Mitchell is an OG, the co-founder of HashiCorp, and now building a new company. In a world where it’s easier than ever to build, with more competitors and more noise, Mitchell nails the essence of winning: agency. I know, sounds basic, but 💯 true.
His point about the world being mutable, or bendable to our beliefs, is also a huge one. We wouldn’t have cars, cheaper rockets, electricity, or so many other things if it weren’t for the will of inventors and founders who were laughed at and ridiculed, but went for it anyway.
While not exactly the point of the post, one can interpret and also say try to build the hard hard thing. As AI gets better and better, intelligence becomes democratized, and folks who have no experience in robotics or nuclear or chips can start building - not there yet but will be. There’s going to be an explosion of founders building the hard thing!
And btw, this is exactly the type of founder I’m looking for!
If your startup can be livestreamed in 3 days, then best of luck 🫡. Starting is the commodity. Enduring is not.
Let that soak in…
As always, 🙏🏼 for reading and please share with your friends and colleagues!
Scaling Startups
#this is the meta unlock from the frontier labs - they get to dogfood 🐶 their own models and use SOTA months before anyone else perhaps keeping their lead
#so agree but its for sustained success - i truly believe that the early ramp up period still requires incredible intensity, more like 5-6 hours a day vs the two he says
#where we are in the cycle
Enterprise Tech
#the trend at YC - also great discussion in comments - and yes I’m seeing lots of these
#just remember, if your market is big enough, they’ll be coming for you! yes you have your playbook - privacy, security, post train your model, FDEs but still be aware
#Ramp: AI spend *declined* among the top 1% - model wars / price cuts, not just open-weight scare
#did they or didn’t they use some of the knowledge from the math professor? if so, could be the biggest boon for open weight models!
#yes all labor day weekend 🤣 ASTRA!
#as I’ve said before the opportunities ahead to reimagine, rebuild for what’s coming ahead in cybersecurity are massive 📈 and everyone’s paying attention
here’s a clip from last week’s Post Money Podcast from Nilanjana Bhowmik where we dive deeoper
#hacking unleashed…
#and this is just insane…
#well said
#there isn’t enough compute
#which is why companies like Gimlet are raising at insane prices rapidly and tranched
#securing AI data centers + neoclouds, this is the next big battleground! rogue agents as tenants, machine speed, tools still in silos
#Skild - $100M ARR in 10 months. Factories, construction, kitchens, data centers. Physical is real
#software is about to eat the world much faster
Markets
#LFG - congrats to Clay $115M Series D at $7.1B - GTM agents like coding agents. Boldstart from inception
#three tranches!!!
#from $17B to $1.355B of value - another ZIRP era unicorn sells for way below it’s last round - where tired unicorn founders lay to rest
#Jensen: AI infra isn’t tens of billions — tens of trillions
#the power of interest rates - multiple expansion for PE returns went from 40% to 8% - so if you’re a founder and left to selling to PE they can’t pay anywhere near what they used to (Torsten Slok - Apollo)
On Mitchell's post. The Economist just had an article two weeks ago about that: trait parents wish most for their kids is an internal locus of control. It's tied to agency and the belief that one can shape the world around oneself rather than believing that luck determines most outcomes. One thing I am learning about in this strange venture world is that Founders and Entrepreneurs usually need to do crazy out of the distribution shit to bend the trajectory in their favor. The same goes for GPs in some ways.
Check it out:
The quality you should most wish for your children
https://www.economist.com/business/2026/08/27/the-quality-you-should-most-wish-for-your-children?giftId=MDVmOGVlN2EtOTNmYS00YzhhLWEyYzEtZGE2MGM3M2ZjZGQ0&utm_campaign=gifted_article