Pinned Tweet
U.S. Venture capital hasn't been able to outperform European VC for the past 20 years. The Thiel Andreessen generation of VC took one of the greatest engines of economic growth and American ingenuity, and turned it into an old world rent extraction scheme.
wired.com/story/to-save-…
wired.com/story/to-save-…
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Del Johnson retweeted
What
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Context was Topher sharing an email from Scott Alexander in which Scott professed his agreement with a white nationalist blogging subculture devoted to proving genetic inferiority of black people. Yud considered exposing a private message unconscionable.
gist.github.com/segyges/f540a3…
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Being right years ahead of others is extremely satisfying. And people apologize to me and tell me I was right and they were wrong all the time, actually.
Being right years ahead of others isn’t nearly as satisfying as people think. Nobody apologizes for treating you like a crazy. They just come back years later, repeating what you told them as if it’s some groundbreaking revelation because they finally heard it from someone else.
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Also it's good when people come back years later parroting your ideas! If you want to be attributed, you have to remind people contemporaneously AND follow up whenever someone tries to pass your ideas off as theirs (if you care about that).
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Del Johnson retweeted
Can't be overstated the extent to which these people think philosophy is simple and that they've figured it out. The reason they think they should have the power to shape AI, even as they warn it could kill everyone, is that they think they've cracked morality for the first time.
Community noteThe excerpt is from Dario Amodei's 2010 GiveWell guest post as a Princeton physics grad student; he donated the $10k to VillageReach (child vaccines) and described the critical analysis as emotionally taxing.
blog.givewell.org/2010/06/03/my-…
nytimes.com/2026/11/05/tec…
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Del Johnson retweeted
The @a16z article quoted below uses the findings of this paper to support the idea that VC firms show persistence of performance.
(e.g. A top-quartile fund is likely to be followed by another top quartile fund from the same firm.)
Indeed, this paper is often shared by @a16z o makes the argument that increases in fund size do not change GP performance.
It’s worth knowing that the study looked at funds from 1984 to 2015; 17 vintage years prior to dotcom, 15 afterwards.
When it talks about fund scaling, it is talking about managers that ~double their fund size, not those who go from $300M to a $15B multi-fund strategy.
In fact, it specifically uses the challenge of scaling VC, and the implicit constraint on fund size, as a reason that VC persistence appeared stronger than PE in their findings.
“We note, however, that performance persistence is stronger in VC than buyout, perhaps reflecting the more difficult challenges of scaling VC investing and thus competing away GP advantages.”
Finally, the study does not find persistence in VC firms generally, but in specific fund strategies which would be separated by factors like specialisation, stage or individual partners.
TL;DR — This is a paper about persistence in traditional VC strategies, which is why it has very little relation to a16z, despite how often they may misuse its arguments.
nber.org/papers/w28109
(e.g. A top-quartile fund is likely to be followed by another top quartile fund from the same firm.)
Indeed, this paper is often shared by @a16z o makes the argument that increases in fund size do not change GP performance.
It’s worth knowing that the study looked at funds from 1984 to 2015; 17 vintage years prior to dotcom, 15 afterwards.
When it talks about fund scaling, it is talking about managers that ~double their fund size, not those who go from $300M to a $15B multi-fund strategy.
In fact, it specifically uses the challenge of scaling VC, and the implicit constraint on fund size, as a reason that VC persistence appeared stronger than PE in their findings.
“We note, however, that performance persistence is stronger in VC than buyout, perhaps reflecting the more difficult challenges of scaling VC investing and thus competing away GP advantages.”
Finally, the study does not find persistence in VC firms generally, but in specific fund strategies which would be separated by factors like specialisation, stage or individual partners.
TL;DR — This is a paper about persistence in traditional VC strategies, which is why it has very little relation to a16z, despite how often they may misuse its arguments.
nber.org/papers/w28109
This article makes absolutely no sense.
Firstly, there’s a list of complaints and criticisms about PE which clearly apply at least as well to modern venture.
(Poor performance, weak liquidity, sloppy markup practices, etc.)
It makes a spurious case about VC outperforming er law as a smokescreen — ignoring the totally different distribution of returns.
An equally spurious case about persistence of performance, ignoring the fact that multistage firms have changed substantially over the last decade.
The idea that VC marks are more rational than PE marks is also comical. PE is far more rigorous about valuation — a term that few VCs even understand.
It makes no sense that a16z would choose to lash out at a more mature, better performing strategy in a way that highlights all of their own flaws so clearly.
The obvious explanation is that they want to consume a bigger chunk of PE allocation as they move further away from VC, and they’re making this move before the AI trade implodes.
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Del Johnson retweeted
After more than a decade backing founders, I decided to make a bet of my own.
Today, Evertrue Capital is officially out of stealth with an oversubscribed $17M debut fund.
Backing founders before consensus forms.
More in @TechCrunch: techcrunch.com/2026/11/03/yvo…
Today, Evertrue Capital is officially out of stealth with an oversubscribed $17M debut fund.
Backing founders before consensus forms.
More in @TechCrunch: techcrunch.com/2026/11/03/yvo…
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Del Johnson retweeted
Analysis from @deedydas below, looking at which founders are most likely to get a funded by a “tier 1” VC.
The most predictive feature is having previously worked at a “tier 1” firm.
Research looking at 85,099 unique startups, of which 1,759 were established by entrepreneurs e, illustrates why this is flawed:
VC experience helps a founder raise more capital — but there’s no benefit to outcomes when compared to other founders that raised a similar amount.
i.e. The fundraising advantage is driven by connections and insider status, not meritocratic selection.
events.bse.eu/live/files/614…
The most predictive feature is having previously worked at a “tier 1” firm.
Research looking at 85,099 unique startups, of which 1,759 were established by entrepreneurs e, illustrates why this is flawed:
VC experience helps a founder raise more capital — but there’s no benefit to outcomes when compared to other founders that raised a similar amount.
i.e. The fundraising advantage is driven by connections and insider status, not meritocratic selection.
events.bse.eu/live/files/614…
Which startups are most likely to get an investment from top tier VCs?
I looked at ~60 attributes across 5000 startups and these were the 15 strongest.
#1 is being from a top tier fund. MBA is a negative signal
Full list of signals below:
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Del Johnson retweeted
An attempt to document important facts concerning AI Safety, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Rationalism and San Francisco Effective Altruism
verysane.ai/p/ai-safety-is…
verysane.ai/p/ai-safety-is…
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Del Johnson retweeted
Be extremely intentional with your friendships — not acquaintances, not business partners, actual friends
Try to pick high-integrity people — the right people
Invest time in those relationships
Cut or downgrade folks who are transactional or who don’t show up for you
Reallocate that time and energy to the right people who do
It's ok to be cutthroat about this, as life is the memories you create with your friends and family.
Invest in making moments.
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Del Johnson retweeted
More than any time in my career, VCs seem to be underwriting other investors’ interest rather than the company itself.
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Del Johnson retweeted
anyone even remotely familiar with the valley is not surprised foreign actors have embedded agents who conduct industrial espionage on US technology companies
there is a literal FBI branch office dedicated to this problem
it *is* funny to try to turn this into a product marketing story when the guy in question was cartoonishly incompetent tho
there is a literal FBI branch office dedicated to this problem
it *is* funny to try to turn this into a product marketing story when the guy in question was cartoonishly incompetent tho
Lots of new details on the OpenAI spy in this piece. The company's newsroom thanked AI for helping identify the culprit, but seems like case really cracked open when the guy *checks notes* LEFT HIS BAG UNATTENDED WITH HIS ID AND ANOTHER LISTENING DEVICE.
"One of the keys to the case was finding an unattended bag in the company’s offices that allegedly contained Alfozan’s wallet and identification as well as a recording device, according to the US Attorney’s office in San Francisco."
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Del Johnson retweeted
I speak to 3-5 LPs every week for different manager reference calls. Three takeaways from calls this week.
1. The mega platforms raised way more than expected this year.
2. They are investing much faster than expected. They raised this year and will be back in market next year.
3. Budgets for smaller managers $200M and seed have been cut almost entirely as a result.
Across all 4 calls this week. Same message.
1. The mega platforms raised way more than expected this year.
2. They are investing much faster than expected. They raised this year and will be back in market next year.
3. Budgets for smaller managers $200M and seed have been cut almost entirely as a result.
Across all 4 calls this week. Same message.
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Yeah, there's this budding idea that by pushing domestic emerging manager competition out of the industry, large VCs leave a capital vacuum that is readily filled by spies, cults, and foreign adversaries. But maybe we're not ready for that conversation yet.
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Del Johnson retweeted
The man arrested for planting a secret recording device at OpenAI's headquarters is a Venture Partner of a VC firm alongside the son of a senior Saudi intelligence official:
I'm told by a source that the employee arrested for installing a covert recording device was OpenAI's only Saudi employee, Abdulrahman Alfozan
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Del Johnson retweeted
That's the point! Large VCs want to push out competition. They have organized the industry to do just that, and it's going to take legislation to fix it, unless you want 5 large risk averse funds to control even more of global VC-backed business formation. wired.com/story/to-save-…
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