Ty Smith

Venture funding isn't success of course, but it's nearly impossible to win big markets without it. Unlike the AI hype, Ando is very, very real. And unlike others, Ando is here to make lives genuinely better for everyone. (*) #proudinvestor #micdrop #oversubscribed Big thx to Bradford Oberwager and James Kairos, Ben Metcalfe, Andy Mutz, Joseph Chittenden-Veal, Scott Sanders, Massy Ghausi, John Lyman, Thomas Wesley, John Holder… and of course Phoenix Toews and Paul Wellons (to name a few) — (*) Yeah yeah, some pencil-pusher will use AI to over-optimize profits over people, but as American Airlines is learning the hard way (WSJ: https://lnkd.in/ePz_QNzt ), net of competition, "people businesses" don't work that way. You HAVE to care for people or you lose. Ando plays a beautiful collaborative role in that dialogue, helping profit-focused management more clearly see the effects of a motivated labor force. That's why I'm truly #proudinvestor --- Posts co-authored with my LinkedIn secret weapon Dennis Buckley

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"Because engineers had been through brainstorming and story mapping, they were able to identify the most promising direction and find a way to implement one key piece of it pretty quickly." Want to get your engineers more involved in continuous discovery? Learn how Ellen Juhlin, Senior Director of Product Management at Orion Labs, successfully brought engineers into the discovery process. Key takeaways from Ellen's experience: 🎯 Start by inviting engineers to customer interviews as listeners and note-takers 💡 Include engineers in brainstorming and solution mapping sessions 🗺️ Use assumption mapping to help engineers focus on validating ideas 🔄 Don't worry about following a linear process - iteration is key 🎯 Begin with just one or two engineers rather than the whole team 🤝 Keep engineers connected to business outcomes Check out the comments for a link to the article. ❓ What's one small step you've taken to include engineers in discovery work? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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Building a startup is hard. It is especially hard in a country like Nigeria, where the ecosystem is yet to mature, and there are still many challenges to navigate. It is confusing, lonely, and full of uncertain decisions. Founders, especially early-stage founders, need as much support as they can get. Not “inspire to perspire” posts, but practical support on hiring, operations, funding, customer research, and navigating the regulatory landscape. Too many founders are surrounded by noise, surface-level advice, and generic content that does not reflect their current realities. What they need is a community that understands exactly what they are going through and can offer context that is immediately useful. Sierra Collective exists to be that community. A space where founders learn from one another’s live experiences and shorten the painful trial and error that usually defines the early stages of building. At Sierra, we believe that the most valuable support comes from those who are active in the trenches, navigating the same obstacles. If you are an early-stage founder, you should join the Sierra Collective. You do not have to figure everything out alone. As the African proverb says, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” Join Sierra: https://lnkd.in/d-Nzmtkq

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"Delusional." Been hearing that word a lot recently. Every founder in SF has it. Every great company was built on it. You'll sit in a coffee shop on Valencia Street and the person next to you is building the next Google with "higher search semantics powered through agentic workflows". You grab dinner in SoMa and someone's explaining why their pre-revenue vibe-coded startup is going to be bigger than Salesforce. "This guy is delusional". Is what I thought when I first encountered scenarios like these, before realizing that I sounded the exact same way to people I tried to sell my idea to. After two weeks, this is what I've learned being out here: The line between delusion and vision is just execution. Every billion-dollar company started as a delusional idea pitched by someone who had no business pitching it. Airbnb was "strangers sleeping in your house." Uber was "get in a random person's car." Stripe was "two 19-year-olds are going to fix payments." Delusional. All of it. Until it wasn't. SF literally runs on delusion. The energy here is different because everyone around you has decided to bet on themselves despite the odds. It's simply the entrance fee — whether or not you make it depends on how hard you're willing to work afterwards. The people who worry about sounding delusional are the ones who never build anything. The people who lean into it — those who are a little too confident, a little too ambitious, and/or a little too early are the ones who end up changing things. That being said, how will you feed into your delusions this week? #startup #founder #sf p.s. this is a video of chinatown where we got cream buns that were quite mid

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🔥 𝗙𝗶𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗼𝗻 “𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗔𝗜 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀” Had an incredible evening hosting a fireside chat with Matt Kraning (𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿 & 𝗖𝗧𝗢 𝗼𝗳 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗲, 𝗲𝘅 𝗖𝗧𝗢 𝗣𝗮𝗹𝗼 𝗔𝗹𝘁𝗼 𝗡𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀) and a group of technology and product leaders from some of the world’s biggest 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱𝘀, 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗲𝘀, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗶𝘁𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 in the Bay Area. We discussed one of the most urgent questions facing every product and engineering organization today: building 𝗔𝗜 𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘂𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘀, and 𝗹𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗔𝗜 𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺𝘀 𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲, 𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗲. 𝗔𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗽𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘁, 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸. The companies that win won’t be the ones waiting for others to define it - they’ll be the ones learning, experimenting, evolving, and writing it themselves. Because the reality is: Your competition is already re-architecting their business around AI agents - driving higher efficiency, faster iteration, and reinvesting those gains to build better products. The next era of product leadership isn’t about adopting AI. It’s about adopting an 𝗔𝗜-𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗱𝘀𝗲𝘁. Grateful to everyone who joined and contributed such sharp perspectives and open conversations. Deepak Kumar P Vache Moroyan DB Banerjee

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Thrilled to announce that Together Fund is investing in Sentra, alongside a16z speedrun! You track results in Jira. Decisions in Notion. Conversations in Slack. But the reasoning, the debates, trade-offs, and context behind why you chose A over B, disappears into what we call "Dark Matter." A decision made in March looks insane by July because no one remembers the constraints that made it smart. I lived this firsthand at Twitter scaling from 800 to 8,000 employees, and at Google while launching AI Overviews to billions at planet scale. The problem isn't process. Process is compensation for something deeper: organizational amnesia. An organization’s "Systems of Record" doesn’t solve this, they encode it. They store what happened, never why. That's why we are investing in Sentra. Sentra is the always-on collective memory that eliminates organizational amnesia by maintaining accurate context for all members and agents, functioning as an operational nervous system. It connects to every channel where work happens, meetings, Slack, email, code commits, docs, calendars, and treats them not as artifacts to search, but as living signals to synthesize. The fleeting and the permanent, unified into a memory that understands. The founding team is built for this: - Jae Gwan Park (CEO): Product-first founder, memory systems research at UofT and MIT - Ashwin Gopinath (CSO): Former MIT professor, created "Reflexion" (NeurIPS 2023), agents that learn from mistakes, 2x founder - Andrey Starenky (CTO): Early Vapi engineer, ex-IBM, built to process enterprise-scale data firehose Together is an operator-led fund. We invest in problems we've lived. This is one of them. Many congrats Jae, Ashwin and Andrey, we are so excited to partner with you! Read the full thesis: https://lnkd.in/gixj9cE4 Book a demo: https://www.sentra.app/ #OrganizationalMemory #AI #Sentra #TogetherFund #a16z #ContextGraphs

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I took my second Waymo across Los Angeles last night, and the experience was largely excellent. From the smooth pickup to navigating the freeway (which is now supported here in LA!), the technology is undeniably impressive. However, the "last mile" wasn't quite perfect. I was dropped off on the left side of a two lane, one way street, directly in traffic rather than on the shoulder. Also, my destination was on the right. As I've written previously (https://lnkd.in/gHw7drrc), there is great promise in using technologies like AI in countless ways, from autonomous driving to talent measurement. However, my recent Waymo experience highlights two critical lessons: 1. Humans Must Own the Outcome: Whether you are a passenger in an autonomous vehicle or managing talent, you cannot delegate accountability to the machine. Technology is a powerful tool, but humans must own the final result. In hiring, as in transport, we must remain in the driver's seat to ensure the "drop off" (i.e. the final decision) is the right one. 2. The Feedback Loop is Non Negotiable: Without human feedback to these systems, technology will never improve. I made sure to provide feedback on my ride, and we must do the same in our talent systems. If we don’t provide constant, iterative feedback, we lose the opportunity to refine them into something better. Progress happens when human intuition meets technological scale. We provide the feedback; the tech provides the lift.

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