Forever startup kid.✌️ Former founder @panobihq, Head of Growth @slackhq, and VC @lightspeedvp.
San Francisco, CA
Joined November 2006
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- Following2.1K
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I was out videoing the reckless drivers at Ellsworth & Cortland. Who should come by but car-loving @conniechansf? Being driven by staff who paused at the stop sign before trying to go the wrong way on Ellsworth and then made an illegal U-turn. @sfstandard @sfchronicle
We’re fed up with the reckless, thoughtless drivers zooming down Cortland and Crescent and endangering our lives. Here’s a video from Friday morning just before 8 of a woman almost hitting me and blowing through 2 stop signs. @sfchronicle
We’re grateful for this article from the Chronicle highlighting the issue. We’ve been working with the city to find solutions and @JackieFielder_ has been so helpful.
sfchronicle.com/sf/article/t…
Drivers in SF have figured out how to bully @Waymo vehicles. I often see people turn left in front of Waymos that have the right-of-way, and this morning I just saw a big white truck (who else? 😂) force a Waymo to reverse back a half block by just slowly inching forward.
Merci Grace retweeted
Your AI is vaporware without deep integrations with your customers’ systems of record.
Introducing @WithAmpersand: integration infrastructure for enterprise agents.
We power 11x, Orb, and Square's ability to take agentic action in systems of record like Salesforce, SAP, NetSuite, and Workday.
Ask anyone serious about building AI and they’ll tell you:
- The SaaSpocalypse didn’t happen. The world depends on CRMs, ERPs, HRISs, and ITSMs.
- Your customers customized their deployments beyond recognition.
- Systems of record companies are basically monopolies. They never had to make their APIs and MCPs user-friendly.
- Docs don't explain half the weird edge cases you'll hit.
- One bad write can blow up your pilot or renewal.
- Once you finally get it working, someone changes a field and it breaks again.
The world's data lives in structured databases. AI needs a translation layer to work with it.
So, for your AI to truly transform the way enterprises work, you'll need deep integrations built for:
- scoped permissions
- bi-directional actions
- real-time speed for agents
- custom objects, fields, and workflows for each of your customers
We built Ampersand to power the future of software.
AI didn't trivialize writing integrations. It made them the critical path.
I believe that deeply, so I didn't make a launch video about Ampersand.
Instead, it's the best builders I know explaining just how big of a challenge this is.
My two most recent Amazon shipments have been either lost or marked as undelivered. This has happened to probably 10 packages total in the last six months and maybe once in the prior 10 years.
Is the root cause diesel prices? ICE labor disruption?
As the daughter of a narcissistic mother, the NYT piece could not have been a clearer window into a sadly familiar dynamic.
Adopted a few drains in SF and named them after Culture ships. 🫡
adoptadrain.sfwater.org/
Merci Grace retweeted
As someone who mostly walks to get around the city, it’s not even close, you always want a Waymo in the intersection over any kind of human driver. They are the only type of vehicle I haven’t had to avoid getting hit by.
Waymo said its robotaxi didn’t do anything wrong, it had stopped by the time the father interceded. sfchronicle.com/sf/article/w…
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
While the post presents as if the toddler was in danger, the Waymo stopped 13 feet from the child and the situation was safe.
sfchronicle.com/sf/article/way…
Merci Grace retweeted
Damn, the Chronicle isn’t messing around in its endorsement of Scott Wiener. 🌶️
sfchronicle.com/opinion/edit…
Scott is exactly the kind of get-shit-done person we need to keep electing.
My bill to allow homeowners to replace their windows with energy-efficient windows without city/HOA micro-management just received its final sign-off from the Senate and is headed to the Governor.
People should be able to lower their energy bills by weatherizing their windows without cities or HOAs banning it or forcing them to pay dramatically more for bespoke replica windows.
SB 908 will help.
Feel like I learned the hard way that most people don’t want to be productive, full stop. 😅
Ben Thompson on the two things Silicon Valley relearns every 10 years:
1) "Consumers do not want to pay for software"
2) "Consumers do not care about being productive"
"If you're going to be in the consumer market, you have to be doing advertising.
We went through this in early SaaS. The canonical company for this is Dropbox.
They had to rebuild the whole thing and realize the only way we're going to make money is by selling to companies.
You literally had OpenAI replaying the Dropbox story, but at like 100x the size.
We're going to sell subscriptions to consumers. And they did. They sold a lot, but they didn't sell enough.
If they had leaned into advertising immediately, as soon as ChatGPT was a hit, I think they would have a great ad product right now.
Charging people money is hard. Giving people things for free is easy."
Merci Grace retweeted
Car break-ins are way down in San Francisco. One reason is we changed state law by removing a massive loophole that required prosecutors to prove all car doors were locked, even if evidence of a break-in was clear. This loophole was a significant barrier, and we removed it.
RIP Bip City.
Car break-ins, long a symbol of dysfunction in San Francisco, have plummeted in recent years — from 22,700 in 2022 to 1,764 so far this year, thanks in part to surveillance technology.
Read the full story: sf.news/4gfGcot
Merci Grace retweeted
Xennials (me) in tech are blessed.
In elementary school, PCs happened.
In high school, the internet happened.
In college, cell phones happened.
In early career, smart phones + cloud happened.
In mid career, AI happened.
We've lived the before and after of so many technological changes.