@abustamante
Account based inUnited States
About this account
- Account based in
- United States
- Connected via
- United States App Store
Account-level information from X, not a live location or the device used for a specific post.
I think @NotionHQ may be the best example of product rot via vibecode. Just because your team can take side quests doesn't mean they should all make it into production.
They've cannibalized an amazing product with a web of ill-defined agents, random features, and distractions.
No thanks!
Every seed investment is an option bet.
“You have to think about the venture portfolio as a bunch of options. Each seed investment is an option bet.
You are buying an option to see if it is an outlier, and you want to have enough of those to make sure you have an outlier.
When there is true quantitative evidence that it is going to be an outlier, then you position size up.” @venkyganesan
How do seed funds play in a world where mega funds are totally price insensitive and “option bets” is the mindset for seed checks @infoarbitrage @chudson @hunterwalk @honam @dunkhippo33 @jasonlk
Hey everyone, I'm in SF this week as well.
Because I live here. But I am here this week
This quoted post is unavailable.
As a @figma user for 10 years, I don't care about MCP whataboutism. Either your tool is accessible by agents or it isn't; and if it isn't, I'm not using it.
Antonio Bustamante retweeted
I left Silicon Valley 6 years ago
Why?
Because it's a monoculture
The most extreme group think of any place on the planet
Show up to a dinner party and everyone is in tech
So what do they do? They start stack-ranking each other
And it's a totally ordered set: being founder of co $100B market cap > founder of co with $50B market cap > managing partner of tier 1 venture firm > hired CEO of $50B public co > founder of $10B co > etc etc
Pure toxicity that nerfs creativty
And then as a corollary, people are especially afraid to speak truth to power as everyone knows their place in
"The Hierarchy"
Reject this nonsense. Stay weird. Think independently. Be honest with yourself. Have fun.
Advice to founders: this kind of stuff stays behind closed doors. Airing out your dirty laundry is bad for business and shows a lack of maturity in your company's governance.
We are terminating Chris Degnan for unethical conduct involving Cognition.
The last few months have seen incredible progress in AI capabilities. San Francisco has flourished as new companies that solve new, more ambitious problems are finding great success. Generally, it is a wonderful time to be building.
We at @FactoryAI have seen overwhelming interest in our model-agnostic coding agents and our software factory product. Our team has 10x’d in size, while our revenue has 100x’d year over year. This momentum has been unprecedented.
A much larger competitor, Cognition (makers of Devin) has fallen behind us on the capabilities that matter most to customers: cost, quality, and security. Instead of competing in the market, Cognition engineers feigned interviews with us to pry information about our product. Not finding what they were looking for, Cognition has decided to throw their weight and money at people with direct knowledge of our most confidential plans.
It feels as though ethics is being thrown out of the window in the AI era. People are willing to do anything, including exploiting privileged information and violating ethical boundaries. I think this is unique to our time, and I don’t think it’s right. Integrity still matters.
Yesterday, I made the decision to immediately terminate Christopher Degnan’s roles as a Board Observer and Advisor to Factory, after over a year of service.
Prior to this decision, Chris told me he had a casual conversation with an executive at Cognition AI. When I questioned his intentions, he reassured me that ethics aside, he had “made too much money” and was “too lazy to go work for Cognition,” which I trusted and believed.
On Monday, Chris spent time advising the Factory team on a handful of confidential board-level matters. That evening, he called me to say that the conversation that was initially described as casual and one-off was actually formal and recurring. For weeks, while he sat in our board meetings and advised our leadership team, he was also confiding with executives of our largest competitor. Chris was subject to confidentiality obligations in connection with his work with Factory. We do not know the extent of the information he shared, but it puts his timely questions about our product roadmap and what the parity gap involves into a new light.
It is sad to sever a relationship with someone who has been a trusted advisor - and even a close friend - for over a year. But Chris’s conduct is unacceptable to me. Trust in Board Membership is one of the sacred bonds in the Silicon Valley, one that helps the startup ecosystem thrive. With it comes an enormous responsibility. That trust was violated.
Competition is good. I respect and in many cases admire our competitors. San Francisco is a beautiful, singular place where the bold and ambitious go to defy the norms and precedents of the past. But certain principles that must remain. Violating ethics to seek advantage turns what should be positive-sum into zero-sum.
We all love technology. And we all love to compete. But we must hold ourselves to a higher standard. The future of software engineering comes with abundance that will impact every person on Earth. Building that future comes with immense responsibility. We must build and compete with integrity.
Antonio Bustamante retweeted
Today is my 3 yr anniversary of purchasing a construction company as sole owner.
The past 3 yrs have been the hardest of my professional life. I'm both proud to have survived so far and embarrassed that I got myself into this situation in the first place.
I purchased in 2023 via SBA 7a, underwritten as a $3M rev business. QofE and my own diligence missed two main things: the seller's second business was floating most cashflow issues and their local reputation was unusable. I rebranded to "Cooper" within 95 days on Jan 1, 2024.
This industry runs on relationships and reputation. I instantly became an unknown entity and revenue dropped 95% overnight compared to what was underwritten. There are a lot of stories to tell about 2024, but tl;dr I scratched and clawed back to only $1.7M rev by the end of the year. I emptied my savings and depended on hard money to survive.
Throughout that year, I made fundamental changes to our sales and operations. We focused on municipal work because I could personally handle the administrative burden and the playing field felt more fair. But our bid -> sale -> collection timeline ballooned to around 9-12 months. Changes wouldn't bear fruit for a long time.
In Q2 2025, our 2024 efforts started to take effect. By EOY, we had grown to $3.65M in rev while improving gross margins. However, we were completely cash poor due to growth capital needs and crazy interest payments. We leaned on MCAs to get through because we couldn't compromise all our new client relationships.
This year, we professionalized further, increasing both sales and GM. Our annualized revenue is ~$6m and this will be the first year with substantial EBITDA ($1.2M). We took some less horrible debt and I'm working on a larger refi to stabilize a bit. I am still just trying to maintain overall debt coverage.
All this time, I haven't paid myself a cent. My team has remained underpaid. Everything has depended on selling the vision to both employees and clients. Selling the future to fund the present.
As I reflect on the last 3 years, I feel optimistic about the future. I am a MUCH better operator than in 2023. My team is lean and loyal. And any further growth should be upside I can capture.
But if you asked if it was all worth it, I'm not sure how I'd respond. For the past 3 yrs, I've chronically felt nauseous about paying bills, payroll, potential liability/conflict in our work. I've been less present at home. I've been very boring with friends. My health has taken a backseat to the needs of the business. Not to mention my net worth has tanked compared to pre-purchase levels.
Our conservative plan is to hit $8M in '27, $12M in '28, then $19M in '29. I know it will continue to be hard, but I'm excited to outgrow the first phase of ownership and work on a fresh set of challenges.
Here's to the next three years.
Antonio Bustamante retweeted
Where are all the “distribution is a moat and hence raise a lot of money” investors today..
when the *checks notes* incumbents are flexing their distribution muscle.
It’s SO important to stay first principles on what matters. Find your unfair advantages. Build a great product with high retention and ideally network effects. Use capital as a weapon to compound and not as destiny. And, finally figure out how to be a self sustaining business because this money spigot will dry.
And, that is so freaking hard. It’s never been easy - especially not now.
(PS: This is not a subtweet on any company, but more so on the investors who’ll dole out terrible advice and move to the next company in their portfolio when that one crashes and burns)
There's no way back. Some doors may seem 2-way, but they're not. Maybe you feel better about yourself if you think you can go back.
You can't. There's only forward or down.
Antonio Bustamante retweeted
Don't start a startup expecting you'll go to college (or back to college) afterward. Those two paths are incompatible, and you're lying to yourself if you try to pretend otherwise.
Where's our money going?
I don't really understand why SF, CA is the most taxed place in the nation and we need to have a conversation about saving @SFMTA_Muni. Can someone explain this to me? How are we on the verge of public infrastructure collapse while paying taxes through our noses? Am I missing something?
cc @brezina
and what can I do about it? I rely on @SFBART, @SFMTA_Muni, @baywheels and Lime every day. So do thousands of other people. How can I influence this?
