Siliconnector by Zamir Shukho

I saw this image by Pascal Bornet, and it made me think that sometimes when I talk to any LLM, it feels like it deliberately misinterprets what I say and does something slightly different from what I ask. In order for me to reiterate again, it can consume more tokens. It's surprising to me how many times I have to correct something that was already in the memory, was already done many times before. Is it the situation where companies building these LLMs cannot tame what they created, and it constantly needs more guardrails, more direction, more guidance in order to perform the same exact task it did ten minutes ago with the same exact outcome? I don't know. Tell me what you think. Is it a hidden way to consume more tokens?

It’s Friday MEME time. Gemini 3.7 Flash has been finally released.

Jensen Huang just ranked #1 on Glassdoor's 2026 Best CEOs list, with an astonishing 99% employee approval rating. I've met Jensen when we visited NVIDIA with a group of startups, and one thing has always stood out to me - he's genuine. The same person on stage is the person you meet one-on-one. It's also interesting that this recognition comes from employees, not from investors, analysts, or the media. In an industry where trust in leadership has been declining, having 99% of your team behind you says a lot. Great companies are rarely built by strategy alone. They're built by leaders who create a culture where talented people want to stay, do their best work, and build something meaningful together. Congratulations to Jensen and the NVIDIA team on a well-deserved recognition. Source: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-life-glassdoor-best-ceo-2026/

Battle of the AIs Credit: James Eagle

The Highest grossing directors of all time! Steven Spielberg leads the way with $10.95 BILLION from 30+ films, followed by James Cameron with $10.60 BILLION from just 10 feature films. Christopher Nolan ranks #3 with an incredible $7.88 BILLION from 13 films. Three legendary filmmakers. $29.43 BILLION combined at the global box office.

It's Friday MEME time. When your Ai doesn't understand you.

🏍️ One spot just became available for this founder/investor adventure. My friends at 12 Scrappy Founders are hosting a dirt biking experience this Saturday, Aug. 8, in Los Gatos. It's a small group of Seed to Series B+ founders and investors. No experience is required—it's beginner-friendly, with professional instructors. In fact, several attendees have never ridden a motorcycle before. I was planning to join, but I can't make it, so my spot is now available on a first-come, first-served basis. If you've been looking for a fun way to meet great founders and investors while trying something completely different, this is a great opportunity. Apply here: https://luma.com/rxo6w33j

This never works.

The new reality of my laptop power consumption.

Last Friday I joined a VC Happy Hour in Palo Alto, where Ali Moiz introduced his new book, 3 Startups, 40 Pivots: How to Not F*cking Give Up. The book isn't another startup playbook. It's the story of Ali and Murti Hussain's 20+ year entrepreneurial journey—building three startups, making more than 40 pivots, raising venture capital, navigating failures, and ultimately building successful companies. The central message is simple: startup success is rarely a straight line, and resilience is often the most valuable founder trait. Vibranium Venture Capital is proud to be an LP in the Stonks Fund, so it was great to catch up with Ali and many friends from the Silicon Valley startup and VC community. A nice bonus was getting signed copies for both myself and KENJI HIDAKA from KEPCO. Looking forward to reading it. 📖 Book: 3 Startups, 40 Pivots: How to Not F*cking Give Up https://www.amazon.com/dp/1544551371

This McDonald's post went viral because it did one thing exceptionally well: It turned a shared customer experience into an inside joke. We've all pulled up to the drive-thru and said, "Can I get... uhhhhhh..." McDonald's simply acknowledged it. That made people feel seen. The best brands don't just sell products—they create moments their customers instantly recognize and relate to. Ask yourself: Are you just selling to your customers, or are you building a connection with them?

It's Friday FUN time. Peak Apple. A $199 metal claw to stop your MacBook from going to sleep while your AI agents keep working. It's called the iClaw. 😂 The funniest part is that people actually looked for it in the Apple Store. And if Apple ever released it, it would probably outsell most AI startups.

--- Someone drew this about life. It works just as well for startups, or enterprise strategic initiatives. Birth on one end. Death on every branch. In between, a lot of choices. Both work the same way. Every junction is a decision, and most of the deaths on this map are avoidable - the risk was there to be seen before anyone committed. So success is mostly not dying. Every avoidable risk you catch keeps the venture alive a little longer, and alive long enough eventually looks like a win. You can't guarantee success. But you can stop picking the branch that ends.

Unitree Super Athlete AS2-W. Look at that mobility, amazing. Fluid movement. Supports a continuous 16kg payload, with 30+ km unloaded driving range.

The Vision BMW ALPINA - unveiled at Villa d'Este this spring. It's the first car since BMW took full control of the Alpina brand this year. A 5.2-meter grand tourer with a V8, positioned above M and aimed straight at Bentley. Production starts 2027. The car is beautiful. The strategy behind it is better. Alpina spent 60 years as a small family operation making BMWs better than BMW could. Instead of letting that fade away, BMW bought the brand and put it above its own flagship line. Sometimes the smartest move for a giant is admitting that somebody smaller does it better - and handing them the top shelf.

YC published its Requests for Startups for Fall 2026. Thirteen ideas they want to fund. Read it twice. Founders read it as a menu. But if you're a corporate executive, read it as a warning: each line is a market where funded teams will show up within a year, moving faster than your planning cycle. What jumps out to me: almost nothing on the list is about better models. Data centers on ships. Sensors for factory floors. Compliance without the compliance team. Proving you're human. The frontier has moved from intelligence to deployment. Which one would you put money on? My pick is #10 - the real world is still barely measured.

Saw this cartoon in a post by Andreas Horn. The comments mostly agree on one thing: AI fails at execution. I've been around too many of these projects to buy that. By the time execution starts falling apart, the failure already happened months earlier, in a boardroom, when the decision was made on assumptions and gut feeling instead of deep research and expertise. The landmines were all there from day one. And it's not because executives are careless. Most of them do some research. But innovation lives in uncertainty, and traditional analysis wasn't built for that - it's hard to ask the right questions about something that doesn't exist yet. CB Insights studied hundreds of failed initiatives, and the top reason was not technology or change management. 43% built something nobody needed. This is fixable. The best venture investors deal with uncertainty for a living, and their way of thinking - the venture mindset - is learnable. It won't guarantee success. But it catches the avoidable risks before it's too late. So it's not the fault of the guy under the bridge. Give the four people on the cliff a better operating system for growth, and the bridge gets finished.

Hi all, We’d like to invite you to the first webinar of our INSIDE THE 2% series: De-risk the $10M+ Strategic Initiative - Thursday, September 17, 9:00 AM PT, on Zoom. 98% of growth ideas never pay off. Professor Pedram Mokrian - INNOVERA CEO and Co-founder - will walk through the go/no-go framework for committing capital with confidence: why strong business cases fail, what evidence actually matters, and how to make the call. Live Q&A at the end. RSVP: https://lu.ma/nrfhh6rj All registrants receive the recording.

That would be me as a kid wondering, if someone told me about "the future" that we live in right now.