What do you get when you put the best founders you can find in one room?
At least $192 billion in value created (!!) and some really good pasta.
Last night,
@dhaber and I cohosted an
@a16z and
@eniac.vc "Human Unicorn Dinner' at the acclaimed Torrisi in NYC — an intimate gathering of founders and operators who have built billion-dollar companies, navigated acquisitions, and rebuilt from scratch.
In the room:
Operators who scaled Axiom Space, ZocDoc, Maven, Databricks, Notion, Stripe, Reddit, Muse, Bond, Bluecore, mParticle, Moloco, Metaplane, Wealthsimple, Slice. Founders now building the next wave — Upscale, PlanZ, Octogen, Crossterra, Trove, Sitelevel, and more.
But the number that hit me hardest wasn't the valuation figure. It was the quality of the conversation.
We went deep on AI — the real stuff, not the headlines:
→ Has AI lowered the bar to build a unicorn, or raised it?
→ What does it mean to be a 'technical' founder when AI can write the code?
→ How do we take care of humans after the AI job disruption?
We also talked about when to sell and when to keep going. What it really means to 'win.' And laughed about the failures nobody writes about.
Here's what I keep coming back to: building community with founders is critical, especially at the highest levels where it can often be the loneliest.
That's why rooms like this matter so much. No pitches. No performance. Just people who've actually done it, being real with each other over (really) good food.
Thank you to every founder who showed up and helped build this community of founders operating at the highest levels, right in our backyard in New York City. Can't wait until the next one! 🗽🦄🍝
