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Casado on Invest Like the Best (Patrick O'Shaughnessy)
Martin Casado called his third conversation with Patrick O'Shaughnessy "the most in depth conversation I've ever had on the practice of venture" and "a good overview of what I've learned over the last decade" . O'Shaughnessy listed the main topics:
- the case for consensus investing
- why moats are overrated
- frontier model economics
- what happens when AI growth slows
- why private markets are efficient
- lessons from the Cursor, OpenRouter and World Labs acquisitions
A clip from the episode gives the central argument. Casado says that betting on non-consensus companies is "actually quite dangerous in the early stage" because "follow-on capital tends to be more and more consensus aligned." He adds that the portfolio companies that returned money "were actually very, very competitive" . YouTube · Spotify · Apple
Casado on Sequoia's "The Sequoia of Tomorrow"
Casado also praised Sequoia's public memo. He saw "a lot of really smart moves here" and expects that "over time it'll be very clear how thoughtful these decisions were" . Seven general partners signed it on behalf of the team . Here's what it says changed:
- Sequoia is ending its Arc accelerator and Scouts programs and putting its focus on "high-conviction, highly selective" investing .
- It no longer has separate Early and Growth groups .
- It is closing the London office. Sequoia says it doesn't need a local presence to back European founders .
- The partnership is flatter, and the firm has raised about $10B in new funds .
- The Monday partner meeting cycle is gone .
Chamath and Rick Rubin
Chamath Palihapitiya shared a conversation he recorded with Rick Rubin and called spending time with him a "pleasure and honor" . Chapters cover trusting your intuition and taste, investing in fringe ideas, the deals he passed on, and how he uses AI and his media diet. The headline quote is about being willing to "zag when everybody zigs" even if it means losing half the time . Episode
Sarah Guo on the Baseten Router write-up
Sarah Guo shared Baseten's technical article and called the router "best in class (cheapest at every pass rate)" . Baseten tested it on held-out coding benchmarks. It reports results within 0.8 percentage points of Opus 5.5 at 72% lower cost. It also says the router beat random routing by a statistically significant margin at every threshold, and none of the other routers it tested did . Article
Patrick Collison: Democracy in America
Patrick Collison said he spent the past week reading Tocqueville's Democracy in America and that it is "striking how much it still rhymes nearly two centuries later." He made the point while arguing that American democracy has responded to voter preferences over the last decade . Post
Shorter picks
- Jason Lemkin promoted a new SaaStr video, "Going from 10 to 1 SDRs," with Vercel COO Jeanne DeWitt on rolling out AI across Vercel's sales team . He highlighted her claim that Vercel's lead-qualification agent costs under $5k a year, takes 20% of one engineer to maintain, and works at quality "as high as the humans" . YouTube
- Aravind Srinivas shared a clip of Larry Page on taking on ambitious challenges and making big bets: "The world needs more Larry Page energy" . Post
- Elad Gil pointed to Sequoia's profile of Cresta, "From Stanford Research to AI at Work," with "Congrats to Cresta" . Article
Patrick O’Shaughnessy shared a video titled “The inside story of Cursor’s $60 billion sale to SpaceX” and linked it to his third conversation with Martin Casado, an a16z general partner (conversation); he closes the conversation post with “Enjoy!” . The conversation covers consensus investing, moats, frontier-model economics, AI growth, private-market efficiency, and lessons from Cursor, OpenRouter, and World Labs acquisitions .
Patrick O’Shaughnessy invites viewers to enjoy his third video conversation with a16z general partner Martin Casado, covering consensus investing, moats, frontier-model economics, AI infrastructure and competition, market efficiency, and lessons from major AI acquisitions (conversation). In the shared excerpt, Casado argues that AI makes it possible to deploy capital productively at scale, shifting tech from an engineering constraint toward a capital-allocation problem and giving investors a more direct role in shaping the future.
Sarah Guo shared and praised Baseten’s article, “Baseten Router: a Pareto-optimal model router for coding tasks”, calling it Baseten’s “first swing” at an intelligent router and “best in class (cheapest at every pass rate).” The article reports that the router performs within 0.8 percentage points of Opus 5.5 at 72% lower cost and beats random routing by a statistically significant margin at every threshold.
Patrick Collison offered a favorable, implicit endorsement of Democracy in America: while arguing that U.S. democracy has responded to voter preferences over the past decade, he said the book still “rhymes” with the present nearly two centuries later. Post
Chamath Palihapitiya promoted a recorded conversation with Rick Rubin, describing the chance to spend time with Rubin as a “pleasure and honor,” and linked to the episode. The linked promo calls it a new episode and lists chapters on trusting intuition and taste, investing in fringe ideas, and Chamath’s AI and media diet.
Patrick O’Shaughnessy recommends his third video conversation with a16z general partner Martin Casado (“Enjoy!”), spanning investing, AI economics and infrastructure, and venture-capital market efficiency. In a clip from the conversation, Casado argues that non-consensus early-stage investing can be dangerous because follow-on capital tends to align with consensus; he says the investments in their portfolio that returned money were highly competitive. Full conversation: https://x.com/patrick_oshag/status/2117971190534852725.
Patrick O’Shaughnessy shared his third conversation with Martin Casado, a general partner at a16z, and closed with “Enjoy!”; it is linked on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts as an episode of Invest Like the Best. The conversation covers consensus investing, why moats may be overrated, frontier-model economics, AI growth and infrastructure, private-market efficiency, and lessons from the Cursor, OpenRouter, and World Labs acquisitions.
Martin Casado recommended @patrick_oshag’s video conversation with him on venture practice, calling it the most in-depth conversation he had ever had on the subject and a good overview of what he had learned over the prior decade. The listed topics include venture-investor types, network effects and moats, AI infrastructure and competition, market efficiency, and AI acquisitions.
Jack pointed followers to Ragavan Thurair’s MTS Live appearance about Dessa, writing “hear from ragavan on dessa”; Ragavan invited viewers to tune in to hear more about Dessa. MTS Live announcement
Garry Tan endorses GStack’s /review skill, saying it is still useful for preventing bugs (post).
Jason Lemkin promoted a YouTube video, “Going from 10 to 1 SDRs. How We Deployed AI Across our Sales Org” with Vercel COO Jeanne DeWitt; watch the video. His accompanying post highlights DeWitt’s claim that Vercel’s lead-qualification agent costs under $5,000 a year in tokens and infrastructure, takes 20% of one engineer to maintain, and runs 24×7 at quality as high as humans.
Elon Musk replied “True” to @brivael’s post, endorsing its thesis that AI and robotics could drive productivity growth enough to make debt manageable . The post argues that faster productivity gains would make capitalism’s benefits visible through lower prices, better services, and more opportunities . Post
Martin Casado praised Sequoia’s The Sequoia of Tomorrow, calling the decisions “a lot of really smart moves” and saying their thoughtfulness would become clear over time; the piece is signed on behalf of Team Sequoia.
Jason Lemkin shared a new video, “Going from 10 to 1 SDRs: How We Deployed AI Across our Sales Org,” featuring Vercel COO @jdewitt29. The post links to the video on YouTube.
Jason Lemkin promoted a new video, “Going from 10 to 1 SDRs: How We Deployed AI Across our Sales Org”, featuring Vercel COO Jeanne DeWitt and focused on deploying AI across Vercel’s sales organization. In the accompanying post, Lemkin quoted DeWitt saying Vercel’s support tickets are complex and highly technical, yet its support agents still resolve 93% of issues.
Jessica Livingston praised Ryan Petersen’s Twitter as making it “a happier place,” linking to his post about a shipping-conference host asking his team to confirm he would not criticize sponsors, followed by a Flexport marketing-team member accidentally replying that he would criticize other sponsors—an endorsement of his humorous Twitter content.
Aravind Srinivas praised @kevg1412’s linked post, which presents Larry Page on tackling ambitious challenges and making big bets, writing, “The world needs more Larry Page energy.”
