Helion Needs You

Helion has been progressing even faster than I expected and is on pace in 2024 to 1) demonstrate Q > 1 fusion and 2) resolve all questions needed to design a mass-producible fusion generator. The goals of the company are quite ambitious—clean, continuous energy for 1 cent per kilowatt-hour,...

Jul 2022

DALL•E 2

Today we did a research launch of DALL•E 2, a new AI tool that can create and edit images from natural language instructions. Most importantly, we hope people love the tool and find it useful. For me, it’s the most delightful thing to play with we’ve created so far. I find it to be creativity-enhancing, helpful for many different situations, and fun...

Apr 2022

Helion

I’m delighted to be investing more in Helion. Helion is by far the most promising approach to fusion I’ve seen.David and Chris are two of the most impressive founders and builders (in the sense of building fusion machines, in addition to building companies!) I have ever met, and they have done something remarkable. When I first invested in them back...

Nov 2021

The Strength of Being Misunderstood

A founder recently asked me how to stop caring what other people think. I didn’t have an answer, and after reflecting on it more, I think it's the wrong question.Almost everyone cares what someone thinks (though caring what everyone thinks is definitely a mistake), and it's probably important. Caring too much makes you a sheep. But you need to be at...

Dec 2020

PG and Jessica

A lot of people want to replicate YC in some other industry or some other place or with some other strategy. In general, people seem to assume that: 1) although there was some degree of mystery or luck about how YC got going, it can’t be that hard, and 2) if you can get it off the ground, the network effects are self-sustaining.More YC-like things are...

Sep 2020

Researchers and Founders

I spent many years working with founders and now I work with researchers.Although there are always individual exceptions, on average it’s surprising to me how different the best people in these groups are (including in some qualities that I had assumed were present in great people everywhere, like very high levels of self-belief).So I’ve been thinking...

Jun 2020

Project Covalence

Almost every company and non-profit working on COVID-19 that I offered to help asked for support with clinical trials—for companies focusing on developing novel drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics, rapidly spinning up trials is one of their biggest bottlenecks. Science remains the only way out of the COVID-19 crisis. Dramatically improving clinical trials,...

Jun 2020

Idea Generation

The most common question prospective startup founders ask is how to get ideas for startups. The second most common question is if you have any ideas for their startup.But giving founders an idea almost always doesn’t work. Having ideas is among the most important qualities for a startup founder to have—you will need to generate lots of new ideas in...

May 2020

Please Fund More Science

Experts on the COVID-19 pandemic seem to think there are three ways out—that is, for life, health, and the economy to return roughly to normal. Either we get a vaccine good enough that R0 for the world goes below 1, a good enough treatment that people no longer need to be afraid, or we develop a great culture of testing, contract tracing, masks, and...

Mar 2020

Funding for COVID-19 Projects

I’m trying to fund startups/projects helping with COVID-19, because it’s basically the one thing I know how to do that can help.  I think we will soon have enough testing capacity, so now I’d like to start funding more startups working on:Producing a lot of ventilators or masks/gowns very quickly.  This will require a lot of repurposing and creativity...

Mar 2020