Sam Thorpe

🚨NEW EPISODE: Recorded live at FUTURE TITANS 2026 - Jeff Perry of Carta sat down with the iconic Seth Levine, co-founder of Foundry. Seth has been in venture for 25 years, built Foundry from scratch as an emerging manager himself, and has backed about 50 emerging manager funds through his fund of funds. He has genuinely seen every side of this table. They went deep on building Foundry, why VCs are in the influence business, not the decision business, and why the concentration problem in venture is not only bad for LPs, but also for the innovation ecosystem overall. And why Seth's new book, Capital Evolution, is so important for the future of America. 🎧 Links to listen... Apple: https://lnkd.in/ehQUQ2EM Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eU4FExpg

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California just changed the game for every premium developer. AB 1305, SB 253, and SB 261 are forcing carbon disclosure and decarbonization across commercial real estate. Other states are watching. This is the new baseline. Here's what most developers miss: Your technology decisions today determine your compliance for the next decade. Building automation systems.  Energy management platforms.  Carbon tracking infrastructure. If IT isn't at the design table now, you're building in compliance gaps that cost millions to fix later. The fix isn't complicated: Bring technology planning into schematic design.  Tie every system to your ESG roadmap.  Design for adaptability as regulations evolve. We've embedded compliance-grade tech into projects from day one for years. The ones who survive value engineering?  The systems tied directly to regulatory requirements. ESG isn't a feature anymore. It's infrastructure. Is your tech stack ready for what's coming in 2026? #ESG #CarbonDisclosure #Decarbonization #BuildingCompliance #CommercialRealEstate #RealEstateDevelopment #PropTech #BuildingAutomation #SustainableDesign #ClimateTech #Layer10 #BuildingTomorrow

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This weekend we began converting part of our avocado acreage to prickly pear cactus. Our acreage burned in the Thomas Fire years ago, with trees, irrigation, and other infrastructure destroyed. Since then, we’ve been evaluating long-term alternatives that can handle California’s wildfire and water conditions while still working economically for a specialty grower. Prickly pear cactus is a crop that could meet that bar. • The U.S. imports nearly $900M of cactus fruit and pads each year • It can be dry-farmed, which means no irrigation required • It serves as a living firebreak • It also has emerging uses, from high-value fodder to biofuel feedstock for sustainable aviation fuel We’re fortunate to be testing this hypothesis with Western SARE, Professor @johncushman at University of Nevada, Reno, and the Carpinteria-Summerland Fire District. This is the kind of applied research that specialty growers increasingly need as climate and economics shift. But for crops like this to scale, the financing system has to adapt. Specialty growers can’t transition to climate-resilient crops or new production systems if banking and credit products are still designed around assumptions built for commodity crops. That’s why we’re building Thombar (banking built for specialty growers). Growers need a financial partner aligned with the realities they face, not the models that overlook them. #agfinance #agriculture #specialtycrops #nopales #wildfireresilience

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It's an analogy I hear often: VCs have the same high-risk, high-reward DNA as gamblers. From the gold seeking 49ers at Sutter's Mill to the naming of the largest podcast in our space (“All-In”), there's an undeniable connection between gambling and venture risk-taking. There's a certain "go west" or gambling spirit inherent in building a company from the ground up and backing lots of early startups. Sometimes, you do have to shoot blind, relying on gut instinct about a founder's compelling vision and little else. But here’s where the analogy breaks down: in venture, we aren't simply throwing chips on a roulette table. Our "adventure capitalism" is governed by structure: A Clear Target: Even when we have few signals to evaluate at an early stage, we are aiming at a fast-growing market and/or a proven founder profile. We are not shooting wildly; we're aiming in the right general direction. Due Diligence: We conduct market sizing, reference checks, financial modeling, etc. This is the opposite of blind faith. Fiduciary Responsibility: This is the ultimate check on the "gambler" impulse. This is not our money. We are custodians of other people's money—funds entrusted to us by LPs (current and former Fortune 500 CEOs, successful founders, etc.). Our job is to be disciplined allocators of capital, not reckless adventurers. We are risk-takers, but successful VCs are calculated ones as well. #VentureCapital #VC #Startups

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California has 6,000 metal fabrication shops and very few successors to run them. Jules Brenner is on a mission to fix that. Our manufacturing crisis is nationwide, but the succession problem is most acute in California. Many retiring owners also own the real estate underneath their shops. As tech and media boomed in CA, property values skyrocketed. Now, a typical owner might have an 8-figure parcel of land and a 7-figure business. With no children eager to take over, many choose the path of least resistance: close up shop and sell the land. That's where Jules comes in. He acquires small- to medium-sized fabs across the state, with a current focus on shops delivering critical infrastructure components (think telecom, transit, energy). He’s an engineer first, and knows how to modernize and grow a fab. Met Jules through his current raise on Mainshares and brought him on SMB15 for a crash course in metal fabrication: - Key roles in metal fabrication - The latest in automation - Importance of certs like AS9100 and ISO standards - The labor market - Competing against China If you're passionate about reindustrializing America, this is a good one. 🎙 Full interview live now (link below).

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Martin Eberhard played a key role early at Tesla and even brought in Elon Musk. Then he was pushed out of the company for pennies. Founders get most of the attention in Silicon Valley, but the ecosystem is built on the people who take a chance and join early stage ventures. Unfortunately, those same people are often the easiest to cut out. Founders can dilute early employees, change vesting terms, and restructure equity with little effort and zero consequences (you can literally do it in Carta in 5 minutes). Daniel Kottke was a close friend of Steve Jobs and helped build the Apple I and II computers. He got no equity (Steve Wozniak eventually gave him a few of his own shares). Brian Acton co-founded WhatsApp and stayed through the Facebook acquisition. When he left Facebook over privacy concerns, he had to walk away from $850 million in unvested stock. There’s more awareness now around how vesting works, what happens during a liquidity event, and how to think about re-ups and dilution. That’s good. But the truth is, if someone really wants to screw you, they can. It still comes down to one thing: trust the people you work with. Or don’t work with them at all.

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Proud to support Esusu as it enters its next phase of growth with a new $50M Series C fundraise! Wemimo Abbey, Samir Goel and team continue to lead the industry in credit building and economic mobility for millions of renters nationwide. Esusu (Founder Institute San Francisco portfolio company) is setting a new standard for combining economic and societal impact. By helping renters get credit (literally) for paying their rent on time, they are increasing financial access and empowering more people to become homeowners - in fact, they have already empowered over $30BN in new mortgages from renters across their system. I'm especially excited about how they plan to leverage their massive dataset to create even more impact. By making rental payment data a more prominent feature in mortgage underwriting, Esusu will be able to increase the number of people that can buy homes and build generational wealth. This is a truly inspiring company 🙌 Read more here: https://lnkd.in/guUKsGtY

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At HOMY Robotics , we’re building caregiving robots to help seniors age in place safely and independently in the comfort of their homes for as long as possible, while giving families support and peace of mind. We’re currently deploying in senior living communities across the Bay Area. If you have aging loved ones or are connected to senior living communities, please reach out at homyrobotics.ai. 🤖💙 Thank you, Adewale Yusuf , for featuring HOMY Robotics!

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At Dreamforce 2025, Salesforce and the Benioffs announced over $139 million in new grants — pushing their total lifetime contributions to the Bay Area past $1 billion. 💙 $100M — to build a new UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital and expand care for families in Oakland. 💡 $39M — to public schools, educators, and nonprofits focused on STEM and AI education. This milestone reaffirms Salesforce as San Francisco’s leading corporate philanthropist — blending innovation with deep local impact. From AI readiness in classrooms to world-class pediatric care, the company continues to prove that business can be a platform for change. 👉🏻 https://lnkd.in/g2Td2N3t #Salesforce #Dreamforce #AIeducation #philanthropy #SanFrancisco #innovation #UCSF #Benioff #AIforGood #community #leadership #STEM #healthcare #education #techforgood #CSR #impact #agenticAI #tatianasf #futureofwork #BayArea #dreamforce2025

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Project Vend reads less like a capability story and more like a governability story. Phase two improved because institutional scaffolding (tools, procedures, role separation) reduced predictable judgment failures—persuasion, compliance blind spots, boundary confusion, values drift. The board-level question isn’t “can an agent run a business?” but “what governance primitives must exist before we delegate authority.” Until incentives, escalation rights, and refusal boundaries are structurally enforced—not merely prompted—agents remain high-performing managers, not autonomous executives.

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#TheTenYearFixedTerm. It drives the entire startup ecosystem. Here’s how. Week 4 of “Venture Capital” at the Santa Clara University School of Law. LPs don’t want to be trapped in an illiquid venture capital fund forever, paying annual management fees. How can they get out? There is a secondary market for those interests, but it’s primarily opportunistic, and targets desperate sellers. So without a structural endpoint, they could be trapped forever. And there is: the 10 year fixed term. On that anniversary, subject to possible but limited extensions, the fund must terminate and wind-up, distributing its final assets to its investors. Seems benign, but the impact is massive! 1️⃣ Our #VC and #startup culture is defined by SPEED. Startup-to-growth-to-liquidity, as quickly as possible. Market dynamics are most certainly relevant, and prevalent. But there’s a structural driver as well: yes, the 10 year fixed term. If you are going to fully harvest your fund in 10 years, you need to front-load your investment activity (to ensure that your portfolio companies have at least some time to grow and ripen). So VCs race to deploy their capital within the first 5 years. But that’s not all - they then apply pressure on founders to drive toward exit. Which in virtually all cases, is M&A (sale of the company). The need for LP liquidity within 10 years drives the need for startup speed. 2️⃣ #AgencyCosts refer to the inevitable conflicts-of-interest that arise when one party (the agent) is tasked with acting on behalf of another party (the principal). In the #VC context, the ultimate principal is the #LimitedPartner, and their agent is the #VentureCapitalist. Limited partners want big returns, and liquidity. But what’s to stop the VC from diverting focus (and capital) toward an unending lifestyle instead? In other words, people have their own agendas and motivations. Always. So how does this principal, here, ensure that incentives are aligned and agency costs minimized? Yep. The 10 year fixed term. By dramatically limiting the space for self-dealing by creating a brief window of active existence, the VC is forced to focus on getting to liquidity. They simply do not have the opportunity to selfishly create an endless, self-perpetuating empire underwritten by the limited partners. Bracketed with their carried interest, the VCs are incented to focus on big returns in a concentrated period of time. Exactly what the LPs want! I was on the road this week, and so I recorded the lecture for the students. I normally can’t provide access to my lecture recordings, because they live behind university firewalls, but this week I bootlegged it and uploaded them to my YouTube channel. If you are interested, this lecture (broken into 3 segments) is available there for free - no agency costs in sight! #DWProf

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Are we seeing a fleeting Silicon Valley: It’s not just about the taxes. For years, the narrative of tech leaders "fleeing California" was blamed on a single number: the 15% (now 5%) tax rate. But the real conversation in the Valley right now is much more human—and much more complex. According to a recent deep dive by TechCrunch, the "Great Dispersal" of 2026 is being driven by three things that money can't fix: 📍 The Rise of the "Micro-Hub": Founders aren't just moving to Austin or Miami anymore. They are seeking "identity-rich" communities in places like Bozeman, MT, and Bentonville, AR, where high-speed satellite internet has made "the middle of nowhere" the new "center of everywhere." The "Quiet Life" Pivot: After a decade of "hustle culture," there is a massive shift toward lifestyle stability. The move isn't just a tax play; it’s a search for better public safety, shorter commutes, and a tangible connection to local community—things that have become increasingly scarce in the Bay Area. The End of Geographic Density: With the 2026 breakthroughs in AI-driven remote collaboration, the "collision of ideas" no longer requires being in a Palo Alto coffee shop. Innovation is becoming decentralized, and for many, California is now a place you visit for board meetings, not where you raise a family. The Takeaway: Silicon Valley isn't dying—it's evolving into a state of mind rather than a zip code. The tech industry is finally learning that you can build the future without losing your sense of place. https://lnkd.in/gtNN7Bn5 #SiliconValley #TechTrends #FutureOfWork #DigitalNomad #CaliforniaExodus #Innovation

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The Headline family is experiencing incredible momentum, and today our portfolio company DeepIP is announcing a $25M Series B, bringing total funding to $40M.  This is the kind of company that doesn’t just add AI to a workflow, but it sets the standard for an entire category. The momentum speaks for itself: 1️⃣ 10x ARR growth in < 18 months 2️⃣ Trusted by 400+ law firms and leading corporate IP teams globally 3️⃣ 2M+ chats on the DeepIP platform We’ve had the chance to back FX (Francois-Xavier) L. and Edouard D., leading their Seed round with Headline. Watching them take on a problem as complex and high-stakes as patent work has been genuinely impressive. And working with them has been an absolute pleasure: these 2 are coupling very high ambition and humility. Tech built in Europe, but opening the US office very early and FX starting a life in NYC with his family with 0 hesitation in order to build a global category leader in the IP industry. What convinced me early is still what stands out today: patent teams don’t need another standalone AI tool. They need something that fits the way the work actually happens: documents, long-running matters, multiple stakeholders, and zero room for sloppy context handoffs. Big congrats to the whole DeepIP team + Korelya Capital, Balderton & Serena Proud that we’re doubling down at Headline and continuing the support for what’s next!

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Software needs California. Hardware not so much. The US is a large, diverse place and there are so many great places to build factories. You can start a hardware company in California, but don't plan on scaling it there. https://lnkd.in/gEkHc-BM

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Good read // The Pacific Northwest is standing at a once-in-a-generation crossroads. If you care about economic development, infrastructure, energy policy, or job growth in Oregon, read up! A massive power demand surge is already underway. The next wave of growth, data centers, EVs, AI infrastructure, advanced manufacturing, and housing, will flood into the regions that can offer inexpensive, reliable, and resilient electricity. A few pulls... >>> Oregon’s electricity demand is projected to jump 30% in the next decade. <<< This is driven by data center expansion, EV adoption, population growth, and advanced industry. >>> Grid capacity is lagging, but Google and CTC Global are stepping in with a solution: advanced transmission conductors that can double power capacity without building new lines. This is about jobs, competitiveness, and unlocking economic opportunity for the next 20 years. I would love to see my beloved PNW and Oregon lead on this.

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Seattle VC panels are not exactly known for being spicy, which is why my AMA with Brooke and Rolanda at AI House last night was so refreshing. We got into the questions founders are too embarrassed to ask out loud. How do VCs actually decide behind closed doors? What counts as traction when you have zero revenue? Is enterprise SaaS dead? Do Seattle founders actually have a shot against the Bay Area? A few takeaways that stood out: ✅ Associates can't get to yes without a partner sponsor — but partners often can't reach deals without associate diligence. Arm them with the facts to fight for you internally. ✅ Expect 50-70 investor conversations before a term sheet. Send your deck a day early but assume nobody read it 😎 ✅ Enterprise SaaS isn't dead, but it's shifting from seat-based to usage and outcome-based pricing. Large orgs still need governed software. ✅ Traction isn't just revenue. How excited are your customers? Would they advocate for you? Paying pilots with automatic, KPI-specific conversion > free trials, every time. ✅ Learning slope > starting background. The strongest founders they've backed adapted fast — not started perfect. Brooke and Rolanda WILL take a second meeting even if you whiff the first one! ✅ Seattle has fantastic enterprise buyers and founders with sales relationships into them. But the equity-vs-cash culture gap is real, and hiring against big tech is still hard. What made it different was how candid Brooke and Rolanda were about what actually happens after your pitch ends, aka the internal deal dynamics most founders never see. Shoutout to the room full of 100+ early-stage founders who went against the Seattle grain and asked hard questions live to the VCs. That energy is what makes AI House work. Huge thanks to Brooke B. (FUSE) and Rolanda Fu (Madrona) for keeping it real! More AMAs like this coming. Tag a founder who we should invite for the next one! #AIHouse (photo credit to Jonathan G. Blanco 🛠)

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San Francisco’s Paradox I walked the streets of San Francisco recently. Between boarded-up storefronts and billion-dollar unicorn offices, I saw the strangest paradox: a city collapsing and reinventing itself at the same time. For every person leaving, one more arrives with a startup dream. For every store that shuts, another AI lab opens. That’s the strange alchemy of this city: decay and innovation happening in the same zip code. Entrepreneurship thrives in paradox. Great founders look at broken systems not with despair, but with hunger. The cracks become entry points. The collapse becomes opportunity. If cities have souls, San Francisco has one made of contradictions—and maybe that’s why it’s still the epicenter of big ideas. Hashtags: #Innovation #Startups #SanFrancisco #SiliconValley #Cities

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Some great thoughts from my friend Neal Bloom🎩 about the critical importance of Founders in the starting and building of companies, and a startup ecosystem in a community. Sometimes we lose sight of this important fact. Service providers, non-profits, Angel investor, and venture capitalists are here to service the startup companies, and they are anchored by founders. He references a great book written by Brad Feld, “Startup Communities”. For those that don’t know, Brad is an entrepreneur, author, blogger, and venture capitalist at Foundry Group in Boulder, Colorado, a firm he started with partners Seth Levine, Ryan McIntyre, and Jason Mendelson. #sandiego #startups #venturecapital

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