"isn't seattle tech just a bunch of AWS and MSFT employees?" well, no. aside from having 25% of the AI engineers in the US, and the second largest pool of dev talent in the country, seattle is home to the engineering hq2's of the world's most important tech leaders. we counted 55 seattle-based c suite execs from @AnthropicAI and @OpenAI to @nvidia and @Cisco ; from @PaloAltoNtwks to @CrowdStrike; from @Shopify to @stripe . see the latest from @Natebek below.

Seattle is almost always outside the top five in terms of gross venture dollars invested in the market. but venture dollars invested is not the only useful metric to judge start up ecosystem’s health. As one of my LPs likes to remind me, any idiot can write a check. what matters is return on investment. And I have always had a sneaking suspicion that Seattle punches way above its weight in this category. We do much less blitzscaling, and founders own much more of their companies when they exit. Which implied to me that early investors do pretty well too. so @Natebek buckled down and dug into the numbers. Turns out, Seattle is the third best place in the United States to create venture returns. but do go on about miami 😂😂😂

Token Talk is live! This week: Quantum Computer Series Finale. Check it out! 👇

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Speaking in Las Vegas, @sequoia's @Alfred_Lin says the desert is "not designed for humans." Just like highways and space. He was responding to @Kr00ney's question about humanoids being the best form-factor for robotics. Most people say the world is designed for humans, which is why humanoids are so popular. He's on stage with @BradPorter_ , Founder and CEO of @cobotco. (The startup makes wheeled robotics). I agree; I'm not made to be Vegas. #humanx

“Stable diffusion was the first thing that gave me hope that there would even be an open source large AI thing at all.” — Vik from @MoondreamAI 🔥 In this One-Shot moment, Vik shares how open-source vision models pulled him back into ML—and how YouTube (hi Karpathy & Jonathan Whitaker) helped launch his journey. 📺 Watch the full episode → buff.ly/ud6XHYX

Indeed: @kirbywinfield @ascend_vc is someone you want on your pre-seed cap table!

"Few people realize that 40 million people die on our roads every single year. That is like a 737 falling from the sky every week. If that was commercial airlines, we wouldn't stand for it. But for some reason, when it's cars and trucks, we look at it as simply the human condition," says @aurora_inno President Ossa Fisher, speaking at #HumanX

On Claude's vision capabilities lagging its general intelligence: "We're not nearly as good at images as we need to be," @mikeyk says. "If you've seen Computer Use... the model is smart enough to do almost every task asked of it. [But] we're currently just putting on funny glasses on it." He added @AnthropicAI is working on this problem, and that once vision capabilities are improved, "it'll unlock a lot."

oumi trending #1 on github ☔🔥☔ @Oumi_PBC

The FIRST co-founder speed matching event is live @AITinkerers - Seattle with a 100% unicorn company founder panel for moderated discussion kick off on this very important topic! can't wait :) thanks @awburgh for leading the charge on this and @ascend_vc @jpmorgan for support!

We're incredibly excited to join our friends at @felicis and @M12vc (GitHub Fund) in Moondream.AI's seed round.

#FoundersBash 2024, in photos

good times last night hosting @ascend_vc lps and friends (shoutout @jpmorgan for sponsoring) at the @Mariners last night - people are in from austin, la, nyc, sf and beyond for @FoundersBash - amped for tonight!

we move fast. @Natebek took this from idea to launch in 24hrs. basically YC Cofounder Matching but for Seattle only. debuts @FoundersBash thurs - if you're looking for a co-founder, sign up (below in replies) and get a special sticker to help you find your match at the bash!

Internet transit vs. GPT-4 level model cost reduction comparison. By no means a one-one-one comparison, but a pretty interesting overlay in price reduction overtime with compute innovation and economies of scale. It took ISPs 17 years to go from $1,200 MBPS to $0.63. It took OpenAI ~2 years to go from $180 per 2 million tokens to $0.75. CC @eladgil // @martin_casado

a note to founders from @ascend_vc

~40% of startups that raised their seed in Q3 2020 graduated to Series A in two years. The comparable percentage for the Q1 2022 cohort is 15.4%.

what a great recap of #SeattleTechWeek from @MadronaVentures - big shouts to my partner @jenduryeehaller - love seeing the #PitchAndRun footage! also check the turntablism b roll from yours truly spinning @ai2incubator 😂