A study of over 21,000 firms by Ramp's Chief Economist found that companies heavily investing in AI increase employment by 10%, including a 12% rise in entry-level roles. This suggests AI adopters are using the technology to go on the offensive and grow, rather than to cut costs and staff.
Comcast's plan to separate its connectivity and content businesses follows identical failed strategies by Verizon (AOL/Yahoo) and AT&T (DirecTV/Time Warner). This reveals a consistent inability of telecom giants to successfully integrate and operate large entertainment and media assets.
While most SPACs collapsed, Rocket Lab spent three years trading at or below its IPO price before its revenue growth led to a rerating. The company is now acquiring Iridium for double its initial SPAC valuation, showcasing a rare success story for the beleaguered financial vehicle.
Monogram aims to create the "graphical user interface for AI" by combining the speed of voice input with the efficiency of visual output. This model avoids the slowness of listening to AI responses, which founder Eren Bali notes is four times slower than reading, creating a more frictionless user experience.
Etched's novel "low voltage inference" technology dramatically lowers a chip's voltage, improving power efficiency. This allows them to pack more computational units (flops) onto the chip without it overheating, a key innovation to solve the physical limits of current GPU performance for AI inference.
Founder Larsen Jensen started Harpoon Ventures with the then-unpopular idea of creating a private version of the CIA's venture arm, In-Q-Tel. He focused on helping enterprise tech companies sell to the government, a dual-use strategy that predated the current surge in defense-focused startups.
The most significant expense in hardware development is the labor cost, not the physical materials, which can be sacrificed in testing. This insight, attributed to Elon Musk, justifies a "build, break, and iterate" approach to quickly get on the learning curve and reduce the cost of engineering hours.
The Oasis smart ring's primary use case is not controlling smart glasses but enabling users to whisper dictation in crowded environments like open offices. Its proximity to the mouth allows for high-fidelity transcription at low volumes, a unique advantage over earbuds or computer mics.
Professional athletes, particularly young ones, should focus entirely on their sport until they secure their second major contract. Only after establishing that financial security should they begin exploring alternative assets like venture capital, a disciplined approach for high-earning individuals with short career spans.
The NBA's Player Post-Career Income Plan, designed to prevent bankruptcy, holds a portion of players' salaries but doesn't generate any interest or returns for them. Thompson critiques this, suggesting the massive capital pool could be invested like an endowment to generate wealth for players.
The next wave of crypto innovation is being driven by experts from industries like energy and robotics who want to use decentralization to solve their sector's problems. This marks a shift from crypto natives building for crypto's sake to outside experts pulling crypto into established, real-world industries.
Kantos Ventures has a "no PhD" policy for founders. They believe doctoral training encourages a cautious, caveat-heavy mindset focused on avoiding errors, which is antithetical to the startup need for bold vision and rapid, real-world testing. They prefer founders who prioritize action over academic rigor.
When diligencing a startup, Kantos Ventures has learned that the best founding teams demonstrate mind-blowing progress in just one week. This extreme velocity is a key indicator of a team's potential, as that speed compounds over time, creating a massive gap between them and their slower competitors.
A common geographic trajectory for successful hard tech companies is to start in LA's "Gundot" for initial talent, expand to larger facilities in nearby Torrance post-Series A, and ultimately build large-scale manufacturing and testing facilities in states like Texas, New Mexico, or Tennessee.