Mercedes Bent
@mercebent
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building smthng new. Venture Partner @Lightspeedvp💁🏾♀️ @Stori_MX @investwithAtlas @Beek_io @Fidu_La @getHoneylove. Consumer. Fintech. SciFi.
San Francisco, CA
Joined January 2011
Best way to fundraise? Tell investors what you’re going to do in 3 months. Do it. Set up another call. And then do it again.
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winning is 51%. winning in competitive fields is always by tiny margins. you will lose countless times on the way to a win.
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Hear me out…I think Tiktok is better for teens than old school social. TikTok turned social media into just Media. Instagram is now a feed of Reels. Not your friends’ posts. I’ve been thinking…could this be good for teenagers? . I’ve always been grateful I went to college.
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in consumer fintech, honesty (trust) is vital. obvious but worth stating today.
Still the same mission 13+ years later: build honest financial products that improve lives. No gimmicks. No gotchas. Just smarter underwriting and a payment network aligned with consumer & merchant needs. Thanks @bbcworldservice for the conversation:
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i'm hosting an event on AI Wearables with senior leaders / cofounders from: . Meta RayBan.Limitless.Rabbit.Humane. DM me if you want to join!.
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There are many times in life when you have to decide:. Do you want to be a big fish in a small pond? or the littler fish in a bigger pond?. and then there are founders who pick the puddle, shovel an estuary, and end up in an ocean . Skip the pond.
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the next social network will initially look like a silly single player consumer ai game that you expand to play with close friends. I also think you’ll go outside of cozy to strangers too tho.
New social networks are going to appear that will be LLMs creating a cozy web customized for us and our real friends, and their friends and so on. There will be a new social network built on mutual trust, all curated by machines of loving grace. Personal Cozyweb is inevitable.
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ChengLei has the most creative research projects: he made PhDs execute AI research ideas for months.
Are AI scientists already better than human researchers?. We recruited 43 PhD students to spend 3 months executing research ideas proposed by an LLM agent vs human experts. Main finding: LLM ideas result in worse projects than human ideas.
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RT @grinich: MCP Night is back! . Demos, discussions, and hundreds of developers at the forefront of AI and modern computing. 🗓️ August….
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I’m going on vacay. Ideas for fast paced non fiction reads (tech/finance) ? Like Going Infinite, Gambling Man, PayPal Wars.
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SciFi tech club on Dune tomorrow! Talking the science behind “the Voice” and technology of spice mining operations 🤓.
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Finance / FP&A still the AI laggard . slide from Iconiq report on how companies are using AI. Top 4 use cases used by over 50% of companies: .1. coding assistance .2. content generation .3. documentation & knowledge.4. product & design
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there is a big shift in how new startups are marketing their products. It’s degen culture meets YouTube generation meets no such thing as bad press marketing strategy. On the one hand, the new style is difficult for millennials to grok (not video creation natives). On the.
degen culture is the newest “niche” culture going mainstream + global . Just like ones before it:.anime culture.reggaeton culture.sneaker head culture.hip hop culture.
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it is NOT the end of software. Employment projections by Occupation, 2023-33.Source: Jeffries and BLS
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VCs hated on consumer fintech the last few years. 2025 IPOs are a good reminder that Public markets != VC group think:. Circle $44B.Chime $10.7B.eToro $4.98B.Webull $4.89B.Slide Insurance $2.9B.
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What are you seeing as the Series A bar today for non-ai native companies?.
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