Jeffrey Silverman

Opened the hotel nightstand drawer to find the Bible and the Book of Mormon. Even religion believes in a competitive marketplace.

Morning thought after reading the news… America wants to win the AI race, but communities are fighting the data centers needed to power it. Sound familiar? We fought cell towers too. Power, water & grid costs are real. Address them. But we can’t demand the future while blocking the infrastructure that makes it possible. #AI

What happens to SaaS when customers stop logging in? AI agents will increasingly do the work across multiple applications. MCP is accelerating that shift. We're already seeing MCP integrations move up the priority list across our portfolio. The trillion-dollar question for venture: Who owns the customer—the AI agent or the underlying software?

I love Instinct, but with @Muse, @OpenAI's Dots, and others entering the market, I worry about its future. My bet is that native extensions of the major LLM platforms will ultimately win. Instinct risks becoming the next @Clubhouse. Great product, but distribution and platform ownership may prove to be the real moat.

A warning to Democrats: Don’t get out over your skis. Listening to @CNN and @FoxNews this morning, my takeaway is that this was more a vote against Trump than an endorsement of the Democratic agenda. Don’t confuse the two.

How much would you pay for a live stream from inside the White House tonight? 🍿

Other than the NFL, is there a better night of television than Election Night? Two screens, two perspectives. Democracy in action.

Venture capital has officially jumped the shark. Sitting at a bar listening to two 24-year-olds talk VC like they’ve got it all figured out. 15 years in, and I’m still learning, listening, and questioning what I think I know every single day. A little humility goes a long way in this business.

A $400M exit is life-changing for a founder. For a $10B fund, it’s under half a percent. One sub-billion exit returned our entire Fund I. Part 2 of my series on seed: IPO or Die 👇 lnkd.in/p/gr3Nxv9V

Fort Lauderdale Airport is a glaring example of outdated infrastructure paired with premium pricing. For a major U.S. airport, the experience is remarkably subpar.

More than once this year, another seed investor has asked me what percentage of our fund we’re putting into moonshots. I’ve been writing first checks for over 15 years, and I’ve never seen seed change this fast. $10M “seed” rounds. Valuations set by two letters. Seed funds raising $250M+. I’m starting a five-part series on what this shift means for founders. Part 1 is below. Speak up as I would love to hear what you’re seeing. linkedin.com/pulse/seed-isnt…

Mailed in my vote today. Different method, same impact — a vote is a vote. Democracy works when we participate. 🇺🇸

Just got selected as fire marshal for our office floor. Same feeling I get when I’m sitting in an emergency exit row on a plane: honored by the responsibility, mildly concerned everyone is counting on me.

AI is in every part of our workflow. But AI without a knowledgeable QB is just a pile of tools. Ours is our CFO @taylordavidson And AI doesn't pick our investments. At seed you're betting on people. That's still on us at @LaconiaCapital lnkd.in/p/gc_kyBRs

My inbox is being overrun by emails clearly drafted by AI and sent by agents — same format, same cadence, same “personalized” opening. The targeting, though, is terrible. International. Series B+. B2C. Life sciences. Basically everything Laconia is not. Agents, a little homework please: @LaconiaCapital = Pre-Seed / Seed, B2B, Americas. AI can write the email. It should probably also read the website.

Game over

Hot take: “not growing fast enough for an AI company” is becoming a lazy VC critique. Not every AI business should look like a viral developer tool. Some of the biggest opportunities will take longer to sell because they’re attacking much larger budgets: labor, services and deeply embedded workflows. If you only benchmark revenue growth, you may be optimizing for the easiest product to buy — not the biggest company to build. lnkd.in/p/g68hrwBx

Political Poll of the day: @KatieZacharia made her debut today as White House Press Secretary. The only question that matters: Will she last longer than @Scaramucci 10 days?

Culture trifecta: Pollock and Krasner at the Met. Huyghe's AI and Warhol's soup cans at MoMA. Warhol and Lichtenstein at the Whitney. Quota filled through 2027. @metmuseum @MuseumModernArt @whitneymuseum

Walking slightly lost through @metmuseum when a security guard looks at me and says, “Let me guess — Pollock/Krasner: The Past Continues?” I said, “Am I that obvious?” We both laughed. Apparently I have a type.