Business building at https://xitter.cf/t.co/6aLauv6aaH. A few fun chapters to date: HashiCorp, GitHub, Hortonworks, VMware, Microsoft.
San Francisco, CA
Joined September 2009
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David McJannet retweeted
Who owns an agent's rules?
Security: the forbids that apply everywhere.
Platform: the defaults for each pattern.
App team: the narrow permits for their own agent.
That's one split. What's yours?
Given how fast the LLMs seem to be improving and the recent acknowledgments of same, it increases the inevitability of model heterogeneity in the enterprise.
That yields the the need for an agnostic approach to agentic compliance controls. Clearer than ever.
David McJannet retweeted
With Dome Systems, McJannet is betting AI agents will follow a similar path to cloud: adoption first, control later. thenewstack.io/hashicorp-mcj…
The NewStack covered the news today
thenewstack.io/hashicorp-mcj…
And worth highlighting a few elements
(a) pricing is public and compelling
(b) designed to enable standalone use of the components if desired.
- Tool gateway domesystems.ai/solutions/use…
- Model broker domesystems.ai/solutions/use…
Our view is that tool and model access is table stakes.
Glad to share that Dome is now available as self-service!
And sharing 3 core observations that underpin our approach.
domesystems.ai/updates/dome-…
Glad to share that Dome is now available as self-service!
And sharing 3 core observations that underpin our approach.
domesystems.ai/updates/dome-…
Companies build things and sell things. Most jobs are in those two departments.
Don't (Start) Work in Venture Capital
Almost every day I get a note from a student saying they want to get into venture investing. got a nice one yesterday from a rising senior at Harvard (comp sci major), here was my response:
my strong, strong recommendation: don't start in venture capital or even investing! this is the greatest time in the world to *build* something. investors are parasites. they (we) need a host. as an investor, your destiny is basically whether you can find somebody to hitch your wagon to.
but if you're technical and determined, you can now create anything!
that having been said, when you are 21 you aren't exposed to a broad array of problems in the world. most college students i meet just know homework, dating, and food -- and consequently start companies/build products around those areas.
so my recommendation (even if you want to end up as an investor): join a very exciting company now. there are only two jobs at real companies: making the thing, or selling the thing. choose which path you want. and as you get more experience there, and are exposed to more problems in the world, and more people in a work environment, maybe you'll start something.
and THEN, you'll have a powerful network, an understanding of how products work vs don't work, deep insights that you can coach people with, etc. and you'll probably already have done a few little investments here and there. and THEN you will be interesting for a venture firm. i didn't reach out to any vcs to get a job, they all pursued me, which is not meant to sound arrogant -- rather it's how most firms operate.
most venture firms don't hire mbas anymore. we want people who enhance our ability to find, pick, and win deals, and overwhelmingly this means people who worked at a startup. there are exceptions, but they're rare. it's the inverse of the world 30 years ago.
good luck!
David McJannet retweeted
Enterprise AI agents are facing a runaway cost problem.
Former HashiCorp CEO and Dome Systems Co-Founder @davidmcj explains why platform engineering controls are needed:
"You need sort of a platform engineering team inside these companies..."
"... to be able to determine what those services are that they're going to provide to allow people to deploy applications in this agentic manner in the same way that they did in the cloud manner.”
Many of us have talked about some of these things for while now, glad to see it put to paper so eloquently.
I’m concerned about the faustian trade of our free will for convenience. My @GeekWire op-ed on “The WALL-E Economy” and the dystopia we’re approaching with AI and smartphones, but can avoid with policy and behavior changes. geekwire.com/2026/opinion-th…
David McJannet retweeted
shoutout to the Google PM who added the Viking Row animation to Haaland’s search result page
Another SJSharks draft day this evening.
Likely their last great one for a while as they've loaded up the past 3 years too. The last pieces for a strong 6- 8 year run.
David McJannet retweeted
Bill Staples runs GitLab, the platform roughly 30 million developers use to ship software. His 14-tweet thread on "GitLab Act 2" is the most honest layoff-and-AI-pivot announcement any public CEO has made yet. The line worth screenshotting: "Authoring code by hand may be going away."
A sitting CEO. Saying it on Twitter. With his face on it.
The pattern this fits into:
- Meta cut 21,000 in 2023, then committed $35-40B to AI infrastructure for 2024.
- Salesforce cut 7,000, then launched Agentforce at roughly $2 per conversation.
- Amazon cut 27,000 since 2022, then committed $100B+ to AI infrastructure for 2025.
- Microsoft cut 6,000 in May 2025, then crossed $13B in annualized AI revenue.
The math is consistent. Every dollar saved on payroll funds a GPU, a model contract, or an agent platform. These companies are running a swap: workforce that built version 1, out. Compute layer for version 2, in.
What makes this thread different is the transparency. Old playbook: hide layoffs in 8-K filings, blame "macro headwinds," never mention AI replacement. New playbook: announce both publicly, frame it as opportunity, post the explanation on Twitter. The CEOs who say it out loud first set the script everyone else has to follow.
Read tweet 8 carefully. "We intend for the majority of work to be done by agents." That is a public commitment, in writing, from the CEO of a 30 million developer platform. To his own investors. The same day GitLab opened a voluntary separation window across its 2,580 employees with no number specified, leaving the entire company in limbo until June 1.
This script is about to run through every white-collar industry. Legal, accounting, design, marketing, customer service, support. GitLab is choreographing it openly because the playbook needs a public test case. The cover story will be "your work gets more valuable." The math will be fewer roles, paid more, managing agents.
Watch the thread structure. Layoff in tweet 2. AI bet in tweet 5. Customer reassurance in tweet 6. Investor pitch in tweet 8. Operating principles in tweet 9. That sequence becomes a template by year-end. Save the screenshot.
1/ Yesterday I published a letter to our customers and investors about GitLab Act 2.
The agentic era is the largest opportunity in our history. We're making the structural and strategic decisions to meet it.
A thread on what changes, what doesn't, and what we're betting on. 👇
about.gitlab.com/blog/gitlab…
David McJannet retweeted
Anthropic is running a masterclass in negotiation-as-marketing right now.
The $200M Pentagon contract represents 1.4% of Anthropic’s $14 billion run rate, up 14x from $1 billion fourteen months ago. This is not a number worth compromising a brand over. Amodei knows this. The Pentagon knows this. So why is he personally publishing a detailed statement, point by point, timed for maximum news cycle impact?
Because every headline that reads “AI company refuses Pentagon’s demands on autonomous weapons and mass surveillance” is worth more than the contract. Anthropic just bought the most expensive brand positioning in AI history, and the Pentagon is paying for it.
The statement is surgically written. Amodei opens by affirming he believes in using AI to defend democracies. Lists every classified deployment Anthropic pioneered. Emphasizes they’ve never objected to specific military operations. Then draws two narrow lines: no mass surveillance of Americans, no fully autonomous weapons. The framing makes it almost impossible to argue against without sounding like you’re pro-surveillance.
The Pentagon’s negotiator called Amodei a “liar” with a “God complex.” The Pentagon threatened to invoke the Defense Production Act and label Anthropic a supply chain risk simultaneously. Amodei pointed out those two threats are contradictory: one says Anthropic is dangerous, the other says Claude is essential. That line will be in every news story for the next 48 hours. It was designed to be.
Sen. Tillis, a Republican not seeking reelection, broke with the administration on the record. Said the Pentagon was being “unprofessional” and that you should listen when a company turns down money out of concern for consequences. Anthropic didn’t have to lobby for that. The positioning did the work.
Every enterprise buyer evaluating AI vendors just watched Anthropic publicly refuse to let a customer override their safety commitments. For a company selling to regulated industries, that demo is priceless.
The 5:01pm Friday deadline is tomorrow. Anthropic will either keep the contract with safeguards intact or lose it and gain something more valuable: permanent differentiation in a market where every other lab said yes.
A statement from Anthropic CEO, Dario Amodei, on our discussions with the Department of War.
anthropic.com/news/statement…
David McJannet retweeted
One of the biggest red flags for me when I am pitched is when the entrepreneur talks about how he (or we) are going to make money. Or they talk about exits. Or they talk about how a competitor is worth $1 billion. None of that matters. A startup is a mission. A great entrepreneur is a missionary. Not a mercenary.
A great irony of entrepreneurship: The entrepreneurs who come in and say they're going to make everybody money, don't.
People who say that they're going to paint a picture of the world that's never been seen before often are the ones who make a fortune.
When entrepreneurs leave their cushy Facebook or Google jobs, some of them can't stop looking back. That is a bad sign to me.
If the entrepreneur ever says, I could be making $XYZ at Google, I am concerned that they've got one foot in and one foot out and won't make it as a founder.
The same can be said for founders who are building a company for the resume versus the mission.
There's been an influx of Ivy League MBAs who believe that starting a venture-backed company is the next logical career move.
I'd much rather invest in someone who has found a problem and believes with every fiber of their being, and knows deep in their bones, that they're the one who is destined to find the solution.
David McJannet retweeted
Fascinating paper just published in Science.
The authors analyze the career trajectories of top performers across multiple domains, including Nobel laureates, elite chess players, Olympic gold medalists, and more.
Their central finding challenges a common belief.
Intensive, single-discipline training at a young age does confer an early advantage, but this advantage fades over time.
By contrast, individuals exposed to multidisciplinary practice early in life tend to start more slowly. Yet, over the long run, they are more likely to reach world-class performance, eventually overtaking early specialists, who often plateau just below the very top.
An important reminder that breadth early on can be a powerful investment in long-term excellence.
Link to the paper in the first reply.
