building in consumer. scouting for @speedrun. prev CEO @sentra_app, fmr @MIT, @UofT, @HummingbirdVC fellow
NYC
Joined January 2020
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I've had a really fun time thinking about how to build my company from scratch!
How we're doing millions of impressions as a team of 2:
It’s much much easier to work your way backwards from what screenshots will place well in Tiktok/groupchats/DMs and building everything backwards from there
.@alexandr_wang says modern product marketing is now all driven by the screenshot:
“To have a modern consumer product, it has to work on the screenshot. The screenshot has to fly, either through group chats or word of mouth or online.”
“Having Jolly in the screenshot immediately communicates this is a Muse screenshot.”
jae retweeted
Applications for @speedrun are now open! If you’re an ambitious, high agency founder - we want to meet you
We’ll bring the capital, customers, & talent - you bring yourself and your wildest ideas
Speedrun is an inception fund. We are your first believers - writing the first check and growing with you as your startup scales
Speedrun founders get up to $1M in funding and over $10M in startup credits across compute, cloud, marketing, and more
Speedrun is for founders with big ideas. We have teams creating new forms of datacenters, constructing orbital space platforms, disrupting 50yo vertical software incumbents, building novel AI doctors, and more
In a world where AI has made building easier than ever, the only cap on what a startup can achieve is the limit of their ambition. So we write the first check precisely on the ideas that sound a little crazy
apply at the link below before apps close on Nov 1st
An extremely underrated reason to get a Mac Mini is to save on Github billing minutes, especially for jobs that need a mac! This past week alone I've probably saved ~$150 on builds/tests.
jae retweeted
downloading files isn’t cool
neither is waiting
don’t be the person slowing your team down – at San Francisco, CA
I know many people in my life who pride themselves on being "the organizer" for social gatherings.
I'm a huge fan of the product so far but not really bullish on this being useful beyond a narrow slice of "busy professionals".
There's a lot of intimacy in putting in the work and going through the process to organize something with your s/o, family, or friends together
Introducing our Trusted Person network powered by our new Instinct-to-Instinct communication protocol. Your Instinct can now talk to other Instincts to coordinate plans on your behalf.
Getting people together often involves a lot of back-and-forth: finding a time, working out the details, and following up when plans change. Instincts can now work with each other to help handle that coordination.
For example:
- Coordinating plans with your spouse
- Planning a weekend trip with friends, including dates and arrival times
- Scheduling time with colleagues and other collaborators
- Hosting events with 10s or 100s of people
- Organizing recurring plans like tennis, book clubs, or weekly dinners
Disclaimer: Your Instinct will only be able to communicate with those in your Trusted Person network. This is the group of people who are closest to you:
- Spouse
- Older children and parents
- Colleagues and trusted professional relationships
- Small local businesses
The Trusted Person network is currently available to our early access group and will be slowly rolled out across the user base over the next 24-48 hours.
jae retweeted
Yes, this result cost millions of dollars.
But remember that when @OpenAI announced o3 it cost ~$500,000 to score 87.5% on ARC-AGI 1. Today, Astra scores higher for ~$20.
In 2025 it took us and GDM an enormous amount of compute to achieve IMO gold. For the 2026 IMO, anyone with a $20/month ChatGPT subscription could do it.
Massively scaling test-time compute gives us a glimpse of the future. I believe that a year from now everyone will have an AI at their fingertips capable of solving problems of this caliber.
We’re sharing a solution to the Navier-Stokes Millennium Prize Problem, one of the deepest problems at the frontier of mathematics.
The proof was produced by a group of agents, using an OpenAI next-generation model significantly more capable than GPT-6 Astra.
The problem concerns whether the description of smooth three-dimensional fluid motion modeled by the Navier-Stokes equations can break down. It has remained unresolved for roughly 90 years.
jae retweeted
this feels like a huge unforced error. even if you think the absolute value of a CS degree has declined, the relative value compared to other degrees has increased.
jae retweeted
Tip for founders: If you ask someone for an intro to a fund or potential customer, and they seem reluctant, it’s usually not in your interest to push for it. A reluctant intro is often worse than just cold outbound.
jae retweeted
People are moving their personal lives back to “dark social” aka private channels, away from ads and algorithms
Average IG users see feeds as being for entertainment not for personal life. IG/Snap stories are now the primary form of public posting because they’re more private, less affected by algorithms, less curated and less performative (which is for creators), more spontaneous, more authentic feeling. Plus you can see who watches which acts as a social interaction. Theres also an aspect that IG became competitive and when the wealthiest hottest people in the world curate the perfect feeds, the only way to win becomes to not play
Social media for personal life is now back private chats with people you know or communities you like. IG group chats, text chats, Snapchat, discords
This is a reasonable reaction to algorithmic internet, AI sloppification of content and dead internet theory, and will likely continue to accelerate as a trend. Social media will become increasingly gated and fragmented because feeds are controlled by algorithms and the creators who cater to them and are thereby shaped by them
One thing I’ve always disliked about Instagram is that I can’t represent how I am with different friend groups on the same account.
IRL I have ~3-5 close groups w VERY different tastes in humor, shared memes/jokes, interests, etc.
Yet I have just… one profile. In an effort to cater to all, I choose to cater to none. So my friends and I almost never post.
I’m building something new in this space… if you’d like to explore/try it out DM me!
I was using Instinct to research sports leagues to join this fall and it just… signed me up using my credit card without confirming LOL?
In this case it bought the option I was most leaning towards (+thankfully refundable), but seeing how trigger happy it is never makes me want to purchase anything through it ever again
jae retweeted
Space has raised a $2.4M pre-seed to give your computer infinite storage.
Today teams lose hours each week downloading files before humans and agents can begin working.
Space removes the wait. Every file, instantly accessible while using zero disk space. – at San Francisco, CA
jae retweeted
we’re launching Codag (@ycombinator S26) - the compression and control layer for agent tools.
we started with logs. then customers pulled us into searches, tests, builds, and api responses.
the pattern was always the same: agents burning context on repetitive output, with teams unable to see where the tokens went.
Codag now cuts input-token usage ~3x at answer parity and gives teams visibility across their agent stack.
agents are becoming the primary users of software - companies are adding agents, models, providers, and MCP servers faster than they can measure or control them. most cannot answer which tools their agents invoke, what those calls cost, or where the waste is.
we’re building the layer between them and everything they read.
90+ engineering orgs already use Codag today to reduce that spend and see agent tool usage across provider. find out more and book a demo at codag.ai/
jae retweeted
introducing Space. what dropbox was supposed to be.
expand your computers storage with the cloud, while keeping every file instantly accessible to everyone on your team.
with Space's virtual drive, every app, agent, and workflow works natively as if your files were local.
it's like a company server that you can set up in under a minute today. – at San Francisco, CA
jae retweeted
People aren't using AI agents because:
1) They want to do LESS work, not more. So the idea of being "more productive" is inherently unappealing to them
2) They're complex. Remember, most people have never even used "SUM" in Excel... they're not going to set up an "agent."
None of this should be taken as me shitting on normies... it's the opposite.
AI companies are insanely out of touch with normal people and until they change that, they're going to keep making the same mistakes and missing the obvious (don't make weird tweets about turning your kids into a podcast).
Hot take… isn’t it kinda crazy that nobody is really using AI Agents? I don’t mean software engineers or AI early adopters. I mean “college friends talking about it in group chat,” the feeling you got when everyone started using Instagram or TikTok.
These frontier AI models are *insane* (as are the harnesses & tool calls & the like). And every large tech co has an AI agents platform, not to mention all the YC startups doing vertical agents. Yet all of your friends and family outside of tech — who spend all day staring at their iPhones and get paid to work in browser tabs — don’t really care or find themselves using any AI agents yet.
Yes ChatGPT, Claude, etc. are extremely popular… but if you look at the engagement data the vast majority of people are still using these aI chat tools like a glorified Google + Grammarly. That’s why the AGI labs are all pushing desktop apps for Codex, Cowork, etc. so hard to non-technical ppl. And yes exceptions for lawyers and customer service but even those have some asterisks and exceptions to rule.
Look I’m not saying the ChatGPT moment for AI Agents is not coming… it most definitely is! Remember we pivoted from Arc to Dia precisely because we believe computing is going to be radically reimagined around these AI primitives. No doubt. But that’s my point: it’s just so surprising it hasn’t happened yet because all of the tech you’d need is there.
Again if you stop for a second and think about it… for all the press and money and hype and models and crazy ARR numbers… this “AI Agent” moment does not *feel* like the other breakthrough tech moments we’ve lived through (e.g. think the shift to Stories via Snapchat & Instagram, or shift to on-demand via Uber/Airbnb/Doordash).
Which is a long way of saying: if you can figure out the answer to “why” most people don’t care about AI agents yet (and have no enduring interest in using them) — especially since the models and harnesses are here and ready — the answer to that question will allow you to capture a lot of marketshare and make a lot of money in 2027.
Theoretically, the tech is ready for AI Agents to totally transform how we work and live our lives… but alas the general public dgaf… that’s the generational puzzle to solve for the next 12 months for anyone not working on the models themselves.
ChatGPT took off because the consumer mental model was already there. For 10+ yrs, Google conditioned us to type a question into a box, hit enter, get some answer back.
It was a huge capability breakthrough wrapped inside a tiny behavioral one. I’d bet most casual users today still treat Chat like Google with better answers.
Agents don't get that gift. Ask any normal person what they want an AI agent to do and they will honestly not know what you’re even talking about.
Every agent product today needs prompt skill, setup, tool wiring, context management, imagination, and *constant supervision* to get any value out of it.
We're in what I’d call the “Linux era” of agents. The capability is real, the packaging is wrong.
Hot take… isn’t it kinda crazy that nobody is really using AI Agents? I don’t mean software engineers or AI early adopters. I mean “college friends talking about it in group chat,” the feeling you got when everyone started using Instagram or TikTok.
These frontier AI models are *insane* (as are the harnesses & tool calls & the like). And every large tech co has an AI agents platform, not to mention all the YC startups doing vertical agents. Yet all of your friends and family outside of tech — who spend all day staring at their iPhones and get paid to work in browser tabs — don’t really care or find themselves using any AI agents yet.
Yes ChatGPT, Claude, etc. are extremely popular… but if you look at the engagement data the vast majority of people are still using these aI chat tools like a glorified Google + Grammarly. That’s why the AGI labs are all pushing desktop apps for Codex, Cowork, etc. so hard to non-technical ppl. And yes exceptions for lawyers and customer service but even those have some asterisks and exceptions to rule.
Look I’m not saying the ChatGPT moment for AI Agents is not coming… it most definitely is! Remember we pivoted from Arc to Dia precisely because we believe computing is going to be radically reimagined around these AI primitives. No doubt. But that’s my point: it’s just so surprising it hasn’t happened yet because all of the tech you’d need is there.
Again if you stop for a second and think about it… for all the press and money and hype and models and crazy ARR numbers… this “AI Agent” moment does not *feel* like the other breakthrough tech moments we’ve lived through (e.g. think the shift to Stories via Snapchat & Instagram, or shift to on-demand via Uber/Airbnb/Doordash).
Which is a long way of saying: if you can figure out the answer to “why” most people don’t care about AI agents yet (and have no enduring interest in using them) — especially since the models and harnesses are here and ready — the answer to that question will allow you to capture a lot of marketshare and make a lot of money in 2027.
Theoretically, the tech is ready for AI Agents to totally transform how we work and live our lives… but alas the general public dgaf… that’s the generational puzzle to solve for the next 12 months for anyone not working on the models themselves.
jae retweeted
excited to announce that Space is joining @a16z @speedrun in SF this summer to bring infinite space to every machine.
for the last decade i've filmed and documented my entire life on youtube. from elementary school through graduating university, to now building a startup in my 20s.
through it all, i never deleted a single clip. terabytes of memories began to pile up across hard drives, cloud providers, and old computers. and every time i found myself looking for old footage i ended up wasting time searching and downloading.
if only there was a way for all my files to appear on my laptop right when i needed them while still maintaining the benefits of cloud storage.
so three months ago we started building a new file system.
Space is built on the idea that all your files should appear only when needed and take up zero disk space otherwise.
grateful to be backed by some of the best in the valley, and to be building alongside my cofounders @ItsMatthewAo @BapnaArihant.
if waiting on file transfers and running out of storage is still slowing your team down, let's chat!
