Matt Mandel (@matthewjmandel) / X

Matt Mandel

1,755 posts

Matt Mandel

@matthewjmandel

ordinary reasoning rendered persistent

Joined January 2015

Pinned
Matt Mandel
@matthewjmandel
Apr 23
Are base LLMs aligned by default? Inspired by @lawhsw's recent essay, I tested 5 Qwen3 base models (0.6B → 14B) on 28 harmful-request scenarios. As they scale, their default response flips from "help" to "refuse" — without any safety training 🧵
364K
Matt Mandel
@matthewjmandel
Jun 17, 2025
I hadn't realized Brex had already raised $300mm before Ramp raised their first round. Pretty wild to go head-on against a well-funded competitor like that
234K
Matt Mandel
@matthewjmandel
Jan 8, 2025
The Deep Tech Opportunity Far from permanently redefining venture capital, the software moment of the last thirty years– where lean software startups could iterate their way to product-market fit and produce outlier returns– might be remembered as an anomaly. In the below
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Matt Mandel
@matthewjmandel
Mar 2, 2023
I’m super excited to be joining @usv as a new analyst. If you’re building something that aligns with our theses, I’d love to chat!
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Matt Mandel
@matthewjmandel
Jan 5, 2024
USV AI Roundtable #1: AI and Search We're kicking off a new lunch series at USV. We're going to host monthly roundtables on topics in AI with investors, operators, and researchers in the NYC community. Our first roundtable will be on January 31st on AI and Search. Search
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Matt Mandel
@matthewjmandel
Aug 29, 2022
Working at a deep tech startup, I’ve gotten excited about this often underrated part of the tech ecosystem, and I wrote up some thoughts on why others should be excited too
Four Theses on Deep Tech
From mandel.substack.com
Matt Mandel
@matthewjmandel
Jul 26, 2024
The Three Kinds of “Deep Tech” Startups Something that’s frustrating about investing in non-purely-software companies is the poverty of vocabulary. People talk about “deep tech”, “hard tech”, “frontier tech”, “atoms”, and so on. Sometimes they just mean to distinguish hardware
10K
Matt Mandel
@matthewjmandel
Jul 10, 2021
This Krugman paper on interstellar trade is incredibly endearing princeton.edu/~pkrugman/inte… (h/t @wwwojtekk)
Matt Mandel
@matthewjmandel
Oct 9, 2023
It’s deeply embarrassing to see @harvard become a home for terrorist apologia. These groups could have simply said nothing if they didn’t want to stand with the civilized world in condemning Hamas’ atrocities. But they’re proud to align themselves with evil
Yael Bar tur
@yaelbt
Oct 8, 2023
This is the final crack in my broken heart - a joint statement from @Harvard students. I could be sitting in class with these students, watching children brutally murdered, raped, kidnapped and their mutated bodies torn apart by a jeering crowd - and hear why it’s justified.
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Matt Mandel
@matthewjmandel
Mar 7, 2024
Replying to @michael_nielsen
Nozick’s “Philosophical Explanations” has a wild intro
6.8K
Matt Mandel
@matthewjmandel
Nov 6, 2024
Congrats to my mom on her naturalization ceremony! ❤️🇺🇸
4.3K
Matt Mandel
@matthewjmandel
Jun 27, 2024
Just got back from an especially meaningful trip to Israel I had the privilege to meet with some of the heroes of 10/7, family of hostages still in Gaza, politicians, journalists, and other Israeli leaders I left heartbroken by the stories I heard but inspired by the resilience
2.9K
Matt Mandel
@matthewjmandel
Mar 8, 2024
Electric group tonight at the USV office discussing AI and art Thanks to Wesley Block @zachkrall @honeyimholm @dnosk @JonathanJarvis @kelin_online @kev_esh @filmstreet and Jacob Goldstein for the incredible demos Felt like a glimpse of the future
3.4K
Matt Mandel
@matthewjmandel
Dec 17, 2024
At @usv, we invest in markets under transformative pressures. Progress in AI is a pressure that's transforming just about every other market. The nature of AI's impact will be dictated by the pace of technical progress from here and the structure of the foundation model market,
Rebecca Kaden
@rebeccakaden
Dec 17, 2024
We (@usv) keep coming back to 2 axes that seem to determine outcomes in this highly uncertain, very exciting, and quickly evolving AI-fueled tectonic shift: rate of advancement & openness of frontier models. These axes create 4 possible views of the future, each with different
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