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Alastair (Alex) Rampell reposted thisAlastair (Alex) Rampell reposted thisPlease spread the word about this exciting Bay Area job opportunity: SEA's partner in Redwood City, Squash on Track, is searching for a new Executive Director. SoT is looking for an education- and community-oriented professional who wants to make a difference in the lives of young people, expand the boundaries of squash, and strengthen and grow a local nonprofit. Anyone interested can message me directly or email sot@squashandeducation.org.
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Alastair (Alex) Rampell reposted thisAlastair (Alex) Rampell reposted thisHow does an AI-native startup unseat an incumbent⁉️ 👇 Enter the Greenfield Strategy: AI-native startup bingo. The battle between every startup and incumbent comes down to whether the startup gets distribution before the incumbent gets innovation. One of the most powerful, and underrated, ways for startups to win distribution is to serve companies at their formation: greenfield companies. Stripe Deel Mercury Ramp Carta Brex have all done this at scale. Why does this work? Simply put, acquiring customers de novo is easier than getting customers to switch: - Many of the large software incumbents have hostages, not customers. Their customers would love to switch, but ripping and replacing existing software is risky and expensive. New companies don’t face those switching costs; they simply look for the best solution and evaluate based on merit. - New companies don’t need as many features to have a complete solution. - New companies have fewer stakeholders. You only have to convince the founders. Grow with your customers: If you attract all of the new companies at formation and grow with them, you will become a big company as your customers become big companies. Consider Stripe: many of Stripe’s customers did not yet exist when Stripe was founded. Some of those early customers later became large businesses in their own right. So when enterprises outside of Silicon Valley also needed to prepare themselves for a shift to ecommerce models, Stripe was an obvious choice, with plenty of relevant reference customers already in place. Incumbents, on the other hand, would much rather sell to existing businesses vs. companies that don’t exist now but might exist in huge numbers in a few years. They are bound by the rules of P&L (Profit & Loss) – and there’s no “P” for greenfield companies that don’t exist yet, just “L”. The startup, however, isn’t bound to a financial model – the startup doesn’t need one; it's still figuring stuff out! Graduation moments: In a similar way, software “graduation moments” (the moments when a startup begins to develop enterprise needs) also create opportunities to execute this greenfield strategy. New companies will need to migrate to more complex software systems as they scale (e.g. from Quickbooks to Netsuite). AI-native startup Bingo: There are many different categories of enterprise software. Enough to fill a 5x5 Bingo board and more! In each category of the Bingo board, there sits an incumbent that could be dethroned by an AI-native alternative. So, how does a new company win the game of Bingo? - Pick a square - Make a narrow wedge much better - Find a constant source of new customers - Rapidly iterate and add features to grow with your customers - Don’t be constrained by the division of existing categories If you’re building a category-defining company on the Bingo board - come and talk to us. New post with Alastair (Alex) Rampell Andreessen Horowitz. Link in comments.
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Alastair (Alex) Rampell reposted thisAlastair (Alex) Rampell reposted thisThe model companies aren’t just selling the ingredients anymore — they’re opening restaurants too. When OpenAI and Anthropic launched, they positioned themselves as infrastructure for others to build on. But today, with Sora, Claude Teams, and constant whispers of potential vertical applications, the model makers are going full-stack — building business lines that compete directly with the startups they continue to power. So where do you build when the farms start running restaurants? One answer: in walled gardens of data — domains where information is proprietary, regulated, or simply too fragmented for general models to master. vLex did it in law, digitizing decades of Spanish case law. OpenEvidence did it in medicine, structuring fragmented peer-reviewed research. Both turned hard-to-access data into defensible AI products. The model companies will always command bigger models, more compute, and more distribution — those are hard games for startups to win. But there’s an opening in ecosystems where high-quality data has historically been fragmented, sensitive, or difficult to access — places where sovereignty and trust matter more than raw capability. More from me and my partner Alastair (Alex) Rampell below on the Fruits of the Walled Garden 👇
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Alastair (Alex) Rampell shared thisFor 60+ years, the history of software was primarily: “take a filing cabinet, put it in a database, give it a user interface” But the old fashioned file in filing cabinet or on-prem or cloud hosted record still needed to be acted on by a human. *This* is what’s exciting about AI. The future of work is software. https://lnkd.in/ghW27CHb
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Alastair (Alex) Rampell reposted thisAlastair (Alex) Rampell reposted thisNew Andreessen Horowitz thesis: AI x commerce AI will change the way we shop - from where we find products to how we evaluate them, when we buy, and much more. What types of purchases will be disrupted, and where does opportunity exist in the age of AI? More from me + Alastair (Alex) Rampell: https://lnkd.in/gHq6KYRE
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Alastair (Alex) Rampell shared thisWe (Andreessen Horowitz) are excited to lead Rillet's $70M Series B and back the team building the ERP for the AI age. Most Finance systems today are brittle, clunky, and deeply manual — still stuck in the '90s. Rillet is building something entirely new. It often takes companies days or weeks to "close the books" every month (I remember at TrialPay when we had a whole project to "get to 7" days). Sprawling AR/AP teams. Tedious workflows duct-taped across Excel, internal dashboards, QuickBooks, NetSuite and other tools. Rillet is a self-driving ERP — designed from the ground up for speed, intelligence, and automation. It combines a modern ledger with AI agents that actively manage finance ops: reconciling, reporting, forecasting, and more. Existing ERPs are systems of record. Rillet is a system of action. It helps finance teams close books instantly, generate investor-ready board decks, and run real-time dashboards — all on one platform. And customers love it. Rillet has achieved rave reviews from CFOs, controllers, and staff accountants alike -- and a big chunk of our portfolio. It's ERP that just works. I’m excited to partner with Nicolas Kopp and the team!
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Alastair (Alex) Rampell shared thisOperation Chokepoint 3.0 Under the Biden administration, Operation Chokepoint 2.0 tried to debank and deplatform crypto: https://lnkd.in/gckpJHD3 That era has ended, but now the banks are about to implement their own Chokepoint 3.0 — charging insanely high fees to access data or move money to crypto and fintech apps, and more concerningly blocking crypto and fintech apps they don’t like: https://lnkd.in/gr2Y8c6i JP Morgan Chase is an $800B company. Make no mistake: this isn’t about a new revenue stream. It’s about strangling competition. And if they get away with this, every bank will follow. Dodd-Frank Section 1033 guarantees that consumers have rights to their data, and it’s the CFPB’s job to enforce. The CFPB under Biden did some bad things, but upholding 1033 preserved consumer choice and competition. The crazy thing is sometimes this “data” is just your account number and routing code. That’s right: information that’s printed on the bottom of every check, if delivered electronically, somehow should require tremendous fees paid to banks that were collectively bailed out by taxpayers a mere 17 years ago. If it suddenly costs $10 to move $100 into a Coinbase or Robinhood account — maybe fewer people will do it. Or if it costs $10 to get a cheaper loan from a fintech, maybe you’ll be forced to take a crappier one by JPM. And maybe JPM and others will just refuse to let consumers connect their own freely chosen crypto and fintech apps to their bank account. In a perfect world, consumers would vote with their wallets and leave JPM. But every bank will likely do this, and getting a new banking charter takes years. Many banks have hostages, not customers. We don’t need a new law; we just need the administration to prevent this callous and manipulative attempt to kill competition and consumer choice.Meuser: The Biden Administration's Operation Choke Point 2.0 Was Carried Out by The Prudential Regulators to Target and Debank the Digital Asset EcosystemMeuser: The Biden Administration's Operation Choke Point 2.0 Was Carried Out by The Prudential Regulators to Target and Debank the Digital Asset Ecosystem
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Alastair (Alex) Rampell reposted thisAlastair (Alex) Rampell reposted thisNever edit a video alone again. Meet Underlord, your AI co-editor. This is vibe editing.
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Alastair (Alex) Rampell shared thisAoPS is the gold standard in mathematics. This is a great opportunity for somebody who loves math, education, and technology.Alastair (Alex) Rampell shared thisAfter 20+ years at AoPS and a decade of Beast Academy success, we're taking our biggest leap yet. We've partnered with Carina Initiatives to form Inflection Point Learning—a new company dedicated to bringing our innovative Beast Academy curriculum to elementary classrooms nationwide. Our goal is to foster mathematical talent in early grades and transform how math is taught in elementary schools. **We're hiring a founding CEO!** If you're passionate about revolutionizing math education and have experience bringing ambitious products to complex markets, we want to hear from you. Remote applicants welcome. Our pilot programs have already shown incredible results in our first three years—advanced students are being challenged to reach their full potential, students who once feared math now tackle complex problems eagerly, and teachers are rediscovering their own love for mathematics. With substantial new funding, we're developing a complete K-5 curriculum with extensive print/online materials and comprehensive teacher training. Help us turn elementary math classrooms into launching pads for future innovators! Learn more about the new company and the CEO opportunity at https://lnkd.in/gwvMZ_8i #MathEducation #EdTech #BeastAcademy
Alastair (Alex) Rampell commented on a post
1mo
this is an absurdly Luddite view. nobody is forcing people to use Facebook or its products. The product had high utilization before any "algorithm"
You don't like them, as is your right. But cloaking your hatred under psuedo-scientific babble is ridiculous.
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Alastair (Alex) Rampell liked thisAlastair (Alex) Rampell liked thisAfter 5 amazing years, last week I decided to take the next big leap and move on from Klaviyo. I'm so proud of the things we built together, from Klaviyo's first ML platform helping reduce time to train and deploy models by 5x to the Marketing Agent and Composer that are redefining marketing in the agentic age, I've learned an incredible amount and am extremely grateful for the opportunity to have worked with such talented Klaviyos both past and present. As I start my next adventure in SF, I'm looking forward to taking those learnings and applying them to new domains, but will always be a Klaviyo in my heart and will be rooting for the team in its next endeavors!
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Alastair (Alex) Rampell liked thisAlastair (Alex) Rampell liked thisis there anyone working in FT who would read that FT is Hasan Piker's “favourite newspaper”, stop for a moment and think "are we the baddies?"? https://lnkd.in/e36mY4at
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Alastair (Alex) Rampell liked thisAlastair (Alex) Rampell liked thisToday, we are pleased to announce ZIP's $156M Fund II. We are particularly grateful to our LPs for their trust and confidence, and are privileged to continue building our firm and our portfolio, brick by brick, with their support. Four and a half years ago, Zero Infinity Partners was born out of the observation that infrastructure sector expertise remains rare in early-stage investing – even as the moment has come to need it most. We believed that there was a place for a group like us who did not grow up in the VC ecosystem but instead brings something very different to the table. So we set out to back the founders bringing innovation to the world of physical infrastructure – providing both venture capital and infra domain expertise at the earliest stages – across sectors like energy, power, compute, mobility, logistics, waste, water, and industrials. We call this the infratech category. Were we right? If you are an infratech founder, come find out. We want to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with you as you build the next generation of infrastructure. To the ZIP dream team (Anagh, Alex, Ashika, Lucy, Shelley, Christopher, Ben, John, Kunal, Rob, Badar, William, Michael): it is a pleasure to work alongside you every day. To the ZIP founders: we are so proud that you chose to partner with us. Lastly, many thanks to Sarah Klearman from The Wall Street Journal for covering this chapter of our story.
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Alastair (Alex) Rampell liked thisAlastair (Alex) Rampell liked this6 months ago I had never opened Roblox Studio let alone built my own Roblox game. This Saturday I spoke at the annual Roblox Developers Conference. It was surreal (and a little intimidating) to step on stage in front of a huge audience who are very experienced and successful developers on the platform. How did this happen? Back in March, I attended the Game Developer Conference because I was interested in building my own video game. I attended a session on using AI to develop Roblox games and was super inspired to learn more about the Roblox Platform. (I also learned that Roblox was launching a new program called the “Roblox Incubator Program” designed to bring in developers interested in building games for 18+ players, and Mike Sego and I decided to apply. We were accepted and started the program in May, and now here I am. My talk was about the specific AI workflows I’ve adopted while building the game, but the broader point was more important: While AI makes a lot of the work up to 100x faster and it enables me to do things I could not do (I have no artistic skills whatsoever), I feel that the point isn’t to let the AI “make my game for me”. I view it as a tool that accelerates the build->play->fix loop so that I can focus on my creativity. The goal was never to one-shot a game. The goal was always to build something meaningful and fun that reflects my interests and satisfies my desire to create someone new in the world. Shout out to Eric Yip and Jason Lesperance who I shared the stage with as they introduced the new AI features in Roblox Studio. The Roblox Studio team had already built or are in the process of building a bunch of features that will make my AI workflows native to the development process. Next step - launch the game.
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Alastair (Alex) Rampell liked thisAlastair (Alex) Rampell liked thisNext year AoPS will launch the AoPS Institute (https://aopsinstitute.org/) to support pre-college students ready for collegiate level study and research experiences. We are starting a new non-profit organization for the AoPS Institute, and seek a Dean of Mathematics to partner with our Dean of Students to craft and launch the program. The ideal candidate has experience working with eager math students who are ready for the challenges of schools like MIT and Stanford well before they finish high school, and likely was one of those students themselves. This is a remote position; learn more at https://lnkd.in/gviN8xye.
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Alastair (Alex) Rampell liked thisAnother wonderful summer for the PROMYS community! What has always made PROMYS special to me is the belief that mathematical discovery requires patience, rigor, and the willingness to wrestle with difficult ideas. Creating an environment where young people have the time, space, guidance, and encouragement to do that is rare, and sustaining that approach across Boston, Oxford, and Padova, alongside our growing Pathways and PROMYS for Teachers programs, is extraordinary. I’m grateful to the faculty, counselors, staff, volunteers, donors, and partners who make this possible and who help preserve the spirit of deep mathematical exploration at the heart of PROMYS | Program in Mathematics for Young Scientists! It is a privilege to help steward that mission and shape its next chapter.Alastair (Alex) Rampell liked thisAnother remarkable summer at PROMYS has come to a close! This year the PROMYS community included 142 students and 45 counselors from around the world, who engaged in deep, exploratory mathematical learning at Boston University in the U.S., the University of Oxford in England, and the University of Padova in Italy. PROMYS Pathways and PROMYS for Teachers also had exciting summers. Pathways returned for its fifth summer with a free, four-week program for 30 Massachusetts students (plus a new Rising Scholars pilot for rising 9th graders), while PfT brought 20 teachers together and 10 teacher counselors (T²s) for a summer of mathematical problem solving. We are so grateful for the incredible students, counselors, teachers, faculty, and staff who make the PROMYS community an exceptional, welcoming, and joyous place to do mathematics!
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Alastair (Alex) Rampell liked thisAlastair (Alex) Rampell liked thisTonight we hosted the first-ever WrapFest I co-hosted with Michael Broukhim at the FabFitFun HQ in Beverly Hills, with special remarks from Montana Tucker We brought together an incredible group of Jewish founders, investors, and builders from across LA for a special pre-Rosh Hashanah evening. Apples & honey. Amazing kosher food. Honey cake. Honey sticks. And, of course, we blew the shofar. A truly beautiful night of Jewish pride, community, and connection.
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Alastair (Alex) Rampell liked thisAlastair (Alex) Rampell liked thisZoom Appoints Former Oracle CFO Jeff Epstein to Board of Directors; Jonathan Chadwick to Retire - Zoom Communications, Inc.Zoom Appoints Former Oracle CFO Jeff Epstein to Board of Directors; Jonathan Chadwick to Retire - Zoom Communications, Inc.
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Alastair (Alex) Rampell liked thisI'm often asked by AoPS alums for advice on starting a company. I start with, "You can't build a company alone." I stress how important it is to find partners in the early days who are strongly aligned with you and who are very good at things you're not good at and from whom you can learn a lot. Then I tell them about Dave, without whom AoPS wouldn't have had nearly the impact we've had over the last 20+ years. Thanks, David Patrick, for being such a critical part of building AoPS! I look forward to hearing your travel stories in the years to come, and to those new books!Alastair (Alex) Rampell liked thisToday is my last day at AoPS -- I'm retiring and becoming "Curriculum Editor Emeritus". It has been an incredible 22-year career here. I'm not planning to leave math education entirely: I have a couple more book ideas in mind, and I hope to continue to do math education outreach and attend various conferences and events. And, of course, more travel for fun!
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Arteen Arabshahi
SF AI-Native Operator Takeaway #2: In AI-native PLG, the hard part isn’t conversion... it’s discovery. Many AI-native teams are still talking about PLG using a classic SaaS mental model, but based on operator conversations in SF, that model is starting to break down in fairly obvious ways. The biggest bottleneck right now isn’t conversion. It’s discovery. In traditional PLG, users generally understood the category before they ever signed up. The problem was obvious, the product’s value was legible from the homepage, and the “aha” moment tended to show up quickly in first use. In that world, PLG meant optimizing onboarding, reducing friction, and improving free-to-paid conversion because user intent already existed. AI changes that assumption. In AI-native products, users are often curious but unclear. They don’t yet know what’s possible, value depends heavily on workflow, context, data, and role, and the product can feel abstract until it’s applied directly to their job. As a result, many users stall not because the product isn’t valuable, but because they haven’t discovered how it fits into their world and how they can't live without it. This is the real distinction people kept coming back to. PLG conversion answers, “Is this worth paying for?” PLG discovery answers, “What problem does this solve for me, right now?” What’s working best in practice is less about funnel polish and more about clarity up front: role- or workflow-specific entry points, guided examples instead of blank states, and opinionated first actions that show users a concrete outcome before asking them to explore. This also explains a broader pattern across AI-native companies. Forward-deployed teams and services-heavy delivery aren’t just implementation tools; they’re discovery mechanisms. They translate abstract AI capability into concrete workflow value, observe real use cases users wouldn’t self-discover, and feed those learnings back into what eventually becomes productized. PLG isn’t going away, but in AI-native companies it’s being redefined. Self-serve no longer means self-explanatory. Education becomes part of the product, and discovery has to come before optimization. The teams making progress aren’t obsessing over conversion rates yet. They’re focused on whether users see themselves in the product, how quickly they reach a meaningful outcome, and whether the product helps users get to a meaningful outcome for themselves quickly, without too much guesswork. Bottom line: in AI, PLG is less about removing conversion friction early and much more about creating understanding first. Once they understand, they may be hooked. Tomorrow is my last SF AI operator takeaway focusing on everyone's favorite topic du jour: 996 work schedules.
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Reid Christian
Founder FOMO - how to navigate becoming an AI-native company We are doing something about it here at CRV, bringing leading speakers from AI-native for our founders We have speakers from each of these orgs: Sales Marketing CS Finance EPD orgs No vendors, just hands on keyboard work, the ones who are building truly internal agents Everyone has built their SDR agent, many have made strides in engineering, but who is innovating in recruiting? (again no vendors) If anyone has suggestions of Recruiting orgs that have built homegrown agents please dm! This is a CRV EXCLUSIVE event for our founders in SF in May
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