There will still be a shakeout. I’m already seeing teams wrestling with the slew of questions every start-up generation faces.

But I’m also noticing it feels like the foundation is solid in a way the dot-com era never had. And that changes how the next few years will go.

Now you don’t need special hardware or a big install. You open a browser, try something, and it might alter how you work.

I’ve watched friends who don’t follow this stuff at all go from zero to "this just saved me hours" in a single afternoon. That wasn’t possible in 1999.

Back then, we were promised a future that required infrastructure nobody had. You’d hear, “once everyone is on high-speed internet, everything changes.” Meanwhile, most of us were listening to a modem sing every time we went online. The groundwork wasn't ready for the vision.

I’ll be following up with folks individually to learn more. A lot of promising ideas in this group.

Looking forward to doing it again.

I really enjoyed hearing people talk openly about what they’re building. Not the polished pitch-deck version, but the real stuff about the experiments and parts that aren’t solved yet. Those are the moments that make events like this so great.

JP Morgan also let us use their Palo Alto space, which turned out to be the perfect setting.

We had 67 people come through. A real mix of early teams, repeat founders, operators, and investors. The best kind of room you can hope for.

The founders who use these tools to accelerate thinking rise to the occasion. The ones who use them to replace thinking fall apart.

The haystack might keep getting bigger, but the needles you're looking for are shining brighter. You just have to be willing to dig.

The new stuff has made it easier to build something that looks complete. But the moment you go beyond surface-level questions to customer acquisition, pricing dynamics, or competitive moats, the distinction becomes clear.

I sat through a pitch recently where the deck looked flawless… until we started talking about go-to-market strategy and defensibility. Within minutes, it was clear which parts were understood and which weren’t.

Just keep it structured and useful:
• KPIs that show movement
• Runway and hiring
• Key wins and risks
• Clear asks

That’s all investors need to stay aligned and help when it matters.
Predictability over everything.

Sometimes, early pivots expose cracks. Other times, they’re the reason a company survives.

The difference is intent. Are you pivoting because you’ve learned something or because you’re afraid to keep going?
Knowing that answer gives you the clarity you need to move forward.

They weren’t thrashing. They were learning fast and implementing feedback. Those pivots kept them alive long enough to discover what actually worked. And today, that same team is growing faster than any of us imagined.

The lesson here is nuance.

At one point, I remember thinking, they’re going to spin themselves into the ground.

But every change they made came from something real. There was a failed pilot, a user interview that went sideways, and a metric that didn’t move as expected.

Yes, growth required investment. But the mindset was never to chase scale with abandon.
Investors also bet on constraint, and if you can endure volatility.

If you’re building or raising, it’s worth asking whether you're planning for survival or the next check.

How I think about it:

• Sustainable growth = agency. If you’re not dependent on infusions, you control the timeline.

• Capital is leverage. Outside money should tilt risk, not keep the lights on.

• Scalable > big bets. Growth that costs more than it returns isn’t growth.

Robotics feels like the next layer. First tele-operated systems that extend reach, then true autonomy for routine failures without humans.

Speculative “sci-fi” robotics are what we often think of, but this is a very typical bottleneck with practical solutions available.

There needs to be something that compounds value rather than rents it from another ecosystem.

Don’t think momentum gives you stability.
You need to have more than one way to grow if you want to last.