one of our competitors straight up copied our website 1:1 and changed the pictures. Should I take that as a compliment?

The energy of someone speaking from experience is completely different than someone speaking from theory.

the internet used to be an escape from reality. now, reality is an escape from the internet. there are 2 ways to make tons of money right now: build niche tools that fuel the scroll or build things that stop it.

It would be such a flex if startups replaced posting fundraising videos with posting revenue milestones.

NEO The Home Robot Order Today

Elon Musk. Sam Altman. Jamie Dimon. All saying the same thing: AI is about to end the world of work as we know it.

I accepted a new job offer today. Less than 2 weeks after I started my job search. In the worst job market in 15 years, I had 5 official job offers, 2 verbal job offers, and even more "come join us whenever you want" pitches than I can count. Here's the roadmap of how I did it so you can implement it yourself: 1: It all came through networking I didn't apply to one single company. It all came through calling people I worked with in the past. And not just "ground level" referrals, but people with actual influence with decision makers, or are decision makers themselves. I figured, these people know who I am, and what I'm capable of. This was important because it will make rebuilding my political equity that much easier. Coming in and having someone of influence vouch for me and to help make introductions was a big factor for me. That, and I didn't have to go through any formal interview process. In fact, I only spoke to one recruiter throughout this whole thing. The actual decision makers themselves drove this process for every offer except one. So make sure you're focusing on building relationships internally - upwards, downwards, and sideways. You never know where some of these people end up in a few years. 2: Networking Internally Of course, this network wasn't built overnight. One of the many things my late father taught me was to build your network for the long term, because you never know what doors it can open up for you later on in life. So, when I first at started my old company 10 years ago, I made it a priority to network with the top performers in the office. When most people think of networking, they think of outside events our DMing people online. Now that stuff is important, but for the purpose of this post, all of my offers except for 2 were via people I worked with in the past. 3: Realizing Top mentors are busy I figured out pretty quickly that, if I’m reaching out and asking these people to mentor me, other people are too. So why should they mentor me over everyone else? My first move was to make sure I was the hardest worker there. I was the first one in the office, last one to leave. So they knew immediately I was willing to put in the work. The next was to offer to take them out for coffee, lunch, happy hours, you name it. I did this on my little $35k base salary. All the new hires had this salary, and they knew it too, so again, they knew I was serious when I told them I refused to let them pay for the bill. Slowly but surely I won them over. 4: Advice in real time I remember one senior recruiter quitting, who sat next to who would then be my biggest mentor, so I switched desks asap. Just hearing him on the phone, taking calls from candidates and clients, how he conducted himself, was a masterclass. This was so clutch. Made it so easy to pop over each other’s desks and ask quick 1-2 questions. Eventually, I would poke in asking questions why he did certain things the way he did. Then as I was working with my candidates and clients, I would ask him for advice in real time. This way he was engaged and saw me implement his advice in real time. I didn’t do this with just him, but with another senior performer in the office. 5: Building relationships with my managers I also was asking the advice of my managers. One in particular I became close with and we grew a great relationship over the course of my career. As I started “winning” more, I didn’t take credit. I gave it. And I made my managers look good in the process. As I made one of them look good, he also went out of his way to make me look good. And we reciprocated this back and forth. Eventually, he became the VP of sales and took me up the ladder with him. 6: Becoming a top performer & recognizing others Of course it's easier to build your network internally when you're a top performer. With the help of my mentors and managers, I kept smashing company records left and right. But it wasn't just about me. My performance raised the bar and broke barriers. With every milestone I hit, other people started realizing what's actually possible and it raised their performance too. So whenever other people starting hitting their new milestones, I was virtually the first person to reach out to congratulate them, and offer advice on how to hit the next one. 7: Giving Others Credit Eventually my reputation grew and spread. Other teams wanted to work with me. I started making placements with everyone on our east coast division. But the thing is, I didn’t really take any credit. I always made sure the other people involved received more recognition than me. I figured, it didn’t matter, because the executives upstairs would keep seeing my name pop up and eventually I am the real impact player behind the scenes. Plus, people love recognition in general. As these people moved onto other companies, they will most certainly remember me not just for my performance, but how I made them feel special. 8: Getting Laid Off Eventually, after years of top performance and building out my network, my entire division was whacked! It didn’t come to a surprise. About a year or so ago I saw the music was going to stop at our company. Overall performance wasn’t great, shuffling executives in and out, etc. I took some time off to decompress especially with the passing of my father to figure out what I wanted to do. 9: Reaching out to my network Now is the time where 10+ years of building and curating my network was going to pay off. I knew I wanted to be intentional about who I reached out to. I started out with not just referrals, but referrals of influence. Meaning it wasn’t enough they worked there. They either had to be a decision maker, or have influence with a decision maker. From there, just to see what my options were, I started reaching out to a few more people I enjoyed working with, that I knew were successful at their new companies. On top of that, virtually anytime someone that was also laid off with me that took an interview, that company eventually reached out to me once they heard I was available. So I was taking calls left and right the past 2 weeks. 10: Fast tracking the interview process I knew everyone would be chomping at the bits to bring me on so I made it very clear from day 1 that I wanted to take my time. This way, I wasn’t spending my time talking to the wrong people, and with the companies I did like, I could process through them faster. That being said, I didn’t have to apply anywhere. The referrals just sent me to either the person I’d be reporting to or their boss. And for the companies I really liked, I did the entire interview process in a week, and in 2 instances, a day. 11: Acting with extreme transparency From the very first call, I made it clear what I was looking for and my expectations for my next employer, manager, role, and income. On top of that, without mentioning the names of the companies I was speaking with, I was very honest where I was at in the process with the other companies. Further, I was even more honest with where that specific company ranked, and if they still wanted to proceed with me to go through their interview process to show them I was cognizant of not wasting their time if they weren't "serious contenders". 12: Choosing the company: It landed down to 3 offers I was serious about. The one I accepted, is where the first mentor I had mentioned above, their company is in the same exact situation my old company was in about 7-8 years ago. They’re landing all these accounts, they’re having growing pains, and they need someone who can not only contribute, but help map out what they need to do. I also already have experience with half the accounts they have so there would be minimal ramp up involved. The 2nd place one was a small, yet growing, recruiting startup. One of my biggest mid-career mentors has a very successful company. But it would have required a little bit of a learning curve. There was nothing “wrong” with their offer, I was just more familiar with the other one. The 3rd place one was actually in first place briefly. I met the entire team in person at their NY office. They had an amazing energy about them. A few senior top billers and a lot of up and commers. Ultimately why I didn’t move forward was that their team was onsite 3x/week in NY. Although they offered me remote, I knew eventually at some point this would cause issues internally with the other producers. 13: Declining offers the right way So far with all of the offers I have declined, they've essentially given me a standing job offer. Which means if the company I go to goes bankrupt or I somehow get whacked again in 6-12 months, I can call them and they'll bring me onboard. Now, I am also taking an extra step to ensure a smooth transition. I am not sending them a generic email template I made on ChatGPT. I am personally calling each of them, not just the main POC, but each person that was involved in the process. Because, again, you never know where each person ends up in the next 3, 5, 10 years. So the focus isn't keeping that bridge and network with that specific company, but with the specific people.

The Walton family (who own Walmart) are worth $400 billion, yet many of their employees are on SNAP. Bezos is worth $400 billion, many Amazon employees require SNAP. The people who need help are not the problem. It’s corporate greed. It’s an unwillingness to pay a living wage

Two reasons why 99% of seed stage companies don’t make it to Series A: 1. They don’t build something people want. 2. Co-Founder breakup. Avoid these two and you are the 1%.

i had this friend back in college; brilliant guy. he’d spend nights building random games, writing weird algorithms just because he could. never for grades, never for recognition; just pure obsession with building. he was the smartest person i knew. the kind who didn’t even need to try. everyone knew he was the class topper; but he only had two friends. me and one other guy. he never went out. never talked to anyone. just sat in his room, building stuff no one ever saw. fast forward a few years; he’s at a stable job now, quiet, low profile, doing okay. but every time i talk to him, i can hear it; that spark he had is gone. so don’t be that guy. don’t lock yourself in the room forever. build; but also show what you build. talk to people. share your work. make friends. go to events. collaborate. engineering is not meant to be a solo act. if you build alone forever, the world will never know how good you really are.

The most important skill you can develop is the ability to execute your plan when everyone thinks you're crazy.