My zone of genius is eating shit with a grin 😁 Philosophizing @StarvingCap Serial founder w/ a high pain tolerance + blue-collar pedigree
NJ + Philly + NYC
Joined December 2009
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If companies are babies, I joined Alto Studios as a surrogate father.
Somewhere along the way, I adopted the kid.
Today it graduates, as @alto_studios1 has been acquired by Good Content.
In late 2022, founder and investor friends conceived an idea and recruited me to launch, build, and lead it in a domain I'd never operated in. First company I ever ran that wasn't mine.
We led strategic comms and content for some of the most impressive founders, investors, and executives I've ever met. People who could charge four figures for 30 minutes paid us to sit with them and understand what made them who they are. Best education available, and we got paid to receive it.
After ~10 years as a 2x venture-backed founder, I wanted to prove I could build something profitable without a dime of venture. Did that, and returned capital plus a little to the five people who backed me.
It's a relatively small deal, and I hate when founders embellish "exits." What we optimized for was where our team and clients landed, and I couldn't be happier with how Good Content delivers on that as a new forever home.
Grateful to everyone who built this with us.
lmao... love my dh Philly fans! If the refs make a bad call at the Linc, you best believe they're getting bullied into making it right. #GoBirdsDH
My mom took this picture in 1991.
That's my twin sister and me, almost three, hugging at Liberty State Park with the Twin Towers behind us.
After 9/11, she printed a poster-size copy and hung it up in our house. She thought it symbolized some kind of rebirth for the hope of world peace in the midst of national tragedy and righteous rage.
My mom was sweet and hokey like that.
The 25th anniversary was a few weeks ago, and it's been pretty cathartic to process what that day did to my life (all of ours?), how it continues to shape America, and how it still directs the trajectory of our world.
From the personal experience of having two fraternity brothers who lost their dads, close friends who spent their twenties in Iraq and Afghanistan, and celebrating at Ground Zero the night we finally got bin Laden...
to the ensuing "war on terrorism", which saw over 7,000 American service members die in combat and another 30,000+ who took their own lives after coming home.
Abroad, we won hearts and minds by killing 432,000+ civilians and displacing 38 million people.
45 days after the attacks, the Patriot Act passed 98 to 1, and we needed no explanation to take our shoes off at airports. Since then, that same security and surveillance apparatus has been weaponized in Orwellian fashion against our own people, as it reads license plates at intersections in small towns across this country.
I wrote about these reflections and what I think my mom was hoping for in a new essay I just dropped on Starving Capitalist (@starvingcap ).
You can check it out below (and subscribe if you dig it!):
25 Years Later
starvingcapitalist.com/essay…
Just found out I'm in the top 1% of @Replit users, which I guess is pretty cool?
... but not as cool as all the cool shit I've been building 🤪
Football being back makes me happier than it probably should, and this week roughly 1,180 guys will find out they didn't make an NFL roster.
Every team cuts to 53 by Sunday, and the hardest calls are at the bottom of the depth chart, where the comps are basically identical and everyone left is "good enough."
It comes down to who covers kicks like it matters and who finishes plays in the 4th quarter of a preseason game.
Coaches have language for it:
"Want-to" is the appetite for contact, and "motor" is effort that doesn't switch off.
15 years of hiring and firing has shown me that split on every team I've built.
Most people want the job, but a much smaller percent want the actual work. You usually don't find out who is who until shit hits the fan (it always does in startups!) and wanting the job stops being a good enough reason to stay.
That used to be a useful filter, but I think it's becoming the whole game.
Check out the new essay over at @starvingcap :
Care Is the Constraint
starvingcapitalist.com/essay…
Founder Mode is the wrong model.
When asked what "Beast Mode" actually meant, Marshawn Lynch said it was "really just a mindset."
@MoneyLynch knew he was going to get hit, and he simply resolved to deliver more impact than he absorbed. It was about making his opponent quit.
I don't know if it's healthier per se, but I think it's the better mental model and it doesn't only apply to founders. It's a decision anyone in the building can make, at any level, and it has nothing to do with hours worked or sleeping at the office.
It comes down to how much punishment you're willing to absorb to keep the run alive.
I wrote about why that quality is becoming the most valuable thing in any company, over at @starvingcap .
AI made the skills cheap, but it can't make people care.
starvingcapitalist.com/essay…
P.S. I built the entire Starving Capitalist website, including CMS back-end, analytics, and newsletter list mgmt + distro capabilities (via @resend integration) with @Replit ... S/O to @amasad , @samuel_spitz , @MannyBernabe , @raymmar , @sarahli and Team 🙌
Big Update: proud to announce I've become a professional looksmaxxer.
As you grapple with the reality that an AI agent will soon be better than you at your job, I'm unlocking a monopolistic competitive advantage by exalting my physical, human beauty.
Starving Capitalist is my folly, but more to come soon on the things that aren't. 👀
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