Sarah Drinkwater

📢NEW PAPER! Where @davidthewid, @sarahbmyers & I unpack what Open Source AI even is. We find that the terms ‘open’ & ‘open source’ are often more marketing than technical descriptor, and that even the most 'open' systems don't alone democratize AI... See more

Amsterdam traded worldwide. The 17th-century city had four times the income per capita of Paris. Foreigners flocked here, and were left largely unbothered. Shorto notes that Amsterdam’s tolerance was – and is – above all pragmatic. Tolerance was good for business, for social peace and innovation. 17th-century Amsterdam published perhaps 30 per cent... See more

Introducing the Optimism Collective:

Roelof Botha brought up this same topic in a recent Invest Like The Best episode in an even more poignant way: "Imagine the venture business in a decade, and Sequoia is gone. We presided over the decline of Sequoia, this team, the people here in this room, it was us. What happened? What did we not do?"

Asking friends what would kill their firms, I heard; Performance. Succession planning. Politics. There was plenty of overlap in their answers. What stuck out to me the most was how a lot of these fears closely aligned with the revolutions already going on in venture that I've been writing about. The productization and improvement in a venture funds... See more

When I was at Index we would include two sections in our memos that were popularized by Larry Summers. We would write about a company's "pre-parade" and "pre-mortem." Not only a "dream the dream" scenario, but a "dream the nightmare."