Infrastructure is destiny. On the Moon, nuclear reactors are this generation’s flag. China intends to put a reactor on the Moon by 2035 — we must beat them. cc: @DougBernauer

The most lucrative story arc of our era is the inversion of good and evil. One could say it’s the most common and profitable arc of the 21st century. Wicked is the simple example of this narrative: taking a well-known story that everyone remembers from childhood and inverting the hero and villain, telling the story with “empathy” for villain and a complete revision of the backstory. Wicked is the second-highest grossing musical of all time at $1.7 billion, just after the Lion King, which debuted six years prior. It’s the highest-grossing musical ever adapted for film, earning $750 million at the box office. But look around and you see the Wickedification of every narrative. It’s a seductive and powerful formula. There’s no story arc I’m more skeptical of, mainly because it’s so easy to write and highly lucrative for its authors.

Positive sum versus zero sum. In tech, you make money and influence on the upside, so casting the net wide and consistently filling the funnel with new people and ideas is incentivized and rational. Being too protective of network or capital means you miss the big one, and consistent big ones is power. In Washington, every two years the board shifts. Elections are zero sum, and you have to fight for every vote. Casting the net wide will break alliances and threaten orders or coalitions that have been built over decades. Everyone responds to their incentives, but best to know where you play best. People who excel in positive sum games are usually pretty bad at zero sum.

Saturday mornings at Home Depot. Greatest country in the world. 🇺🇸🔨🚀

Never apologize for winning.

American Power is American Power 🇺🇸⚡️ Stay tuned.

Why is building hardware so hard? I realized a shocking amount of my life has brought me back to the question, so I wrote down a bit of how I learned (some of!) what it takes to really build a physical product + how deeply-integrated tech can soon help us do it faster.

Congratulations to @zoink, Praveer and the @figma team on going public. When we originally invested, we said we were entering the decade of design. Amazing how much that has happened. Thanks for letting us at @a16z be part of the journey.

Margit took a brand new firm in a 50 year old industry and built the best known global brand in Venture Capital. She has been a giant in the field and we are eternally grateful for her amazing contributions to Andreessen Horowitz.

Today, Saronic unveiled Echelon – a unified platform for high-fidelity simulation, advanced mission planning, and real-time command-and-control across our growing family of Autonomous Surface Vessels. This is a major step forward in enabling one-to-many operations, where a single operator can control a fleet of maritime assets reliably, safely, and from anywhere.