ceo @forumdotmarket (yc w26). prev l/s @ balyasny
San Francisco
Joined January 2026
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Owen Botkin retweeted
Not money, not time - but attention.
“The real currency of life is attention
What you choose to pay attention to
And what you do about it”
- @naval
THE REAL CURRENCY OF LIFE
OUT NOW
Owen Botkin retweeted
Almost every AI company or inference cloud we talk to has the same problem: they raise a round, sign a handful of large compute contracts, and a big chunk of the money goes straight into a deposit before a single GPU is turned on. Equity is the most expensive capital a startup has, and it's being spent on a bill that comes due in months. No other commodity has been so reliant on a single source of funding.
Today that changes. Alongside K8, we've launched a $250M prepayment facility that lets AI companies and inference clouds finance their compute deposits against the contract instead of paying them out of their round. The operator still gets paid upfront. The buyer keeps its equity for research, hiring and product.
It's the first financial product we've built on top of our physical exchange, and it won't be the last. Thank you to the K8 team for underwriting something that hadn't been done before.
Liquid Compute and K8 announce a $250M prepayment facility to help compute buyers fund prepayment capacity commitments.
This facility makes compute financeable the way every other commodity already is, and we are already finalizing our first deployments with a few large inference clouds.
We're proud to build this with K8 as we bring the discipline of commodity finance to compute.
Owen Botkin retweeted
Today I'm excited to show off the HiveMind. I think it'll be the social media app that will connect the world; it'll allow you to understand anyone as well as you understand yourself.
It feels like the world is becoming more divided than ever; and it's because of social media. No one posts because you're scared to show your true self or don't have the time to document your life. Most platforms have devolved into short form dopamine machines.
The HiveMind is different. Though we share the same fundamentals as every social media app (stay caught up with your friends's lives and meet new people), we're a lot better at everything humans need to be social.
We make it easy to capture every aspect of your life through your camera roll. There's a notes tab (that feels like your favorite notes app) and allows you to talk into it (like your favorite dictation or meeting recording tool). And we give you an AI, your second brain, that talks to you, helps you, and documents your memories as you go.
You can then take those memories that are private to you, and choose to share it with different circles in your network. Your interactions with the Hive (the social feed) are also recorded as memories, which your AI second brain helps maintain.
Anything you see on the Hive, your AI can see as well. This allows your AI to help find you more cool people to talk to, or keep you updated on what your friends have been doing. And you can loop in your friends's AI into conversations, or message them directly to get caught up on their life.
I'd love it if you could give it a try! It's live on the app store, and if you'd be willing to hop on a call so I can see your experience, just comment and I'll send you a message!
I'm competing on a startup gameshow hosted by @stanleybystan #StanLaunchpad, and produced by the same people that make Mr. Beast videos. You'd be helping me survive elimination if you allowed me to interview you :)
compute is one of the more interesting asset classes to emerge over the past few decades
lots of structurally exposed firms with lots of spec demand (on both sides)
these guys are building it the right way. super bullish
I’m excited to share that today @liquidcompute emerges from stealth with a $15 million seed round. We are announcing pending applications before the CFTC for Designated Contract Market (DCM) and Derivatives Clearing Organization (DCO) status to build the first regulated orderbook to trade both cash and physically settled contracts on compute.
The reality of compute is that it is heterogeneous and cannot be stored, functioning much like electricity rather than oil. Our approach focuses on developing a highly efficient short-term market to underpin a cash-settled derivatives layer, operating similarly to PJM or ERCOT sitting below liquid derivatives markets.
Over recent months, I’m also happy to announce that Liquid Compute has collaborated with leading financial firms like Susquehanna International Group, @BGCGroupInc and @wintermute_t to facilitate liquid OTC trading for AI startups, neocloud providers, and lenders.
This round was co-led by @chemistry and @FirstMarkCap , with participation from K8 Cap, Night Capital, @ufo_holdings, @TrueBridgeCP, Brainchild Holdings (@kalvepuri), @ycombinator, and angels such as Dmitry Balyasny, @taro_f , @JdotJdotF, Ethan Lin and others from companies like CoreWeave, Jane Street, OpenAI
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Owen Botkin retweeted
AI made us 100x engineers. But outside code, we're still copying context between 6 chat threads and explaining ourselves from scratch.
So we built Turnstone: a free AI workspace for running persistent agents that actually know your work, powered by a second brain that lives on your machine.
Don't just be a 100x engineer. Be 100x at everything.
myturnstone.ai
my conclusion here is i should start looksmaxxing more
At @forumdotmarket, we analyzed 1.25M user relationships and mapped the attention of the entire LARPing X.
The bigger the circle, the more popular the niche. Edges connect niches whose members overlap the most.
Real estate agents are 2.6x more likely to be into golf than the average X user
Prediction market traders: 2.2x more likely to be interested in casinos
Looksmaxxers: 1.7x more likely to have music as a main interest
And music lovers are into soccer 1.7x more often than a random X user
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We analyzed over 1.25M relationships on X to find out where attention is flowing.
One interesting finding is prediction market speculators are 4× less likely to follow fashion than a comparable user.
Owen Botkin retweeted
There’s never been a better time to invest in cards.
Join the waitlist at tash.cards for a chance to win an ’86 Fleer Jordan worth ~$10K
Every referral = 10 extra entries.
Owen Botkin retweeted
People who have followed me for a while probably know that I'm skeptical about new asset classes. The last genuine new asset class to have gained any real traction was carbon credits and even that was due to regulatory pressures.
Starting a new asset class is extremely difficult. It needs:
- demand from retail to get it going
- long-term genuine hedging demand from institutions to keep it going
- some kind of cold-start solution for market makers
- brand-new exchange designs that are not susceptible to manipulation
Attention perpetuals are the only idea I've heard in the last five years that I'm bullish on.
Super proud to be an angel to these guys.
They have an exceptional vision and are building everything the right way
Owen Botkin retweeted
“Someone who spots a rising artist early can trade on that insight.”
Who hasn’t met a brand or an artist they wished they could bet on becoming huge?
Market creation of this sort is a generational design opportunity. If this piques your interest, @owenbotkin is hiring… DM me!
Owen Botkin retweeted
Democratizing eyeballs - it’s the new wave Robinhood except instead of anti Wall Street we’re in the era of anti big social media.
