One Who Continues to Overcome Himself: Looong Attention Span 🧘♂️ Focused https://xitter.cf/t.co/CuhuMr2bmp
New York, NY
Joined May 2013
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Disagreement is not oppression. Argument is not assault. Words – even provocative or repugnant ones – are not violence. The answer to speech we do not like is more speech.
Ibrahim retweeted
Christina on why Vanta pays its top people 10x what it did five years ago
"Should I adjust the pitch and be like 'Inevitably the baseline here is Vanta's 50 billion.
The real question you should be considering is if you join, can you take us on a journey to 250 billion?’
Should I start saying that? Probably not. But the answer is not definitely not.
Because that is the pitch that people who work at Vanta are getting from other companies. The market now is saying that so much, you do seem unambitious.
Total comp, it's probably like a factor of 10. I think it actually should be higher. My general comp philosophy is you never pay the top people enough.
Patrick: What those top people are doing that's so valuable typically.
High agency, get shit done. That sounds so milquetoast and that's worth millions of dollars, but yes, actually it is.
A high-context person who understands the company and the customers and the domain, making generally reasonable decisions and sometimes bad ones, and then iterating on their bad ones and just moving is so valuable."
My second conversation with Christina Cacioppo (@christinacaci), Vanta's cofounder and CEO.
Charlie Songhurst says the best returns come from companies that are highly boring and highly complex, because fewer founders want to build them.
Vanta is one of those companies.
When we first talked five years ago, Christina told me about building the first version of Vanta in Excel.
Since then she has turned it into the category leader in security compliance. Now she is rebuilding it around AI.
We discuss:
- Why great software businesses got cheap
- Why Vanta eats the cost of AI instead of marking it up
- Why comp for top people is up 10X in five years
- What is over/under hyped in AI
- How AI attackers are changing security
- Vanta marketing + billboards
- Building trust in an era of low trust
Enjoy!
TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Intro
4:17 Surviving the SaaSpocalypse
9:40 The AI Pricing Trap
16:17 Rebuilding Software for AI
22:43 Silicon Valley's Talent Wars
31:57 What's Overhyped in AI
38:39 Security at Machine Speed
47:16 Reinventing Software
55:37 The Billboard War
60:38 Rebuilding Trust in Technology
Ibrahim retweeted
Great Men of history are depressed.
The personality that builds empires is not the same personality driven by a happy feel-good ethos. Especially in their 20s many of them are depressed.
A few examples from history:
- Napoleon wrote an entire paper called "On Suicide" when he was 16.
- Hamilton wrote to his friend around the same age that he "wished there was a war" so that he could make his name.
- Winston Churchill wrote countless letters to his mother about Loneliness while at school.
- Abraham Lincoln was constantly writing about how his heart yearned for greatness, but his reality didn't reflect it. This was before he became president.
- Caesar weeped at a statue of Alexander the Great because he hadn't accomplished as much him by age 30.
This is a recurring pattern you see throughout history. Many greats are depressed in their youth. And often times, this is their driver towards action. They deal with their pain through pure action.
Ibrahim retweeted
Its important to remember most people take the path of least resistance
they dont stray far from where they were always "supposed" to be
rejection, pain, and suffering are for these people, indications of wrongful pursuits (1/4)
Ibrahim retweeted
Reaching out to strangers only makes you money. You either:
1) Get nothing and end up in the same position as before.
2) You make money.
So whether it’s 1 no or 1000 nos, you’re in the same spot. But 1 yes, can change everything.
No downside from no.
All upside from yes.
Ibrahim retweeted
Everything you want is on the other side of taking a shot, asking again, and not giving a fuck about what other people think until you get what you want.
You just have to fucking try.
Ibrahim retweeted
YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING, PRIMETIME, and DIGGER make 2026 the best year for film since 2015 (SICARIO, EX MACHINA, and MAD MAX: FURY ROAD). At long last, movies are back.
Ibrahim retweeted
The moment you stop thinking of Douglas Adams as a humorous SciFi writer but instead as a profound philosopher it all makes much more sense
Ibrahim retweeted
"Winning is getting what we want, which often includes assisting others in getting what they want."
– Gerry Spence
Ibrahim retweeted
Most people are stuck because they're solving the wrong problems
When something isn't working, line up every number in your funnel. CPM, click-through rate, opt-in rate, show rate, booking rate, close rate
Find the one that's way off and ask which looks easiest to double
That's your bottleneck. Fix that
Ibrahim retweeted
“Reality is that which, one you stop believing it, doesn’t go away.”
~Philip K. Dick
Ibrahim retweeted
this is the best breakdown I’ve seen of the dark arts behind Block Blast!, the most downloaded mobile game in the world last year
intentionally making players lose to optimize which ads they see, the sophistication behind such a “simple” game is stunning.
Ibrahim retweeted
You have no enemies, you say? Alas, my friend, the boast is poor, He who has mingled in the fray Of duty, that the brave endure,
Must have made foes.
If you have none,
Small is the work that you have done. You've hit no traitor on the hip, You've dashed no cup from
perjured lip, You've never set the wrong to right. You've been a coward in the fight.
"No Enemies" by Charles Mackay
Ibrahim retweeted
Lovable is a scam.
So is Replit, Base44, Framer, and all AI website builders.
These are for low IQ people who don’t know how to use AI and fall for SaaS marketing gimmicks.
You are paying a premium for less usage, shittier models, shittier websites, and hand cuffing yourself to a SaaS ecosystem you don’t control.
A $100/month Claude Max plan (or ChatGPT Pro) is a better solution BY FAR
Ibrahim retweeted
✔️✔️NEW EPISODE: "If you're on the phone to someone and you're asking a very important question. where the answer will mean a lot to you, listen to the silence before you get the response. If I ask, do you still love me? Or, what do the results of the tests say? If you listen to the quality of that silence, you know the answer before it’s spoken." -Mark Booth
