Gaurav retweeted
If you want to understand American optimism…
We celebrate the date that we declared independence, not the date that we achieved it.
No surprise, the "Apple of AI" wants a walled garden so that it can control the UX of Claude Code end to end.
Definitely felt inevitable, but I'm a huge @conductor_build fan and am conflicted on what to do next.
It’s been a little over a week since Tax Day - be honest, did you file on time? 😉
This season, AI finally showed up in taxes for real. Perplexity, Claude, and ChatGPT all rolled out tax capabilities aimed at consumers. That’s exciting — and validating. This is the exact thesis Uday and I had when we started building Grove.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth:
Consumers aren't going to trust AI to file their returns anytime soon. The tolerance for error is zero. One mistake isn't a bug — it's a liability.
But clients are absolutely going to trust AI to ask questions. And that changes everything for CPAs.
In the next 12 months, firms will be flooded with smarter, more demanding clients. People who've already run their situation past AI before the intake call. Who expect faster turnarounds. Who assume their preparer is already using AI - and will leave if they're not.
That shift is inevitable.
When it hits, "dabbling with AI" won't cut it. Firms will need workflows that are AI-native from day one.
Not a wrapper. Not a copilot. An AI workforce — ready to hire, ready to scale.
That's what we've been building at Grove. Next season, the firms that move first will take the clients the rest are too slow to serve.
Gaurav retweeted
Today, we’re launching @autoaicam, a camera that builds personal apps for anything you point it at.
How does it work?
- Take a photo
- Auto picks a Frame, a mini-app built and designed by you or our community
- The Frame does something for you: track calories, virtually try on outfits, identify a plant, and much more
How many of you have a camera roll full of photos that are really actions or reminders? Auto turns these photos into something useful.
> Agent 1: "Not in our app. If you're seeing them swapped in practice, it's likely upstream data has values reversed"
> Agent 2: "Not our bug — it's in X itself. Look at the pattern"
I'm guessing "works on my machine" is next
Gaurav retweeted
a16z Speedrun Alpha, for pre-idea/pre-team/pre-everything founders
it's time to bet on yourself, and figure out your startup idea. 2026 is well underway, crazy stuff happening in AI, and you're building agents/apps/whatever every night+weekend. You want to start a startup but you're working or still going to school.
what if you're pre-idea, pre-product, pre-launch, and even a solo founder? You need time to cook
The Alpha Fellowship is for you.
alpha.a16zspeedrun.com/
details:
- $20K equity-free upfront to start building
- up to $250K investment when you finalize
- automatic final interview for a16z speedrun, with up to $1M investment
- 8-week, in-person experience with a kickoff retreat, founder AMAs, and small-group dinners alongside the a16z speedrun community
- targeted to early-career highly technical founders
- deadline to apply is March 6
We ALSO have a "startup track" for the Alpha Fellowship where you can get more founder experience by working for a portfolio company if you're not quite ready to found something.
The Alpha Fellowship places top early-career engineers into full-time roles at fast-growing a16z speedrun and Andreessen Horowitz portfolio companies. For future founders, we provide capital before a team or idea even exists.
We're looking for highly technical students and recent grads who don't want to wait to start building. Fellows take full-time roles at fast-growing portfolio companies - or, if you're ready to build now, receive capital to start your own company - kicking off with a two-month in-person fellowship. Fellows also have access to the a16z speedrun and EO Ventures communities and events.
...
If this is you, want to meet you. If you have people to introduce us to, that would be amazing too.
will have more to say, and lots of ideas coming up here. But excited to get this out! Excited to host y'all soon.
AI has gotten really good. But I think it's a little too sure of itself.
Today, while fixing a build, it told me I needed to write my code a different way.
Cursor: Starts refactoring confidently
Me: 𝘙𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘤𝘴 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘤𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘺… 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘱𝘴 𝘪𝘵 “Umm no.
Here’s what it actually says.”
Cursor: “My bad!”
Or, as @ChatGPTapp 4.5 puts it:
POV: "When your confidence is 'absolute' but your CSS positioning isn't."