Product Market Fit

Product Market Fit is the newsletter read by more than 50k founders, product managers and investors looking to grow their startups into PMF and fundraise.

Founder 

gflor

Investing globally in pre-seed startups, helping founders with distribution and visibility. Portfolio:
• HappyRobot (a16z, YC) - Intelligence that runs your operations
• Frontnow Seed Round
• Pally (Pioneer Fund, YC, Founders Inc) - Personal relationship management platform
• Throxy (YC, Base10) - Vertical AI agents that automate the full sales funnel
• Azimov (a16z speedrun) - Building the missing half of the digital world
• Cubic (Peak XV, YC) - AI powered code review platform
• Nozomio (LocalGlobe, CRV, YC) - Context augmentation for agents
• QFEX (General Catalyst, YC) - The 24/7 exchange for traditional financial markets
• Minerva Intelligence (YC) - AI to replace SMB bookkeepers
• Novoflow (YC) - AI employees that automate medical ops for clinics
• YouShift (YC) - The operating system for healthcare staffing
• Klavis AI (YC) - Open source MCP integrations for AI applications
• Clova (Founders Inc) - Cursor for video editing
• Cua (Peak XV, YC) - Docker for Computer-use Agents
• Flai (YC) - Turn every call into a sale with AI that never misses a lead
• Veritus Agent (YC) - AI agents for the consumer lending industry
• Keystone (YC) - Your team's on-call AI engineer
• OrangeSlice (YC) - AI agents that find you customers who already want to buy
• Hera (YC) - Your AI Motion Designer
• Floot (YC) - Vibecoding platform for non-coders who build serious apps
• Slashy (YC)- The AI for Work
• April (YC) - our AI voice executive assistant
• Omnia - LLM search optimization
• ETN. - european new tech media

Angel Investor

GoHub Ventures

Gohub Ventures is a 90M AUM Venture Capital Fund investing in seed and series A rounds all over Europe.

Venture Capital Investor

The AI Opportunity

AI is eating the world.
And behind every shift, there’s a chance to get ahead—if you know where to look.

The AI Opportunity is a weekly newsletter that surfaces the most lucrative, overlooked, and fast-moving opportunities in AI. We track what’s breaking, where the money’s flowing, and what smart founders and investors are quietly building—before it hits the mainstream.

Our mission is simple:
Help you spot the next Google before the rest of the world catches on

Founder

Compound Podcast

Conversations with the smartests founders & investors in tech: Index Ventures, NFX, WeWork, Amplitude, Substack, Perplexity, Synthesia & more.

Co-Founder

HappyRobot

AI Communication built for Logistics

Raised $60M+ from a16z, YC, Base10

IE University

Associate Professor

Frontnow

IE Private Equity & Venture Capital Club

Board Member

Accenture Strategy

On my internship at Accenture Strategy, I worked on a new digital product development for an IBEX35 company, working on the product discovery and design and working on the business case and strategic plan.

MBA Summer Associate

VC & Angel Investor 

Founder of Product Market Fit Newsletter and the AI Opportunity: 2 tech publications with + 100K subscribers & +1M monthly reads.

OpenAI just launched an Agent Builder. Say goodbye to thousands of startups


AI is progressing so fast, most founders don't know how to build defensibility. Here’s what the smartest founders do differently:

1. They own the data
 APIs are temporary. What compounds is your proprietary dataset.
 → throxy (yc x25) scrapes its own data instead of relying on LinkedIn or Apollo. Every interaction improves the product and makes it harder to replicate.

2. They build a UX moat
 When tech is commoditized, experience becomes the differentiator.
 → Granola is a meeting recorder, but what sets it apart is the interface. It feels delightful, fast, frictionless—like it was made for you, not for enterprise IT. In a world of clones, great UX builds loyalty.


3. They unlock power for non-technical users
 Defensibility comes from enabling outsiders to do what only experts could before.
 → Lovable turns brand design into something anyone can do. In minutes, non-designers generate entire visual identities. 

4. They move up the stack
 Commoditized infra dies. Winners package it into workflows users already need.
 → Perplexity started as a research tool. Now it’s becoming an AI-native browser. Owning the user’s daily search habits is how you defend long-term.

5. They go deep, not wide
 Horizontal tools get replaced fast. But narrow use cases can dominate markets.
 → ElevenLabs focused on voice. It didn’t try to do everything—just build the best voice AI in the world. Now it powers thousands of creators and companies.

What am I missing?

Full breakdown in my last article: https://lnkd.in/dSbpWnBz

Guillermo Flor

Venture Capital Investor | Founder Product Market Fit

BREAKING: Synthesia rejected a $3bn takeover bid from Adobe AND a bid from Meta

Rubén Domínguez Ibar and I sat down with CEO Victor Riparbelli in London to talk about how he built a $2.1B AI video company from scratch

He gave us a masterclass every founder should watch:

1. How he started doing AI before chatgpt: https://lnkd.in/dEvMEJfP

2. How it was almost impossible to raise the first 2 rounds: https://lnkd.in/d8KnwVUH

3. Why VCs didn’t want to fund Synthesia: https://lnkd.in/db8f-rxy

4. How synthesia found PMF after 3 years: https://lnkd.in/dva5KjZz

5. How Mark Cuban invested 1M in synthesia and saved the company:  https://lnkd.in/dH8W7ytV

6. Where the opportunity in AI is:  https://lnkd.in/dEYx-8m3

7. The difference between Europe and US:
https://lnkd.in/dCjNeF2C

8. Project Europe & how to build in Europe: https://lnkd.in/d_v6vw7x

Share this to push Europe’s startups momentum 🔥🚀

Venture Capital Investor at Gohub Ventures, an early stage SaaS B2B Venture capital fund investing in great companies all over Europe & USA. 

I'm very passionate about value creation at scale, high growth strategies and SaaS products that allow companies to acquire customers and transact.

Before joining Gohub Ventures, I've built a SaaS startup,  worked as a strategy consultant at Accenture Strategy and graduated from an MBA at IE Business School.

On my free time, I write about Startups and Venture Capital for more than 6k founders, investors and product managers on my newsletter Product Market Fit.

🚀 Google Ventures is one of the most quietly powerful VC firms in the world.

Although it doesn’t appear publicly very often, its influence runs deep across the tech ecosystem.

Backed by Alphabet, GV has invested in more than 400 startups, with 60+ unicorns and 45+ IPOs. The portfolio includes some of the most transformative companies of our time:

🧠 Harvey  – AI for legal and professional services
🎥 Synthesia  – reinventing how video is created using AI
⚙️ Lightmatter  – building faster, more efficient processors for AI
🧬 Isomorphic Labs  – reimagining drug discovery
📊 Redpanda Data – the modern data streaming platform
💡 OpenEvidence  – transforming medical data into actionable knowledge
💼 Tessl  – reimagining software development for the AI era
❤️ Verve  – inventing next-generation treatments for heart disease
💳 Stripe – empowering millions of businesses worldwide

What sets GV apart is the combination of Google’s DNA in engineering and data with a founder-first mindset and a deep focus on long-term value creation across AI, biotech, and consumer tech.

If you’re building something ambitious, GV is one of the few firms that can truly help you scale from idea to impact.

Shoutout to Elena Sakach for hosting us! 🙌🙌

𝐒𝐲𝐧𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐚’𝐬 $180𝐌 𝐏𝐢𝐭𝐜𝐡 𝐃𝐞𝐜𝐤, $2.1𝐁 𝐕𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 $1𝐌 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐢𝐥 𝐭𝐨 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝐂𝐮𝐛𝐚𝐧  💰 

Synthesia has raised $330M from NEA, Google Ventures, Atlassian Ventures, WiL, PSP Growth, and Mark Cuban, becoming the largest generative AI startup in the UK

But before that, they were getting rejected by hundreds of investors.

I’ve compiled everything you need to study Synthesia’s rise from near failure to $100M ARR.

Inside you’ll find:
 💸 The $180M Series D pitch deck that valued Synthesia at $2.1B
 🔥 The story of how Mark Cuban invested and helped save the company
 📈 How they survived 3 years before product market fit
 🧭 What Synthesia’s founder would build today in AI

Synthesia went from being “too early” for investors to powering AI video creation for Zoom, UiPath, and Spotify.

Want the full pack?

𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 "Synthesia" and I’ll send you the link 🔥

i'm looking to hire a full time junior role:

- loves tech, startups, venture capital and entrepreneurship
- has built side hustles/ bussineses
- huge hardworking (996)
- highly organized
- great communication skills 
- hungry as f*ck
- remote but availability to travel
- engineer degrees appreciated

you'll work directly with me

if interested, send me an email to g@guillermoflor.com with your cv and tell me what you are the best at

if you see this i'd appreciate a repost for visibility!

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐭 𝐋𝐋𝐌 𝐒𝐄𝐎 𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤

60% of users now skip Google and ask ChatGPT directly.

And traffic from LLM answers converts 6x better than Google search.

If your startup doesn’t show up there, you’re invisible.

Here’s the unlock: showing up in ChatGPT isn’t random. LLMs lean heavily on Reddit, and thanks to licensing deals, Reddit threads are piped straight into ChatGPT and Google’s AI search.

That’s why I built a 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐭 𝐋𝐋𝐌 𝐒𝐄𝐎 𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤 for founders:

👉 What’s inside:
1. The Reddit post formula proven to get cited by ChatGPT and Perplexity.
2. A curated database of 60+ subreddits with the highest AI crawl value.
3. Optimization techniques that helped Deel & Webflow surface in ChatGPT answers.
4. How to use comments to lock your Reddit posts into AI results.

Unlike buying PR or paying affiliates, Reddit is free and with the right playbook, you can outrank industry giants.

Want the full guide?
 ➡️ Comment “Reddit” and I’ll send you the link 🔥

Jeannie Lewis

AI is creating the biggest opportunity to create wealth in history, and some startups are taking advantage of it. This is how:

I've been studying how AI startups grow for the last 3 years and these are the learnings that can change your life.

These are my top 12 findings:

1. Sequoia’s AI Playbook: How to Win in 2025: https://lnkd.in/dKyTWNx8

2. Sequoia AI Ascent: lessons by OpenAI, Nvidia, Anthropic, LangChain and Ramp: https://lnkd.in/dKyTWNx8

3. How to Get Your Site Into ChatGPT: https://lnkd.in/d5iSJpQr

4. The list of AI Agent Startups I would build right now: https://lnkd.in/dR_kYY8J

5. How I built my dream website using AI: https://lnkd.in/dZtmkwhx

6. How did cursor grow so fast -$1M to $100M ARR in 24 Months: https://lnkd.in/d4WjStPh

7. Why Mckinsey of AI is the biggest opportunity right now: https://lnkd.in/dmDSTjUa

8. HealthTech’s Next Gold Rush: AI: https://lnkd.in/d_yRvnJ5

9. LLMS have changed everything and very little people are noticing: https://lnkd.in/dCxuk-NG

10. AI is eating the world (and how you can eat it too): https://lnkd.in/dRjbp3F6

11. Inbox → Autopilot: Why AI Personal Assistants Are the Next $100B Land‑Grab: https://lnkd.in/dvmNCd5M

12. Buying Traditional Businesses and Powering Them with AI: https://lnkd.in/dUhp4Jir

This is just the start 🔥

Steve Nicholls

10 concepts every entrepreneur should learn 👇 

1. Peter Thiel: The Key is not to compete, but to do something nobody else is doing: https://lnkd.in/dkVweFkm

2. How to Angel Invest by Naval Ravikant: https://lnkd.in/defe4zJ2

3. How to get into YC: https://lnkd.in/dPP_TF3P

4. How to Raise Venture Capital in 2025: https://lnkd.in/dfWa_HKH

5. The Sequoia Fundraising Pack: https://lnkd.in/du7ShPUy

6. The AI founders Playbook: https://lnkd.in/dYrHGTEf

7. 12 Tactics Behind Lovable’s Insane Growth: https://lnkd.in/dVAskG5a

8. How Startups find Product Market Fit: https://lnkd.in/dc59ESvj

9. The AI Consulting Playbook: https://lnkd.in/dpjCQdNF

10. Andrej Karpathy's full guide on how to use LLMs: https://lnkd.in/dhRFRcmc

PS: Forbes pictures was something to catch you attention. That's another story but let me know in the comment if it worked!

Mark Cuban: "Never raise money if you want to become a billionaire" 🤯

When Mark Cuban says something about building companies, you listen.

We asked him when founders should raise venture capital, and his answer caught everyone off guard:

> “When should founders raise VC?

Never.

The only way to become a billionaire is to own as much of your company as you possibly can.

If you can avoid fundraising, you’ll be a whole lot richer.

If it’s generating cash, put it in your pocket.

A lot of founders get caught up in their top line, not their bottom line.

Raising money isn’t an accomplishment, it’s an obligation.

It’s a powerful reminder that most founders chase fundraising like a trophy instead of treating it like the trade-off it really is.

Cuban’s message was simple: control is freedom. Every round you raise buys time, but it sells ownership.

So here’s the question for you — if your startup had to grow without outside funding, how would you build it differently?

Full breakdown on my latest article: https://lnkd.in/dvk4tSHb

I met a YC founder in SF that just raised $44M. this is how 👇 


HappyRobot (Pablo Palafox, Javi Palafox & Luis Paarup) just raised a $44m Series B from Base10 Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Y Combinator.

They’re building the AI workforce for supply chains, a digital twin of your business and a team of AI agents that automate repetitive work for global logistics companies.

8 of the top 10 freight brokers already use them.

2 of the 3 biggest ocean carriers too.

When I asked them what made the difference, here’s what they told me:

1. 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐢𝐭’𝐬 24/7
 “Everybody says you have to work hard, but almost nobody really does. You’ll think it’s obvious—until you realize how much work it actually takes.”

2. 𝐆𝐞𝐭 𝐜𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐫
 “They became insiders by spending every day inside client operations, watching what was manual, and asking ‘how can AI do this?’”

3. 𝐁𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐩𝐢𝐯𝐨𝐭
 “They changed their idea during YC Demo Day.* If they hadn’t been open-minded, HappyRobot wouldn’t exist.”

4. 𝐁𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐧
 “Being in SF keeps you surrounded by people who are just as obsessed. When you’re tired, you talk to another founder who’s also suffering—and you keep going.”

5. 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐞𝐟𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐬 𝐥𝐮𝐜𝐤
 “Things take time to mature. Most people quit too early. The ones who stay in the game long enough are the ones who win.”

Two years after YC, they’ve gone from a pivot to a $44M round.

From outsiders to redefining how global supply chains work.

Hard work, compounding, and being in the right place. 

That’s the real playbook

Shoutout to Rubén Domínguez Ibar for the help with the on the street interview ⚡

Stockholm might be the most underrated tech city in the world 🚀

Global legacy Stockholm born tech companies:
› Klarna  – globally iconic fintech founded in Stockholm
› Spotify  – Swedish success story
› Skype  – one of the earlier tech exports

AI Unicorns with decacorn potential:
› Lovable - the last piece if software by Anton Osika  & Fabian Hedin  
› Legora - the collaborative AI platform for lawyers by Max Junestrand  & Sigge Labor  
› Sana - enterprise AI knowledge assistant platforms by Joel Hellermark  

Promising new startups:
› Vesence: Cursor for lawyers by Henrik Hansson & Ludvig Swanstrom  
› Straw Berry - the selfdriving browser by Charles Maddock, Sebastian Thunman & Arian Hanifi  
›Agaton - AI powered sales superiority by John Kristensen & Andreas Kullberg  
› Grasp - AI analyst for finance professionals by Richard Karlsson, Johan Devér (formerly Cederqvist) & Simon Hällqvist and

Beyond founders, the investor ecosystem is heating up too:
› Creandum  - the original Nordic VC keeps backing great companies
› Oliver Molander  – General Partner at Inception Fund, investing deeply in AI/data startups in the Nordics
›  EQT Ventures & Growth 
›  Almi Invest  
›  Norrsken  

Who am I missing?

The 10 principles to build an AI Company by Sequoia Capital:

1. This is the biggest opportunity since the internet. Bigger than cloud. Faster than mobile.

2. AI isn’t one market — it’s eating all markets. Software, services, labor, infrastructure.

3. The value is in the application layer, not the models. Tools people actually use will win.

4. Foundation models are moving up the stack. Compete by going narrow and deep, not wide.

5. The best products start customer-back, not model-forward. Solve one job completely.

6. This is the Agent Era. AI will shift from chatbots to swarms of agents executing work.

7. Speed is everything. There’s a vacuum in every vertical. Whoever ships first, wins.

8. Distribution is built-in now. You’re launching into a 5.6B-person internet. If it works, it explodes.

9. The model doesn’t matter unless the product is great. Startups win on UX, not architecture.

10. Your moat is your workflow. Own the end-to-end journey. Don’t build tools, build outcomes.

What do you think Sequoia is missing?

Full breakdown in my article: https://lnkd.in/dYrHGTEf

Sebastien Cloutier PSM1, SAFe SASM

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐍𝐨-𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐦-𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨-𝐑𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐈𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝐋𝐢𝐬𝐭 🔥 

Not every founder has a network.

Not every founder went to Stanford.

And not every investor needs a warm intro.

That’s why this is so valuable:

160+ investors who have actually backed founders from cold outreach.

No intros. No gatekeepers. Just smart investors who care about traction and story more than status.

Here’s what’s inside 👇
𝐍𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬 & 𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐬 of 160+ investors and funds
𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐜𝐮𝐬: Pre-seed, Seed, Series A
𝐕𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐬: B2B, SaaS, AI, Productivity, Future of Work
𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐜𝐭 𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐨 & 𝐋𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐞𝐝𝐈𝐧 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐟𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐬
𝐍𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐃𝐌𝐬

And here’s how to use it (the part most founders skip):
1. Do your homework – find the ones that fit your stage and sector.
2. Personalize – reference something real about their investments or thesis.
3. Keep it short – 5 lines max: who you are, what you’ve built, why it matters.
4. Be human – people invest in people, not pitch decks.
5. Don’t spam – this is the start of a 7-10 year relationship.

If you’ve ever thought “I could raise if only I knew the right people” — this list is how you start.

Comment “intro” below and I’ll send you the link.
Big thanks to Y. Bel Storm for curating!

🔥Integrations used to take months to make... Replit just made them simple with Connectors 🤯 

No more API keys and OAuth flows.

You log in, and it just works.

You can connect now use Replit to connect Google Sheets, Notion, Dropbox, Salesforce, and more, then build apps and automations in minutes.

Each Connector provides the infrastructure you need to integrate seamlessly with external apps:
1. One-click connect → Log in once, build unlimited applications
2. Reliable integrations → Build with official SDKs
3. Native feel → Every integration behaves like a first-class extension of your app

Connectors enable building apps and automations like:
- A Slackbot for Sales to query HubSpot data 📊
- A customer feedback dashboard powered by Discord or Notion ⚡ 
- An automation that pulls meeting notes from Dropbox & assigns tasks in Linear 🧩 

💡 Build apps and automations on top of your data with Connectors → https://replit.com

What automations would you build right away for your business?

OpenAI just launched an Agent Builder. Say goodbye to thousands of startups 💔 

Last week Sam Altman presented ChatGPT’s new features.

It felt like a turning point for thousands of AI startups that had built their products on top of OpenAI’s technology. 

Many founders realized their moat might not be a moat anymore.

So the question came back: how do you survive when OpenAI starts doing what you do?

Here are five ways startups compete with OpenAI and succeed:

1. Target a different demographic.
Character AI went after younger users with a playful product and reached 180 million visits a month.

2. Own a vertical.
Cursor and Lovable focused on specific use cases like coding and grew fast while ChatGPT stayed broad.

3. Create a better interface.
 Granola feels fast and human. When the experience is delightful, users stay.

4. Use specific data.
Harvey trained on legal case law, becoming the preferred tool for lawyers. Accuracy beats scale.

5. Build defensibility early.
Hugging Face thrives on network effects. Legora integrates into lawyers’ daily tools. Both create lock-in.

It's not about outbuilding OpenAI. You just need to find the edge they’ll never chase.

I did a full breakdown in my latest article, write "BUILD" below and I'll send you the link 🔥

Sam Altman’s 20 Rules for Success:

Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI) once shared what he believes separates successful people from everyone else.

I went through every tweet and summarized the most important lessons 👇
Work on what matters most.

 1. Work on what matters most:
The best people constantly seek the most important problem they can solve and focus on it.

2. Important ≠ Popular.
Be willing to work on something for years before others understand it.

3. Be relentless.
Willfulness, determination, and execution focus beat raw talent.

4. Move fast.
Fast movers compound faster. Work with them. Be one of them.

5. Think long-term.
Compounding—of effort, reputation, and relationships—is the strongest force in success.

6. Own equity, not salary.
The path to wealth is ownership, not employment.

7. Focus on scale.
You can scale bigger than you think. Network effects and power laws win.

8. Cut the noise.
Avoid politics, drama, and low-stakes arguments. Focus your stress budget on what truly matters.

9. Follow your curiosity.
Look inward. The intersection of your skills, passions, and what the world values is your edge.

10. Be authentic and high-conviction.
When you find a rare, true vision—double down.

11. Work with idea generators.
Surround yourself with people who build and create.

12. Don’t overschedule yourself.
Reserve deep work blocks. Avoid unnecessary meetings.

13. Stay optimistic and curious.
Great work rarely comes from cynics.

14. Set hard but reachable goals.
You should barely hit them. Too easy = stagnation. Too hard = burnout.

15. Keep high standards.
Be demanding with care and praise excellence.

16. Avoid haters and cynics.
They rarely succeed at anything except negativity.

17. Strong teams share values.
Diversity of thought is great—but not of goals.

18. Help others first.
The best way to get someone to bet on you is to help them first.

19. Work hard.
Almost everyone great at something worked incredibly hard for it.

20. Cut the BS.

Repost so it reaches more founders 🔥

Sam Altman's Guide to Career Success

These investors rejected Steve Jobs. Paradoxically, they all "funded" him as a group...

These lessons remain relevant today, just as in 1976 when Apple was a fledgling company 👇 

1. Tom Perkins and Eugene Kleiner (Kleiner Perkins) refused to meet Jobs.

2. Bill Draper dismissed Jobs and Wozniak as "arrogant" after an associate's visit.

3. Pitch Johnson doubted home computers, asking, "Are you going to put recipes on it?"

4. Stan Veit rejected Jobs' $10,000 offer for 10% of Apple, mistrusting Jobs' appearance.

5. Nolan Bushnell declined to buy one-third of Apple for $50,000 but introduced Jobs to Don Valentine, founder of Sequoia.

6. Regis McKenna refused to design Apple's commercials for a 20% stake, saying, "20% of nothing is worth approximately nothing," but also introduced Jobs to Valentine.

7. Don Valentine was skeptical but guided Jobs on management and marketing.

Valentine introduced Jobs to three contacts; Mike Markkula, the third, saw potential in Wozniak's design and invested $91,000 for 26% of Apple, becoming its first angel investor.

Markkula convinced McKenna to help Apple with publicity, leading to the creation of Apple's iconic logo.

Markkula persuaded Venrock's Hank Smith to invest $300,000 for 10% of Apple.

Eventually, Don Valentine invested a small portion, believing his presence on Apple's board would be beneficial.

LESSON #1 - No one funded Steve; the network did! His perseverance and connections were key to Apple's early success.

Read full story in my newsletter: https://lnkd.in/dFMv7yQ8
--
Shoutout to Angelos Georgakis for the story

Breaking: Billionaire founder & investor Daniel Lubetzky doesn’t invest in AI startups. "It's going to be a bloodbath" 🔴 

When I asked him why, he said:
“Because while some of them will be gigantic… it’s going to be a bloodbath.
 
I’m investing in funds that back 100 of these AI companies — and hopefully, a few will become transcendental.”

Then I asked how he picks those funds.

“There are very few that are truly off the charts.
 99% won’t outperform the market.
 
Most of my money is in index funds like VTI.
 I only invest in six funds — the best of the best.”

It’s a reminder that discipline often beats conviction.

Everyone wants to find the next OpenAI.

Daniel’s just betting on the system that finds them all.

Would you rather invest in AI startups or AI funds right now?

Shoutout to Clover for getting us the sharks 🔥

AI is creating the biggest opportunity to create wealth in history, but it's also creating a huge gap for people that don't learn to use it.

137 tech companies have fired 62,114 tech employees by this time in 2025, and this is just the beginning. 

It's not that humans aren't going to be necessary, but rather that humans that know how to use AI will be 100x more productive (and there is the gap).

I'm watching daily what the best founders and professionals are doing to take advantage of the opportunity. These are 10 things you must learn:

1. Sequoia Capital: Why AI is starting 10x bigger than the cloud boom: https://lnkd.in/dKyTWNx8

2. Lessons by OpenAI, Nvidia, Anthropic, LangChaing and Ramp: https://lnkd.in/dTQkHSS7

3. How the Google‑to‑GPT search is changing the internet: https://lnkd.in/dCxuk-NG

4. The AI Founders Playbook: https://lnkd.in/dYrHGTEf

5. How AI is affecting Health: https://lnkd.in/d_yRvnJ5

6. How AI can kill Mckinsey: https://lnkd.in/dmDSTjUa

7. AI Personal Assistants are the future: https://lnkd.in/dvmNCd5M

Save this and start you AI journey now 🔥

today was a16z speedrun demo day 🔥 fomo is an understatement

shoutout to all the companies that are pushing the limits of what's possible:

Pierre-Antoine Rohr-Lacoste - Agent Astra
Ryan Waliany - Ambiguous AI
Smayan Mehra - Anchr
Gavin Purcell - AndThen
Ido Deutsch - Argu
Ariel Harmoko - Artifact AI
Taylor Offer - Stealth
Heng xin Fun - Autonomous Investing
Maria Z. - Avenir AI
Ayush B Shah - Stealth
Kevin Jiang - Azimov
Alexey Zanin - Bead AI
Akshay Raj - Bins
Steve Mayernick - stealth
Andrew Dillon - Brief
Dmitri Mirakyan - Creed
Michael Shang - Daedalia
Paddy Lambros - Dex
Maxwell Wang - Dispatcher
Zuhair Lakhani - Doublespeed
Ye Wang - Evercurrent
Ophir Samson - Ezra
Han Kim - Fearn
Besart Çopa - Stealth
Miguel Monares - Jigsaw
Mark Benliyan - stealth
Karan Grover - Kanu AI
Ivan Romero - Kintow
Yeng Tan - Lekondo
Aviv Shamny - Limy
Brew Johnson - Loan Labs
Lauren Bilbo - Logical Health
Alexis Sursock - Luvu
Dhruv Mangtani - Maniac
rishi serumadar - Stealth
Usman Gul - Metal
Rob L - Moescape
Victor Vanbremeersch - Moona Health
Philipp Wehn - Nexxa AI
Ben Standefer - Stealth
Leo Korsunsky - Stealth
Jan Mansukhani- OpenSesame
Pelago
Pencil dev
Prepp
Presla
Rork
Sans Strings Studio
Shockwave
Sonatic
Sourcerer
Taya
URSA Mining
Variant
Vega
YKB
Zero Billion
ZingRoll

I couldn't tag all of the founders because of linkedin limit. can you tag them in comments?

taplio

Guillermo Flor's Linkedin Analytics

Guillermo Flor

Performance ScoreGuillermo Flor's LinkedIn Performance

Guillermo Flor's Best Posts (last 30 days)

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

.css-6ytdur{background-image:linear-gradient(284deg, rgba(39, 43, 72, 1) 0%, rgba(33, 47, 183, 1) 100%);color:transparent;-webkit-background-clip:text;background-clip:text;}Guillermo Flor's Linkedin Analytics

Guillermo Flor

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Guillermo Flor's LinkedIn Performance

Guillermo Flor's Best Posts .css-1emoo84{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:400;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);}(last 30 days)

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Guillermo Flor's Linkedin Analytics

Performance ScoreGuillermo Flor's LinkedIn Performance

Guillermo Flor's Best Posts (last 30 days)