Time travelers, not tourists.

F3 Thesis

We are looking for time travelers

There are two types of founders in the world: those who build from today, and those who build from the future.

The first group iterates forward from today's constraints. They conduct user interviews, analyze market gaps, and build incrementally better solutions. They're tourists with a return ticket to the present.

The second group has already lived in the future. They've experienced AI doctors that cure diseases before symptoms appear. They've seen fusion reactors the size of shipping containers powering entire cities. They've watched autonomous factories in orbit manufacturing materials impossible on Earth. These founders aren't visiting the future – they're Time Travelers who've returned to build the infrastructure that makes that future inevitable.

At F3, we back Time Travelers. 🚀

The Great Convergence: When AI Eats Everything

We're witnessing something unprecedented: artificial intelligence isn't just improving existing industries, it's fundamentally reimagining what those industries can be. This isn't disruption. It's transmutation.

Consider what's already happening:

AI + Biology = Programmable Life

• AI systems are discovering new proteins in hours, not decades

• Machine learning models predict drug interactions better than century-old pharmacology

• Synthetic biology controlled by AI is creating organisms that eat plastic, produce fuel, and manufacture medicines

• The entire drug discovery pipeline is collapsing from 15 years to 18 months

AI + Energy = Abundance Economics

• AI-controlled fusion reactors are solving plasma instability in real-time

• Neural networks are designing new materials for 90% efficient solar cells

• Intelligent grids are orchestrating energy flows that make baseload power obsolete

• AI-discovered catalysts are making hydrogen storage finally practical

AI + Space = Exponential Expansion

• Autonomous systems are planning and executing entire missions without human intervention

• AI is discovering asteroids, analyzing their composition, and planning mining operations

• Machine learning enables spacecraft to repair and upgrade themselves in orbit

• Swarm intelligence coordinates thousands of satellites as a single computational fabric

The pattern is clear: AI isn't just a tool within these industries. It's a new form that changes what's possible.

The Time Traveler Paradox

Here's what most investors miss: the founders who will capture this value aren't the ones analyzing these trends. They're the ones who've already lived through the transformation.

Time Travelers share three unmistakable characteristics:

1. They Build for Post-AGI

Today’s founders ask: "How can AI improve drug discovery?"

Time Travelers ask: "What does medicine look like when AI can simulate every molecule's interaction with every human cell?"

Traditional founders ask: "How can AI optimize energy grids?"
Time Travelers ask: "What does civilization look like with unlimited clean energy?"

Today’s founders ask: "How can AI help us explore space?"

Time Travelers ask: "What does humanity look like as a multi-planetary species with self-replicating infrastructure?"

The difference isn't incremental. It's existential.

Case Study

Daphne Koller and insitro

While others were using AI to slightly speed up drug screening, Daphne Koller saw a future where machine learning doesn't just assist biology – it reveals biology's source code. At insitro, she's not building better tools for drug discovery; she's building a system where AI understands disease at such a fundamental level that drugs design themselves. She's lived in a future where we don't treat symptoms but reprogram biological systems, and she's building the ML infrastructure to make that future real.

2. They See Convergence as Destiny

Time Travelers don't think in terms of separate industries. They see inevitable convergences that create entirely new categories of existence.

They understand that:

• AI + Bio + Nanotech = programmable matter that heals, adapts, and evolves

• AI + Energy + Space = self-replicating solar collectors that beam unlimited power from orbit

• AI + Brain-Computer Interfaces + Quantum Computing = hybrid intelligence that transcends human cognitive limits

These aren't wild predictions. For Time Travelers, they're memories of futures they've already experienced.

Case Study

Max Hodak and Science Corp

After Neuralink, Max Hodak didn't just see brain-computer interfaces as medical devices. He experienced a future where AI-enhanced perception is as fundamental as smartphones are today. Science Corp isn't just building retinal implants – it's creating the infrastructure for a world where human perception is programmable, where AI doesn't just analyze what we see but expands what we can see. He's building from a future where the boundary between human and artificial intelligence has dissolved.

3. They Create New Laws of Business Physics

Time Travelers understand that post-AGI economics operates by different rules:

• Zero Marginal Cost Creation: When AI can design and digital biology can produce, the cost of innovation approaches zero

• Exponential Learning Curves: Each AI system improves all future systems, creating compound intelligence

• Network Effects in Time: The future value of their platforms increases faster than the present can price

• Winner-Take-All Dynamics: The first to achieve AI supremacy in a domain locks out all competition

They build companies that don't just ride these dynamics – they architect them.

Case Study

John Carmack and Keen Technologies

Carmack didn't leave Meta to build another VR company. He saw a future where artificial general intelligence (AGI) isn't just possible but inevitable, and he's reverse-engineering from that reality. At Keen Technologies, he's not trying to compete with existing AI companies – he's building from a future where AGI has already arrived and asking what infrastructure that world needs. His approach to AI development assumes breakthroughs that haven't happened yet, because in the future he's seen, they already have.

TIME TRAVELERS CREATE A NEW KIND OF OPPORTUNITY

The Implications:

🔮 They Build Category-Defining Companies
They don't compete in markets; they create markets that shouldn't exist for another decade. The returns aren't 10x improvements but 1000x new possibilities.

🔮🔮 The Magnetic Field Effect:
The clarity of their vision pulls in the world's best minds who can also intuit the same future. Time Travelers create a temporal gravity that pulls in fellow travelers. Their teams look impossible by conventional standards.

🔮🔮🔮 The Inevitability Framework: They see their success as inevitable rather than possible. Not from arrogance, but from having seen how the story ends…

WHAT WE OFFER

A Time Machine for Founders

Future Memory Networks: We connect Time Travelers who've seen similar futures, accelerating their ability to build.

Reality Distortion Resources: Access to computation, labs, and infrastructure that shouldn't be available to startups.

Community Capital & Equity: We understand breakthrough timelines. Every founder we back has equity in their batch of companies. Regardless of timeline — when one of us eats an industry — we all eat!

The Call to Time Travelers

If you've lived in 2035 and returned to build it, we need to talk.

If you see AI not as a tool but as a new physics transforming Bio, Energy, and Space, you're our kind of founder.

If you're building something that seems impossible to those trapped in the present day, you've found your home.

The future doesn't arrive on its own. It requires Time Travelers willing to endure the present to build what they've already seen. At F3, we exist to find, fund, and accelerate those rare individuals who don't predict the future – they remember it.

We are assembling our next launch crew.

Email me (Nate) at [email protected] if you are a founder or funder from the future.

Follow us on X @FTHREEVC.

*We're not looking for pitch decks, diplomas, or referrals. We're looking for memories from 2035.