Automate What You Can, Augment What You Can’t

A framework for when vertical automation wins vs. augmentation

Jul 22 • Variant

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June 2026

VARIANT 4: AUTONOMY

We are pleased to announce Variant 4, a new $222M venture fund that invests at the earliest possible stage and maintains a barbell of liquid/growth…

Jun 3 • Variant

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May 2026

The Open API Is Dead. Long Live the Open API.

In three short years, Cursor went from a VS Code fork running on OpenAI’s API to a legitimate competitor to Claude Code and other coding models.

May 5 • Variant

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March 2026

Where Crypto Markets Are Headed: Everywhere

We’re back on Substack!

Mar 6 • Variant

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May 2024

How We’re Thinking About AI

Tasteful AI; the SocialFi stack; running the risk with tokens

May 31, 2024 • Variant

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April 2024

Of memecoins and markets

Memecoins as “attention assets”; Farcaster startups we’d like to see

Apr 2, 2024 • Variant

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February 2024

How Crypto Can Make an 'Impact'

Jake on "impact litigation" for crypto; what to watch for in Denver; portfolio news

Feb 27, 2024 • Variant

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January 2024

Headless marketplaces, Farcaster frames

Jesse on a new GTM strategy for crypto founders; highlights from our Frames hackathon in NYC.

Jan 30, 2024 • Variant and Dan Roberts

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Hiring, building, and playing the game on the field

Takeaways from our hiring & compensation survey with USV; our 2024 requests for startups; and Jesse Walden on memecoins.

Jan 9, 2024 • Variant and Dan Roberts

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December 2023

Points have a point in crypto

Plus: Wrapping the year with our best writing

Dec 19, 2023 • Variant and Dan Roberts

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New signs of life for NFTs

Data shows new participants minting onchain and new use cases.

Dec 8, 2023 • Variant and Dan Roberts

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November 2023

The Progressive Ownership Playbook

The crypto app layer has yet to see a winning model for how to distribute tokens to users in a way that achieves sustained growth and retention. Now…

Nov 17, 2023 • Variant and Dan Roberts

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