Roger Ehrenberg @infoarbitrage

New York Tech Week was pretty great. After leaving @iaventures almost five years ago and doing my own investing until recently, it was a pretty lonely pursuit. I also missed being a part of the NYC venture ecosystem of which I've been a part for more than 20 years. Thinking back to the 2005-09 era and how much has changed since then is stunning. NYC is a venture capital powerhouse with a deep well of tech talent to boot. I am so proud of what the industry has accomplished since my early days post-Wall Street. This was the first Tech Week since founding my new venture firm, @gamechangersvc, which is the impetus for getting back in touch with so many with whom I developed wonderful working and personal relationships over the past two decades. I am so grateful to see so many friends doing so well, and I am energized by what I see as a historic opportunity for NYC in this next wave of technology's evolution and its impact on society. Our collective futures are bright. Long live NYC venture capital. #vc #innovation #entrepreneurship #grateful

I haven’t really viewed reserves as a specific number - it’s the concept of optimizing the risk/reward profile of the portfolio. This means being comfortable with extreme concentration when you feel those follow on checks reflect attractive risk/reward trade offs. The issue with very early stage fund is, of course, recycling. My tendency is to deal with that as it comes rather than to view it as a hard constraint. Take the great opportunities that present themselves to you now and figure out how to take advantage of other great opportunities later.

If you’re really early, the bias should generally be towards slightly insane and irrational founders who have a non-consensus take on a large market. If you’re really early, a small venture check can get you large ownership if you can make the case that your money isn’t a commodity. If you’re really early, you can generally create a 25-30 constituent venture portfolio where you can concentrate into most promising companies. If you’re really early and if you’re a talented assessor of people and markets, 2 great companies can produce a generational fund. These fundamental principles haven’t changed in my 20 years in venture. Amidst the chaos, it’s really the same f&cking game at the pre seed and seed stages IMO. Maybe I’m wrong but I don’t think so.

@HarryStebbings Once you develop your thesis, execute the strategy and don’t panic. Succumbing to FOMO and PR hype cycles is bad for your mental health and your returns.

The future is bright, and Simon Sokol, Ethan Ehrenberg and I are here to make Equipe ubiquitous across the sports and, eventually, the enterprise customer landscape. hashtag#data hashtag#infrastructure hashtag#fandom /fin

The Equipe business sits at the intersection of pretty much everything Game Changers Ventures cares about, and bringing our full capabilities to bear in helping Nick and Sajan to build the best business possible is truly a gift /3

We @gamechangersvc have been working with Nick Benson and Sajan Gutta from earliest days. We explored how our shared love of data, infrastructure, fandom, disruption and sport might help in a landscape short on modern technology but long on opportunity. The result was @EquipeHQ /1

Six months ago, we formally launched @gamechangersvc. It feels good — really good — to be back building a firm from scratch around ideas and domains where I have deep conviction. Even better is doing it with @ssokol94 and @ethanehrenberg, and with the founders we’ve had the privilege to back so far. Early-stage venture, when done right, is not a transactional business. It’s a deeply personal one. Our job is to help founders become the best versions of themselves — as leaders, as decision-makers, and as humans — while they attempt something very hard. I believe we’re doing that the right way. I also believe what we’re building into is not cyclical, but secular. AI will reshape almost everything about how we work and create. Paradoxically, that will only increase the value of being human together — gathering, belonging, cheering, participating, identifying with something larger than ourselves. Sports, entertainment, live experiences, and the technologies that power them sit squarely in that shift. To us, it looks like a generational opportunity. When I first announced the firm, I mentioned that we would eventually add one more partner-level person. That remains true. There is no job description. There is no timeline. There is no “process.” What there is: openness. We are looking for someone who is AI-native in their thinking, intellectually curious, comfortable with ambiguity, and genuinely passionate about sport, entertainment, community, and culture. Someone who wants to build a firm — not just join one. Someone who extends how we think rather than simply amplifying what we already do. This person may not currently be in venture. They may not even be in this sector. In fact, that could be a feature, not a bug. The goal isn’t incremental horsepower. It’s new perspective, judgment, creativity, and values alignment. There is also no rush. The right partnership is discovered, not hired. We’ll get to know this person over time, and they’ll get to know us. In all likelihood, this will be the last person we ever add. The aspiration is a very small, very high-trust, very long-term partnership — similar to what we built at @iaventures. That model worked pretty well, and it was a lot of fun. If this resonates with you — or with someone you think we should know — my inbox is open. [email protected] #LFG #vc #builders

My biggest takeaways from @sherwinwu: 1. AI is writing virtually all code at OpenAI. 95% of the engineers use Codex, and engineers who embrace these tools open 70% more pull requests than their peers, and that gap is widening over time. 2. The role of a software engineer is shifting from writing code to managing fleets of AI agents. Many engineers now run 10 to 20 parallel Codex threads, steering and reviewing rather than writing code themselves. 3. The average PR code review time has dropped from 10-15 minutes per PR to 2-3 minutes. Every pull request at OpenAI is now reviewed by Codex before human eyes see it, and Codex surfaces suggestions and catches issues up front. This allows engineers to focus on more creative and strategic work while dramatically increasing productivity. 4. The models will eat your scaffolding for breakfast. When building AI products, don’t optimize for today’s model capabilities. The field is evolving so rapidly that the scaffolding (vector stores, agent frameworks, etc.) that seems essential today may be obsolete tomorrow as models improve. 5. Build for where the models are going, not where they are today. The most successful AI startups build products that work at 80% capability now, knowing the next model release will push them over the line. 6. Top performers become disproportionately more productive with AI tools. AI tools amplify the productivity of high-agency individuals, so the gap between top performers and everyone else is widening. The ROI on unblocking and empowering your best people compounds faster than ever in an AI-augmented environment. 7. Most enterprise AI deployments have negative ROI because they’re top-down mandates without bottom-up adoption. Success requires both executive buy-in and grassroots enthusiasm. Sherwin recommends creating a “tiger team” of technically-minded enthusiasts (often not engineers) who can explore capabilities, apply AI to specific workflows, and create excitement throughout the organization. 8. The one-person billion-dollar startup is coming, but with unexpected second-order effects. As AI makes individuals more productive, we’ll see not just billion-dollar solo founders but an explosion of small businesses: hundreds of $100M startups and tens of thousands of $10M startups. This will transform the startup ecosystem and venture capital landscape. 9. Business process automation is an underrated AI opportunity. While Silicon Valley focuses on knowledge work, most of the economy runs on repeatable business processes with standard operating procedures. There’s massive potential to apply AI to these workflows, which are often overlooked by the tech community. 10. The next two to three years will be the most exciting in tech history. After a relatively quiet period from 2015 to 2020, we’re now in an unprecedented era of innovation. Sherwin encourages everyone to engage with AI tools and not take this moment for granted, as the pace of change will eventually slow. 11. AI models will soon handle multi-hour tasks coherently. Today’s models are optimized for tasks that take minutes, but within 12 to 18 months we’ll see models that can work on complex tasks for upward of six hours. This will enable entirely new categories of products and workflows. 12. Audio is the next frontier for multimodal AI. While coding and text get most of the attention, audio is hugely underrated in business settings. Improvements in speech-to-speech models over the next 6 to 12 months will unlock significant new capabilities for business communication and operations.

Lenny Rachitsky @lennysan

4 months ago

"Engineers are becoming sorcerers" @sherwinwu leads engineering for @OpenAI’s API platform, which gives him a unique view into what’s going, where things are heading, and what the future of software engineering looks like. Over 95% of engineers at OpenAI use Codex daily, each

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This is certainly one of the most relevant and timely pieces of thinking I’ve ever read.

Will Manidis @WillManidis

4 months ago

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Goodbye Toronto 🇨🇦 So excited to have officially moved to New York 🇺🇸 to partner with @infoarbitrage and @ethanehrenberg to build @gamechangersvc! To all sports, media & entertainment tech founders, don't hesitate to reach out. PS GO JAYS

I know Detroit well and am building several business there, and I can say Dan's perspective is spot-on. It's nowhere near time to declare victory - you don't fix 50 years of troubled history in a single generation - but the progress is real and has to be seen. #LongDetroit

Dan Reese @DanReese21

5 months ago

What US city has the largest gap between national perception and reality? My answer: Detroit Everyone seems to think it’s a run down hell hole w nothing but boarded up buildings. In reality: > Completely rejuvenated downtown w businesses, residential, restaurants, & nice

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If I recall, @joshk , didn’t the same thing happen to @Square when they had a pre-IPO ratchet deal that seemingly cost a lot of money but ultimately paid off in spades for the founders? It’s insanely hard to do but wow, if you get it right…

This post is genius. It’s so hard to accept because of ego. But by ignoring ego and playing the long game, controlling emotions can unlock intrinsic value. Short-termism is a tax on our futures, especially for those with great ideas that take a longer time to unfold.

Josh Kopelman @joshk

5 months ago

Private company CEOs go to extreme lengths to avoid down rounds. But from Jan 2022 to Jan 2023, almost every public company took the equivalent of ~40% Down Round. Of the 63 public companies in the Bessemer Cloud Index: • ~97% were down (61 out of 63) • Median drawdown ≈

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@HarryStebbings So yes, one of the best traits in deal making and in life is to listen. Actively. I want to listen, and to learn. Conquer this, and you’ll be in a better position to evaluate and to make better decisions. Always.

@HarryStebbings Humans want to talk. Humans are generally uncomfortable with silence. The ability to let others fill the empty spaces takes discipline and is a sign of pushing down ego to learn. Most people are really bad at this.

@miehrmantraut @HarryStebbings totalrealreturns.com/s/DDOG