building @psumvc @colossusmag hosting @investlikebest
New York, NY
Joined June 2013
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Patrick OShaughnessy retweeted
Brilliant interview
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
Patrick OShaughnessy retweeted
Both markets are still early relative to who could use them.
About 1 in 3 overweight adults qualify for a GLP-1 today. About 1 in 100 are taking one.
For AI, about 2% of people online pay for it.
Patrick OShaughnessy retweeted
This kid was in my junior year intern class at Booz (a management consulting firm). He didn’t get a return offer; apparently he disagreed with his manager. This was a big deal for our intern class because almost every one got return offers, and Zach was one of the smartest and popular kids in our class.
But he went on to become an entrepreneur and build a multi billion $ healthcare biz instead.
Moral of the story - some people aren’t meant to become agreeable consultants and have bosses. Those are usually the entrepreneurs who refuse to accept the world as is, and who want to “put a ding in the universe.”
Patrick OShaughnessy 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
Patrick OShaughnessy 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
Patrick OShaughnessy retweeted
The new prefect.io is live!
We’re bringing @dagster, @fastmcp, and @PrefectIO together as an amazing platform for controlling what agents know, what agents can do, and what outcomes they’re achieving.
That’s everything you need for repeatable, reproducible, and reliable agent behavior.
More next week…
Patrick OShaughnessy retweeted
Most LPs haven't seen liquidity this cycle:
- SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI: $4.2T
- Every US VC-backed exit, 2016-2025: $2.6T
- SpaceX's $1.7T IPO alone is 65%
- Only 42% of 2020-vintage funds have returned any cash
"If you're an LP that wasn't in a fund that had a lot of exposure to SpaceX, you haven’t gotten any liquidity.
It's not 30-50% of LP AUM in venture capital. It's 30-50% of their AUM in three to four companies. It's SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI." –– @ramtinnaimi
40 feverish minutes of zoomed in detail on what’s happening in venture markets, with @ramtinnaimi
We discuss:
- cuck tranches
- why rounds are moving so fast
- how today compares to 2021
- what record deployment means for LPs
- the Anthropic S-1 and compute
- seed risk at Series D prices
The full episode is available everywhere you get podcasts (links in comments)
Enjoy!
Patrick OShaughnessy retweeted
at thrive, we deeply believe that the best ideas can come from anyone.
our fellowship is one way we put it into practice. each year, we support a small group of college students as they pursue their own ideas alongside our team.
we have been fortunate to learn from those who have shared their time and experience with us. we do not have all the answers, but we hope that sharing what we have learned can help our fellows find their own.
fellows.thrivecap.com/
Patrick OShaughnessy retweeted
"Only two things truly matter: family and money. Success without family is hollow; family without financial security is precarious." –– @ramtinnaimi
40 feverish minutes of zoomed in detail on what’s happening in venture markets, with @ramtinnaimi
We discuss:
- cuck tranches
- why rounds are moving so fast
- how today compares to 2021
- what record deployment means for LPs
- the Anthropic S-1 and compute
- seed risk at Series D prices
The full episode is available everywhere you get podcasts (links in comments)
Enjoy!
Patrick OShaughnessy retweeted
Had another fun conversation with @patrick_oshag, this time on the state of venture.
40 feverish minutes of zoomed in detail on what’s happening in venture markets, with @ramtinnaimi
We discuss:
- cuck tranches
- why rounds are moving so fast
- how today compares to 2021
- what record deployment means for LPs
- the Anthropic S-1 and compute
- seed risk at Series D prices
The full episode is available everywhere you get podcasts (links in comments)
Enjoy!
Patrick OShaughnessy retweeted
Really important breakthrough that is not widely understood - the mythical man month may be no more when capital unlocks productivity vs the limited scaling laws of human engineering teams
Martin Casado:
"I really think the big disruption of AI is the fact that you can throw capital at problems. In the history of tech, you haven't been able to do that, because it was always an engineering problem, which just doesn't scale.
The biggest shift with AI is I can take 20 people, give them a billion dollars, and they can use that. Do they make 500 million from that billion or two billion? I have no idea. But the fact that you can productively use that money is so new.
We've turned this into a capital resourcing problem, and we're capital allocators. We're in this very strategic position to help drive the future in a much more direct way than we ever have been before.
If you look at Anthropic and OpenAI, they've probably raised more money in aggregate than the entire downstream ecosystem combined.
They are these mechanisms of turning money into growth."
Patrick OShaughnessy retweeted
This chat with @martin_casado is one of the top conversations on @InvestLikeBest this year: pca.st/episode/a1fe729c-202b…
Interesting, opinionated, insights-dense
Patrick OShaughnessy retweeted
The most in depth conversation I’ve ever had on the practice of venture. It’s a good overview of what I’ve learned over the last decade.
My third conversation with Martin Casado (@martin_casado), general partner at @a16z.
- The case for consensus investing
- Why moats are overrated
- Frontier model economics
- What happens when AI growth slows
- Why private markets are efficient
- Lessons from Cursor, OpenRouter, and World Labs acquisitions
Enjoy!
TIMESTAMPS
Intro
Four Types of Venture Investors
What Everyone Gets Wrong About Network Effects
Moats, Market Growth, and Disruptive Technologies
How AI Is Rebuilding Computing Infrastructure
Anthropic, Frontier Models, and the Future of AI Competition
Why AI Is Bigger Than Software
AI's Capital Revolution and Infrastructure Bottlenecks
Market Efficiency, Valuations, and Venture Capital
Lessons from AI's Biggest Acquisitions and the Future of VC
Patrick OShaughnessy retweeted
What it’s like to run President Trump’s science and technology office.
A few weeks ago, the Secret Service locked Jensen Huang, Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, Satya Nadella, Lisa Su, and Michael Dell in a room in Washington, DC.
While they waited for President Trump, Huang—who chooses not to own a jet—complained about a recent commercial plane ride. It had no Wi-Fi.
“Best way to sandbox an AI,” Musk said. “Put it on a Delta flight.”
All six were about to receive national medals from the President. The ceremony was the idea of Michael Kratsios, Trump's chief science advisor. He is 39, a Peter Thiel protégé, and has worked for Trump every day of both terms.
For decades, the office Kratsios runs was known mostly for reports on things like algae blooms. Kratsios himself was barely known in Trump's first term. Now he sits between the President and tech royalty. He is one of a handful of people shaping America's AI policy, and the White House's point man on nuclear, space, and quantum.
In our latest feature, @harrytlambert shows how the fight to regulate AI and reform American science runs through his office.
colossus.com/article/michael…
Patrick OShaughnessy retweeted
“Best way to sandbox an AI,” said Musk. “Put it on a Delta flight: No escape is possible.”
be Greg Brockman
go to White House dinner to beg your enemies for compute
> "h-hey Elon... got any spare compute bro?"
Elon calls you out in front of the entire room: "DUDE, you stole my charity! You can't be a huge dick then ask for favors, hello?"
Sergey Brin: “He was asking me for compute too. How many grown men do you know that keep a diary? If I did I’d burn it.”
LMAOOOOOOOO
Patrick OShaughnessy retweeted
If you also prefer not to read, you can listen to this feature on your podcast player of choice.
It's read by award-winning narrator Scott Brick.
open.spotify.com/episode/7Kf…
Patrick OShaughnessy retweeted
“Price is a signal wrapped in an inventive” is one of the best, most concise, ways to describe perhaps the most undervalued feature in a free market society.
Cliff Sosin (@CliffordSosin) is one of my favorite people to call, ask some big questions, and then shut up and listen.
This conversation is a version of one of those calls.
We discuss:
- The limits of intelligence
- Owning the complements to it
- Meta, the frontier labs, and the AI build-out
- Capital markets
- Why he's comfortable with 80% of his portfolio in Carvana.
TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Intro
10:41 The Limits of Intelligence
18:03 Investing Beyond Cheap Intelligence
24:03 Will AI Become Commoditized?
35:10 Who Profits From AI?
43:00 AI Agents Reshape Competition
52:06 America's Capital Markets
58:04 Transforming Companies With AI
68:19 AI and Portfolio Concentration
73:16 Education in the AI Era
Patrick OShaughnessy retweeted
Three podcasts I really enjoyed recently
1. Cliff Sosin - Owning the Complements to Intelligence. This was really stellar. Cliff makes a compelling case that intelligence is being commoditized, and leads a conversation to consider what becomes valuable and scare in that scenario. I don’t fully agree with him and still found it be incredibly insightful and compelling
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…
2. Dr. Sarah Paine: Why The World Is Turning Away From America. I found this to be quite depressing but worth listening to. Dr. Paine is always a great listen, but it’s not exactly fun to sit with how catastrophically Trump’s second term has eroded our standing as a nation, destabilized the world and materially degraded the future outlook for our children. Required listening nonetheless
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…
3. Robert Caro – The master biographer reflects at 91. I am conflicted. Obviously this is great. But I don’t like that he is being distracted from finishing the last book. Anyways. It’s here so listen to it. It’s great. Read all his books if you haven’t. What more is there to say?
dwarkesh.com/p/robert-caro
Patrick OShaughnessy retweeted
A few weeks ago, the Secret Service locked Jensen Huang, Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, Satya Nadella, Lisa Su, and Michael Dell in a room in Washington, DC.
While they waited for President Trump, Huang—who chooses not to own a jet—complained about a recent commercial plane ride. It had no Wi-Fi.
“Best way to sandbox an AI,” Musk said. “Put it on a Delta flight.”
All six were about to receive national medals from the President. The ceremony was the idea of Michael Kratsios, Trump's chief science advisor. He is 39, a Peter Thiel protégé, and has worked for Trump every day of both terms.
For decades, the office Kratsios runs was known mostly for reports on things like algae blooms. Kratsios himself was barely known in Trump's first term. Now he sits between the President and tech royalty. He is one of a handful of people shaping America's AI policy, and the White House's point man on nuclear, space, and quantum.
In our latest feature, @harrytlambert shows how the fight to regulate AI and reform American science runs through his office.
colossus.com/article/michael…
Patrick OShaughnessy retweeted
Cliff Sosin on the AI build-out:
"America's capital markets, and the capital markets in general, are just incredibly underappreciated.
We just redeployed 3% of GDP into this highly speculative venture, basically on the turn of a dime.
There's no one else in the world that’s been able to do it."
Cliff Sosin (@CliffordSosin) is one of my favorite people to call, ask some big questions, and then shut up and listen.
This conversation is a version of one of those calls.
We discuss:
- The limits of intelligence
- Owning the complements to it
- Meta, the frontier labs, and the AI build-out
- Capital markets
- Why he's comfortable with 80% of his portfolio in Carvana.
TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Intro
10:41 The Limits of Intelligence
18:03 Investing Beyond Cheap Intelligence
24:03 Will AI Become Commoditized?
35:10 Who Profits From AI?
43:00 AI Agents Reshape Competition
52:06 America's Capital Markets
58:04 Transforming Companies With AI
68:19 AI and Portfolio Concentration
73:16 Education in the AI Era