There has never been a bigger gap between what is technologically possible and what the world understands to be possible. For AI-native builders, the world has fundamentally changed. Things that once required months of effort and millions of dollars can now be built by one or two talented people in hours or days. Business leaders outside the AI bubble know that AI can radically change their business, from how they run it to what they offer their customers, but they have no idea where to begin, or even who to trust to help them find out. I don’t blame them. AI is accelerating so fast right now that if you aren’t actively building and learning at the frontier, your entire strategy is almost certainly built on wrong assumptions. To use an analogy from history, right now some people are flying jets across the country while others are still dying of dysentery on the Oregon Trail. It doesn’t have to be that way. Today we’re launching Foundations Design & Engineering (FDE) to bridge that gap. Over the past two years, Foundations has grown into a community of 300+ committed AI builders across Seattle and SF. Increasingly, the scarce resource for many of them isn’t the ability to build. It’s finding great problems worth solving. FDE is our attempt to connect these two worlds. For existing companies eager to embrace AI, FDE should feel like magic. You express a business problem in plain English. We analyze your problem through an AI-native lens, assign the right team in our community to solve it, and help you get to the best outcome for your business as quickly and cheaply as possible. No armies of junior consultants. No incentive to maximize billable hours. Just founder-grade technologists applying hard-fought lessons from the edge of what’s possible today. Sometimes the answer is a few hours of expert help or a product that already exists. Sometimes it’s a full build. Sometimes it’s “the tech isn’t there yet, let’s find another way”. You have problems. We have builders looking for them. Let’s make the connection. fde.fndtns.org/

@crashdev and I have been leading seed rounds into Excel replacement startups since before I went bald and have lost money every single time … until the team at @GetRowZero got it very, very right. We can finally end our watch. Thanks guys for letting us be part of your journey!

I love what @jacobcolker is trying to do here and he almost gets there, but misses one key point. Seattle IS great. But it may not be YOUR great. And frankly, if you're someone like me (a libertarian-leaning VC), right now it definitely isn't. And that's okay! People flock to different cities to "find their people". NYC, SF, LA... it's obvious why. But Seattle? It's for quality of life. It truly is. Yes, we have some of the greatest companies in the world here, but it's despite our ethos, not because of it. The rise of MSFT attracted a generation of psychos who prioritized building over everything else. Amazon, and AWS specifically, attracted folks who would rather work on something at global internet scale than go hiking or to their kids soccer game. There's a reason why so many people talked about how "toxic" AWS culture was while others said it was the best place they ever worked by a wide margin.. But that was NEVER Seattle. Those were things that happened DESPITE Seattle. And that's ok! Yeah, prioritizing compassion over a safe park for your kids or extra $$$ for a trip vs. increased taxes to allow you to subsidize services for others may not be your jam, but it IS Seattle's. And that's okay. My take? We do need less imposter syndrome. But that requires self-awareness first. Let's be the best Seattle, not something else.

Thank you @alexatallah @cclark and @louis_g_v for letting Founders’ Co-op and the fndtns.org community follow along with your journey since the seed. Ya’ll are absolute beasts and deserve all of your success. Unfortunately, I will now be forever disappointed in any other investment’s IRR 😂🥇❤️🙏 PS: @seawatts drinks are on you next time