I don’t fully know the best way to explain this yet but all these things are related:
- robotics + embodied AI
- spatial computing / XR
- AI wearables / ubicomp
- BCIs + other biological interfaces
- DePIN
Emerging endpoints for computers to read-write to the material world.
1/ We at
@a16z
are thrilled to publish the first-ever American Dynamism 50 🇺🇸🚀
50 companies building in the national interest that embody the ethos of American Dynamism.
Thrilled to share I’ve joined
@a16z
as a partner investing in American Dynamism.
Excited to join
@KTmBoyle
and
@davidu
alongside
@MichelleVolz
and
@grant__gregory
to partner with ambitious founders and companies building in the national interest.
It's time to build! 🇺🇸🗽
There’s an astounding level of ideological capture on campuses that enables these terrorist sympathizers to not just fester but be emboldened.
Even worse, these bloodthirsty, morally bankrupt ideologies will probably spread to other institutions after graduation.
This is the final crack in my broken heart - a joint statement from
@Harvard
students. I could be sitting in class with these students, watching children brutally murdered, raped, kidnapped and their mutated bodies torn apart by a jeering crowd - and hear why it’s justified.
Working on internal tools is often considered undesirable by product teams, but they're absolutely core to operationally-intense businesses - these products often *are* the tech that enables an order of magnitude improvement. Lots to be learned from working on them imo.
📣🚀🧵
@KTmBoyle
and I are thrilled to announce our new American Dynamism fund! Since creating this movement we've seen incredible founders flock toward the mission of building in the national interest. More capital means more startups means more winning.
1/ "Nobody wants to work anymore," or so goes the meme.
Core industries around the country are constrained by labor shortages. We believe companies can be built to tackle labor challenges across critical sectors in a few different ways.
Stoked to wrap up a phenomenal tech week with a great group of builders across aviation, manufacturing, energy, workforce, and other American Dynamism sectors in LA. 🌴🇺🇸🚀
A lot of what we’re seeing in the world right now is the bill for pernicious luxury beliefs like degrowth coming due.
And time and time again it will be everyday people, not those who advocated for these unserious positions, who pay the price as basic resources become scarce.
Certain startups in massive yet difficult markets grow into generational outliers and catalyze further startup activity in their industries.
I wrote about full stack startups, and why they are particularly prominent in American Dynamism sectors.
[new] American Dynamism engineering fellows
We're launching a program
@a16z
to bring together multidisciplinary technical talent from industry teams & academic labs for American Dynamism.
Details below. Engineers + researchers in AD —
@espricewright
& I want to hear from you!
"And we’re here because we heard the call to build against these dark forces we face. We know technology is the escape hatch from a nihilistic world. That democracy demands a sword and sometimes we have to use it to defend ourselves, our allies, and civilization."
One of the
I don’t think it’s overstating things to say that
@KTmBoyle
has emerged as one of the most important voices of this pivotal moment.
HOW TO WIN THE FIGHT FOR AMERICA :
Sharing a collection of content I've compiled around building for American Dynamism.
As interest grows in building companies to solve critical national problems, content around this thesis can help shape important narratives and galvanize talent.
Girly pop
Espresso on the beach in Malibu
Hardware in the loop
Summer love
Partial radar beam blockage correction
Linen clothes
Signing deals
Brat summer
Every time the hard work debate resurfaces it’s just a reminder that in a culture that celebrates mediocrity as a form of acceptance, pursuit of excellence is a subversive act.
An underrated strength for startups in industrials, “hard/slow” sectors, etc is a visible aesthetic sensibility.
Even just beautiful landing pages can help with attracting talent by making working on something hard aesthetically legible to those from other sectors.
We're excited to run it back bigger and better for round two of LA Tech Week in less than a month!
A number of us from the
@a16z
American Dynamism team will be around. Hit us up and drop a note below if you’ll be in town. cc
@MichelleVolz
@rmcentush
@grant__gregory
@kimberlywtan
I wrote about technology companies and the levers of cost reduction for consumers in critical yet notoriously broken industries - housing, education, and healthcare.
Founders and technologists are creatives, and early stage technology companies are creative orgs that have more in common with an artistic endeavor than many other businesses.
I find most disagreements about management in tech come down to whether you believe the above or not.
1/ I've had a number of conversations with (1) those looking to join a startup as a chief of staff, or (2) founders looking to hire their first CoS.
A lot has been written on this topic already, so I want to highlight a few points I think are under-discussed.
It seems, given the way the frontier is being built (AI, superconductors, etc.), the organizational design of applied research is worth deeply exploring at this point, including capital structures, talent aggregation, and incentive design.
There are lots of examples of enduring
Subtle distinction: the TAM of robotics isn’t just all physical labor; the TAM of robotics is all interactions with the physical world.
So much like how every company became a software company, every company is a potential robotics company.
And the foundations for that are
The contrast between bottom-up & top-down culture is stark right now.
Bottom-up: the Gundo goes mainstream; prayer app takes the
#1
app store spot; Miss America is a nuclear energy advocate.
Top-down: doomer establishment institutions; "responsible" AIs; "ESG" monoculture.
Found myself reading this essay from
@rivatez
today. It puts into words something I’ve increasingly noticed - how bursts of seclusion seem to help one live with agency, and the exhilarating clarity of spending time alone.
We
@a16z
are honored to be leading the Series B of
@Saronic
and continue our support for the team in their quest to build a new era of maritime autonomy 🌊🇺🇸!
Big news: We have raised $175M in Series B funding, putting Saronic’s valuation at $1B. Redefining maritime superiority requires the tech of tomorrow, with the resources of today - thanks to our investors, including
@a16z
,
@8VC
,
@caffeinatedcap
,
@eladgil
&
@nightdragon
we’re able
We have an existential risk of not being able to manufacture critical components of our military arsenal if we don’t change the way things are built in the US and rebuild the talent pool.
Loved seeing
@2112Power
and
@oyhsu
discuss the future of manufacturing at
#LATechWeek
🇺🇸🚀
Was a great pleasure to host the American Dynamism community tonight during LA
@Techweek_
.
Thanks to all the builders, investors, and friends who came out! 🇺🇸🚀
Excited for the a16z American Dynamism happy hour in LA this evening. Invigorating day learning about new startups in the energy, space, and defense categories. LA has a long history in these areas and continues to be a talent for these critical domains.
In some ways the more fragmented/change-resistant an industry is, the more compelling a full stack startup can be.
These markets are often huge (eg edu, construction, transportation) but have hard dynamics. Some startups choose to own entire value chain vs selling to incumbents.
Time for some big ideas.
From team American Dynamism at
@a16z
, we're looking forward to advancements in the space supply chain, small modular reactors, industrial robotics businesses scaling vertically, and reshoring everything!
cc
@MichelleVolz
@rmcentush
@grant__gregory
With 2023 on the horizon, a16z asked our partners: What ONE big idea do you expect tech to tackle in the coming year?
From small modular reactors to having fun with AI applications, their answers tell us a lot about what's likely to come in tech. 👇
every generation has its industry that captures the popular imagination and reigns supreme as the destination for top talent.
over the last 70 years or so, that top spot has been traded off between government, finance, big tech, and currently early to growth-stage startups.
I've listened to this
@patrick_oshag
interview with
@cyantist
3 times since it came out this week. I cannot recommend it enough.
Something about this discussion has resonated more deeply with me than anything I've read/listened to about early stage investing in a long time.
Todays podcast is with
@cyantist
I met her via
@jwmares
when I asked him for investors who aren’t lame
Cyan’s life and career are pretty singular
She’s so clear, honest and refreshing. And has one of the best investing track records you’ll ever see.
A great conversation!
We should actually look to harness status-seeking, not discourage it.
Most things people do are status-seeking (even the anti-status counter-signaling), and it motivates lots of effort and ingenuity. Magic happens when status-seeking is aligned with positive-sum creation.
A common ingredient for building big ambitious projects in core domestic industries - from industrial reshoring to energy abundance - is the supply of talent and a culture that helps that talent find meaningful work.
Why workforce is a key theme across American Dynamism sectors.
There are some technologies that have been developed in the past but are largely forgotten or left dormant today. I like to think of them as waiting for the right person to come by and pull them back into the world.
IMO an underrated way for early career biz folks in tech to accelerate learning is vendor mgmt.
It’s not a high-prestige ‘strategery’ function, but you learn a ton about build vs buy decisions, managing external parties, b2b sales/implementation, & entire landscapes for tools.
We
@a16z
are honored to support the
@RadiantNuclear
team on their quest to build portable nuclear reactors for a resilient and accessible energy future!
⚛️⚡💯 I'm thrilled to announce our investment in
@RadiantNuclear
— a company producing portable 1-megawatt nuclear reactors to make long-term clean energy accessible quickly and globally.
We’ve had the privilege of talking to excellent engineers and researchers across a number of disciplines since this announcement.
I’m so excited for this program and what we can build for the ecosystem here. Still time to get in touch if you want to work w us! cc
@espricewright
[new] American Dynamism engineering fellows
We're launching a program
@a16z
to bring together multidisciplinary technical talent from industry teams & academic labs for American Dynamism.
Details below. Engineers + researchers in AD —
@espricewright
& I want to hear from you!
We
@a16z
just launched this year’s American Dynamism 50, a collection of companies building in the national interest.
Given broader technology tailwinds, the list this year is centered around applied AI in verticals core to American Dynamism.
The most exciting thing to me about the current wave of hardware, robotics, and physical world ai startups is that it seems we've finally moved on from making incremental improvements to the status quo and on to enabling net new capabilities.
We
@a16z
are honored to support
@josephjconnor
and the
@WithOdyssey_
team as they build the infrastructure to enable educational choice, access, and dynamism for families across the country!
Catching up on some reading and once again amazed by how much more you can learn from niche newsletters/blogs.
Niche audiences enable a precision & depth that's just really difficult when writing for a general audience.
We should give more serious consideration to finding answers about mythical relics with new tech. Seafloor imaging for potential Atlantis sites. LLM-assisted search for clues to the Holy Grail.
1/ A key question in industrial automation GTM: what primarily drives the buyer’s purchase decision?
Here are a few common ones, based on customers across verticals/use cases.
1) Net performance improvement
2) Enable new businesses
3) Fill labor shortages
4) Reduce labor costs
Thank you to everyone who reached out over the past couple of months. A few life updates:
1. I’ve officially wound down Countdown's operations and delivered a highly profitable outcome for our LPs. Most—if not all—of our investors are pleased with our returns.
2. I’m in the
Congrats to the
@zeromarkinc
team on this milestone!
We
@KTmBoyle
@a16z
are excited to back them as they bring their novel C-UAS solution to market — an application of CV, ML, and robotics that brings zero-error marksmanship capabilities from sci-fi to our warfighters.
We’re thrilled to announce that ZeroMark has raised $7M in seed funding to bring our 'Handheld Iron Dome' tech to market and flip the script on small drone threats by making our defenders untouchable.
Led by
@KTmBoyle
of
@a16z
and
@jordanodinsky
of
@GroundUpVC
, with
"We do not need aging institutions to pave the way for American dynamism. But we need American will. And this will comes from ordinary, extraordinary people" -
@KTmBoyle
For the serious. For those who build, because building is a political philosophy.
Thesis: the best companies are n-of-1
Antithesis: the best ideas/markets will attract many companies
Synthesis: the best companies are n-of-1 because only they have the requisite talent/capital/expertise/audacity to conquer a particularly hard market
The conclusion I kept coming to when figuring out how to onboard new hires to a team culture is we needed to be winning together. Hard to build a strong culture on a sinking ship.
Winning a cutthroat competition as a team is the best culture.
As someone who has worked in both dying companies and rocketships, you cannot have great culture without growth and wins. True of people, companies and countries.
Winning isn’t toxic. It’s abundance.
Very fortunate to have gotten the chance to work with
@grant__gregory
, who is a phenomenal colleague and great partner to founders.
Looking forward to more GG x AD collabs soon 👀
Some news: today is my last day
@a16z
The past few years have been incredible. I’ll always cherish my time with a16z and the American Dynamism team, and be grateful for
@davidu
&
@KTmBoyle
taking a chance on me and mentoring me over the past few years. I can’t imagine a better
2/ These companies are pioneering technologies to solve important problems across the country, in critical sectors like education, housing, industrial automation, energy, defense, aerospace, logistics, public safety and more.
Been coworking with a group of 0-1 founders working on a wide range of interesting problems the last few weeks, and I leave each session more energized and optimistic than the last. Deep privilege to learn from these incredible people.
Skeptics and cynics often get very aggressively defensive when faced with new ideas, because their sense of self worth is tied to being skeptical and worshipping rationality (which is what they equate to being smart).
They also often end up being wrong because rationality is
Why this wave of robotics feels different:
The move towards generality / extension of the bitter lesson to robotics means there is more of a platform emerging for an ecosystem of robotic apps to be built.
Previous waves involved more siloed, vertically-integrated robot
3/ In education, companies like
@GuildEducation
and
@wonderschools
are building for education at all levels, creating new solutions for students, families, and lifelong learners.
I wonder if the term 'deep tech' is used far too imprecisely. I understand it as trading off some market risk in favor of technical risk. But it's also used to refer to companies with mostly execution risk, longer timelines, or greater capital needs, but little technical risk.
There is a palpable energy this
#LATechWeek
among builders tackling hard generational problems in the built world across aerospace, defense, manufacturing, energy, construction, and more.
Honored to spend time with the technoindustrialists choosing to go to the moon. 🇺🇸🚀
Deep pleasure to host 120 engineers, product managers and operators at Factory II!
After today we’re closed to civilians so glad we could show folks what building in the real world looks like. Pax Hadrian!
BREAKING: 4 million students left district schools from 2021 to 2022.
3.7 million students enrolled in private, charter and homeschools instead.
I'll explain below why this post pandemic decline is not temporary, but instead is an inflection point in K-12.
I’m excited about where extended reality is and where it’s going, particularly in industries with a large physical world component like manufacturing, logistics, defense, construction, transportation, and other critical sectors.
I’m just starting to dig in. Here are a few
Once again getting back on my soapbox that the only truly effective structural solutions for higher ed affordability involve building or expanding alternatives, and/or meaningfully reducing the number of bad programs and diploma mills.
Let’s go
@2112Power
! Congrats to the
@HadrianSpace
team on their Series B milestone.
The progress this team has made to date is nothing short of extraordinary, and we
@a16z
are honored to continue to back them as they revitalize the American industrial base.
Announcing our monster $117M Series B!
We raised a Series B in December to massively scale operational capacity, double our software team and launch Factory III in 2025.
Stay tuned for a huge
@johncoogan
deep dive later today.
Pleasure to host a great group of founders in SF building companies to advance all facets of housing and construction.
Takeaway: many approaches to be taken to improve each component of building in the built world. Exciting time for the space!
A view I'm coming around to: the path to general robotics eventually runs through the home.
The types/diversity of household tasks + environments, and the design constraints of consumer robot hardware, make it a challenging but likely crucial part of solving general robotics.
Some areas of interest for me going into 2023…
-scalability in industrial automation
-structural labor trends & demography-driven markets
-challengers in artificially supply-constrained industries (edu/housing)
-software-led mfg/ops businesses
-creative industries & dynamism
The reasons I joined
@mosdotcom
include the potential to create new financial services and a strong focus on the civic vertical.
But the core of it is one of the most incredible people I’ve ever had the privilege of working with
@Mira404
.
Read her story:
Today we're sharing what we've been building
@mosdotcom
these past few months - banking for students, done right. Mos' next chapter is as the banking solution helping students address their biggest financial challenge - affording their education without taking on excessive debt.
Today's Daily Spotlight, from
@katiemacreilly
:
Since 2018, some 400,000 students have used Mos to garner an annual average of $16,430 in college financial aid. Now, the company hopes they will stick with the app to learn other personal finance skills
Unimate, the first industrial robot, developed by George Devol and Joseph Engelberger in the 1950s/60s via Unimation, the world's first robotics company.
Shakey, the first mobile robot able to perceive and reason about its surroundings, built by the Stanford Research Institute