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Peter Zakin

Investor at Upfront Ventures

Peter Zakin is an investor at Upfront Ventures based in Los Angeles, California.23 He joined Upfront Ventures in March 2023.3 Zakin has a background as a successful entrepreneur, having co-founded two companies:

  1. Macro Computer Club (2019-2022)3
  2. Hyper Travel (2014-2016), which was acquired by Tradeshift in 20163

Prior to his current role, Zakin held positions at:

  • South Park Commons (Member, 2019-2020)3
  • Tradeshift (Senior Product Manager, 2016-2018)3
  • Venmo (Software Engineer + Product Manager, 2012-2014)3

As an investor at Upfront Ventures, Zakin's investment range is $500K to $10M, with a sweet spot of $3M.1 He is particularly interested in developer tools, AI, and data.1

Zakin holds a B.A. in Philosophy (Political Philosophy) and Computer Science from Princeton University (2008-2012) and participated in Y Combinator's S'10 batch.3

On his personal website, Zakin has written about various topics including the future of technology, AI, and product development.2

Highlights

Yesterday · twitter

The irony is that in a post github world, the CI orchestrator might actually be more strategic than a (headless) version control system.

Yesterday · twitter

The current meta of coding agent companies is to build the "software factory".

One definition of the software factory is just to be the dominant interface where work is defined. There's more in this than just delegation. The best tools here clarify your thinking, scaffold agent work, set up proper testing environments etc...

This is right and very much the current paradigm of AI coding tools -- but I'm interested in the next one. (Part of my strategic thinking for startups is that it's sort of foolhardy to try to compete in the present paradigm. The next one's coming. That's the one to shoot for.).

My sense is the next one is less about humans defining tasks and more about agents defining tasks. The right abstraction that I think will guide the next generation of work is to build the interface -- not where work is defined -- but where objectives are declared. Objectives by themselves are insufficient: but when joined with signals and long-running agents, I think you have a software factory that runs autonomously and eats into an ever expanding set of work.

Jul 6 · PYMNTS.com
Judge Thwarts Latest Attempt To Derail McDonald's Payroll Card Suit - PYMNTS.com
Jul 6 · PYMNTS.com
Sowing Loyalty And Reaping Rewards - PYMNTS.com

Related Questions

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Peter Zakin
Peter Zakin, photo 1
Peter Zakin, photo 2
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Location

Los Angeles, California, United States