Investor @BatteryVentures | The views expressed here are my own; no investment advice is intended
California
Joined October 2019
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Aaron Neil retweeted
Special interests have captured California.
Despite being the 4th largest economy in the world and having the highest taxes in the country, California is unaffordable, we don’t build enough housing, our cities are unsafe, and we’re experiencing net migration out of the state.
We need to act to save California.
SCOOP: Tech billionaires are weighing a $500M war chest to counter labor unions and reshape California politics.
The proposed endowment, would use investment profits for politics, and work to cement tech’s influence in Sacramento for decades.
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Aaron Neil retweeted
Battery Ventures raised $3.25B for its XV fund, roughly matching its 2022 raise, to back software and industrial tech firms amid AI disruption concerns (Bloomberg)
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
techmeme.com/260218/p9#a2602…
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Aaron Neil retweeted
General Manager Ron Rivera has announced a coaching leadership change.
🔗 calbea.rs/4p7r2F1
Aaron Neil retweeted
I literally think about California’s geography permanently. You don’t know how privileged you are. It’s a perfect Olympia with a giant bay, a massive agricultural valley, diverse climates, southern niches for cities, a Mediterranean climate, and a wine region. Absolutely goated.
Aaron Neil retweeted
“Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition.” — W.H. Auden
Discipline is the scaffolding of greatness and the quiet architecture of progress. The ambitious mind builds freedom through structure, knowing that mastery is born from repetition refined by intent.
Aaron Neil retweeted
They went as far west as they could, until the Pacific Ocean stopped them.
Marc Andreessen says that’s what made California the filter for the most risk-hungry, independent people in the world.
It’s why Silicon Valley and Hollywood share the same renegade DNA. You have to be willing to move to the mining camp.
Source: @pmarca on Cheeky Pint with @collision and Charlie Songhurst
Marc Andreessen says Boston and Silicon Valley were neck and neck as tech hubs in the 90s.
The final break came when Mark Zuckerberg couldn’t raise for Facebook in Boston and had to move west.
If he’d stayed, Boston might have had its own ecosystem. Instead, the frontier spirit won.
Source: @pmarca on Cheeky Pint with @collision and Charlie Songhurst
Aaron Neil retweeted
Statement by President George W. Bush:
"Today, a young man was murdered in cold blood while expressing his political views. It happened on a college campus, where the open exchange of opposing ideas should be sacrosanct. Violence and vitriol must be purged from the public square. Members of other political parties are not our enemies; they are our fellow citizens. May God bless Charlie Kirk and his family, and may God guide America toward civility."
Aaron Neil retweeted
The view that imagines AI wiping out jobs or causing some overnight shock to the system doesn’t contemplate that companies are a made up of a series of bottlenecks. When AI accelerates work in one area, you run into a bottleneck somewhere else.
As any individual workflow gets more efficient, the ultimate productivity gain is still constrained by some other part of the system. And usually it’s the case that that part of the system will not have inherently seen the same impact of AI efficiency, which means humans are still doing the work.
Take almost any process in an enterprise and you can see how this plays out. If AI Agents generate leads for the sales team, the bottleneck will be humans to have conversations with those customers. And if the leads are good, that will mean more sales hiring. If AI Agents generate more code, you will eventually be bottlenecked by the engineers that can review and incorporate that code into production.
You can quickly see how this scales to any process in an organization. Economists and others tend to totally miss how work actually happens in a company; it’s not a series of wholly independent tasks, but instead highly interdependent tasks that all link to each other across a system.
This is of course the natural rate limiter of AI efficiency gains, but also the reason why humans will still be doing so many jobs in the future.
Aaron Neil retweeted
Defense tech is no longer a niche. It is becoming one of the most important markets for software innovation today.
With a growing $863B+ DoD budget and rising demand for innovation, there’s massive opportunity for startups to transform how the military adopts and uses modern technology.
In our latest blog, General Partner Michael Brown and Vice President Aaron Neil (@aneilvc) outline why now is the time to build in defense, what frameworks we use to understand the landscape and the themes we're most excited to back.
Check out the full blog: bit.ly/4niw3Kk
Aaron Neil retweeted
Congratulations to Grant Demaree (@DemareeGrant) and the entire @Onebriefapp team on all the incredible momentum you’ve had this year! We're thrilled to partner with you and lead your latest $20M financing round.
OneBrief is transforming how the defense community plans and collaborates with cutting-edge workflow software and AI-enabled tools. We’re excited to support this next chapter as the company continues to innovate and expand its impact across national security and beyond.
Read more: bwnews.pr/3FFvMQY
Battery deal team ⬇️
Michael Brown
Aaron Neil (@aneilvc)
Aaron Neil retweeted
Jony Ive and OpenAI’s partnership is a big vote of confidence in San Francisco. Our city has a strong history of creativity and innovation, a legacy that is alive and well today. This is the place to create the future.
Aaron Neil retweeted
Is the Rule of 40 overrated? 🤔 Aaron Neil (@aneilvc) shares his thoughts on “Overrated or Underrated!”
Aaron Neil retweeted
Back in the day, it was Goldman Sachs alumni getting top US government positions
Under this new Trump administration, it’s being replaced with a16z alumni and the PayPal mafia
Silicon Valley replacing Wall Street is an interesting trend to watch unfold
Aaron Neil retweeted
We are thrilled to congratulate @AraServiceTitan, @VaheKuzoyan and the @ServiceTitan team on the company’s initial public offering, an incredible milestone! 🎉 Eight years ago, we began exploring the idea of empowering non-desk workers like tradespeople with modern software. That journey led us to ServiceTitan, whose founders, inspired by their own families, built software for industries like plumbing, HVAC and more.
Aaron Neil retweeted
Cal will ring the Closing Bell on the NYSE today, at least in part due to these results. Go Bears.
Aaron Neil retweeted
Every company in the world worth more than $1 trillion was founded on the US west coast, including Saudi Aramco which was started in the same building as @flexport here in San Francisco.
Aaron Neil retweeted
Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on where she’s seeing investment opportunities in today’s market: click.gs.com/lutm #GSExchanges
Aaron Neil retweeted
Our San Francisco-based Vice President @aneilvc is all about growth, personal and professional. Here’s what’s on his mind lately, as he shared with us for our latest #TeamTuesdays spotlight:
🖊️ We know you work closely with our General Partner @michaelmbrown. What’s something Michael taught you that’s stuck with you?
🔹 Michael has taught me a lot, especially the importance of humility and remaining level-headed through all the inevitable ups and downs one experiences in a career in investing. He is so curious and loves learning how new markets and businesses operate, his passion for this work is infectious.
🖊️ What are the three software products you can’t live without?
🔹 Microsoft Outlook and Excel and LinkedIn Sales Navigator are mission-critical for my daily work. I’ll note that Outlook has done a great job adding in features over time to boost productivity and Excel is an incredibly powerful tool for data analysis.
🖊️ If you could take one tech founder out to dinner, who would it be and why? And, importantly, where would you take them?
🔹 I’d love to have dinner with @bryan_johnson of Braintree. I’d take him to the Liver King Ranch to have a wide-ranging discussion around health and nutrition. I'm genuinely curious about advances in human longevity and the impact technology and habit can make in enhancing health. I'd especially like to hear Bryan's thoughts on contrasting his vegan diet with that of the @liverking, who is an Internet-famous carnivore… on that note, we’d probably have to bring some vegan food for Bryan to the ranch.
🖊️ What’s something you wish everyone knew about Battery?
🔹 How collaborative and open minded we are and how challenging yet supporting everyone is of each other. The global team works together as one team across six global offices and across deal types, from seed to buyout. From the outside looking in, you might not realize how often the early-stage venture and buyout teams collaborate, but we often do. The variety of POVs is very helpful in understanding markets and products.
🖊️ If you could attend any one event at the #Olympics2024Paris this year, which would it be?
🔹 Definitely surfing! Not only am I a big surfer, but this year’s competition is on the beautiful island of Tahiti.
Aaron Neil retweeted
We are so proud to share that our General Partner @rogerleevc was named to the 2024 @Forbes #MidasList! ✨
