Announcing our new firm and first fund: Footwork (@footworkvc).

Excited for @a16z to join the Protege journey, a few months after we @footworkvc led their Series A. The company is on a serious tear, with nearly every major foundational model company as a customer. Come join us:

Today, we are thrilled to announce that @withprotegeai has raised a new $30M funding round led by @a16z. When @BobbySamuels and former @DatavantHQ co-founder and CEO Travis May first started Protege in 2024, we saw three bottlenecks to AI’s progress — compute, models, and data.

A few takes I like from @nbt's annual Next Big Thing In series

https://t.co/AX754jPzAB 🙏 thank you for contributing @gokulr @jmilinovich @rebeccakaden @kimberlywtan @aashaysanghvi_ @TaliaGold @jakesaper @jamiedavidson @yrechtman @KatieS @Max @jmj @mercebent @saarsaar @astaehelin @bonatsos @kirstenagreen @sumeet724 @rex_woodbury @km @nikunj

This year’s contributions to my year-end blog post are from founders like @qasar, @Max & Jensen, leaders at companies like @canva & @OpenAI, and VCs at firms like @a16z, @emergencecap, and @usv. AI once again dominates the themes, with predictions that reasoning models will

hello https://t.co/KR8kmYoQTz also - we're giving all Pro and Max users a free domain to launch their next thing reply to claim yours https://t.co/1vbGA7e4BH

One of my favorite evenings of the year: holiday hangout with a few special guests, and dinner with all of our @footworkvc founders.

Introducing Anything Max: Vibe Coding that's leaps above Lovable and Bolt We've raised money at a $100M valuation and built what we believe is the future of vibe coding. We asked 100 vibe coders to build their apps side by side on Lovable, Bolt, and Anything Max and they rated

New Trailblazers pod episode today w/ the co-founder & GP at @footworkvc, @nbt! 🎙️💪🏻 He’s an early backer of @canva, @hinge, @farmersdog, & many others. We talked about the future of Footwork, the role of simplicity when investing, why he & @msmith492 chose to partner, & more!

📷🎙️New pod drop today! @nbt x Trailblazers https://t.co/mgTvbrVQXs

Long day, but I have a lot to be thankful for: 1. My supportive partner. 2. My sweet daughter who turns another month old in a few days. 3. My co-founder @thealexgunn and the incredible company/team we're building at @onton_ai 4. Our users who give us a chance every day to

The incentive has never been higher for the agglomerator venture firms to wait to invest until a company is a “clear winner”

Jeff highlights one of the key reasons a number of founders have told us they've chosen @footworkvc over other firms as their Seed or Series A lead - because our investment team is just two of us, equal partners, co-founders of the firm. This is our last job.

It is so much easier to be a major investor in a company and to not take a board of directors seat.

It is fun to look back at a blog post I wrote in 2014 about the trend of $10-25M Series As. Feels so quaint now.

One thing I appreciate about Standard Capital is that we are calling $6M rounds Series As again

Anything mobile app is ready for pre-order! Build production ready applications from anywhere 40+ integrations Max agent Built-in database Process payments 1-click publish to App Store reply to get sign up link + a chance to win free Max for a year

Like de Tocqueville capturing the unique spirit of America as an outsider in 1835, @nbt nails the New York startup spirit from his seat in SF

Data from this election is... wild. e.g. Erie PA moving from +1 Trump to +24 Democrats. Wow.

One of many 🤯 stats from this conversation: Canva is $3.3B ARR, but also giving away $1.5B ARR to non-profits, students, education users. Any other software company donating their product at that scale?