Ryan K.

Today, we’re thrilled to publicly launch Phoebe and announce $17M in seed funding, in rounds led by GV and Cherry Ventures. We are building the immune system for software: An AI agent platform that continuously investigates live data, diagnoses emerging issues and generates preemptive fixes. As AI accelerates how software is built, reliability must keep pace. Phoebe started with faster troubleshooting, and our aim is to prevent the overwhelming majority of emergent problems before becoming customer-impacting failures. Huge thanks to the hundreds of early users at customers such as Trainline and PPRO. Thanks to our investors, including 20 CTOs and tech veterans joining as angels. And of course, thanks to the small and mighty Phoebe team! This is just the beginning! 🚀 Shoutout to Mark Kleinman at Sky News for breaking the news this morning (linked in the comments) Some of the many backers we're grateful for 🤗 🙏 GV (Google Ventures), Cherry Ventures, Anthony Danon, Carmen Alfonso Rico 🍫, William Gaybrick, Shola Akinlade, Yaron Shaer, Christian Dorffer, Tom Stafford, Thomas Wolf, Andrew Tan, Victor Riparbelli, Harsh Sinha, Jeanne DeWitt Grosser and more

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It feels like there are two modalities of competition in Silicon Valley today. Both are valid and interesting and can lead to big outcomes. Modality 1: Work on something legible. Out execute everyone. --> This means that you are working on something that is future-facing but at this stage not a contrarian opinion --> You will likely have multiple competitors --> There will be an insane amount of noise in the ecosystem --> The path to victory here just means growing as fast as possible. --> This is a 100m dash.....for a long time. --> People will ask you about moats yada yada yada...and your answer should be: "Winning is the moat" A lot of successful AI companies (ala Luma, Gamma) are executing this playbook incredibly well. It's not for the faint hearted and requires peak-level performance for long periods of time. Modality 2: Work on something truly illegible and contrarian. --> It is CRITICAL that a lot of people laugh at your when you explain your idea (or at the very least, think your approach is dumb) --> You should not have many other people taking similar approaches --> You want to take your time in the early days and make sure you don't fall into the gravity well of Modality 1 Both of these modalities are valid approaches but you get into trouble when you fall in between. An issue I see often is when someone in Modality 1 but thinking they are in Modality 2. They are in a dogfight but don't realize it. They pay too much attention to the competition....get psyched out by funding rounds etc. If you are in this mode, the only thing to do is to put on blinders and work very very hard. Modality 2 is often more "fun".....but requires real creativity and being in the wilderness for a while. You must not care about a lot of the status games that Silicon Valley plays in the short run. Get in the Arena but make sure you know what game you are playing.

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Today in “Scott Learns How Silicon Valley Works”: I’ve apparently been quoting ARR wrong this whole time. At Metronome we run a usage-based business. Customers sign up for committed contracts, find value, expand, and then negotiate new ones. It’s a virtuous cycle of NRR growth. To stay disciplined, we usually talk about cARR - the literal book value of our signed contracts. It’s conservative by design. But here’s the truth: most customers expand well beyond that number, often for multiple years. The confusion: I recently told an investor, “Our cARR is $X.” They assumed that meant a run-rate from last month’s revenue - and mentally discounted it by 50%. In reality, history says that $X in cARR is more likely to yield ~150% of X in actual revenue. A 3x swing, all in the framing. That’s just part of the fun (and pain) of building usage-based businesses: explaining why NRR, not ARR, is the real determining force. If you’re wrestling with usage-based monetization, let us know - we’ve had to learn this the hard way.

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🚀🚀 AI is rewriting the rules of startup success. In our latest Crunchbase piece, Noah Lin and I dive into how we @ defy.vc have seen AI-first companies scale smarter with value model tactics—leveraging predictive power and network effects to reshape industries. From defying traditional metrics to building data moats, these strategies are a game-changer for founders. 💡 Stay tuned for a deeper follow-up where we’ll share actionable tactics for founders to scale their AI ventures! Full article 👇 #AI #Startups #Innovation #VentureCapital

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"AI companies are really buoying the American economy right now, and it’s looking very bubble-shaped." Chatted with Michael Hiltzik over at the LA Times about GPT-5, AI hype, and the growing bubble. https://lnkd.in/gAhnNkzV

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