Founder. Building Leap. Sharing what I learn. Journaling the funny bits. One moment at a time
Bangalore
Joined February 2010
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Actually the chronically negative you can identify in hiring and avoid
The real damage to startups is done by 'Smart Skeptics'
Who are smart, sound even smarter than they are, are great at raising objections, can hold great intellectual conversations, have a lot of anecdotal evidence about everything.
But can't execute/move metrics/ solve hard problems even if their life depended on it, because they are skeptical about everything.
And they dissuade the believers as well.
Avoid them like a plague
"Everyone at my 19th birthday party is a billionaire.
Everyone was either from MIT or Harvard and interning at this firm, HRT"
MIT and Harvard should make billboards out of this.
"Everyone at my 19th birthday party became a billionaire."
@alexandr_wang had an Wintership at a trading company in 2019, almost everyone else getting that internship became a founder and a billionaire.
Only two roles exist in PED (Product, engineering, design) teams
1. Slop Canon - can vibe code and experiment at insane velocity.
Completely independently
Test a crazy number of hypothesis
Land something valuable
10% hit rate
Persona - Restless, Tinkerer, Creative, polygot, loves taking control.
Dislikes giving away responsibility/delegating to another human.
Loves delegating to Agents and talking to Users
Hates building alignment with humans
Feels humans are too slow
One person army
2. Grown ups - take what the slop canon has uncovered.
Build a proper product.
Ensure the best architecture/security/growth motion/business goal alignment
50%+ hit rate on scaling up the insight
Persona - Strategic, Cross function operator, understands product, business, user persona, competitive dynamics, market structures intimately.
Comfortable talking to all functions in the company.. engineering, finance, business, customer support.
Ninja at building alignment and consensus.
Incredible at strategic calls, including capital and resource allocation.
Understands growth motions
All other roles will either go extinct (eg: I only do design, don't want to own metrics)
Or they will get very niche / super specialised (eg: top 1% data scientist, math PhD)
If you are not killing it at one of these two persona, you better be top 1% in the world at what you do
Ps: first hit when I saw a talk by the every company founder
Can't find it but credit to them
This is by far the best podcast I have heard in months.
And definitely the best with an Indian crew :)
Sidu is fantastic, as always.
Sidu is sagacious
Sidu is very rare and in a category of ONE
A rare combination of someone who's can talk strategy, software, business models, hiring, history, psychology and sci-fi.
And rarer because he is articulate, warm humble, engaging, graceful and opinionated while juggling a wide variety of topics
So glad we have folks like Sidu in the ecosystem to learn from, and emulate.
I will watch this one again
My only suggestion is that the thumbnail could be much better.
It doesn't do Sidu and the conversation justice.
@ponnappa
youtu.be/CPISElKbFFg?si=v0N-…
If you’re building a product, ask yourself every day:
1. How can I go faster?
2. How can I move my metrics without involving another human?
If you are still saying things such as
"I am waiting for X to give me an update on Y so that I can then do Z", you're ngmi
Truth 1 : Brand building has never been more important than it is TODAY
Truth 2 : Very few people 'get' BRAND.
And most of them are building their own rocketships
we put on a broadway musical about accounts payable.
slate called it "a glorified ad for a tech company." correct. it was also the most fun we've ever had as a company.
the part i didn't expect was what happened after. a flood of messages from theater folks in new york saying it meant the world to them. billy porter told the crowd that industrials like this paid his rent for decades, until they disappeared in the early 2000s.
for most of the last century, when a company had something to say, it hired composers, choreographers and actors. somewhere along the way we decided marketing should be cheap, measurable and forgettable.
i hope more companies lose their minds a little. make something people feel.
I have a love hate relationship with long weekends.
I love them because it gives me just enough time to make grander plans for life, work, health and hobbies.
But I dislike that it doesn't give me enough time to change the reality of the coming Monday..
Where things will break, life will happen, surprises will be sprung
And my grand plans will take a backseat, till the next long weekend rolls by
😃
HBS interview question:
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
AI Labs:
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious token budget?
An unwritten rule of the tech world is that when Bill Gurley gives a talk, you drop everything and watch it.
And watch it again.
So do yourself a favour and watch this
This might be even better/more important than the "Regulatory Capture" talk he gave a couple of years ago.
If you haven't seen that one, watch it.
And you will almost see Bill predicting that the leading AI labs will beg for regulation, all in their own interest.
Something we are now see playing out.
Bill's style is unique.
He delivers deep, hard to grasp e
Strategic concepts, in a lucid, relatable manner.
And he explains it with conviction.
Without the hyperbole.
Without taking sides.
Just the quest for truth, in human behaviour, systems and how the world works.
I wish he wrote and spoke more
I am such a fanboy
All-In Summit: Bill Gurley
(0:00) Bill Gurley takes the stage at the All-In Summit
(1:29) Bill's Presentation: Searching for Feynman
Links to additional resources mentioned in talk and used in research:
p3.institute/searching_for_f…
@bgurley