Plugged into the Matrix
Year-end notes, 2025
I’m supposed to write predictions. What’s coming in 2026. What sectors I’m excited about. I’ll get to that at the end. But that’s not the meat of this.
The meat of this is that I got plugged into a matrix somewhere in the last two years and I’m still figuring out what that means. Being extremely online. Writing constantly. Building side projects at midnight. The whole VC game of allocation and access and logos. It’s all one thing now. I’m inside it.
First up, writing. A lot of my writing comes from anger. Just anger at people wasting their time. Chasing shiny things that don’t matter. I’m 35 now. I have two kids. And it’s kind of crazy that people think I’m much younger, but time is singularly the only thing you don’t get back. When I'm meeting 20-year-olds optimizing for the wrong stuff, I get it. I was the same way. Doesn't make it less frustrating to watch.
That frustration turned into 72 posts on Substack last year. A lot of them were short. Thoughts I’d get at 4am trying to put my son back to bed. Quick hits. The best performing posts were all long form though. Those were the ones that actually led to investments. Founders would read something, reach out, and we’d start a real conversation. What surprised me more: people reaching out just to say thank you. Not for intros or advice. Just to say a post helped them think about something differently, helped them feel seen. That keeps me going more than the metrics do. In 2026, I want to go back to long form. Less dopamine, more depth.
Naivety is something I keep coming back to. I think you really have to be naive to see big companies early. Every company starts off looking like a toy. And I’ve been actively trying to train my mind on how to stay naive. How to only focus on the thing that actually matters, which is product-market fit. At the same time I’ve tried to not clout chase. Not pile into companies that don’t have fundamentals, or founders who juice metrics. I had access to some of the hot rounds. If you look at annual letters from newer venture firms, they all tout “oh we got access, we got allocation.” I guess that’s the game if you want LP money someday. But I found a place where I can stay focused on fundamentals while still having a bullet a year. Something high risk-reward, even if it seems crazy.
I’ll always be a generalist. I’ll always be founder-driven first. That’s probably why I found a home at FPV. I left Khosla Ventures early this year. Everyone thought I was crazy. Great people, so much respect, so thankful. But I wanted to be part of a small team and make a few investments a year. As funds get larger it’s just hard to sit across the table and say this really matters. Wes and Pegah have been nothing but kind. I think they’re underrated and the world will see more of them.
Made three investments this year that I’m really proud of. But I’ve also lost deals. Not because the founder didn’t like me but because the other option had a logo that felt safer. Founders pattern-match. That’s just the game. I don’t know how to solve that except by being right more often than the logos. I want to be one of the best at this. Not chasing markups. Actually helping founders when it’s hard. That takes time. I’m okay with that. I also want to go deeper. At least one topic a month where I really understand what’s happening, not just pattern match across a hundred pitches.
The other thing that makes me different, or maybe just weird: I keep building side projects. It’s what I do when my kids are asleep. This is instead of sleep. Honestly it gives me energy. But I worry it comes across to founders like I haven’t made the full switch to investor yet. Like I’m hedging. When I’m actually talking to founders though, it feels like an advantage. I understand what hard problems mean. I understand what the future might look like. I’m not just asking questions from a framework.
Reading fell off the bed this year. Unless you count reading my kids’ books every day. I used to read sci-fi and narrative non-fiction. But if I’m going to be great at investing, I want to read more history. Bubbles. Technology shifts. What happened before. Not the boring kind though. Guns, Germs, and Steel is really hard for me to read. If you have recs for history that reads like story, let me know.
Health fell off too. Basically paid zero attention to it besides getting a full body MRI and biomarkers done. Exercise has been running around with my kids and that’s about it. Given everything happening with family, I really need to focus on this. Can’t take care of anyone if I’m not taking care of myself. Obvious but I needed to write it down.
Meera’s four now. Rishi just turned one. Both healthy. That’s the thing I’m most grateful for this year.
This was also my most vulnerable year with family. Everyone’s in India. Dad had surgery recently. I flew out for six days, which felt like nothing. My grandparents are slipping. They’re so far away. I’m grateful everyone is alive and safe and I’m also terrified. My brothers and I are starting to figure out long-term plans for my parents. I don’t have this figured out. I want more trips with just my kids. Hopefully Rishi gets through the diaper phase quickly. I did a few trips with just Meera last year and they were really fun. I want more time with my wife. It’s hard with family being so far but I’m going to try.
I've been thinking about giving back. Overnight Success has been a highlight. Getting founders and operators in the same room, no agenda, just conversation. That’s worked better than I expected. But my broader worry is I’m just making the rich richer. Connecting founders who are already going to make it to VCs who don't need the help. I want to figure out what real giving back looks like. I want to involve Meera so she sees it matters. Not a nice-to-have. Something I have to do.
Oh right. Predictions. That’s what I was supposed to write about. We’re living in the greatest time for technology. Too many good things happening at the same time. World models, computer use, synthetic humans, vertical robotics, long-horizon tasks that actually complete. On the capital side, the zombiecorns of 2021 finally meet their fate. Purse strings tighten. Series A gap goes wider. More on all of this in another post.
That’s where I’m at. Still plugged in. Still figuring out which parts are signal and which parts are noise I’ve mistaken for signal.
See you in 2026.
If there's a post you have particularly enjoyed this year, or something you want me to write more of, let me know.
We are still good if just your writing is a byproduct of your anger. We rarely examine the mental state under which extraordinary founders make decisions to pursue building successful businesses, which hopefully lead to great institutions in the long-term. But let me tell you it has a lot to do with past experiences, unresolved childhood wounds and trauma-like symptoms.
The naivety framing is sharp. Training yourself to stay naive while avoiding clout-chasing are fundamentally different skills, and the tension between them probably explains why most people end up doing one or the other but not both. Side projects while everyone's asleep is relatable, though I wonder if it actualy does signal hedging to founders or if that's just projected anxiety. In my experience the people who keep building tend to understand product intuition better than pure pattern-matchers, which seems like it'd be an advantage when evaluating early stage stuff.