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Bruno Koba

@brunokoba

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Founder @astorinvest (YC S25)
Building and investing
🇧🇷 in SF 🇺🇸
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Your first 100 users are probably already in your network. Our first 10 were friends who agreed to test the app. The tradeoff is softer feedback and a weaker match with your ICP. For the next 90, we widened the circle through LinkedIn. A simple beta post and waitlist gave interested people somewhere to sign up. Some of those early users are still our most valuable. #startups #consumerapps #founders #product by @brunokoba
Maybe a hot take but… I think every consumer startup should test paid ads. Paid buys attention, tests messages, and keeps new cohorts entering the product. At Astor, we have used prelaunch campaigns to see which hooks land. Historical averages can hide rising marginal CAC. Gross-profit LTV needs to clear fully loaded CAC, and payback has to fit the company’s cash. Paid can become the main growth engine while those marginal economics keep working. #startups #growth #marketing #paidads #consumerstartups by @brunokoba
Three things from my Stanford MBA helped me as a founder. One aged badly. Cold outreach opens doors when the message and delivery are right. High-stakes communication gets better when I script and dry run it. Hearing the founders of Vanta and DoorDash showed me there is no single path from zero to one. The MBA habit of validating for weeks before building has aged badly! AI made prototypes cheap, so building earlier now creates faster learning. #startups #founders #entrepreneurship #mba #artificialintelligence by @brunokoba
YC taught me three rules I still use and one I take less literally. Launch early because customers and mistakes teach faster than planning. Hire slowly because AI lets a small team do much more. Treat fundraising as a focused transaction that buys time to find product market fit. For consumer products, customers explain pain better than they predict a new product. #startups #ycombinator #founders #consumertech #product by @brunokoba
Every first venture round needs some kind of aura. That aura usually comes from a former employer, an accelerator, or relationships. At seed, investors have limited company data, so they read the signals around the founder. Aura earns the first meetings, and those meetings can become momentum. The real question is which source of credibility the company already has. #startups #venturecapital #fundraising #founders by @brunokoba
We got into YC with zero revenue. I think three things carried our application: team, RFS fit, and founder edge. YC says solo founders can get in, but one-person startups are tougher. Our team could build the product, and Daniel brought engineering credibility from Stripe, Robinhood, and Amazon. We were also building AI for personal finance, directly inside one of YC’s Requests for Startups. The application asked how we had hacked a system, which tested how we operated under constraints. Before revenue, the application had to make the team itself feel like the strongest evidence. #ycombinator #startups #founders #venturecapital #artificialintelligence by @brunokoba
Hedge funds spotted Situational Awareness’s forced sale before it became public. Its portfolio fell 67% in July. An offer to sell part of its roughly $5B Anthropic stake had to close overnight. Public filings gave rivals a map of the fund’s likely pressure points. Traders shorted holdings they expected the fund to unload, adding pressure as margin calls arrived. Citadel then bought most of the public-stock portfolio before the market opened. #hedgefunds #wallstreet #markets #artificialintelligence #investing (Not investment advice. All investing involves risk. See astor.app/legal.) by @brunokoba
For young grads, starting a company can be the rational choice. Three things drive this in the U.S.: abundant capital, uncertain jobs, and a startup flywheel. When I did YC, I felt old. Many founders had little management or company experience. The U.S. accounted for 64% of global VC deal value in 2025, giving founders room to pay themselves and learn while building. AI makes a conventional job less certain, so joining a company carries risk too. When startups win, investors get liquidity and fund the next generation. That loop runs at unusual scale in the U.S. #startups #venturecapital #ycombinator #entrepreneurship #AI by @brunokoba
Yes, I do. 💍 by @brunokoba
My world just got way bigger. Thank you all for the ride of my lifetime 🌲❤️ by @brunokoba
Found a few reasons to become a WeChat monthly active user by @brunokoba
Officially joined the club 🪁 by @brunokoba

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