquered vast swathes of the world, and proclaimed themselves favorites of the gods.
and yet their empires crumbled away.
it is easier to conquer, than to rule.”
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free chips, get your free chips
in honor of astra pushing the frontier this weekend, we @amppublic are going to free up ~1K chips (interconnected) from our internal research pool for interesting projects for the next 2 days as a grant
reply below with info on your project, and how many nodes you'd like
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Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham says great founders aren't motivated by dreams of becoming a billionaire. They're focused on keeping their model train from falling off the table.
Sometimes, he's even the one who delivers the good news.
@paulg, @vivianmshen, @ycombinator, @jason
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Paul Graham on what drives founders through the hard parts:
“Being dutiful is not enough. The obstacles are too fearsome for mere dutifulness.”
“You know what actually motivates founders day to day? The fear of failure.”
“If your server’s crashing, you’re not thinking, ‘I got to deal with this because if I deal with it, I’ll become a billionaire.’ You’re thinking, ‘Oh no, the server’s crashing. It will be a disaster. The engine of my model train set is falling off the edge of the table. I need to go and save it.’”
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This S26 batch stood out as the most ambitious yet. YC is in great hands with @garrytan and history will show the enormous impact pg has made for founders everywhere
Feels good to be in @Forbes.
But it feels even better when we find info about a market no-one else has.
Thanks for selecting @lato_ai, @dasha_shunina!
.@paulg came to the 47th (!) @ycombinator batch talk a few weeks ago, where we talked about the Turing Test, ambitious startup ideas, and formidable founders.
It was also a reminder of the incredible YC community, where founders literally help each other treat their cancer.
What a special time and place to work on startups.
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never forget where you came from
getting messages like this reminds me of everything @ycombinator has done for founders
honored to carry on the tradition and pay it forward
.@MaxJunestrand is a force of nature. Legora grew from $1 million to $100 million in ARR in <2 years, and now over 3% of lawyers worldwide use Legora.
I caught him after his talk at YC Startup School to chat backstage about his experience in YC, how his first YC interview went, and why working at a startup is one of the best ways to start your career.
his talk is now live, see the link in comments
we also have some friendly competition going - is @Starcloud_ or @WeAreLegora YC's fastest unicorn? @PhilipJohnston may need to jump in!
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