Much taller IRL
Salt Lake City, UT
Joined May 2007
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Love seeing our early conversations continue as ongoing themes throughout the @firstofkind series.
An epic conversation between two of my favorites.
A key motivation behind @firstofkind is giving the next generation of creatives some working examples of the people who gave themselves permission to lead by example.
@bryce and I often talked about the risk-aversion that often afflicts the creatively minded. It was the genesis of Season 1.
I hope this project inspires a new breed of builder, and that down the road they’ll point back to these specific conversations as the source of unlock. It’ll make the effort all the worthwhile.
Enjoy E03 “How We Win” with @karrisaarinen the CEO @linear this weekend
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The future of Alpha School is already at risk in Utah. We should be scaling this instead we’re stifling it.
Seems like something worth fixing @SpencerJCox
Utah did a really smart thing and passed legislation making it easier for microschools to open without having to navigate all the usual red tape around local zoning and permitting.
So when @Alphaschool approached me last year about opening a school on a property I own in Park City, it seemed like a perfect fit. The property had been home to a 150-kid private school for years.
Ironically, despite the history of the property and a state law that explicitly makes microschools a permitted use in every county zoning district, Summit County has refused to issue @Alphaschool a business license without first requiring a conditional use permit. Which seems like the exact thing the law was intended to prevent.
So now we have a perfectly good six-acre school campus sitting empty while we figure out where else in Park City we're allowed to educate children.
Makes loads of sense.
@SpencerJCox little help 🙏
10 yrs old and seems to have aged pretty well considering the current state of seed funding:
“A business model that depends on the business model of upstream capital will significantly limit the profile of founders one can fund and the outcomes they can achieve” bryce.vc/post/151995919905/u…
On days like today I take morbid joy in opening my banking app and staring into the abyss of red ink.
A reminder we’ve been here many times before and have always come out stronger for it.
Keep building anon.
The single greatest gift you can give your children is a chip on their shoulder.
Never let them feel like enough.
To be clear- I loved our @indievc scout program. Brought us one of our highest value investments (a multi fund returner).
Maybe we should zig while others zag 🤔
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NEW EPISODE: “I'm going to zag when everybody zigs. Now the problem is that may mean half the time I'm just going to lose everything. And then you have this critical question: am I okay with that? And most people's answer to that question is no, and then they stay to the conventional path.”-Chamath Palihapitiya, All-In Podcast @chamath
0:00 Chamath Palihapitiya
2:03 Inside the All-In Podcast
8:51 Getting Canceled & What It Taught Him
23:31 Healthcare, Incentives & Prediction Markets
41:11 Trusting Your Intuition & Taste
50:56 Poker, Gambling & Playing Against the Odds
1:05:29 Investing in Fringe Ideas
1:11:21 AI Fears & the Deals He Passed On
1:22:13 Growing Up Buddhist & Finding Peace
1:30:11 How He Uses AI & His Media Diet
1:51:12 Seeing the Future: Bitcoin, Misses & Money
Do I know anyone at the big residential builders in Utah- Ivory, Edge, Visionary and/or Fieldstone?
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Told you this was an emerging Utah archetype to watch...
Benjy is a great product mind and even better friend.
Grateful that @indievc can be part of he and Chris' next big swing at a problem that has only gotten more acute and a market that has only gotten bigger since their Parsec days.
Watch this space...
Today we’re announcing an $8.75M seed round for Phaze.
Companies aren’t ready for how many computers people and AI agents are about to need. And it’s happening just as computer prices are up 3x.
Chris and I spent years building Parsec to make a computer thousands of miles away feel like it’s sitting right in front of you. We sold that company, and we’re starting over because people aren’t the only users of computers anymore.
Now, agents need access to real computers to run applications, test software, and get work done. They need to work alongside people, hand off control when necessary, and operate within the security policies companies already have in place. And companies need to start managing computers like infrastructure.
That’s why we’re building @Phaze_in: secure, high-performance access to computers, wherever those machines happen to be.
An engineer can connect to a CAD workstation from any device and forget about being physically stuck at that workstation. A video editor can ask an AI agent to connect to a render machine to monitor and fix broken renders. An IT support person can fix multiple machines at the same time with an AI agent connecting to employees’ computers. If the agent needs help, it can hand control back to the technician in the same session.
We loved working with the firms who backed Parsec, so we’re running it back. Our Seed round is led by @martin_casado at @a16z, with @bryce at @indievc, @davidbeisel at @NextViewVC, @BenjLerer at @LererHippeau, and @Ryann_Lai at @makersfundvc.
Collaborating our way to oblivion.
When consensus is high and conviction is low, seed dies.
1️⃣1️⃣ The number of "real VC" deals is stable too: about 15,300 a year in the US from 2023 to 2025, more than in any year before 2021.
The weak spot is seed, the very first round. In mid-2025, the number of seed deals fell to its lowest point in more than a decade. As more money pours into "VC" as a whole, investors seem less interested in seed rounds.
Cc @bryce
(NVCA; PitchBook)
