FINALLY I can share what I have been working on for the past 12 months. @HalePrevention is coming out of stealth. We started Hale because we believe everyone should have access to cutting-edge preventive heart care. Heart disease impacts almost all of us in some way. ➡️ 900K lose their life to heart disease each year in the US ➡️ Roughly 30% reading this post will already have plaque build up in their arteries* ➡️ $400B is the total annual economic burden in the US (estimated to reach  $1.3T in 2030) I started my career at Uber, where I saw firsthand how technology can transform entire industries and fundamentally change the consumer experience. I think we are in the same very early innings in healthcare and right now feels like a unique inflection point of consumer agency, awareness and technology all enabling new ways to access and consume preventive health. Finally, none of this would have been possible without my co-founder Patrick and Sebastian, our investors Menlo Ventures (Shawn, Ryan) medical advisors and everyone who has supported us along the way. Explore what we have been building at halehealth(dot)com 👀 *𝘉𝘢𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘰𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘢𝘶𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘮𝘰𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘱𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘴

I'm pretty sure we have the best UX in the health game. And when the end-user becomes king this really matters. You cant action what you don't understand.

Here’s what I’d do if I were Dario Amodei (founder of Anthropic): 1. IPO Anthropic at $2T. 2. Buy Novo Nordisk for $300B — a ~50% premium. 3. Build the world’s most powerful pharma company. Why? The next generation of pharma won’t just own the drugs. It’ll own the intelligence stack behind discovering, developing, manufacturing and commercializing them. Anthropic brings the intelligence. Novo brings the biology, data, infrastructure and distribution. AI → discovery → clinical trials → manufacturing → patients. Own the entire stack.

Are you still a tier 1 VC if you missed OpenAI and Anthropic? I think you can be but definitely hurts to miss out on the two largest VC outcomes ever. Imagine being the partner who passed on either back in 2021-2023. If you didn't get into at least one of them early - nothing else really matters. Some of the biggest names in venture missed the boat (some got in later but at high valuations): - Benchmark - Accel - Index Ventures - Lightspeed - Founders Fund - Insight Partners - NEA - General Catalyst What's remarkable is the scale of the opportunity. Even if you invested early in the biggest winner outside the AI labs Cursor, now sold to Elon at $60B, you'd likely need ~15 Cursor-sized outcomes to match the value created by one early investment in Anthropic. That's the power law of venture capital. One extraordinary investment can define an entire fund - or even an entire firm. Thanks to Harmonic for the data!

Exciting!

It's always a bit of a 🚩 to me when founders brag about how hard they work or how hardcore their culture is. I recently listened to @HarryStebbings interview with the @UseCorgi founder. And whilst I love the work hard / play hard culture it also made me reflect on hard work. To me, working incredibly hard is table stakes if you want to build a great company. I think it is for most founders who are crazy enough to do a startup. Not just because the raw hours matter, but because the best founders I know are obsessed with the problem they're solving. They just can't stop thinking about it. That doesn't necessarily mean spending 7 days a week in the office. And also not working 7 days per week. But it does mean that the business occupies the majority of your mind during most of your waking hours. IMO, Uber was the OG of hard work and hustle. A lot of that came from Travis Kalanick and his ability to lead by example. There was incredible momentum in the product, and the company attracted people who were deeply passionate about building a global business. Nobody needed to talk about how hard they worked. It was simply the natural outcome of being surrounded by ambitious people chasing something that felt important. The best cultures don't talk about how hard they work but everyone can feel it.

In combination, the 10 leading AI Apps are 𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐭 $1.3𝐓 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 $59𝐁 𝐢𝐧 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐞. Are we in an AI Bubble?⤵️ OpenAI just raised at $852B and Anthropic at $380B 🤯. I had a look at the 10 most valuable private AI Apps. To compare their valuation with their revenue. In turns out, it might not be that crazy after all. The below 10 AI Apps have a valuation of $1.3T in total. And combined revenue of $59B. Thats a 22.5x revenue multiple. Which is high but not crazy - particularly considering their growth curves. Revenue Multiples: 🔸 Anthropic: 13x 🔸 OpenAI: 34x 🔸 Anysphere (Cursor): 15x 🔸 Perplexity: 31x 🔸 ElevenLabs: 33x 🔸 Together AI: 11x 🔸 Glean: 36x 🔸 Harvey: 58x 🔸 Sierra: 67x 🔸 Synthesia: 40x There might be some individual companies that are valued very highly (Sierra and Harvey in particular) but overall it seems reasonable. 𝘈𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘋𝘢𝘵𝘢 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘯 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘱𝘶𝘣𝘭𝘪𝘤 𝘢𝘷𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘤𝘦𝘴 - 𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘵 𝘢𝘴 𝘥𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 Thanks to Harmonic for the data 🔥

Is @MenloVentures building the most impressive AI portfolio in all of venture right now? 2026 is already looking like a breakout year for the storied firm. Many VCs are playing the volume game - Menlo is doing the opposite: ➡️ Low volume ➡️ High conviction ➡️ Early bets And it’s compounding. Look at their AI investments: 🔸 Anthropic 🔸 Suno 🔸 Lovable 🔸 Higgsfield 🔸 Mercor 🔸 Chai Discovery 🔸 Delphi 🔸 Wispr Flow 🔸 Hale 🔸 Abnormal + many more exceptional companies (Legora, Inception, Goodfire, OpenRouter)! The strategy is simple (and rare): Only ~2 investments per partner per year. Go early. Many deals at Seed. While others “spray and pray” Menlo picks few and goes deep. And when it works… it really works. Thanks to Harmonic for the data 🫶

𝐓𝐡𝐞 "20𝐱" 𝐐𝐮𝐨𝐭𝐚 𝐫𝐮𝐥𝐞 is another crazy AI phenomenon 🤯. My good friend @Carles_Reina just did an interview with @HarryStebbings on his role leading sales at @elevenlabs (worth a listen!). One thing that stood out to me from the interview is the quota they give new hires. 20x their base salary 🤯. The math is easy. Say an Account Executive makes $150K in base salary (pretty standard in NYC) - that person has to bring in $3M to hit quota. When I worked in SaaS, 3–6× base salary was the standard. And only 20-30% would hit that number. At Elevenlabs +80% are hitting their quotas. I would expect other top tier AI companies are seeing the same pattern. In order to bring in 20x base aggressive outbound is not enought. You need to have an insane momentum and pull from the market. If I worked in Sales I would run as fast as I could to the fastest growing AI companies 🏃💨.

Is Benchmark still the most desirable Series A terms sheet in the world? For the past 25 years that has been true. But when they lost 3 partners in a row: ➡️ Miles Grimshaw ➡️ Sarah Tavel ➡️ Victor Lazarte many thought they had lost their edge. Yet looking at their leading AI investments - we see another story. Having led early checks in startups dominating their verticals: 🔸 Sierra 🔸 Legora 🔸 Mercor 🔸 Cursor 🔸 LangChain 🔸 HeyGen 🔸 Numeral 🔸 Reducto 🔸 Agentio They have also brought on "EV" to the team and seems to be back firing on al cylinders. Unlike A16Z, GC and Lightspeed they have stayed true to their $500M fund size. Under the notion that "small focused teams produce better cash on cash returns". Notably they are one of the only VC firms who have not invested in the foundation models (OpenAI, Anthropic etc.) Whether or not that plays out in the long term is to be seen. Safe to say landing an investment or job at Benchmark continue to be the ultimate status signal. 👉 Full deep-dive here: lnkd.in/eR4JRNtp Thanks to Harmonic for the data 🫶

"𝘞𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘢𝘴 𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘢𝘴 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘯𝘦𝘹𝘵 𝘪𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵". Those were the words of @roelofbotha, the now former steward at Sequoia Capital. Its a good reminder, that there is no resting on your laurels in VC. Particular in the age of AI. AI is not only a disruptive force for the world - it is also existential for venture capital firms. I had a look at 12 leading US based VC firms and their most promising AI investments. Specifically I looked at the below firms: 🔸 @sequoia 🔸 @a16z 🔸 @benchmark 🔸 @kleinerperkins 🔸 @generalcatalyst 🔸 @lightspeedvp 🔸 @foundersfund 🔸 @khoslaventures 🔸 @IndexVentures 🔸 @Accel 🔸 @MenloVentures 🔸 @eladgil 👉 Read the full breakdown here: palle.substack.com/p/we-are-…

Reviewed 100s of websites. Here are my top 20 AI websites: palle.substack.com/p/the-20-…

𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘰𝘰 𝘧𝘢𝘳 𝘢𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘥 - 𝘯𝘰 𝘱𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘳𝘺𝘪𝘯𝘨... @brexHQ just got acquired by Capital One for $5B down from their latest valuation of $12.3B. The story of Brex and @tryramp is an interesting one! Brex was founded back in 2017 and was one of the hottest companies in Sillicon Valley. When Ramp launched back in 2019 many thought it would be an impossible task to catch up to Brex. Yet, with A+ execution and patience they slowly built a superior engine and product. And in the past few years it was clear they were in the lead. A great story around the power of relentless execution and focus. Congrats @eglyman and @karimatiyeh !

I managed to cross 6.000.000 impressions in 2025 on Linkeding (up 92.6% YoY). These 20 learnings will make you a content god like me: A mix of data driven insights and anecdotal so take it with a grain of salt: 1. Visuals will 10x your impressions 2. Humor is very underrated in generating reach 3. Friday, Saturday and Sunday are great for posting 4. Personal accounts are an order of magnitude more impactful than business accounts 5. Posting any external links will destroy your post (if you have to, post in comment section after +10 min) 6. High quality content is the most important aspect of posting on LinkedIn 7. Sometimes your posts will get 2.000 impressions sometimes 200.000 - hard to tell when so just keep going 8. It can become all consuming (posting, checking and commenting) - I do all of my posts for the week Sunday/Monday 9. Engaging the first hour after posting is important - make sure you are available at that time 10. Be patient. Sometimes your post takes of immediately - sometimes it takes 24 hours 11. Power laws exist for content as well. 5-10 posts account for 95% of my impressions 12. No one cares about your opinion (unless you are famous). Focus on creating value for your audience or make them laugh 13. Schedule your post in advance, sleep on them and then iterate/edit them before posting. I often change content even after posting 14. Find out what topics you have an unfair advantage in and become the expert in those 15. If you don't get see good engagement after 3 months of posting regularly - revisit and adjust your strategy 16. People don't spend enough time on writing hooks. They can make or break a post but are very hard to do well consistently 17. Not all followers are born equal. I see people with +100K followers and very little reach or impact and people with 10K followers but massive reach and impact. 18. The bar for creating content keeps increasing. In order to stand out you need to create exceptional content. Okay doesn't cut it anymore. 19. LinkedIn and Twitter are two very different beasts. Focus on one of them. 20. No one cares when your post gets 5 likes (and few people will have seen it anyway) - so just keep going To wrap it up the upside of posting on LinkedIn vs other platforms is huge IMO. Hope this is somewhat helpful - please reach out if you have any questions to the above!