Partner @OutlanderVC. Co-founder & board member @Andela. Backing founders building AI and software for the physical world.
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Joined December 2007
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Jeremy Johnson retweeted
Introducing the Dreamwork MCP 🤖
Your favorite agent can now get you your dream job.
It gives you access to 2M live roles, perfectly tailored resumes, and most importantly: automated submissions directly to the employer.
Paste this: npx -y @dreamworkhq/mcp
Jeremy Johnson retweeted
Dreamwork has gotten me 4-5 interviews! One of them even flew me out to tour their facilities. Check it out
Proud of my brother @colindotj and his team for building Dreamwork. One resume in, all the right applications go out.
Jeremy Johnson retweeted
after every sports team transaction I think to myself 'how can the buyer possibly make money on that' and then the next franchise trades 10% higher.
Jeremy Johnson retweeted
We just crossed $500B in assets under management tracked on Standard Metrics (@metrics_co)!
Behind that number: over 150 firms trusting us with their portfolio management, and more than 10,000 portfolio companies trusting us as a key investor relations partner. A growing share of those companies report to multiple investors on the platform.
In other words, $500B is a marker of our network effects in action. As our network grows, portfolio management gets better for investors, reporting gets faster and easier for portfolio companies, and AUM managed on platform grows alongside it.
It’s been a fun last few weeks, but we’re even more excited about what’s to come. Just getting started!
Really well said - one of the most obviously good economic ideas for cities, states, and the country is to be pro-data center build outs.
Regret the tone of my post on data centers yesterday.
What I should have said:
There were reasonable concerns about data centers 18ish months ago: water, taxes, jobs, electricity prices, the environment and what they would do to small towns. Well-structured data center projects have largely addressed these concerns today and we should be celebrating this.
On balance, data centers are awesome for America in every way.
On water: U.S. data centers use a fraction of what golf courses use. A lot of the numbers from 18 months ago were off by over 1000x. Newer data centers use closed-loop systems or recycled water. Should be required by every town approving a data center project.
On taxes: looking only at sales-tax exemptions, as Ronan Farrow did, is the wrong way to evaluate this. Data centers pay significant property taxes. Loudoun County, which is the wealthiest county in America, now collects on the order of $1 billion a year from data centers. In Quincy, WA, data centers are more than half the property-tax roll. Over time, property taxes can go to zero while government spending increases in these towns.
On jobs: this has been unambiguously awesome for blue collar Americans. Demand for electricians, plumbers, welders, HVAC techs, and contractors has gone vertical, and it is not a one-time construction job. These buildings get upgraded and expanded over time. That is why the building trades are fighting for them, and why some unions are now treating opposition to data centers as a reason not to endorse politicians.
On power: the original fear was that households would pay for the incremental electricity demand in the form of higher prices. That is why the ratepayer-protection deals and the new large-load tariffs exist. The right structure is: the data center brings or pays for new generation and signs a contract long enough that existing customers are protected. Where that is happening, utilities are cutting or freezing residential rates and saying so on the record. Where it is not, people are right to object. Electricity prices are going down *today* in a number of large states because of data centers.
On the environment: data centers overwhelming use natural gas today, which is the cleanest power source outside of nuclear, solar and wind. And the companies that are building the data centers are committed to carbon neutrality such that an equivalent amount of solar will likely be built. Maybe more importantly, the data centers need batteries to function effectively and these batteries can also sell energy back into the grid (which recently prevented blackouts in Texas). Over time, data centers will run on solar plus batteries.
On the towns: Poverty in Quincy, WA fell from 29% to 6%. Data center taxes paid for a new high school, a hospital, a library, police and fire stations. This is happening in many left for dead former mill and farm towns that had no other bidder for the land.
Data centers are actually reindustrializing parts of America and creating the kind of working-class jobs both parties have spent decades claiming to support. That should not be a partisan issue. Data centers can and should be awesome for America and they increasingly, overwhelmingly are. Supporting the outsourcing of data centers to China will likely age just as well as support for the outsourcing of high quality, blue collar manufacturing jobs to China has aged.
When the facts change, I change my mind. I hope that reasonable people who had good faith reasons to oppose data centers at least consider updating their beliefs given the change in the facts over the last 18 months. This really matters for America.
I will say I also think the idea of making data centers beautiful is a good one that has yet to be implemented. Data centers should be just as beautiful as Grand Central Station. We can learn a lot from the railroad buildout. Neoclassical revival ftw.
Might write up open-weight AI tomorrow as this is equally essential to America.
Jeremy Johnson retweeted
A lot of startup fundraising comes down to whether the investor can explain your company to someone else.
You might have a brilliant product, a nuanced market and a complicated technical advantage, but if the VC leaves the meeting and can’t explain in 30 seconds why the company matters, that’s a problem.
Because the pitch usually doesn’t stop with the person you met.
They have to explain it to a partner. That partner may have to explain it to the rest of the fund. Then somebody has to remember it a week later when they’re comparing you against five other companies.
The strongest companies usually have a very simple sentence hiding underneath all the complexity.
What do you do? Why now? Why are you different? Why can this get huge?
Founders sometimes think simplifying the story makes the business sound less sophisticated.
Usually it does the opposite.
If your investor can’t retell your story clearly, they’re probably not going to fight very hard to get the deal done.
Normal founder text: I am on a mission from god to will these people into success
Me: That is the literal perfect way to view your customers
Congrats @jmelaskyriazi! You were a great VC (and a hugely impactful part of the @Andela journey) in part because you were actually always a great founder. Thrilled, but not surprised, to see @metrics_co taking off.
Standard Metrics (@metrics_co) has raised a $20M Series B led by 8VC (@8vc) to accelerate innovation in the private markets!
Trillions of dollars of economic activity in the private markets still run on spreadsheets, email threads, and PDFs. This critical ecosystem remains surprisingly analog and inefficient despite financing many of the world’s most innovative companies.
This problem matters. A better-functioning innovation economy would lead to new big technological breakthroughs, life-saving medicines, jobs, and game-changing new products.
AI expands both the urgency and the scope of this opportunity. New AI models have fundamentally changed how data can be organized, analyzed, and acted upon, and they are beginning to drive rapid software adoption in an industry that has historically lagged behind. We believe AI-native infrastructure will reshape the private markets over the coming decade.
Two years ago, we bet our company on the idea of building the AI-native portfolio management platform for venture capital and private equity. That was the single most consequential decision in our history: it led us to create the first MCP server in our space, launch an AI-driven document processing service, and build cutting-edge agentic reporting and analytics tools.
Today, we’re proud to support more than 150 investment firms who collectively manage over $400B, along with more than 10,000 of their portfolio companies. 30% of the Forbes Midas List are customers of Standard Metrics. But we’ve still only scratched the surface: we work with roughly 1% of active global VC/PE firms.
We’ve raised roughly $50M to date. Most of that capital has come from our customers. Investors in this round alongside 8VC include Salesforce Ventures, Spark Capital, January Capital, First Trust Capital Partners, Socii Capital, Kindergarten Ventures, Calm Ventures, Gaingels, and more. It’s been an honor to partner with some of the world’s most forward-thinking investors on this journey.
Thank you so much to our team, customers, investors, and supporters. We’re just getting started!
Jeremy Johnson retweeted
My pet theory is they’re all masking. I think elite athletes learn early on that normies don’t respond well to truths about innate talent disparities, the amount of practice and hard work that goes into succeeding, and the insane focus and competitive mindset required to excel. So they smile and murmur platitudes to the civilians.
This is a core part of what we do at YC actually, creating a safe space for elite practitioners (in this case startup founders) to be themselves and talk about how they actually do their work with other founders.
One really great essay by David Foster Wallace is about exactly this.
He wrote about the gap between the inner experience of a tennis athlete, approaching Olympian transcendence through iron will supreme self master and endless sacrifice, and how athletes fail to convey this in anything other than the most tired cliches.
They don’t have words for what they go through, they cannot convey it, and so they fall into a very bland stock phraseology that makes for very poor memoirs and reading.
Jeremy Johnson retweeted
I’m reading a book that’s so depressing that it has made me happy.
Its called 4000 Weeks. 4000 weeks is roughly the average human life.
The premise of the book is:
1. We’ll all die any minute now.
2. Time efficiency hacks just make you more busy.
3. Accept you can do very few things in life and commit to only a few things.
The last thing on commitment, I think is the most important:
“And not only should you settle: ideally, you should settle in a way that makes it harder to back out, such as moving in together, or getting married, or having a child.
The great irony of all our efforts to avoid facing finitude - to carry on believing that it might be possible not to have to choose between mutually exclusive options - is that when people finally do choose, in a relatively irreversible way, they're usually much happier as a result.
We'll do almost anything to avoid burning our bridges, to keep alive the fantasy of a future unconstrained by limitation, yet having burned them, we're generally pleased that we did so.”
Jeremy Johnson retweeted
What happens when everyone becomes more articulate, more efficient, more optimized, and somehow less alive?
AI can obviously be extremely helpful. It can reduce cognitive load, organize information, speed up research, improve communication, support planning, and make certain decisions easier. Used well, it can create more time, clarity, and freedom.
But there is also a real risk that AI can make people feel like every area of life is available for constant improvement. Once a tool can analyze almost anything, it becomes easy to start applying that analysis everywhere - health, work, relationships, routines, travel, home systems, finances, creativity, communication, even emotional dynamics.
At that point, the issue is not the tool itself. The issue is whether the tool is reducing complexity or quietly adding another layer of complexity.
Optimization backfires when the process of improving life starts creating more work than it removes. For example, if AI helps someone make a decision faster, that is useful. But if AI creates more options to compare, more frameworks to consider, more systems to maintain, or more pressure to find the “best” answer, then the optimization is no longer serving its purpose.
There is also a difference between high-value decisions and low-value decisions. Some areas deserve careful analysis: business strategy, major financial choices, health decisions, hiring, travel logistics, and complex planning. But many parts of life do not benefit from the same level of scrutiny. Some decisions are better made quickly, intuitively, or with “good enough” information.
The risk is that AI can blur that line. It can make small decisions feel like they should be optimized with the same seriousness as major decisions.
Another important distinction is whether AI is supporting judgment or replacing judgment. Ideally, AI should help clarify thinking so a person can make a better decision. But if someone starts relying on AI to endlessly validate, refine, or improve every choice, they may become less practiced at trusting their own instincts and experience.
The same applies to relationships and quality of life. Some things improve with planning and structure, but others require presence, spontaneity, emotional attunement, and direct experience. Not every part of life becomes better by being analyzed.
A useful q is whether AI is producing more freedom or more mental overhead.
So the concern is not that AI should be avoided. The concern is that without boundaries, optimization can become self-defeating. The goal should be to use AI in areas where it clearly reduces friction, while being careful not to turn every part of life into a system, project, or performance metric.
*Conflict of interest: AI assisted in the production of this concern about AI optimizing the blood out of life.*
Jeremy Johnson retweeted
I’ve always believed the No.1 application of AI should be to improve human health.
That work started with AlphaFold, and now at @IsomorphicLabs with the mission to reimagine drug discovery and one day solve all disease!
We are turbocharging that goal with $2.1B in new funding.
Jeremy Johnson retweeted
Anthropic has 454 open roles. The company is hiring software engineers at $320K-$405K. Their CEO, Dario, said three months ago that coding is "going away first, then all of software engineering."
The paradox resolves instantly.
Dario's engineers told him they don't write code anymore. They let Claude write it. They edit. They review. They architect. They didn't lose their jobs. They got faster. Anthropic grew from a small research lab to 1,500 employees in four years, adding engineers the entire time.
This has played out five times in computing history. Compilers replaced assembly. Frameworks replaced boilerplate. Cloud replaced server management. Every prediction was the same: most programmers won't be needed. Every result was the same: the number of engineers grew.
The global software engineer pool went from roughly 5 million in 2010 to 28.7 million today. BLS projects 17% growth in US software developer roles through 2033, adding 304,000 positions. The pool is projected to hit 45 million by 2030.
When building software gets cheaper, more problems become worth solving with software. A startup that needed 10 engineers now needs 3. But 50 companies that couldn't afford to build at all now can. The denominator shrinks. The numerator explodes.
Meta's engineering headcount is up 19% from January 2022. Google's is up 16%. Apple, 13%. These companies adopted AI coding tools years ago. They're using Copilot and Claude Code daily. They're hiring more engineers than before those tools existed.
Every generation of "coding is dead" content creates two cohorts: engineers who freeze up, and engineers who build 10x more with the new tools. The second group has won every single time.
Jeremy Johnson retweeted
Always ask, but never expect.
Always ask for what you want. Many people are happy to help—if the request is direct and specific. In a surprising number of cases, something remarkable is possible if you have the courage to ask.
Never expect people to say yes. Everyone is busy and balancing multiple priorities. Your request is not their responsibility. When you're told no, move on lightly and freely. The world is full of opportunity.
Jeremy Johnson retweeted
Most of the founder/CEOs I work with are allergic to 2nd hand information.
They like to go to the source, irrespective of the org chart.
Jeremy Johnson retweeted
If you don’t get flooded with gratitude multiple times a week you’re dumb:
-we live in a free country
-gyms exist
-Christopher Nolan movies exist
-NFL Sundays happen 20+ times a year
-you and your wife can drink 5 bottles of red wine then smash all night without a condom
-you can build yourself into a superhero in a few months of hitting the gym
-every food item in the world has been hunted and gathered for you (grocery stores)
-you didn’t have to spend your entire life figuring out how to make a car… you were born into a world where they’re already invented
-you could be working in a coal mine in a third world country 16 hours a day breaking your lower back for less than $1
-you’re spinning on a sphere in an infinite universe and the fact you’re alive is a 1 in 500 trillion miracle
If anyone complains in front of you tell them they’re an idiot :)
Jeremy Johnson retweeted
Habits that have a high rate of return in life:
- sleeping 8+ hours each day
- lifting weights 3x week
- going for a walk each day
- saving at least 10 percent of your income
- reading every day
- drinking more water and less of everything else
- leaving your phone in another room while you work
Jeremy Johnson retweeted
I was raised in abject rural poverty by a single mom, dropped out of high school at 16, joined the Navy at 18, and served for 26 years.
I am now a member of Congress.
Keep your bullshit to yourself, every American can rise to the level of their God given talents and drive.
Jeremy Johnson retweeted
Our CEO, Carrol Chang, recently connected with John Winsor, Founder of Open Assembly for the Transform Work podcast! Tune in as Carrol shares insights on scaling talent, building global communities, and shaping the future of work – including the importance of change management as it applies to AI adoption.
This one is not to be missed!
Listen on Spotify: thisisande.la/4o07KRf
Amazon Music: thisisande.la/4o4PVRi
Or the Open Assembly website: thisisande.la/3JnixWM
