Jon Lai

hey all - update for SR008: It's now the FINAL weekend to apply for our next residency in San Francisco. Applications close this Sunday, Nov 1 at 11:59 PM PT. Here's the link: speedrun.a16z.com/apply How it works: - you apply - we review, reach out to get introduced, etc - if there's a fit, we handshake and sign - we wire our investment right away! - plus you get access to >$10M in credits right away - you'll onboard + start working with us immediately, have access to working out of our SF offices, etc The official residency starts Feb 2027 where we'll have speakers, office hours, and much more. I plan to be on site and look forward to meeting many of you You might ask- who's the best fit for this? We want to talk to you as early as possible, and that means: - no company yet - no deck - no huge insight tweet thread - sometimes not even fully committed yet You don't need the perfect idea. We can start working together when you're iterating and getting the idea off the ground. That's the whole point of speedrun - it's our way of backing you from Day 0. More official stuff below: - Deadline is this Sunday, Nov 1 at 11:59 PM PT (this weekend!) - SR008 runs Feb 1 through April 18, 2027 in San Francisco -- twelve weeks of firesides, office hours, and sessions, closing out with Demo Day on April 13 in front of thousands of investors - Capital: up to $1M with a two-week close target, plus $10M+ in credits from 200+ partners - Customers: SR Insiders gets you in front of 10,000+ buyers and operators, including 150+ C-suite execs, plus a full day of live demos at AI Faire - Talent: our Talent Network of 171,000+ engineers, designers, and product people. 230+ hires so far, $0 in fees. Plus visa, banking, and housing help if you're coming from abroad - A team of ~40 battle-tested investors and operators who help cover your gaps without adding headcount -- GTM, marketing, brand, talent, fundraising, and more - a16z speedrun is super selective -- fewer than 0.4% of applicants get in. You'll join a tight-knit community of founders from 20+ countries who stay involved as speakers, advisors, and often each other's first customers - Still in school or still finding your idea/team? Check out the alpha fellowship too -- up to $250K for students, recent grads, and dropouts

how to go from a BAD @Speedrun application to a GREAT one... I sat with @PhilippWehn (SR005) to look at his app that was rejected for SR004 w/ @Nexxa_AI & what changed when he reapplied and was accepted for SR005 - clearly identified traction - direct founder-market fit - no more buzzwords - 10x better one liner - new swagger this was fun apply for SR008 here! speedrun.a16z.com/apply

Ben Horowitz on treating your story as your strategy, and why founders often skip writing it even though it's one of the most important parts of the job: "The story of the company is also the strategy of the company... In your mind, you're kind of adjusting that strategy a little bit at a time every day. But then a quarter later, it's actually pretty different than what you started with." "So it's really important that you keep upgrading your story. The articulation of your story. I would definitely recommend it be in written form." "Something that you can share with everybody in the company, and everybody you're recruiting, everybody you're trying to raise money from, all your constituents, every customer." "The problem that I think founders have is it doesn't feel like work. Like, 'What are you doing today?' 'I'm working on my story.' That doesn't sound like work." "Because it doesn't feel like work, people don't do it, but it's probably one of the most important parts of the job." @bhorowitz w/ @speedrun GP @Tocelot

founders: getting up to $1M in funding via @speedrun is actually the easiest part of the journey - as you start to build your product, you'll need to build your team... and I have some bad news: recruiting sucks. Most experienced founders will tell you that they spent at least half their time in the early days trying to woo early missionaries to join their cause. Your options at the earliest stages aren't great: • Agencies are expensive + generally have perverse incentives • You could do all the recruiting... but it's often too time-intensive to do effectively • Hiring an internal recruiter doesn't make sense yet... • Job postings... welcome to the nightmare of AI-generated apps! I want to give you a better option. Our goal as the Speedrunun talent team: lend you our brand and hiring prowess. Not just hollow words and advice... because advice is cheap. Sourced candidates are not. Our team of internal recruiters spends every single day cultivating relationships with world-class talent from the most heavily in-demand functional backgrounds (AI, ML, Full Stack Eng, Design Eng, Designers, etc), and then we curate and share that talent with founders across the portfolio. We're on track this year to directly place ~150 hires into speedrun portfolio companies. No fee. No perverse incentives. Just a purely aligned desire with the founders to get them exactly what they are searching for. One day there will be a solo-founder unicorn, and all this hiring drudgery might go away. Until then, you're going to have to build your team - so let our team (@nazzari, @thetalentcarver, @joegarciaisme ) help you build yours. APPLY TO SPEEDRUN >>> bit.ly/3UawfBA

The games we've long wanted, which didn't exist because they'd cost several times more to make than they'd earn back, will soon become possible. As will the games developers wanted to build, but couldn't with the resources available. It'll be a new golden age of gaming.

a few tips for @speedrun applicants: 1) brag about your team. what's the most impressive thing you've done? we look for a history of excellence - professional, academic, personal achievements, side hustles, weekend projects etc 2) founder market fit. what's your earned insight into your problem space? what gives you an unfair advantage? why will your team win vs the competition / frontier labs? 3) product validation. what have you already built? there are so many ways to quickly prototype these days. what tests have you run to validate that people want what you've built - revenue, users, waitlists etc? 4) network your way to a warm referral. this bumps you for priority review. we have >600 Speedrun founders and many more in the broader a16z network. the networking you do here reflects the work you do every day as a founder - recruiting, sales, fundraising, etc you may have noticed >50% of these tips are about the team. the most common mistake we see in apps / interviews is that founders spend most of their time talking about the product idea and not enough time on the team. whereas we base our investment process primarily on the team

SR008 APPS ARE OPEN. Up to $1M + $10M+ in credits. 12 weeks in SF, Feb through April. Built to help you land capital, customers and talent. Apply by Nov 1: speedrun.a16z.com/apply

A company I work with went from $0 -> $60M in 3 months - will hit $100M run-rate this month Fastest growing company I’ve ever seen. I don’t think people have fully grasped data as a first class citizen alongside compute and algorithms They are selling frontier data to AI labs and model developers. DMs open if you would like to chat with them