Fundraising milestones, OpenAI's latest acquisition, and the merits of planning ahead

One of the hardest dynamics of today’s venture landscape is figuring out milestones to benchmark yourself against. Categories like American Dynamism aren’t mature enough for there to be definitive milestones, and the software / AI world is shifting so rapidly that founders are left to explain their own benchmarks (or adapt to rapidly changing ones).

In today’s episode Grant and Hammad discuss how to navigate this type of uncertainty, and how OpenAI’s latest acquisition compliments the discussion. They also discuss Mike Dempsey’s latest piece on venture fundraising and how it captures the current market zeitgeist.

This is perhaps the most active the tech ecosystem has ever been. All the incumbents are live players, and the challenger companies are aggressively expanding their horizons. It’s going to be a fun ride.

🔗 Show Resource Links

• Announcing io

• Paul Graham’s Tweet

• Mike Dempsey’s The First 40 Months

🎙️ Podcast Links

• Spotify

• Apple Podcasts

• ⁠X (FKA Twitter)⁠

• Subscribe

🌀 About Motion Blur

Exploring what makes great companies and technologies work. Brought to you by Grant Gregory & Hammad Aslam. Grant is a Partner at Cantos where he focuses on physical world technologies. Hammad is a Partner at Kivu Ventures, Susa’s growth fund.

Learn more about the hosts:

• Grant Gregory, ⁠Embers⁠

• Hammad Aslam, ⁠Susa Ventures

Intro music credit: ⁠Will Harrison⁠