Methods of fast growth, resulted in $10Bln rounds: next big thing

Databricks just raised $10B round, thanks to impressive growth, as well as OpenAI did earlier. There is a disclosure of next big thing for VCs, and my digest of secrets of growth for startups — in guidances by Matt Mochary, Nvidia founder and Trump’s advisor Sriram Krishnan.

Matt Mochary coaches legendary founders like Sam Altman ( OpenAI), Brian Armstrong ( Coinbase) and Alfred Lin.

Henry Shi used Matt’s guidance, as follows:

“Matt’s book teaches a simple but powerful framework for building meaningful relationships:
1) Get genuinely curious about their life (work and personal).
2) Prove you’re listening by summarizing what they’ve shared:
“I think I heard you say…”
3) Follow up. Reference details from past conversations to show you care.

I took this lesson to heart and applied it to our first call.
I didn’t pitch. I didn’t push. I just got curious about his world. I asked about his life in Hawaii and sought advice on scaling innovation (a problem we were tackling).
Afterward, I followed his appreciation framework from the book to a T.

4️⃣ Prove your potential

Use this guidance to restructure your startup team into Mission Aligned Teams.

Other great tips for founders:

No.1 Customer acquisition strategy for new startups in crowded markets

AGI technology window: next big thing

Great Technology Change Gives Great Opportunity; A new asset class is very profitable when it’s first getting going, but then competition comes in.

Trends and patterns that drive Emerging AI tech:

1. Inception. AGI is next stage of AI, in the inception phase.
2. Knowledge diffusion. Alerted to the opportunity for status and wealth, many founders start investigating the technology and exploring what it can do.
3. Competition floods in. Since Microsoft/OpenAI, Databrics, Nvidia and other infrastructure leaders of AI industry had invested trillions. So they are active in AGI R&D
4. Incumbents emerge, because they have better management, or they grab the key defensibilities

Technology Windows: The Unseen Force Driving Your Startup

Next, main secret of Nvidia success is to attract the best talent by creating something never done before.

Apple, Google have the same approach. As well as AGI Alliance by Ed Musinski.

There is disclosure of this secret, from the Nvidia founder:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxeUnk6Y2x8

Databricks founder Ion Stoica from Romania has created multibillion company. Insights from his experience 10 years ago

databrics ion stoica secret of teambuilding - Google Search

Ed Musinski (also from Romania) picked up Databrics into Emtech AI Rating.

A rating of companies that potentially could create AGI, in collaboration

https://telewellness.medium.com/who-is-able-to-make-strong-agi-in-one-year-by-musk-and-ratings-a15bc1159faf

Sriram Krishnan was appointed AI Advisor to Trump.

https://flashnt.info/the-success-story-of-shriram-krishnan-is-interesting-survey-of-ai-policy-in-us-presidents-team-without-iit-the-success-story-of-shriram-krishnan-is-interesting-survey-of-ai-policy-in-us-president/

There is Sriram’s guidance on how to create a community of leaders:

“There is a touch of alchemy to picking the right people to come into a chat. A great dinner party doesn’t have the same kind of person — the best ones have a mix. You have someone who will be entertaining, perhaps someone famous, someone who is warm and keeps the conversation going and definitely someone who will be a great raconteur. A good group chat needs a mix of personalities. Some archetypes:

• the very online person who is familiar with participating in chat at all times
• The celebrity who everyone is surprised to see in a chat.
• The deeply thoughtful people who don’t speak up often but when they do, have real depth to their opinions
• The cheerful bon vivants who keep the group light/funny/fresh.

Gravitational pull of a few topics

It is common for group chats to suffer from audience capture and start circling the same topics incessantly. This happens in a few ways:

• A certain topics gain outsized influence and the group can’t stop having the same debate ad-nauseaum
• Two or three people in the group align themselves into various teams and feel locked into supporting or opposing the same causes or people every single time. In the chats I moderate, I always look out for two people arguing with each other incessantly.
• The angriest/most provocative topic usually winds up sucking the most oxygen. I’ve seen many groups die because they couldn’t get past talking about the one issue they disagreed on.

This is where variety comes in. You need a constant injection of new ideas, themes, and members into the mix. Stagnation is death.

Size and Pruning

Every good group chat has an inverse relationship with size. It is impossible to add new members forever without decreasing quality. Over time, the group decays in quality and I often find groups with >100 members unsustainable. Far below Dunbar’s number, it breaks some human model of intimacy.

This is where pruning comes in. Good group chats make you earn your spot periodically. And if you haven’t participated in a meaningful way in a while, you should find yourself kicked out.

On the flip side, one of the best ways to add value to a group is to suggest a good new member who will fit in.

Shared rituals

The best group have shared rituals, jokes, routines. They range from the simple (post the same thing every week) to something deeper (organize a multi-day trip once a year). These rituals bring people together in deep ways and give meaning. After seeing several of these, you can easily see how religions and communities need these as a bonding experience.

So, what makes a great group chat work? I recently stumbled onto a 1930 Vogue essay on hosting great dinners by early 20th century columnist and socialite Elsa Maxwell. I’ll leave the final word to Ms. Maxwell writing nearly a century ago.

“What makes or breaks a party?. A new idea, plus a sense of humor, makes a party — and the bores break it.”

Thanks to Erik Torenberg, Vitalik Buterin who read versions of this and help Sriram.

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