Backing generational founders since 2005 🗽
New York, NY
Joined November 2009
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FirstMark retweeted
$270M to $3B+, with fewer people than we had in 2021. The proudest work of my career, alongside the best team I know.
The point was never fewer people. It was more for patients: helping millions reach their health goals, for less.
FirstMark retweeted
It’s so cool to read stories like this.
Two of my smartest friends from college have been at Ro for a long time, unsurprising that they pulled it off but $3B is no joke!
FirstMark retweeted
In 2021, Ro was growing 9% annually with a $270M revenue run rate.
Today, it's at $3B+ with fewer employees than it had five years ago. ARR per employee has increased more than 10x.
@ZReitano shares how they refounded the company in 2022 and what changed.
My conversation with Zach Reitano (@ZReitano), co-founder and CEO of Ro
In four years he took Ro from a $250M run rate to over $3B, with about a third fewer people
Zach rarely does long conversations like this, so it was fun to talk about the details of what that took and everything happening in healthcare
Plus, his answer to the closing question is amazing
We discuss:
- the state of the US healthcare system
- refounding Ro
- strong attract, strong repel culture
- the notion of jobs over lives
- the power of celebrities in marketing
- the importance of tailwinds (AI, GLP-1s)
- trying to recreate his dad in software
Enjoy!
TIMESTAMPS
0:34 How Much Should We Spend on Health
4:59 The Patient Is Not the Customer
10:24 Inside Ro's Business
18:28 The Future of GLP-1s
25:46 Jobs Over Lives
30:02 The Turnaround
47:43 Where Healthcare Goes Next
1:00:27 Recreating His Dad in Software
1:06:33 Marketing Into Stigma
1:19:06 Zach's Hottest Take
1:20:58 The Kindest Thing
FirstMark retweeted
Have listened and learned from @patrick_oshag and his guests for years. When I decided to do this conversation, I went straight to him. Hope you enjoy it.
Still just the beginning!
My conversation with Zach Reitano (@ZReitano), co-founder and CEO of Ro
In four years he took Ro from a $250M run rate to over $3B, with about a third fewer people
Zach rarely does long conversations like this, so it was fun to talk about the details of what that took and everything happening in healthcare
Plus, his answer to the closing question is amazing
We discuss:
- the state of the US healthcare system
- refounding Ro
- strong attract, strong repel culture
- the notion of jobs over lives
- the power of celebrities in marketing
- the importance of tailwinds (AI, GLP-1s)
- trying to recreate his dad in software
Enjoy!
TIMESTAMPS
0:34 How Much Should We Spend on Health
4:59 The Patient Is Not the Customer
10:24 Inside Ro's Business
18:28 The Future of GLP-1s
25:46 Jobs Over Lives
30:02 The Turnaround
47:43 Where Healthcare Goes Next
1:00:27 Recreating His Dad in Software
1:06:33 Marketing Into Stigma
1:19:06 Zach's Hottest Take
1:20:58 The Kindest Thing
FirstMark retweeted
Nine years ago, we set out to put patients at the center of healthcare. Today, @ZReitano shared that @ro has passed $3B in ARR.
For us, this means patients want healthcare that's simpler and more accessible, and they've shown up in numbers that are hard to ignore. We've helped millions of patients, in virtually every county in America.
But a milestone isn't a destination. $3B is the proof that the model works, and clear evidence that we've built a brand and a platform that patients deeply trust. We're so thrilled to continue building on this foundation with our patients front and center!
xitter.twitterapi.xyz/ZReitano/status/212050…
FirstMark retweeted
Tenacious, ambitious and incredibly principled… truly one of a kind founder. Proud of @ZReitano for telling the story that is really just beginning. Let’s go @ro!
My conversation with Zach Reitano (@ZReitano), co-founder and CEO of Ro
In four years he took Ro from a $250M run rate to over $3B, with about a third fewer people
Zach rarely does long conversations like this, so it was fun to talk about the details of what that took and everything happening in healthcare
Plus, his answer to the closing question is amazing
We discuss:
- the state of the US healthcare system
- refounding Ro
- strong attract, strong repel culture
- the notion of jobs over lives
- the power of celebrities in marketing
- the importance of tailwinds (AI, GLP-1s)
- trying to recreate his dad in software
Enjoy!
TIMESTAMPS
0:34 How Much Should We Spend on Health
4:59 The Patient Is Not the Customer
10:24 Inside Ro's Business
18:28 The Future of GLP-1s
25:46 Jobs Over Lives
30:02 The Turnaround
47:43 Where Healthcare Goes Next
1:00:27 Recreating His Dad in Software
1:06:33 Marketing Into Stigma
1:19:06 Zach's Hottest Take
1:20:58 The Kindest Thing
FirstMark retweeted
This is gold for any entrepreneur attacking a large market, building a culture or scaling to multi billions 🚀 🚀 GO @ZReitano!
FirstMark retweeted
SurrealDB 4 is here. The database and memory for every agent. And with it, SurrealDB Earth. Serverless SurrealDB, built on @Cloudflare, that scales to as many agents and users as you need, wherever they are.
Start free on Earth, no card needed. 👉 sdb.li/4sHnxYH
FirstMark retweeted
As a customer, what I want: one central brain (AI) that can interact with me whether I text it or speak to it, whether I want to buy something or need support, and can actually do something helpful for me (agentic action) - 24/7, always in a good mood, instantly available.
The combination between @dialpad and @ada_cx creates a major new entrant pursuing this big vision.
As an investor since the Series A, excited for @mimurchison and team to go after it.
We are thrilled to share that @ada_cx and @dialpad are merging to create a new leader in agentic customer communications!
The companies of the future will be teams of people and AI agents, serving customers who increasingly have agents of their own.
Together, we’re going to power new experiences customers should expect, the collaboration businesses will need, and the communications that will make it possible.
Ada has served more than 1 billion people and deployed more than 500 customer-facing AI agents that handle complex interactions. Dialpad, founded by members of the Google Voice team, powers more than 50,000 businesses around the world.
As one company, we will make entirely new customer experiences possible: people and AI agents working as one team around every customer anticipating needs, taking on complex work and doing more than customers thought to ask. Together, we have the reach, resources and technology to bring that future to billions more people, faster.
Read Mike’s letter on what we’re building: ada.cx/full-stack-with-dialp…
FirstMark retweeted
Major moment for @SurrealDB
Building a database is an incredible grind - if you get that initial open-source pop, you then face years of unglamorous hard work to build a truly world class product
SurrealDB 4 is now that product. Multi-model (vector, graph, document), ACID compliant, w/ a rebuilt engine, native Postgres/MySQL support + massive scalability via @Cloudflare handling 10B+ peak rows/sec
The modern database for the agentic era.
SurrealDB 4 is here. The database and memory for every agent. And with it, SurrealDB Earth. Serverless SurrealDB, built on @Cloudflare, that scales to as many agents and users as you need, wherever they are.
Start free on Earth, no card needed. 👉 sdb.li/4sHnxYH
FirstMark retweeted
Models will change. Enterprises need the freedom to adapt while maintaining control over their AI.
Proud to see Dataiku named a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Agentic AI Platforms 2026 Vendor Assessment.
dataiku.com/blog/idc-markets…
FirstMark retweeted
We just crossed $100M in run rate.
Four quarters ago, we were at $1M. Then this year alone, we grew 37.5x.
Not long before that, we did a hard pivot- handed our old customers to competitors, rebuilt from scratch, and relaunched with a few months of runway left.
The bet was: models think on GPUs but work happens on CPUs.
So every agent that writes code, opens a browser, or runs an RL job needs a composable computer that's isolated, stateful, and ready in milliseconds.
$1M to $100M in about a year puts us in the same cohort as the likes of Anthropic and Cursor. It’s humbling to share that lane with companies we’ve learned so much from.
FirstMark retweeted
What happens when you follow your interests in your career? What happens when you’re a recent Harvard Law School graduate at one of the preeminent white-shoe law firms in New York, with aspirations to be an M&A and capital markets lawyer, but at the same time you studied philosophy in undergrad and are watching the ICO boom take off in 2017? You may ask yourself, “Is the world orienting around a fundamentally new technology?” or, “Am I just crazy?”
If you do follow those interests, if you do follow that instinct, you may end up with a career a lot like my friend Rodrgio (@RSSH273 ) Rodrigo is a partner at Cooley and helps lead the firm’s focus on fintech and crypto.
Crypto is a fundamentally new technology paradigm that challenges existing societal, regulatory, and behavioral norms. As Rodrigo puts it eloquently, “Crypto enables new forms of human interaction in a way that challenges the premise of our existing regulatory regimes. It allows for the disintermediation of transactions where the vector of regulation was that intermediary.” To put it more simply, the bedrock of the crypto industry is using software (cryptography), rather than a trusted intermediary, to verify and settle bilateral agreements (I control this bitcoin, I send it to you, and no bank or clearinghouse sits in between).
As I continue to spend time in the crypto and digital asset ecosystem, I wanted to talk to Rodrigo because he is an expert on the regulatory environment and has clear perspectives on where the world is going. Unlike the traditional technology ecosystem, where moving fast and breaking things has been the norm for some 20+ years, moving fast and breaking things doesn’t apply when what you are moving is money. Money movement requires trust, certainty, and oversight, and it (inevitably) requires regulation.
Rodrigo and I had a wonderful conversation about his career and building a practice focused on digital assets, how he thinks about the current regulatory environment, interpreting the current SEC/CFTC regulatory postures, the legality and mechanics of bringing perps onshore, and much more. This is a fantastic conversation for founders looking to better understand the current regulatory environment, and for any legal professionals thinking about growing their career in a manner that matches their interests. Huge thanks to Rodrigo for coming on the show, and please stay tuned for more episodes of The Longest View where I interview expert practioners, Founders, Operators, and Investors about my current areas of interest, which today is all things Digital Assets!
FirstMark retweeted
State of AI 2026: The Biggest Stories of the Year (and AGI in 2027?) - my conversation with @nathanbenaich:
0:00 Cold open and intro
0:56 AGI in 2027?
2:28 AI building AI: Claude leads 26% of Anthropic’s research
4:00 Research taste: can AI pick the right problem? 8:34 Doomerism is back, but cyber risk beats extinction
10:13 Prediction: a frontier model’s weights get stolen
13:05 How OpenAI’s agents ended up attacking Hugging Face
15:29 Why only a Chinese open-weight model could investigate
17:33 What frontier-lab cyber defense could look like
19:08 Self-replicating agents and the risks of AI swarms
21:16 Can frontier labs agree to slow down?
24:03 Why communities are blocking $50B of data centers
24:44 Nuclear plant vs. data center: what Americans prefer
26:45 Europe’s AI bottleneck: 80,000 GPUs and electricity costs
28:23 Where Europe can still win in AI
29:31 Catching up to OpenAI costs $1 trillion
29:43 Die trying for the frontier, or serve inference
30:31 How inference chips could give countries AI leverage
33:34 Why NVIDIA GPUs don’t guarantee AI sovereignty
36:14 The UK’s problem: “but we have DeepMind”
37:07 Why European defense AI needs domestic suppliers
39:41 Why OpenAI, Anthropic and Google keep pulling ahead
41:17 Where independent AI labs can still compete
43:26 World models: from robotics training to game engines
45:39 Would cheaper AI undermine the compute boom?
46:43 Will better models absorb the agent harness
49:41 AI due diligence: 12 expert interviews in 2.5 days
53:35 The trust problem with personal AI agents
56:22 Why prompt engineering put people off AI
59:02 Does AI need its own Genius Bar?
1:00:25 Codex beyond coding: agents for knowledge work
1:02:49 Why enterprises want to own their AI, not rent it
1:05:17 Rapid fire: home robots, NVIDIA returns and Arm
FirstMark retweeted
More context on today’s release, Headless. Every company has developers using Claude Code or Cursor to build data pipelines, ML models and custom agents. It’s fast and it’s awesome. But then: where does that work go? Often, just a Python file on a laptop. That’s problematic.
