Weekend Reading
Writing worth reading - 14th/15th June 2025
No Rivals: The Founders Fund Story by Mario Gabriele
“It would be too much to say that Thiel designed such a moment. But throughout his career, the former chess prodigy has shown an uncanny gift for seeing twenty moves into the future and pushing key pieces into position: JD to b4, Sacks to f3, Zuck to a7, Elon to g2, Trump to e8. He does so across power centers, moving between New York finance, Silicon Valley tech, and Washington’s military industrial complex. He employs a puzzling blend of discretion and impropriety, disappearing for months on end only to pop up with a spiky bon mot, a head-scratching new investment, or a titillating vendetta. Many of these maneuvers look like blunders at first, only for time to reveal them to be indications of stunning foresight…”
Why I don’t think AGI is right around the corner by Dwarkesh Patel
“. But the fundamental problem is that LLMs don’t get better over time the way a human would. The lack of continual learning is a huge huge problem. The LLM baseline at many tasks might be higher than an average human. But there’s no way to give a model high level feedback. You’re stuck with the abilities you get out of the box. You can keep messing around with the system prompt. In practice this just doesn’t produce anything even close to the kind of learning and improvement that human employees experience.” …
Software engineers are eating the world by David Chapman
“We are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy. More and more major businesses and industries are being run on software and delivered as online services—from movies to agriculture to national defense. Over the next 10 years, I expect many more industries to be disrupted by software, with new world-beating Silicon Valley companies doing the disruption in more cases than not.”
Founders (need) Focus
This week we shared that we’re starting Founders Focus, a new membership program from 9others; a space for you to carve out time to work on the hard things that really matter. Check out the announcement here.
What does it do?
Founders Focus keeps you focused, accountable and connected.
Who it’s for?
Founders Focus will suit Solo Founders, Remote (Co) Founders, and Freelancers, CxOs and Side Hustlers.
Qs?
Read more and check out the FAQs on the 9others Notion, here.
We hope you’ll join us.
Upcoming meals (and party) with 9others
Thursday 3rd July — Cheltenham — details and signup here.
And a Summer Party
Thursday 10th July — London — details and signup here.