Marwan Refaat

A fire broke out today at the Seventh-day Adventist Church by my home in San Francisco

I was able to capture some footage of the heroic efforts of our @SFFD

Wishing everyone safety, and hoping this beautiful landmark is restored very soon

"It's much easier to just raise a huge fund and go off of fees and not have a winner." - @annabjacoby, Venture LP investor at LGT Capital ($$$B+ AUM).

Pointed observation from Anna on the incentive design of the asset class. When the fee stream gets large enough, a GP can run a 10-year fund without ever needing a real winner - which is exactly the alignment problem LPs are trying to solve for. Smaller funds force carry back to the center of the relationship, and that's where the LP and GP interests actually line up.

"I know the revenue's real because I'm paying for Claude credits." - @annabjacoby, Venture LP investor at LGT Capital ($$$B+ AUM).

Got into the AI valuations question with Anna. Is this real, or is it the dot-com era with a new logo? Her take: AI is a generational shift on par with the early internet, and yes valuations are high, but this time the revenue is concrete. She pointed at me as the proof. Told her I am the revenue.

Drove through San Francisco with @TimKentleyKlay, co-founder and CEO of @hypr, while his AI, HYPRACTIVE, navigated downtown on 33 watts powering an NVIDIA Orin chip that runs HYPR's proprietary models built by just four engineers in two years, for under a million dollars.

Tim is a Melbourne-born designer turned robotics CEO who co-founded Zoox, the first company to operate a purpose-built, fully autonomous robotaxi and scaled it to $3.2B. He envisioned the car becoming a character in 2011, and spent the next decade and a half making that real. 125+ patents, $800M raised, and now CEO of HYPRLABS Inc - a small team coding a clean AI architecture and launching a completely new robot this summer.

The whole industry is throwing tens of billions at problems HYPR is solving with a computer the size of your fist and a hot-glued camera.

"During a downturn and during weaker events is actually a time when you should be investing even more." - @annabjacoby, Venture LP investor at LGT Capial ($$$B+ AUM).

A take I've heard from a few sharp LPs but rarely this direct. The reflex to slow deployment in a soft market is what creates cyclical misallocation - everyone piles into what's already worked. Historically, the strongest vintages were deployed when the room felt empty.