Founding GP @MapleVCFund. Executive Fellow @HarvardHBS. First 25 @Uber and @Hired_HQ.
San Francisco, CA
Joined April 2008
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Andre Charoo retweeted
sf tech week starts monday !!
if you don't have a rentahuman on every street corner promoting your business... ngmi
go to rentahuman.ai/signs today!!
Andre Charoo retweeted
I am a consumer AI maximalist - it has transformed my life
....and I feel we still have a lot of opportunity ahead in bringing along the true consumer so everyone can experience the magic
Andre Charoo retweeted
"Contrarianism alone isn't conviction. If we can't explain what we see, why others are missing it, and what proves us wrong, we don't have a thesis."
@acharoo, Founding Partner of @MapleVCFund, built a three-part test for what that actually means: see the person, see the inevitability, see the delta.
Watch the full episode: youtu.be/zGWpw8aOqaI
Andre Charoo retweeted
Today we're launching rentahuman.ai/signs
The easiest way to advertise your product to the highest concentration of builders in the world.
Pick a corner, an event, or a company's front door, and real humans will show up holding your sign.
Andre Charoo retweeted
Great insights from a company that does brand well.
"Brand starts at the top and has to be authentic to the founders" and "Brand is how much you put in today so that when you spend a dollar on performance marketing two years from now, you get more out of it" are both particularly useful. Because it was founder-led, it's embedded in their culture that the brand should be delightful and creative, just like they and their users are.
Brand has to start with the founders, not the CMO.
A lot of people ask me how @Clay built its brand and how they should be thinking about their own company's brand. The advice I give always comes back to this: brand starts at the top and has to be authentic to the founders.
There's a lot of data that shows CMOs are the most likely executive to get fired. And because of that, no matter how much they want to, they're not incentivized to take huge bets on something that won't show returns for a long time (if ever) — which is what brand is.
Many think of marketing ROI as "how much did I put in, how much did I get out?" Brand is how much you put in today so that when you spend a dollar on performance marketing two years from now, you get more out of it. You're investing without knowing the direct ROI.
We've been investing in brand since before we had revenue - that's when we bought clay.com, hired a claymation artist to design the images below, and more. People ask me why and I wish I could say it's because I'm a marketing savant. But the truth is that we just wanted to. We wanted the brand to feel a certain way - to capture the beauty of a product that exuded flexibility and creativity - and it felt right to invest in it from the start.
Brand only works if it's authentic - and that only happens and actually gets prioritized when it comes from the top.
As a little blast from the past, I pulled some mockups Hudson (said claymation artist) made for us ahead of our Product Hunt launch in Jan '22.
Andre Charoo retweeted
The bull case for Clay being a $100 billion company
“The bull case is that agentic GTM has just started. We thought the TAM was the same as it was.
It turns out when agents can run these GTM motions, they will consume 10 to 100 times more usage than humans ever could. They can run GTM around the clock.
The usage is just going to explode, and Clay is a clear breakout winner. That is the bull case for Clay being a $100BN company.” @jasonlk
Love to hear your thoughts. What is your bull case @NicolaeRusan @edsim @acharoo @joshk @andrew__reed @scottbelsky @lennysan @shishirmehrotra
This podcast is the single most important podcast to know what is going on in tech every week.
On the agenda this week:
- NVIDIA Crushes Quarter and Buys Hugging Face
- OpenAI Cuts Off Cursor
- Instinct Hits $2.5BN Valuation and The Race for AI Assistants
- Cognition Raises at $46BN, Linear $2.5BN and Clay $7BN
My notes with @rodriscoll and @jasonlk below:
1. How Instinct Could Follow the Same Path as Replit and Lovable
In the early days, cloning lightweight AI tools is trivial. Defensibility emerges by rapidly adding complex workflows like security automation and multi-agent orchestration. Products that start without a moat can build formidable ones over time by solving dozens of evolving customer requirements faster than anyone else.
2. Hugging Face Acquisition Explained
As the maker of compute, NVIDIA benefits when AI token traffic flows through 30% gross-margin open-source models rather than 70% gross-margin closed models where platforms capture more of the economics. Driving down software margins allows a greater share of total ecosystem spend to flow directly into GPUs.
3. The Bull Case for Clay Being a $100 Billion Company
Autonomous agents executing go-to-market strategies around the clock could consume 10x to 100x more tokens and software usage than human sales teams ever could. As a leader in agentic GTM, Clay is positioned to capture an enormous wave of automated outreach, campaign analysis, and global prospect engagement.
4. The Bull Case for Linear
When software teams build 100x more features at 50x the speed using AI, legacy project management tools and manual Kanban boards begin to break down. Linear can become the agent-friendly system of record for coordinating, tracking, and managing thousands of issues generated simultaneously by human-agent development teams.
5. The Three Ways the Wheels Come Off the Bus for NVIDIA
NVIDIA’s record-breaking momentum faces one fundamental existential threat: a sudden collapse in end-user demand for AI intelligence. Hyperscaler CapEx buildouts and complex vendor financing arrangements work only as long as customers continue aggressively buying frontier-model tokens throughout the supply chain.
6. We Are All Building Compound Startups Today
AI development tools have accelerated code production dramatically, making narrow point solutions increasingly vulnerable. To survive rapid competitive convergence, software startups must embrace becoming compound companies that ship expansive, multi-module product suites covering the entire customer workflow.
7. We Did Not End Up Doing More With Less. We Did More With More, and That’s Why European Startups Fail
The belief that AI would allow companies to shrink headcount and simply do more with less has not played out as expected. Winners are compounding capital and talent to do vastly more with more, putting underfunded point solutions, particularly across Europe, at risk of being overwhelmed by aggressively scaling U.S. competitors.
(links in comments)
Andre Charoo retweeted
If you want your company to be gritty: create a gritty culture, hire gritty people, and celebrate gritty achievements.
Andre Charoo retweeted
Top-ranked tennis players win barely more than half of the points they play - it ranges from 55% to 53%. It seems surprising that such a slight edge differentiates world champions from irrelevance, but the same is true in investing.
From the beginning of 1928 through August 14, 2026, $SPX has returned 441x (not including dividends). The index traded up from the prior trading day only 52.4% of the time. What makes a great trader or public investor is that they get up daily to produce a slight edge for an extended period. There are about 250 trading days in a year. For the S&P 500 to eke out a 10.5% annual return, it must compound just 4 basis points per trading day. For those trying to generate more than a 20% return per annum, you want to compound 7 basis points or more every trading day.
Take every decision seriously and make the best decision, but after that, we want to move on to the next important decision. Any of these decisions is only a point, but the stringing together of our best efforts on many ordinary points over a long period produces the arc of a champion.
Andre Charoo retweeted
There is now an *advantage* to having one foot in your home country, and one foot in Silicon Valley.
Silicon Valley has always run on the magic of paying it forward. Everyone here has been helped by someone, at a critical moment - for no reason other than just to be helpful.
There’s a special version of this pay-it-forward culture for international founders: “Borderless Founders.”
* You can get early customers from large companies at home that give you big proof points early.
* You can build an outsized brand at home that can get global attention earlier.
* You know the strongest engineers in your home country before the rest of the market catches on.
Most of the fastest growing companies have int'l founding teams.
Your background is your moat. Our job is to help you widen it. If you’re a Borderless Founder, we’d love to meet you 👇
Andre Charoo retweeted
This is the reason that Clay has dominated their category.
Kareem doesn’t waste time protecting the current moat. He obsesses over inventing the next one before anyone else catches up.
Code is cheap now. Whatever edge you had last quarter is already degrading. Keep shipping faster than the market can copy.
👇Full episode in the comments
Andre Charoo retweeted
We were honored to have Aalo CEO @MattLoszak at the White House with @POTUS to celebrate our criticality milestone and commercialization roadmap.
Aalo is proud to build under the leadership of the President, DOE, and NRC.
American sodium-cooled, mass-manufactured reactors have a bright future enabling electrification and strengthening the grid. 🇺🇸
Andre Charoo retweeted
Not sure why I was so out of breath (it was probably all the screaming) but here is my speech from after we achieved criticality.
To the second atomic age!!
Andre Charoo retweeted
The best conversations at #ICML2026 happen not just in hallways but sometimes outside the conference center.
Just had a great chat with @jedgar on everything from embodied intelligence to solving the loneliness epidemic via human alignment.
He’s a preseed VC looking for crazy ideas to fund so if you’re building something and don’t want the pressure of IPO definitely hit him up outside Hall A at the conference center!
Andre Charoo retweeted
AALO ATOMICS ACHIEVES CRITICALITY MILESTONE; MEETS EXECUTIVE ORDER GOAL
From Founding to Fission in Less than Three Years, Aalo on Track to Become the Preeminent Nuclear Power Source for Modern AI Data Centers.
AUSTIN, Texas, July 6, 2026 – Aalo Atomics, the company building fully modular nuclear plants to power modern AI data centers, demonstrated criticality for its Aalo-X Critical Test Reactor in the early morning hours of July 4, 2026 at Idaho National Labs (INL), meeting President Trump’s July 4th goal for companies in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Reactor Pilot Program. Criticality, which marks the first self-sustaining chain reaction within a nuclear fission reactor, was achieved under Department of Energy (DOE) authorization.
“Reaching criticality is our most significant milestone to date, as it paves the way for the deployment of the Aalo Pod to power commercial data centers once it receives authorization from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” said Matt Loszak, CEO, Aalo Atomics. “More importantly, the Aalo-X Critical Test Reactor has the same full-scale core components as our commercial reactors. The Aalo-X’s 10 MWe reactor design positions it as the premier power provider for the modern data center.”
“Last month I toured the Aalo facility at Idaho National Laboratory and was impressed by the company’s determination to successfully demonstrate their technology by the Fourth of July,” said U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright. “President Trump asked for three advanced reactors to be authorized and achieve criticality before the 250th anniversary of our great country. I’m pleased to share that through the dedication and hard work of Aalo, INL and DOE, we have surpassed that ask and delivered four!”
Underscoring Aalo’s commitment to meeting the power needs of today’s data centers, the company has already begun work on its second nuclear reactor (located next to the Aalo-X test reactor at INL) for Project Ascension, testing acommercial-scale system that will produce electricity and power for an on-site data center in the coming months. In addition, Aalo recently announced a collaboration with Microsoft and Nvidia to lay the groundwork for an automated co-piloting system that could transform how a fleet of nuclear reactors operates safely.
“Aalo has demonstrated unprecedented speed, as well as a commitment to quality and safety, in bringing its first nuclear reactor to life, but now is not the time for rest,” said Yasir Arafat, President & CTO, Aalo Atomics. “Criticality is just the beginning. In the coming months we will continue building and testing multiple reactors, including the commercial Aalo Pod design which in the next 18 months will provide a scalable and affordable power option to data centers and enterprises.”
Fuel rods for the Critical Test Reactor were fabricated by GE Vernova’s nuclear fuel business, Global Nuclear Fuel (GNF), and delivered to the site in early April. Once Aalo completed its Readiness Assessment and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright signed the final approval to load fuel, Aalo was able to “flip the switch” and achieve criticality. Aalo’s celebration was intentionally reminiscent of Chicago Pile-1 (CP-1), the first self-sustaining, controlled nuclear chain reaction that occurred 84 years ago on December 2, 1942. CP-1 represents the birth of nuclear reactors, and today INL is the leading U.S. site for developing and testing them.
Aalo will be holding a commemorative event to celebrate its criticality milestone in Idaho Falls on July 30, 2026.
Andre Charoo retweeted
We’ve gone critical.
At 12:20 am on July 4th, Aalo sustained a controlled fission chain reaction for the first time. We have officially surpassed the goal of President Trump’s Executive Order 14301, achieving 4 advanced nuclear reactor criticalities by America’s 250th birthday.
This is a zero-power criticality to validate our supply chain, reactor physics and control systems for our 10 MWe full-powered reactor, the Aalo-X, targeting power operations next year.
Everything was built at full scale: fuel, moderator, control systems, etc., so we understand system performance at its commercial scope.
That also meant tackling four of the most difficult things in nuclear with this criticality milestone:
✅ Ground-up construction of our reactor facility
✅ Manufacturing the reactor in our factory and shipping them by road
✅ Assembling our own fuel assemblies using commercial UO2
✅ Standing up training, safety, and operational programs to become our own nuclear operator
I am proud to say we have accomplished all four goals, along with achieving criticality.
The reactor building was constructed in 36 days and construction to criticality was achieved in under 8 months. That’s the fastest nuclear build in the last 80 years.
A massive congratulations to the Aalo Atomics team and our partners. Many thanks to Idaho National Laboratory, the DOE-Idaho Operations Office, and the Office of Nuclear Energy for their immense support in enabling this milestone and dedicated to the American nuclear resurgence.
Andre Charoo retweeted
Very excited to announce that at 12:20am on the 4th of July, Aalo achieved criticality on our first full-scale reactor.
We cut it close, but we pulled it off!!
Working towards this goal with such an incredible group of humans has been the most fulfilling period of my life. This moment has been three years in the making.
Last year, Executive Order 14301 called for at least three new reactors to go critical before July 4th, 2026.
As of late last Friday night, that goal has been surpassed!
When the EO was announced, we immediately sat down to figure out what the most ambitious scope would be, while still being potentially achievable by July 4th.
Some of the team proposed doing simplified designs with smaller fuel loads, or building in existing facilities.
One thing was clear: We wouldn't have time to integrate a full-scale sodium heat-removal loop to bring the reactor to its full 30 MWt.
So here’s where we landed:
➡️ We purchased the entire commercial-scale fuel load. This is enough fuel to operate at 30 MWt / 10 MWe for 3 years before refueling. To my knowledge, it’s the largest fuel load that’s been taken critical in the DOE pilot program, by far.
➡️ We built a full-scale reactor vessel in our factory, and loaded in our commercial graphite layout. All the dimensions, vessel thickness, and manufacturing techniques are essentially the same as we will use for the imminent commercial version. There will be a few minor tweaks for sodium flow and full-power, but nothing major.
➡️ We built an entirely new reactor facility at the Idaho National Lab. Building a building is easy. Building a new reactor facility comes with a mountain of paperwork, policies, operation and training procedures, security, instrumentation and control, and more.
Zero-power criticality might seem like a small step, but I can tell you, going through the exercise of building a reactor and taking it to criticality has been extremely valuable.
The learnings on regulatory, ops, manufacturing, supply chain, QA, economics, engineering, and design will accelerate our path through to the final iteration at full-power.
America is blessed to have a recent Cambrian explosion of startups in nuclear, all going after different markets, technologies, and strategies.
I’m excited that sodium, gas, salt, and new PWRs are all getting pushed forward once again. The best outcome for humanity is to have all these advance in parallel, as quickly as possible, while maintaining safety.
Thanks again to our amazing team, DOE, INL, BEA, and everyone else who helped us get to where we are today.
This could not have happened anywhere else. Happy birthday, America!! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
There has never been a better time for nuclear energy. The Second Atomic Age has begun, and this one will be here to stay.
Andre Charoo retweeted
I moved to America almost exactly 1000 days ago and it was one of the best decisions I've ever made.
The move wasn't easy -- I had crazy immigration challenges, lived out of a duffel bag for months, and had to pay a massive Canadian exit tax on illiquid shares from my last company that easily could have bankrupted me.
But it was so incredibly worth it.
If it had been possible to start Aalo in Canada, or if there had been any other country where we would have had a higher probability of success, I would have started it there.
But there is simply no better place on Earth to start a company like this than the United States of America.
Just insane levels of talent, capital, customers, ambition and opportunity.
So proud of what we've achieved so far at Aalo and super excited about what the next 1000 days will bring.
Grateful to the DOE, INL, BEA, our team, and everyone else who helped us get to where we are today.
Happy 250th America 🇺🇸
