Rough drafts on startups, tech, and leading teams. If you want pixel perfect, this ain't it.
Paraphrasing, but I think about this 👇 from Ben Thompson/Stratechery every. single. day. All companies have the ability to produce more code/products cheaply due to LLMs Most companies will use that ability to expand to adjacent areas currently occupied by another SaaS co Competition between SaaS co's is going to explode for this reason and become ruinous Established competitors offering similar…
These takes are everywhere and good grief are they boring 🥱 When you see one, you can be certain of a few things: the most interesting, nuanced aspects of the topic won't be covered the author is optimizing for clicks over precision [that's fine, that's the game] the post tells you more about what the subject wants you to believe, or is afraid of, than the topic itself In rank order #1. Anything…
Molly Graham - Fight the fight 3 times After the third attempt, you let it go. ... there are some fights you are simply not going to win. Sometimes the timing isn’t right. Sometimes the CEO needs to see the chosen path play out for themselves. Sometimes you are just wrong about what will happen next. The reality is that most decisions inside a startup are experiments. People like to say disagree…
A running list of resources on the importance of speed as a habit in startups. In case you ever need support to impel your team to ship quickly 🏁 Paul Graham Tweet Geoff Charles tweet Leo Polovets tweet "Real Professionals Ship" @ ~30:00 min. [Patrick Campbell, Lenny Rachitsky Podcast] Speed as a habit - First Round Review A bias to action - Henry Ward, CEO Carta Bias for Action - Amazon…
This post offers a pragmatic approach to integrating AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) into operations at software companies. I offer a structured thought process for identifying opportunities to leverage AI, while cautioning against overly complicated solutions. Read on for the full guide 👇 The AI-First Operator's Question AI-first operators ask one question for every operational bottleneck:…
Spoiler - it's the same old change management / software adoption problem as always 💁♂️ So you're going to want to Empower the power-users / early adopters Make adoption easy on the less-inclined Build usage / proficiency into the culture, hiring, and performance measurement List 25 proven tactics to accelerate AI adoption at your company [Lenny Rachitsky] From Memo to Movement: Shopify’s…
I continue to update the timeline as news comes out. The latest update was made to the timeline and tracker on: September 12, 2025 . I'm not editing other writing. Check out my tracker spreadsheet here: Perplexity Table ~~~ Perplexity baffles me! It’s a fast-growing startup that has built a great product and is stirring competitive reactions from the likes of Google and OpenAI. At the same time,…
Value is created through innovation, but how much of that value accrues to the innovator depends partly on how quickly their competitors imitate the innovation. Innovators must deter competition to get some of the value they created. These ways of deterring competition are called, in various contexts, barriers to entry, sustainable competitive advantages, or, colloquially, moats. [ Taxonomy of…
Links to source data below the fold Uber Uber Announces Results for Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2020 Uber Announces Results for Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2021 Uber Announces Results for Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Uber Announces Results for Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Uber Announces Results for Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 DoorDash DASH Q4 2020 DASH Q4 2021 DASH_Q4-2022…
Original Source: https://x.com/kevg1412/status/1956446117358625193 Behavioral Bias Description Impact on Investment Decision-Making Mauboussin's AI-Aided Countermeasures Overconfidence Overestimating one's knowledge or ability to predict outcomes. Leads to excessive risk-taking, concentrated bets, ignoring contradictory evidence. Consciously seek disconfirming evidence; consider a wider range of…
"Steve Jobs would have never shipped this." "No way would this happen if Steve Jobs were still alive and running Apple." Oh yeah? Which Steve Jobs are you referring to? The one who got pushed out of Apple? The one who ran NeXT into the ground? The one who thought search engines were useless? The one who oversaw the launch of a litany of miserable products like the Newton, Apple Lisa, the hockey…
The Bitter Lesson - Rich Sutton, 2019 Often referenced by Ben Thompson as one of the canonical tech blog posts. Core section We have to learn the bitter lesson that building in how we think we think does not work in the long run. The bitter lesson is based on the historical observations that AI researchers have often tried to build knowledge into their agents this always helps in the short term,…
What is a “tarpit idea”? These are the startup ideas that seem good — almost too good to be true! — but have been tried by many founders before with little to no success. Tarpit ideas are often not hard in obvious ways. They might seem so easy and good that it’s unbelievable that no one has done it — but when you look a bit deeper, you realize that they have been tried. Over, and over again. Via:…
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I jumped into startups in 2014 after finally walking away from law. Here's how I built up my startup knowledge from scratch. The grind 10+ hour days, 6-7 days a week for 3 years straight Every spare moment went to consuming information I could immediately apply at work Startup podcasts on the subway commute Reading business books at my desk before the workday started Diving deep into First Round…
This bit about "Founder Mode" is great, watch the clip here . Bryce: Eric, are you telling people to go into Founder Mode? Eric: What I love about the Founder Mode story, everyone of those guys who made that - who have told those stories - is they're always like "I had to cut through all the bureaucracy, and the red tape, and the this and the dumb people." And I'm like, "who hired those people?…
Not because founders get worse, but because building a novel business that works is very hard. Naval Ravikant - Airchat David Sacks - Glue AI Adam Neuman - Flowcarbon Marissa mayer - Sunshine, Dazzle Ev Williams - Mozi Kevin Rose and Alexis Ohanian - Digg relaunch Kevin Systrom - Artifact Not a dunk. Just an observation, a pattern worth noticing, and a reminder that yea, it's hard even if you've…
Last weekend I started vibe coding with Lovable and it was a blast! Picture this: I'm at my computer prompting away, having fun learning how to use the Gemini API, GitHub, and Supabase Woo hoo! I'm just chit chatting with the AI agent, we're building (I think?) Then reality hits: 94/100 messages gone I had a decision: should I pay to upgrade to Lovable's $50/month plan to get 250 messages? Hard…
Check it out on a much prettier version on this Notion page ⚡️ A great Chief of Staff (Cos) is a high-EQ, operationally excellent, and strategic leader who helps move the entire organization forward every day. Read more below. 🎯 The primary objective of a great Chief of Staff To increase the effectiveness of the entire organization If successful, a great Chief of Staff creates business value by…
I thought the internet moved past the " SaaS is dead " takes months ago. Apparently not ! "SaaS is dead" generates engagement and points to real shifts happening in tech, but at this point it's stale and it's always been wrong. Here’s why the arguments for “SaaS is dead” don’t hold up: The argument is so broad as to be (almost) useless The argument is internally inconsistent Sufficiently valuable…
Questions via: The Leaders Cheat Code by Rachel Pacheco I categorized them based on how I'd user them. Understanding the situation What led to this situation? What does your gut tell you about the situation? Where is the urgency coming from? How do you feel about the situation? What’s not yet clear about what’s going on? How could you get clarity? What’s the challenge here? What do you find most…
Debugging with Jam.dev -- super great tool for capturing and communicating bugs, has some AI features built in with more on the way. Content generation -- I created a Claude Project and uploaded examples of content + our content guidelines. Now, when I need something created, I just prompt it, get the ~80% done rough draft, and edit it quickly for accuracy + tone. Strategy thought partner -- I…
I started working “remotely” at Mighty in 2018, though it wasn’t exactly by design. At the time, Mighty was a small startup tucked into the corner of a two-floor office shared with a larger company. I make the most impact when I'm able to do deep, focused work, so to get some uninterrupted time, I’d grab my laptop, monitor, mouse, and headphones and march to a quiet, under-construction corner of…
Jam.dev builds a browser extension that helps teams resolve bugs faster. It's cool, effective, and incredibly user-friendly! I got a bit obsessed about understanding the business and here we are - a strategic analysis of Jam.dev for fun. Read on for my take on: Adoption Product Overview Growth/Pricing Strengths Challenges Strategic path forward As always, I’m certain to be missing loads of…
These are companies that just happened to flow through my inbox in the last 24 hours, no proactive searching robinai.com finchlegal.com spellbook.legal draftwise.com https://www.supio.com/ https://www.paxton.ai/ And then there are the bigger players, like ironcladapp.com harvey.ai evenuplaw.com I haven't used these products, but I have a hard time thinking the value they produce is differentiated.…