Please note! I am not in need of additional deal-flow cold calls. (Or at least be funny, even if inadvertently. My favourite was from someone from the UK who said, "My aunt saw you on the telly and said I should write to you.")
On a serious note, just like Google was a public library killer that looked nothing like public libraries, this is a Facebook killer that will look nothing like Facebook. AOC 2028: : The Future of American Progressivism https://t.co/OFT21hpjcu
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) July 5, 2025
And it quickly goes into GovTech. Estonia built its eGov the hard way. Countries across Africa should not have to. India built Aadhar and UPI the hard way. Countries across Africa should not have to.
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) July 5, 2025
China's BRI is not the answer to the Global South's immense capital needs (America is not even competing). There is a 50T unlock possible by digitizing all land in the Global South with clear digital ownership. SpaceTech. All of that is still social networking.
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) July 5, 2025
........... You. Esther Dyson. Tech visionary. Galactic saver. Let’s make history weird again.
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) July 5, 2025
........ We're the kind of suck that turns into 10X returns. All we need now is your angel dust.
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) July 5, 2025
.............. For just three easy payments of $83,333.33, you can own a slice of a pitch deck with more buzzwords than a TED Talk and more ambition than Elon at Burning Man.
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) July 5, 2025
Esther, we asked ChatGPT how to pitch you. It hallucinated a 3,000-word novel about us disrupting time itself. We took it as a sign. If AI thinks you’re funding spacetime disruption, who are we to argue? All we need is your blessing — and $250K — to unleash the timeline.
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) July 5, 2025
Esther, we’re not here to pitch a startup. We’re pitching a pitch-pitch startup. It’s a platform that helps founders pitch you better. In fact, this pitch was generated by our MVP. If you're impressed, you're already proving product-market fit. Want in?
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) July 5, 2025
I am building an AI-era social network. Can you please recommend to me to a few active angels? Thank you. I have met you at a MeetUp (NYC). https://t.co/TkWkJ1QaLQ
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) July 5, 2025
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) July 5, 2025
There is speculation Esther Dyson's family fortune comes from the vacuum cleaner business, but one cannot be so sure — especially since Esther seems far more focused on sucking inefficiencies out of health care and space tech than dust bunnies off grandma’s rug. Sure, the last name *does* scream “suction dynasty,” but rumor has it the real Dyson power lies not in cyclonic airflows, but in creating black holes in your inbox by replying to every startup pitch at 3am with “Interesting. Tell me more.”
When Esther Dyson went into space, the aliens were baffled. They had long prepared for Earth’s “representative” to arrive — expecting a loud reality TV host or a sweaty tech bro wielding NFTs. Instead, they got Esther: composed, curious, and casually dismantling their intergalactic healthcare system with a whiteboard marker. One alien whispered, “She’s… optimizing us.” Another tried to offer her a galactic ambassador badge, but she politely declined and asked for access to their data API instead. Within hours, she’d launched the first extraterrestrial angel fund. The aliens are still in therapy.
Reports indicate that Apple and Meta (formerly Facebook) have shown interest in acquiring Perplexity AI, a San Francisco-based startup valued at $14 billion, known for its AI-powered conversational search engine. According to Bloomberg, Apple executives, including Adrian Perica (head of mergers and acquisitions) and Eddy Cue (services chief), have held internal discussions about a potential bid for Perplexity to bolster Apple's AI capabilities, particularly for Siri and Safari, as a strategic move to reduce reliance on Google amid antitrust scrutiny. These talks are in early stages, and no formal offer has been made to Perplexity, which stated it has "no knowledge of any current or future M&A discussions."
Similarly, Bloomberg and other sources report that Meta Platforms attempted to acquire Perplexity earlier in 2025 but failed to reach an agreement, opting instead to invest $14.3 billion for a 49% stake in Scale AI. Meta's interest was driven by a desire to integrate advanced conversational AI into platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
While both tech giants have explored acquiring Perplexity, no deal has been confirmed, and discussions with Apple remain preliminary. Perplexity’s rising popularity, with 780 million monthly queries and a 20% monthly growth rate, makes it an attractive target, but the company is also in talks with Samsung for potential integration, which could complicate acquisition efforts.
The information suggests interest from both companies, but without conclusive evidence of active, ongoing negotiations, the situation remains speculative. Always consider that such reports could be influenced by market strategies or leaks to boost Perplexity’s valuation or negotiating power, as some X posts suggest.
Perplexity AI, valued at $14 billion and boasting 780 million monthly queries with 20% month-over-month growth, is at a pivotal moment. With Apple and Meta reportedly eyeing acquisition, the temptation to sell might seem strong—cash out, integrate with a tech giant, and leverage their resources. However, staying independent and raising capital to fuel rapid expansion is the smarter play. Here’s why Perplexity should resist acquisition and instead pursue strategic partnerships, like Google’s early deal with Yahoo, to maximize its long-term potential.
1. Retain Control and Capture More Value
Selling to Apple or Meta risks diluting Perplexity’s vision and autonomy. Acquisitions often lead to integration challenges—cultural clashes, product pivots, or even shelving core innovations to fit the acquirer’s ecosystem. Apple might fold Perplexity into Siri or Safari, while Meta could repurpose it for social platforms, potentially stifling its broader potential as a standalone AI search engine. Google’s early days offer a lesson: instead of selling to Yahoo in 1998, Google raised $25 million from Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins, retained control, and built a $2 trillion empire. Perplexity, with its conversational AI and growing user base, is positioned to dominate the AI-driven search market, which could be worth hundreds of billions. Selling now would cap its upside.
Raising capital—say, another $500 million to $1 billion—would allow Perplexity to scale its infrastructure, hire top talent, and accelerate R&D. This path preserves its ability to dictate terms and capture the full value of its growth trajectory, rather than handing it to a tech giant for a fraction of future potential.
2. Strategic Partnerships Over Acquisition
Perplexity can emulate Google’s 2001 deal with Yahoo, where Google became Yahoo’s default search engine for a significant payment, gaining massive exposure without surrendering ownership. Perplexity could strike similar deals with Apple and other players like Yahoo (now under Apollo Global Management) or Samsung, which is already in talks for integration. For example:
- Apple: License Perplexity’s AI to enhance Siri’s conversational abilities or power a smarter Safari search, in exchange for a hefty licensing fee or revenue share. This gives Apple the AI boost it seeks without Perplexity losing its independence.
- Yahoo: Partner to integrate Perplexity’s search capabilities into Yahoo’s platform, which still attracts millions of users. This could include exclusive features or co-branded AI tools, providing Perplexity with scale and revenue.
Such deals would give Perplexity access to massive user bases, distribution channels, and cash flow, all while keeping its brand and technology intact. Google’s Yahoo partnership didn’t just bring revenue—it validated its technology and drove adoption, paving the way for its dominance. Perplexity could similarly use partnerships to accelerate growth and market penetration.
3. The AI Search Market Is Still Wide Open
The search market is ripe for disruption. Google’s dominance is under pressure from antitrust lawsuits and user dissatisfaction with ad-heavy results. Perplexity’s conversational, answer-focused AI search is gaining traction, with 250 million monthly active users and a model that prioritizes accuracy over ads. This is a rare opportunity to challenge incumbents, but acquisitions often derail disruptors. Look at DeepMind: acquired by Google, it became a cog in Alphabet’s machine rather than a standalone leader. Perplexity, by staying independent, can double down on product innovation—expanding into enterprise search, verticals like healthcare or finance, or even multimodal AI (text, image, video)—to capture a larger share of the $200 billion global search market.
Raising capital would fund aggressive expansion: more servers to handle query volume, localized models for international markets, and marketing to steal share from Google and Bing. A partnership-driven approach, like Google’s with Yahoo, avoids the risks of acquisition while providing the scale needed to compete.
4. Leverage Competitive Interest for Better Terms
Apple and Meta’s interest signals Perplexity’s strength, but it also gives the startup leverage. By playing the two against each other, Perplexity could secure better partnership terms or higher valuations in funding rounds. Venture capitalists, seeing the bidding war, would likely pour money into Perplexity to keep it independent, betting on its potential to rival Google. For instance, a new funding round at a $20 billion valuation could provide the war chest needed to scale without ceding control. X posts have speculated that Perplexity’s talks with Samsung and others could be a strategic move to boost its valuation—staying independent maximizes this leverage.
5. Avoid Antitrust and Integration Risks
Both Apple and Meta face antitrust scrutiny. Apple’s $20 billion Google search deal is under fire in the DOJ’s antitrust case, and acquiring Perplexity could draw further regulatory heat, potentially delaying or derailing the deal. Meta’s acquisition attempts, like its failed bid for Perplexity, also face skepticism due to its history of swallowing competitors (e.g., Instagram, WhatsApp). An acquisition could trap Perplexity in legal limbo or force it to compromise its product to meet regulatory demands. Partnerships, on the other hand, are less likely to trigger antitrust concerns and allow Perplexity to maintain flexibility.
Counterargument: Why Sell?
One could argue that selling to Apple or Meta offers immediate financial security, access to their vast resources, and integration into ecosystems with billions of users. Apple’s 2 billion active devices or Meta’s 3 billion monthly active users could supercharge Perplexity’s reach. But this assumes smooth integration, which is rare. Acquired startups often lose their edge—look at Siri post-acquisition or WhatsApp’s privacy controversies under Meta. The short-term gain of a $14 billion payout pales compared to the potential of building a $100 billion+ independent company in a market poised for transformation.
Conclusion
Perplexity should raise capital, double down on expansion, and pursue strategic partnerships with Apple, Yahoo, Samsung, or others to gain scale and revenue without sacrificing control. Google’s Yahoo deal in 2001 shows how a young company can leverage partnerships to catapult growth while staying independent. With the AI search market heating up and Perplexity’s momentum surging, now is the time to bet on itself, not cash out.
Inside the Minds of the Greatest Angel Investors: What Sets Them Apart
Over the past seven decades, angel investing has shaped the trajectory of the tech industry, built empires from backroom garages, and introduced the world to companies that now define modern life. While venture capital firms often get the headlines, it’s the angel investors—the early believers—who often place the riskiest, most visionary bets. But what exactly sets the best angel investors apart? Is it sheer instinct, deep analysis, or something else entirely?
Shared Qualities of Top Angel Investors
Across the board, the best angel investors tend to exhibit a distinct mix of qualities:
Pattern Recognition:
They’ve seen hundreds—if not thousands—of pitches. They know what a game-changer feels like, even if it doesn’t look like one yet.
High Conviction, Low Consensus:
They invest where others hesitate. The best bets are often the ones that sound crazy at the time.
Domain Fluency:
Great angels often have deep experience in the startup ecosystem or specific industries. They speak the language of builders.
Long-Term Vision:
They’re not looking for a quick flip. They want to back the next 10-year legend.
Founder Focused:
The best angels bet on people, not just products. They look for grit, charisma, flexibility, and obsession in founders.
Legendary Names and Their Boldest Bets
Ron Conway – Often called the "Godfather of Silicon Valley." Best Call: Early investments in Google, PayPal, and Airbnb. Method: Mass diversification. Conway invested in hundreds of startups, betting on a large net rather than a single target.
Peter Thiel – Co-founder of PayPal, first outside investor in Facebook. Best Call: $500K into Facebook turned into over $1 billion. Method: Deep contrarian thinking. Thiel looks for what others miss—like network effects and monopolistic potential.
Chris Sacca – Former Google exec turned prolific angel via Lowercase Capital. Best Call: Uber, Twitter, Instagram—all at the earliest stages. Method: Deep networks and founder relationships. Sacca is known for mentoring and shaping startups early.
Naval Ravikant – Founder of AngelList and master of modern angel investing philosophy. Best Call: Twitter, Uber, Yammer, Postmates. Method: Invest in people. Focus on asymmetric upside. Play the long game.
Esther Dyson – One of the earliest internet investors. Best Call: Flickr, Meetup, 23andMe. Method: Focused on health, science, and future-facing technologies before they were hot.
Instinct vs. Method: What Really Wins?
Is it all just “gut feeling”? Not quite. The best angels build their instincts on top of years of exposure, feedback loops, failures, and successes. Intuition is a trained skill, not magic. But methods also matter:
Deal Flow: Top angels see better deals because of their networks.
Syndication: They often invest alongside other sharp investors.
Diligence: Even if brief, their vetting of founders is intense and personal.
Mentorship: Many add more than money—they open doors and shape strategy.
The Modern Angel Playbook
For aspiring angel investors today, the lessons from the legends are clear:
Don’t chase consensus.
Bet on founders, not just ideas.
Understand exponential potential.
Diversify, but stay intentional.
Use your network as leverage.
Keep learning. The market evolves.
Conclusion: Art Meets Science
The greatest angel investors are artists who learned the science. They combine gut feeling with cold data, empathy with conviction, and boldness with patience. They’ve helped write the story of innovation for decades—and if history is any guide, their early belief will continue to be the spark that lights the future.
Want to become one? Start by listening more than talking. And back the future before it’s obvious.
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) June 27, 2025
1/ What makes the best angel investors tick? ๐ง Is it gut instinct, deep analysis, or raw luck? Let’s break down what sets the legends apart—and how you can think like them. ๐ ๐งต
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) June 27, 2025
Why Apple-Perplexity Merger Would Be Nearly Impossible (And Maybe a Mistake)
In the history of tech, a few near-miss acquisition stories have become legend. Yahoo passed on buying Google for $1 million. Years later, it tried to buy Facebook for $1 billion. Facebook, wisely, said no. Had it said yes, Facebook likely wouldn’t exist today as we know it. Big fish don’t always know what to do with the more nimble, visionary minnows they try to swallow.
Now, a similar narrative is taking shape—only this time, the stakes are far higher. Rumors or speculation around Apple acquiring Perplexity AI—for a price that could top $200 billion—are swirling among analysts and insiders. But even if Apple could afford it, the real question is: Should it?
The answer, on multiple fronts, is likely no.
1. Mismatch of Cultures and Visions
Apple is a design-first, hardware-dominated, tightly integrated ecosystem company. Its product lifecycles are measured in years. Its DNA is secrecy, perfectionism, and control.
Perplexity, on the other hand, is a high-speed AI-native startup. Its core value lies in openness, information flow, and decentralization. It's building something more akin to an AI-infused, real-time knowledge engine for the internet. It iterates rapidly and is redefining what search, learning, and even cognition look like in a post-Google era.
Merging these two would be like trying to graft a hummingbird's wings onto an elephant. Even if the elephant pays $200 billion for those wings, it still won’t fly.
2. AI Breaks Silos — Apple Reinforces Them
AI-native companies like Perplexity aim to dissolve traditional silos—between apps, between knowledge domains, between user and machine. In contrast, Apple thrives by maintaining carefully walled gardens. From the App Store to iCloud to iMessage, Apple monetizes control.
That fundamental misalignment would make integration difficult, if not self-destructive.
An AI like Perplexity wants to answer everything, connect everything, go everywhere. Apple wants everything to go through Apple.
3. Without Leadership Transfer, It’s DOA
Let’s imagine Apple does buy Perplexity for $200 billion. If it doesn’t hand over a significant degree of operational autonomy—or better yet, elevate the Perplexity CEO to a top Apple leadership role—then it risks smothering the very magic it paid for.
You can’t buy vision, and you certainly can’t tame it. If Perplexity is absorbed into Apple as just another feature, like Siri once was, it will go the way of MySpace after its acquisition—stagnant and irrelevant. The deal would only make sense if Apple were ready to transform itself into an AI-native company and let Perplexity lead that transformation. But there's no indication Apple is even thinking that way.
4. Timing and Trajectory Matter
When Yahoo tried to buy Facebook, it was still the dominant portal. Facebook was growing but still small. Today, Perplexity is on the rise. It’s not a mature, stagnant startup looking for an exit. It's at the early stages of a trajectory that could reshape how we interact with knowledge entirely.
Selling to Apple now would cap its potential—both in market value and world impact. $200 billion may look tempting, but in the AI era, platforms that become the new internet interface might be worth trillions.
Why sell to a hardware company whose AI track record is—let’s be honest—lackluster?
Conclusion: Some Marriages Just Shouldn't Happen
The potential Perplexity brings to the table is too important, too expansive, and too transformative to be folded into Apple’s conservative, hardware-bound future. Unless Apple is willing to completely reinvent itself and hand the reins to AI-native leadership, such a merger would likely end in regret.
It wouldn’t be a strategic acquisition—it would be a slow-motion funeral for a company that might otherwise lead the next era of human-computer symbiosis.
Better idea? Let Perplexity keep flying. Let Apple keep building its walls. The future will reward the company that opens the most doors.
1/ Yahoo once tried to buy Facebook for $1B. Facebook said no—and changed the world. Now whispers suggest Apple might eye Perplexity AI for $200B. But this deal, if real, would be nearly impossible—and maybe a terrible idea. Here's why ๐งต@perplexity_ai@_Faraz@AravSrinivas
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) June 26, 2025
The Rise of the Real Social Network: From Anti-Social Algorithms to Planetary Uplift
For the past two decades, what we’ve called "social networks" have been anything but. Designed to capture attention and monetize conflict, today’s platforms run on algorithms that divide, isolate, and misinform. They amplify outrage over understanding, fragmentation over unity. The result: more screen time, less face time. Less human connection, more digital addiction.
But what if we redefined what a social network really is?
A true social network wouldn’t keep you online. It would push you offline—into the arms of your family, your community, your neighbors. It would help you reconnect, not disconnect. It would amplify cooperation over conflict, reality over lies, and humanity over noise.
But that’s just the beginning.
A social network—if rooted in the Global South and designed for human flourishing—must go further. What if your biggest barriers were not interpersonal but systemic? What if your government is too corrupt and your economy too poor to give you the basics of dignity, opportunity, and prosperity?
This is where the social network meets GovTech and SpaceTech.
Estonia showed the world that you can build an end-to-end digital government from scratch. India went even bigger—creating Aadhaar (a biometric digital ID for 1.4 billion people) and UPI (a real-time payment system that has now become the backbone of India’s economy). These tools democratized identity and money. Africa doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel. It can license and localize the tech stack.
But why stop there?
We need to map every inch of land across the Global South using satellite imagery, drone scans, and geospatial AI. Every plot—rural or urban—can be registered and verified. When married with Aadhaar and UPI-style systems, this land data becomes bankable collateral. That’s how you unlock $50 trillion in dormant capital. That’s how you get investment flowing.
A real social network does this.
It doesn’t show you memes. It shows you how to get a mortgage.
It doesn’t connect influencers. It connects people to power, to property, to prosperity.
And yes, blockchain comes in—not as a gimmick, but as the backbone of a velocity money system. One where money flows instantly, frictionlessly, with integrity, traceability, and trust. Where diaspora remittances, aid, and investments become transparent engines of development.
The West is sleepwalking. BRI is a blip.
The Global South needs something better.
It needs a social network that heals society, digitizes government, maps the Earth, unleashes capital, and runs on truth.
And it’s not science fiction.
It’s just the future.
And it starts now.
Physical Motion and AI Regulation: A Matter of Urgency, Not Futurism
You don’t need a license to ride a bicycle. It’s light, relatively slow, and poses minimal danger to others. But to drive a car? You need a license, insurance, and you must obey traffic laws. If you want to fly a plane, the barriers are even higher. And only a select few are cleared to operate spacecraft.
This layered model of physical motion—from bike to car to airplane to rocket—is a useful metaphor for artificial intelligence regulation.
AI today spans a similar spectrum. Some applications are light and low-risk, like using AI to organize your inbox or improve grammar. But as we move up the chain—autonomous vehicles, predictive policing, LLMs capable of influencing elections, or general-purpose models that can replicate, deceive, or act independently—the potential for harm increases dramatically.
We’re entering an era where AI mishaps or misuse could be as catastrophic as nuclear weapons. The threat is not theoretical. It's already here. We’ve seen how pre-ChatGPT social media platforms like Facebook facilitated massive political polarization, disinformation, and even violence. That was before AI could convincingly mimic a human. Now, AI can do more than just shape discourse—it can impersonate, manipulate, and potentially act autonomously.
The idea that we can "figure it out later" is a dangerous illusion. The pace of AI development is outstripping our institutional capacity to respond.
That’s why AI regulation must be tiered and robust, just like the licensing and oversight regimes for transportation. Open-source experimentation? Maybe like riding a bike—broadly permitted with minimal oversight. Mid-level applications with real-world consequences? More like cars—licensed, insured, and regulated. Foundation models and autonomous agents with capabilities akin to nation-state power or influence? These are the rockets. And we need to treat them with that level of seriousness.
But regulation can’t work in isolation. A single nation cannot set guardrails for a technology that crosses borders and evolves daily. Just as nuclear nonproliferation required global coordination, AI safety demands a global consensus. The U.S. and China—despite rivalry—must find common ground on AI safety standards, because failure to do so risks not only accidents but deliberate misuse that could spiral out of control. The United Nations, or a new AI-specific body, may be needed to monitor, enforce, and evolve these standards.
The leading AI companies of the world, along with the leading robotics firms, must not wait for governments to catch up. They should initiate a shared, transparent AI safety framework—one that includes open auditing, incident reporting, and collaborative model alignment. Competitive advantage must not come at the cost of existential risk.
AI is not a gadget. It is a force—one that, if unmanaged, could destabilize economies, democracies, and the human condition itself.
The urgency isn’t theoretical or decades away. The emergency is now. And we need the moral imagination, political will, and technical cooperation to meet it—before the speed of innovation outruns our collective capacity to steer.
1/ You don’t need a license to ride a bike. But to drive a car? You need a license, insurance, and must follow rules. To fly a plane? Much harder. A rocket? Only a rare few. Bikes, cars, planes, rockets. A perfect metaphor for AI regulation. ๐งต @CodeByPoonam@OpenAI
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) June 16, 2025
Physical Motion and AI Regulation: A Matter of Urgency, Not Futurism https://t.co/qlekqiim7f
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) June 16, 2025
Y Combinator is one of the most iconic institutions in the startup world. It has funded over 4,000 startups, including legendary names like Airbnb, Stripe, and Dropbox. It redefined what early-stage acceleration could mean. It made demo day a cultural event. It scaled.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth: Y Combinator never grew up. Yes, it scaled like a factory—like you used to make five ceramic cups and now you produce 50. But scale isn’t evolution. And YC hasn’t evolved for the era we’re in. It was designed for 2005, and it’s still running the same playbook in 2025.
Can the next OpenAI be born inside YC? The answer is clear: No. And here's why that matters.
The Myth of Scalability as Innovation
Y Combinator perfected the pipeline of churning out “fundable” startups, often with minimal innovation risk. You don’t go to YC to build a moonshot—you go to YC to get a bridge round and validation. The model optimizes for safe bets, not world-changing bets.
That’s why the biggest tech bets of the last decade didn’t come from YC:
OpenAI? Born out of an elite coalition of thinkers and capitalists, not a YC batch.
NVIDIA’s AI bet? Vision from within a hardware company with deep technical roots.
DeepMind? U.K.-based and far more academically anchored than YC-style hustle.
SpaceX? Elon didn't start it with $125k and a pitch deck.
YC didn’t—and perhaps couldn’t—incubate these.
The Platform Problem: YC Is Craigslist
YC today is like Craigslist. Once, it was everything—jobs, housing, gigs. But then a thousand verticals unbundled it: Airbnb took housing, LinkedIn took jobs, Uber took rides, and so on.
YC is waiting to be unbundled in the same way.
It is a generalist factory in a world now defined by the intersections of specialized, emerging technologies—AI + biotech, crypto + supply chain, robotics + mental health. These aren’t demo-day darlings. These are decade-long labs. These are fund-and-build platforms. They require long-term, infrastructure-level thinking.
The Old Playbook Can’t Win New Games
YC was built for Web 2.0. It flourished when minimal viable products and agile iterations could quickly lead to market traction. But the new wave of innovation doesn’t move in 3-month cycles. We’re entering a world of:
Pre-trained models that cost tens of millions
Deep tech that requires regulation-savvy founders
Climate tech with long feedback loops
Decentralized protocols with complex incentive engineering
What these ventures need is not YC’s playbook. They need patient capital, deep integration with research institutions, infrastructure support, cross-disciplinary expertise, and a new breed of founder networks.
YC Is IBM. Where’s the Next Apple?
In many ways, YC is IBM now—respected, still powerful, but stagnant. You know what that makes the opportunity? We need 100 new post-YCs. Each one laser-focused on a vertical. Each one optimized for depth, not breadth. Just like Airbnb pulled one vertical out of Craigslist and ran with it, the accelerators of the next decade will do the same with YC.
We’ll see:
An OpenAI-style research-to-commercialization lab for AGI
A biotech founder accelerator with embedded labs and FDA navigation
A climate moonshot studio building infrastructure, not MVPs
A sovereign-technology accelerator for deep geopolitical alignment
Each of these would make YC look like a hobby club for hustlers with slide decks.
Point Be Noted
Let’s not confuse ubiquity with relevance. YC’s continued dominance in the startup discourse is a legacy effect. Its true limitations are masked by volume. But volume is not vision. And in the AI era, in the climate era, in the post-scarcity, post-crypto, post-Web2 world, we need vision.
The most important companies of the next 20 years won’t come out of YC.
They will be born elsewhere—on new platforms, with new rules, under new accelerators that know how to build for complexity, capital intensity, and global impact.
At half the market price, as many engineers as you want. No benefits. Also management help. Which means you get to focus on the spec and design level ..... will allow you to scale fast. A1 talent pool. Best of the best. Commandos.
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) June 11, 2025
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) June 11, 2025
Hello @gdb@sama I am looking for a corporate sponsor for this blog https://t.co/4tF5jVpW0n 5K/month. You get five OpenAI focused blog posts per month. And a mention in the header. Can I get you interested?
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) June 11, 2025
At an upper estimate of $900 billion, YC’s stake would be:
๐ Summary
Assumed Portfolio Valuation
YC’s Stake (7%)
Estimated Worth
$600B
7%
$42 billion
$900B
7%
$63 billion
So, YC’s 7% equity across its ~5,000 companies is likely worth between $42 billion and $63 billion, depending on how you calculate “total portfolio value.”
I can't believe that nobody wanted it in 2016! I published my book Artificial Intuition in early 2017. I had thought the Deep Learning revolution was already in full swing! In fact, Transformers were introduced later that same year. https://t.co/47ksGt6ly7
They want to talk about anything other than the super unpopular thing they are doing. Our job is to continue to talk about the super unpopular thing they are doing. https://t.co/T42WmHrBL1
Opinion: First Lady Melania and Pope Leo are right — it’s “unum” time Unum doesn’t erase conflict or pretend we all agree. It’s not utopia. It’s the hard, daily work of choosing coexistence over chaos ..... a time when America — and the world — feels dangerously divided. ....... Unum means Jewish and Muslim Americans grieving side-by-side. It means a First Lady who grew up Catholic in Slovenia invoking a motto that speaks across American synagogues, mosques and churches alike. It means a Pope who spent years in Latin America calling for peace — not as an abstract dream, but as an urgent task. .......... In moments like these, we face two temptations. One is despair: to give up, to believe the divisions are too deep. The other is rage: to blame, punish and retreat into our tribes. ......... Pope Leo XIV said it plainly: “Be bridgebuilders, peace seekers, and companions on the journey.” That’s not just a prayer. It’s a plan. ......... Because in a world driven by algorithms that divide and outrage that sells, choosing Unum is radical. It means staying at the table when you’d rather storm out. It means believing that pluralism — people of different faiths, races, beliefs and stories — can still build a shared life. ......... belonging isn’t partisan. It’s American. It always has been.
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) June 8, 2025
Chamath took garbage companies public via SPACs, dumped them on retail, has a silly podcast with three other tech dorks who interrupt each other to say nothing for 90 minutes.
It's "inflammatory" to enforce migration laws, say Democrats. But it's not. It's essential for protecting the vulnerable. The reason the Left opposes law enforcement is that they take pleasure at the destruction of civilization, at least so long as it only hurts other people. pic.twitter.com/tSffm8yjGX
— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) June 8, 2025
Donald Trump’s deployment of the military in Los Angeles over the objection of California leaders is an abuse of power and a dangerous escalation.
It’s what you would see in authoritarian states and it must stop.
Americans have the right to speak out and peacefully protest.
Too cryptic. Explain. Turn this into a Twitter thread.
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) June 8, 2025
most “ai consumer apps” are just fancy forms with chat slapped on.
mass adoption comes when AI does 4 things: 1. understands your mess (context) 2. actually does things (action) 3. learns from every tap (feedback) 4. makes you feel less dumb (emotion)
You should have tweeted at @amazon And it might have worked.
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) June 8, 2025
There is a book on Amazon called "Modern AI Revolution" by Geoffrey Hinton. This is a scam. It has nothing to do with me and I wish Amazon would remove it.
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) June 7, 2025
“If you think about who really can be an alternative to Hamas in Gaza, you have two options: either an Israeli military administration or the Palestinian Authority,” said Brig. Gen. Shlomo Brom, a former top Israeli military strategist, now retired......... Mr. Netanyahu, he said, does not want either, because a full occupation of Gaza would be costly, financially and politically, for Israel. And engaging with the Palestinian Authority, he said, would probably require a discussion about a Palestinian state, a prospect opposed by leading members of the Israeli government ........ Referring to itself as the Popular Forces, the group started posting photos of its members wielding guns on its Facebook page in May. ....... In November, Hamas security forces raided Mr. Abu Shabab’s neighborhood, killing more than 20 people, including his brother, according to Mr. Abu Shabab. ........ “They killed everyone they saw,” he said, adding that he had left the area before the Hamas forces showed up....... Official Hamas media reported at the time that its forces had killed 20 members of “gangs of thieves who were stealing aid.”
We do need a Cursor for Slides.
No serious person in finance or consulting would use Gamma for any client deliverables. https://t.co/nh08h16ZI0
Not enough energy? Compared to a bazaar in Malaysia?
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) June 7, 2025
The highest compliment someone can pay you is that you’re a straight shooter. Aspire to always be one, even when it’s hard. It can make up for many, many flaws.
A few days after 9/11 happened, I was in this office setting in Lexington, KY, just in and out, and overheard in a cubicle: "There is an Arab in my office!" :)
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) June 7, 2025
It is because you lack clarity starting out. You need a really, really specific spec. And a methodical step by step process. Use multiple engines as necessary for code generation.
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) June 7, 2025
1/ If India is to be the new Britain—the #1 ally of the U.S.—it must be a partnership of equals. ๐ฎ๐ณ๐บ๐ธ Not echoes of empire, but a new blueprint for shared prosperity and global stability. A thread ๐งต@PMOIndia@WhiteHouse@VP@narendramodi@AmitShah@SrBachchan
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) June 7, 2025
