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Liam has led engineering teams at Google and Microsoft. He's founded three startups and…
Articles by Liam
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40K followers
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Liam Bolling shared thisBuilding in NYC? We're having a Friendsgiving next week, come thru ❤️ Our team is bringing the craziest builders together for: 🍂 Fully catered dinner feast (yes, vegan options) ✨ Beautifully decorated space 🥃 Above average hugo spritzes 🍷 Artisanal real espresso martinis 🤗 Tipsy conversations about life What we're NOT doing: 🌁 "So what's your startup?" 🌁 "How are you leveraging AI?" 🌁 "Is it disruptive though?" 🌁 [Anything overheard in SF] In a world where everything will be taken over by AI, the only thing left for people is taste. This city is where fashion collides with Wall Street. Where baristas drink with engineers and music producers. Where everyone's building something niche, bizarre and beautiful. We even have our friend Tiffany building the world's most comfortable heels (IG: mera_newyork) right here in our office. That collision? That chaos? That's why we’re in NYC 🗽 So we're bringing builders together to celebrate this place. No pitches. No LinkedIn nonsense. Just good people and a fun night. Building something you love? Pull up to the Rehearsals office with David Schmetterling Jess L. Brian Oppenheim Daniel Katz Reid Brostoff Drop a comment or DM me for details.
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Liam Bolling shared this𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐃𝐄𝐃: 𝐃𝐀𝐓𝐀𝐁𝐑𝐈𝐂𝐊𝐒 🔄 𝐑𝐄𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐒𝐀𝐋𝐒 🦄 Unicorn companies are created by attracting the best talent. Today we’re announcing that Daniel Katz is joining Rehearsals as our 3rd cofounder. We poached him from Databricks. He worked on post-training AI coding agents, founded and exited a startup, was an engineer at Microsoft and dropped out of Dartmouth College. Rehearsals is on the cusp of becoming unstoppable. This is just the first announcement of the week.
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Liam Bolling reposted thisLiam Bolling reposted thisIf you wan't to live in NYC, receive custom crocs, and have fun while working hard... Liam Bolling is hiring a founding engineer and a head of growth at Rehearsals (SR004) - see him tapping into cosmic intelligence below. apply in ⚡️ Rehearsals Careers: https://lnkd.in/gRibh5ex Work at another a16z speedrun startup: https://lnkd.in/gMAFU7X5
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Liam Bolling reposted thisLiam Bolling reposted thisIf you wan't to live in NYC, receive custom crocs, and have fun while working hard... Liam Bolling is hiring a founding engineer and a head of growth at Rehearsals (SR004) - see him tapping into cosmic intelligence below. apply in ⚡️ Rehearsals Careers: https://lnkd.in/gRibh5ex Work at another a16z speedrun startup: https://lnkd.in/gMAFU7X5
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Liam Bolling shared thisThe hardest part about leaving Google wasn't the golden handcuffs. It was going against everything I was taught growing up. Get a good job. Keep that job. Stability over risk. A year ago today, I handed back my badge after 6 years at Google. — I was obsessed with an idea: AI replicas of humans that could transform how products get built but the tech wasn't ready. It was too risky even for Google to productionize at scale. I talked to my director, Simon (founder of NotebookLM's Audio Overviews) about it early on and he said to go build it. That's the thing about Google's culture people miss. They encourage you to leave and build because regardless of outcome, you’ll most likely end up back better than you left. — One year later: I founded Rehearsals, AI digital twins of your customers so product teams can test ideas before writing code. We're working with Fortune 50 brands. 250+ customers. Backed by a16z speedrun, 25madison, Factorial Funds and more. I brought Brian Oppenheim (Gemini tool use) and Jess L. (25+ patents, Google Lens) with me. — Here's what Google taught me that I didn't know I was learning: How to spot the right people. Not just talent, but the ones with agency who don't wait for permission. When Brian, Jess and I left Google, we took those instincts with us. Googleyness is real and critical. How to peek around corners. The best leaders and researchers at Google see what's coming with uncanny accuracy. I thought it was magic. It's not. It's pattern recognition at scale. They taught me that vision isn't luck. It's reading 50 papers and talking to 100 customers until the future becomes obvious. The quality of questions matters more than the speed of answers. Google's culture is deeply academic. Everything runs on asking the right questions in meetings, in reviews, in 1:1s. That muscle memory changed how I talk to customers and make product decisions. In a startup, you don't have time to build the wrong thing. — The contrarian take everyone gets wrong: The Google of 2025 is closer to OG Google than it's been in years. While everyone writes think pieces about bureaucracy, they're looking at 2020 Google. Sundar made incredibly hard decisions. The company is building and shipping at a speed we haven’t seen since the 2010’s. Google isn't your competition if you're building in AI. Google is becoming the best platform to build on if you're serious about AI. — For product managers and builders thinking about making the leap: You're sitting on more leverage than you realize. The network, the credibility, asking good questions. It compounds after you leave in ways you can't predict. The scary part isn't whether you can do it. It's giving yourself permission to try. Everything I was taught said stay safe. Everyone said go build. I'm grateful I chose the one that scared me more.
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Liam Bolling shared thisI downloaded the new ChatGPT Atlas browser (OpenAI's web browser) so you don’t have to. Here's what I found interesting in 15 mins: 1: Agent mode is slick. It completes things like ordering coffee or filling out a TSA pre-check form on my browser with my passwords. 2: When you background a tab with agent (which is really amazing they built that) it gets tripped up in content blockers. 3: Websites like The New York Times somehow blocked using atlas to summarizing content. CNN and others work just fine. 4: It’s so native to MacOS and is integrated with auto-filling iMessage 2FA codes which is super sick. Chrome doesn’t even do this. 5: The agent is very human like (example: dismissed modals by clicking out from them). Maybe it’s not intentional and got lucky? Not sure. 6: I love the UI and onboarding is super slick. Very clever use of full-screen usage on my mac. The animations are amazing. Watch the video for 15 minutes of my raw thoughts and first look.
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Liam Bolling shared thisWant to build the world’s first AI customer simulation platform? We’re a small team of ex-Googlers building something the world’s never seen: The ability to simulate customer behavior to a level of accuracy nobody’s ever seen. I’m hiring a Head of Growth to help us bring this to the world. You’ll own sales, marketing, and everything that drives adoption. It’s a startup so expect to learn more in 2 months than most people do in 10 years We’re in person every day in NYC, surrounded by people who love the work and push each other to do the best of our careers Come build something people actually want. Join Rehearsals Link below for the #hiring link 👇
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Liam Bolling shared thisWe just wrapped up the Tech Week AI Faire and here are the results: 200+ leads worth at least $20m+ in contract value and 40 meetings on the calendar within 24 hours We showed a sneak peak of Rehearsals to 1,500 people influential execs from household fortune 10 companies to the best of the valley and they were blown away Special shoutout to Macy Mills and a16z speedrun for creating this opportunity 🙏
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Liam Bolling shared thisWho’s in San Francisco for tech week? We’re hosting a few small private events for Rehearsals and would love to see a few internet freinds IRL.
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Liam Bolling liked thisLiam Bolling liked thisThe energy of Alumni Demo Day week at a16z speedrun is unmatched. There’s something special about seeing the current cohort step onto the *main* stage for the first time, while also catching up with founders from earlier batches and seeing how far they’ve come. Featured below: me smiling through SR003, SR004, and SR005 Alumni Demo Days 😊 Let's kill it this week, SR006 ❤️🔥
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Liam Bolling liked thisLiam Bolling liked thisBefore you become cofounders, it's worth finding ways to go through intense emotions together, and the simplest way to do that is having hard conversations upfront and directly. Conventional wisdom says the cofounder relationship is like marriage. But if you really think about it, how many married couples on this planet have gone through the same emotional intensity as cofounders of successful, or even not-so-successful, companies have? How many married couples have gone through the transition from ordinary people on the street to billionaires, or found themselves being summoned by policymakers in D.C. to be questioned (a real story from founders I've talked to)? I met Jackie (Jaclyn Lunger) at South Park Commons last spring. In our first chat over coffee about working together, I asked her: "Does your family support you in building a company, and do they trust your ability?" It wasn't the kind of question one would ask point-blank, a friend was there and let out an audible gasp. By that point, I already had a lot of experience talking to potential cofounders and had figured out my way to quickly gauge whether there was a fit. I'd heard horror stories like: "it took them 6 months to be real with each other", only for them to realize they'd wasted 6 months. We quickly decided on a full-time trial together. Jackie had high clarity of thought, had travelled a long psychological distance, and was completely okay, more like had a shared understanding, with many of the hard truths I'd come to acknowledge about how society and business work. But we were also quite different. By the time we met, I had spent 12 years at companies like Google, Twitter, Lyft, and Cash App, had led high-profile teams, and had been through situations one can only learn to handle by living through them. Jackie was earlier in her career. So I asked Jackie: how do we complement each other? It wasn’t an easy question, but she came back with an answer the next day. The complementing shows up in unexpected moments that sometimes make or break a team’s momentum. A few months ago, we hit a situation that seemed impossible to untangle. I had worked through something like this before, I knew how to show up, what questions to ask, and got us through it in one conversation. A few weeks later, I got into a spiral on how hard it is to build an initial system that extracts patterns from data, Jackie built a prototype in 1.5 days, and it was a big unlock for our direction. Both Jackie and I are genuinely curious about things we don't yet know how to do, and have a strong desire to figure them out, fast, and in the best way possible. We both have low tolerance for BS (though I’m more direct or blunt, depends on how you view it), so when faced with situations that are new to both of us, we talk to each other, separate noise from truth, and arrive at a new place together. It’s been fun.
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Liam Bolling reacted on thisLiam Bolling reacted on thisAn Intelligence layer is missing between companies & their users, forcing the former to provide generic one-size-fits-all experiences, instead of hyper personalized ones. But a shift is taking place as brands adopt the same systems big tech has used for years - adaptive interfaces that adjust in real time. Soon, websites won’t load pages, they’ll construct experiences around you based on who you are, what you want, and what you’ve done. To get there, an intelligence layer has to sit in between - constantly matching intent with content across surfaces. It’s already forming, and once it does, static websites will feel as broken as a YouTube that never changes.
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Liam Bolling liked thisLiam Bolling liked thisI took for granted the founder friendly culture at a16z and always being in service of the founder. Because my god now that I'm on the other side there's so much bad behavior: - VCs that ghost you - VCs that show up to meetings 10 minutes late - VCs that don't read your memo even for 30 seconds before the meeting - VCs that ask the dumbest questions that you have to repeat a hundred times a week - VCs that are sheep and only follow leads and can't decide for themselves - VCs that waste your time with meaningless diligence - VCs that only buy and never sell - VCs that meet with you but already are negative on the market so won't invest - VCs that use you for competitive intelligence Of course there's some bright stars in the industry. But I'm surprised that such a supposedly prestigious industry has so many bad eggs. Makes me appreciate the T1s and high quality people even more. What did I miss?
Experience & Education
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Rehearsals
View Liam’s full experience
See their title, tenure and more.
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Courses
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Business Statistics
STAT-S 301
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Data Structures
CSCI-C 343
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Data Visualization
INFO-I 422
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Design Form and Function
AMID-D 191
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Discrete Mathematics for Informatics
INFO-I 201
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Human-Computer Interaction
INFO-I 300
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Information Representation
INFO-I 308
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Intermediate Computer Science
CSCI-C 212
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Introduction to Business Administration
BUS-X 100
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Introduction to Computer Science
CSCI-C 211
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Introduction to Informatics
INFO-I 101
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Presentations IT Professionals
INFO-I 399
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Public Speaking
CMCL-C 121
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Swift iOS Development
INFO-I 399
Projects
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GoldenKey - Real Estate Search Engine (UX Design)
See projectConsulted 100+ employee company to build more efficient homepage and new user onboarding. Guided executive, development and sales team to design webpage wireframes based off user testing results. Final design was implemented and resulted in increased new user signups by 4x.
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BarPay - Cover Payment (Swift iOS App)
Realized market need to build cashless cover payment system for local businesses. Developed app based solution which increased revenue for business partners by 1%, created revenue stream for myself and did not require additional costs for partners. Published in App Store, gained 900+ organically grown users and created partnership with two local businesses.
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String to Date Object - Javascript/Cloud Code
See projectI came across situation where I needed to parse a string and convert it to a date object for a larger application I've been working on. The function accepts any string and returns the best possible guess to the correct date, instead of the conventional method of matching a string to known date formats.
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IU Maps - Campus Navigation (Swift iOS App)
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See projectNoticed market need at college for native, offline mapping application to navigate campus efficiently. Existing solution was 10+ years old. Launched app, 500 downloads within one week without marketing.
Honors & Awards
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Winner of Best Undergraduate Project
Esfandiar Haghverdi - Associate Dean at School of Informatics and Computer Science Indiana University
- Created iOS Swift application and back-end server components.
- Presented to 33 judges with over 125 student participants.
News: http://www.soic.indiana.edu/news/story.html?story=Student-Ideas-Shine-at-Fall-Symposium-and-Research-Fair -
Featured App
Adobe Systems Inc.
- Featured on Adobe's website to showcase exceptional applications built using platform.
News: http://phonegap.com/app/greekride/ -
Winner of Startup Idea Competition
Indiana University
- Received first place award in the Clapp Startup Idea Competition.
- Gave one minute pitch, 15 minute presentation, and 5 minute Q/A.
- Competed against over 100 other teams of two of more.
News: http://www.idsnews.com/article/2015/04/iu-student-created-app-wins-business-competition
Languages
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German
Professional working proficiency
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English
Native or bilingual proficiency
Organizations
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Talk Nerdy to Me Podcast
Co-host
- Present- Over 17,000 monthly listeners. - Generate discussion points and meet monthly to record new episodes. - Visit http://www.talknerdy.iu.edu/
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Indiana University Student Association
Congressional Representative - School of Informatics and Computing
- Present- Elected by student body to represent over 2,000 students. - Vote and assist on creating new legislation.
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