Jim Ford’s Post

San Francisco is the only tech hub with growing startup formation. Politicians want to kill it🚨 Garry Tan on the data: SF has +24% company formation growth. Every other city is declining. But city hall is doing everything it can to drive companies out: ▪️ 800% gross receipts tax hike proposed ▪️ Lab bans threatening biotech and AI startups This is the only VC hub in America still growing, and local politicians are trying to destroy what makes it special. The irony: SF's comeback is real, and the biggest threat isn't competition from other cities. It's self-inflicted. Do you think SF stays the AI capital or does policy push startups elsewhere?

Massachusetts has always been where things start. Now we’re organizing to make sure some of the world’s most important building starts here too. In 1635, Boston put a light up on a pole to guide ships effectively– that area was inevitably called Beacon Hill. We are creating that same signal for founders. If you care about -1 → 0 → 1 company building, we need you! The Massachusetts AI Coalition is building out task forces focused on one thing: helping founders launch fast here, grow here, and scale here. This is execution, not optics. ⚡ Fast founder starter packs (capital, space, GPU credits in days — not months) 🌉 Real bridges to pilots, first 10 hires, and VC capital 🏠 Hacker houses, residencies, and places where builders actually gather 🧲 Convening world-class talent: students, operators, newcomers 🛠️ Vibe Days & Nights: hands-on experiments, not panels 📣 Storytelling at scale: 100+ new voices amplifying Boston wins 🤝 Structured deal-making to bring companies here fast 🥂 Executive integration: real friendships, real peer networks ❤️ Helping builders truly feel at home: not just headquartered here I’ll be focused primarily on Project Beacon, our -1 → 0 → 1 signal for founders, and working across the board to help more companies through our other task forces led by Lily Lyman, Ben Katz, Carmel Galvin, Anna Suslova, Meghan Verena Joyce, Josh Friedman, Kate Gulliver, Ryan Durkin, and countless others. The first 30 days decide where a startup lives. We need as many founders, operators, investors, students, and collaborators involved as possible. If you obsess over early momentum, if you want to help founders succeed, if you want Massachusetts to continue to win in the AI era like Sophie Panarese, myself, and the rest of the Coalition do, PLUG IN! Details are on the website, linked in comments. DM me if you are interested in learning more.

In 2022 our tech clients were expanding monthly. In 2023 the calls changed: “Pause.” Same companies. Different funding environment. Little secret for venture-backed startups: office demand is often about  investor confidence. As rates climbed, capital demanded profitability. Growth at all costs gave way to discipline. Real estate was often first on the chopping block. Space is easy to take. Much harder to unwind. And the balance sheet almost always dictates the strategy. Now in 2026 tech is a different animal. AI capital is flowing at historic levels. We’re seeing Series A companies sign 10-year leases. Mind boggling. Cycles within cycles.

Miami isn't the next Silicon Valley, but it's carving out its own unique tech identity. 🌴 - Investment Boost: Miami and Fort Lauderdale startups raised $3 billion in 2025. Not quite the Bay Area's $177 billion, but it's a start. - Wealth Magnet: Miami attracts decision-makers from family offices and private equity—those who've already "made it." - Reverse Strategy: Wealth is coming first, with hopes startups and engineers will follow. - Big Moves: Companies like Palantir moving HQs show real commitment to Miami. - Talent Shortage: Local engineering talent is limited; many look offshore. Could Miami become the next hotspot for the creator economy, prop tech, and fintech? The foundation is there. #MiamiTech #Recruitment #Innovation

the new york tech scene feels like it’s splitting into two speeds right now on paper everything looks strong.. nyc startups pulled in roughly $1.6b in venture funding in january alone, across more than 100 deals investors around union square and soho keep repeating the same line in private: the market has tightened, weaker companies have fallen away, and capital is concentrating around fewer but stronger technical teams but if you listen to what founders and engineers in the city are saying, the picture underneath is more nuanced two shifts are happening at the same time. • AI infra is absorbing a disproportionate share of capital the money is clustering around the picks and shovels ↳ Runway coming off a $300m+ round and expanding its research and enterprise teams ↳ Traversal raising again, backed by sequoia and kleiner perkins, tackling a brutal engineering problem: causal debugging inside AI-driven systems and distributed infra ↳ new data infrastructure startups like Protege and creative AI tooling companies like FLORA pulling serious venture backing early the centre of gravity is shifting toward systems that make AI work reliably rather than the flashy products layered on top everything else is fighting harder for oxygen. meanwhile a few blocks away venture firms are hosting panels about responsible AI my view is that new york tech is becoming two ecosystems running side by side ↳ one building serious infrastructure for the next generation of software ↳ one drifting into financialised spectacle where almost anything can become tradable if you want to understand where nyc tech is heading, don’t just watch the funding rounds.. watch where the smartest engineers are choosing to spend their time

San Francisco doesn't have better engineers than Seattle. It has better rooms. This sounds like a throwaway line but I think it explains billions of dollars in missing startups. Seattle has 23% of all U.S. AI engineers and second only to San Francisco. But Seattle captures just 3.6% of AI startup funding. While San Francisco captures 47%. (credit Peter Walker) Same caliber of talent. Wildly different output. (See the image below) Seattle ranks #2 in North America for tech talent. But #15 globally as a startup ecosystem. A 13-position gap between where the talent sits and what it produces. So what does SF actually have that Seattle doesn't? It's not smarter people. It's not more capital, capital follows startups, not the other way around. It's rooms. SF has hundreds of environments where builders run into each other repeatedly. Hacker houses. Founder residencies. Builder dinners. Dense communities where operators spend enough time together that real relationships form - the kind where you learn how someone thinks, how they handle disagreement, how fast they move. Seattle has happy hours. I've been in Seattle's tech scene for two years. I've talked to hundreds of builders. The talent here is genuinely world-class. But the infrastructure that converts talent into startups barely exists. Low time density. No repetition. No rooms where the talent collisions happen. A few of us have been building that infrastructure through something called OnlyExit. Small rooms. Builders who have actually shipped things. A format designed so you learn how someone thinks not just what they do. If you have built real products, led real teams, or shipped something from zero, this is the room. If you are looking for a casual mixer, this probably isn't it. 3/12 Thursday. Moxy Downtown, Seattle. 25 people. lu.ma/u9nuhvfg

Every week I hear founders say: “Germany is too slow for startups.” “Funding is impossible.” “The ecosystem is broken.” But after working inside the system, I realized something uncomfortable: The ecosystem isn’t broken. Most founders simply don’t understand how to play the game. Germany doesn’t reward hype. It rewards structure, credibility, and patience. Investors want proof before promises. Institutions want compliance before growth. Partners want reliability before vision. If you come with the Silicon Valley mindset of “move fast and break things”, you will feel frustrated. But if you understand how Germany actually works: Build relationships with institutions. Understand funding programs. Show operational discipline. Demonstrate real market demand. Then suddenly doors start opening. The founders who succeed here are not always the loudest. They are the ones who understand the rules of the system. And once you understand the rules, Germany becomes one of the most powerful ecosystems to build a company in Europe. The question is not: “Is the system broken?” The real question is: Are you willing to understand how the system works?

🔗: https://on.wsj.com/47ycIOX Artificial-intelligence startup Aaru’s first New York headquarters had a basketball hoop and a “rage room” where employees smashed tables with a hammer after coding failures. The conference room served double duty as a co-founder’s bedroom. The space looked like a cross between a frat house and a high-tech research lab, a fitting aesthetic for a company founded by teenagers. Aaru recently reached a $1 billion valuation, making it one of a growing crop of hot companies led by people who have barely cracked their 20s and want to shake up entire industries in lieu of attending college. Co-founders Cameron Fink and Ned Koh started the company two years ago when they were 18 and 19 years old, respectively, along with technology chief John Kessler, then 15. (Kessler isn’t yet old enough to join the board, and his father had to sign off on the investment paperwork.) Their firm’s work offers a window into how AI is automating labor-intensive, expensive tasks once controlled by research companies, consultants and Madison Avenue.

The Wall Street Journal ran a piece this week about AI solutions that simulate human populations so companies can test ideas without running traditional research. This space is starting to move quickly. Over the past year I’ve been exploring and building in this area with Matt MacBeth and Tom Foust. Although the applications are vast, most recently we’ve been focused on the goal to help teams pressure test ideas with AI-generated audiences. Working on this has made one thing clear. These systems are powerful, but they also raise real methodological questions. When do simulated responses actually reflect real human behavior? When do they mislead us? We’ve been exploring these questions and discovering a lot. The next chapter of insights will involve learning how to leverage AI-generated perspectives and/or traditional research methods through the lifecycle of brand. The industry of consumer simulation is still early. But the experimentation happening right now is going to shape how organizations understand people over the next decade. https://lnkd.in/g4i_6vkV

If you haven’t heard about Aaru yet, you will continue to see them make headlines…their technology is transforming decision making and helping steer corporate strategy. It’s so exciting to follow their journey and see the impact they are making first hand.