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š The Bay Area Billionaire Plot
It's San Fran But Better
Gm. I saw that Burning Man started yesterday. Iāve always been really curious about it. Is it as fun as people say? Has it become too mainstream? Are people just high out of their minds the entire time? If youāve been, let me know. And if youāre going this year, have fun!
ā Stephen Flanders

š TECH
A New SF?

By all accounts, San Francisco is a wonderful place. What else can you call the home of Silicon Valley, and thus, many of the worldās most significant technological achievements?
However, SF is far from perfect, and its problems look increasingly difficult to fix and increasingly likely to drive people away.
So, what if you can build a new city that can capture the magic of SF with none of the issues?
Thatās the goal of Flannery Associates.
Tech Royalty
The mysterious company is headed by former investment banker Jan Sramek and is funded by a whoās who of techies, including Marc Andreessen, Chris Dixon, Reid Hoffman, Patrick and John Collison, Lauren Powell Jobs, and Michael Moritz.
And what theyāve been spending their vast fortunes on is Bay Area land. 50,000 acres for $800M, to be exact.
Thatās enough land to make the Feds think a foreign adversary was involved.
And for the last five years, nobody had any idea why. But now we do.
A Grand Vision
Flannery wants to build ātens of thousands of new homes, a large solar energy farm, orchards with over a million new trees, and over 10,000 acres of new parks and open spaceā.
The goal is to ādeliver access to good-paying jobs, affordable housing, clean energy, sustainable infrastructure, open space, and a healthy environmentā.
Basically, they are building what they want SF to be.
Obviously, thereās still a long way to go before any of this becomes reality, including having to pass a vote as all their land is classified as agricultural.
But, if Flannery delivers on their promises, then the new city sounds pretty damn attractive.
The Big Picture: Ideally, San Fran would fix their issues and get back to being the city it can and should be. But Flannery makes clear the Bay Areaās tech billionaires are skeptical of this happening.

š TECH
InstaCart Is Going Public

The tech IPO winter might be finally thawing after all.
Days after chip design company Arm filed for an IPO, grocery delivery giant Instacart followed suit and formally submitted its public ambitions.
If successful, it will be the first significant venture-backed tech IPO since December 2021, when software vendor HashiCorp and cloud technology developer Samsara both went public.
So yeah, a pretty big deal. And, as part of the filing, we got to take a look behind the curtain for Instacartās business:
Itās been profitable for 5 straight quarters.
Like every other company, itās integrating AI into its products. In this case, that has taken the form of Ask Instacart, a search tool chatbot.
It wants to ācreate a truly omni-channel experience that brings the best of the online shopping experience to physical stores, and vice-versaā, whatever that means.
Theyāve tapped Goldman Sachs to lead the offering.
And you can bet that the investors who have poured $2.9B into the company since its 2012 beginnings are praying this thing goes through.
A Poor Track Record: Among the public gig economy companies (Airbnb, DoorDash, Uber, and Lyft), only Airbnb is trading above its IPO price. Will Instacart be able to buck this trend?

šāāļø QUICKIES
What else is going on?
LinkedIn is so 2022, we use Twitter X now.
Alibaba launched two new AI models that can understand images and carry out more complex conversations.
Thereās some funny business going on with TikTokās algorithm.
Starship is growing ever closer to launching again.
Stat: 100 Years: How long you can register a domain name with WordPress for a small payment of $38,000.
Rabbit hole: The Strange, Secretive World of North Korean Science Fiction (ArsTechnica)

𤩠MONDAY MOTIVATION

š§ POLL
An expected result, but my heart is still with Philly:

For this week, we got:
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š DOPAMINE HIT
Probably still better than Burger King.
@anttonraccaus The space burger - Part 1

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