Recent Posts

Most Used Categories

Month: November 2021

Assured Misery

by Collaborative Fund

People tend to know what makes them angry with more certainty than what might make them happy. Happiness is complicated because you keep moving the goalposts. Misery is more durable.

So you can move the needle a lot by focusing on what not to do in life.

A few little things to avoid:

**1. The inability to deal with petty criticisms. **

Alexander Hamilton was one of the most talented Americans to ever live. But he had a flaw: Born into nothing without a prominent family name to leverage, he was hypersensitive to anyone criticizing his reputation.

The first time this backfired was when a judge named Aedanus Burke called Hamilton a liar. Hamilton challenged the judge to a duel. Burke quickly apologized, but congressmen were stunned at Hamilton’s willingness to die over a petty exchange.

A decade later Hamilton’s 20-year-old son, Philip, heard a speech where a lawyer claimed the Hamiltons might try to overthrow the presidency. Philip was so shaken that he continued the family tradition, challenging the lawyer, George Eacker, to a duel. Alexander wasn’t just aware of the duel; he counseled his son on how to do it properly. But these things are 50-50: Philip died.

Three years later Hamilton claimed Aaron Burr had no principles and would do anything for power. Burr asked for an apology, which Hamilton seemed to interpret as an insult to his dignity. He called for a duel, which took place at the same spot Philip was shot. An hour later (Read more...)

Lessons from the Sea

by Collaborative Fund

One of my great privileges is living in Los Angeles, close to the Pacific Ocean. I often swim in the ocean, and thanks to the amazing California weather, I get to do this year-round. The physicality of the practice is one thing, but reflecting on my life, I think I am infinitely more grateful for the lessons it teaches me about perseverance and mental strength.

I have swum competitively throughout my life, but turned to the ocean full-time when the lockdown happened and pools were shut down. At first, the experience was awful - my heart rate spiked from the cold-response and the fear of seeing the sandy bottom drop-off into a gaping abyss.

But the people I swam with - all more experienced in open water than myself - pushed me to keep going.

Frankly, I don’t think I ever openly expressed that my heart was about to explode from fear, but they probably noticed that I swam pretty much on top of them the entire time (I still do this at times).

Almost two years later, the fear has not completely gone away, but I’ve learned to live with it. I wish I could say there was a “moment” when the fear dissipated, but the answer is a lot less sexy - it simply reduced over time, with a lot of consistent, dedicated effort.

I think about this mechanism often - slow, persistent, and disciplined effort - and how it can lead to incredible results.

I use this (Read more...)

Bipul Sinha & Nicole Perlroth | The Zero Trust Strategy

by Greylock Partners
This post is by Greylock Partners from Greymatter

As software and data management systems have evolved, so too have the cybersecurity threats targeting them. How can companies, government agencies, and individuals keep their data secure when risk is at an all-time high? Greylock general partner Asheem Chandna, New York Times cybersecurity reporter Nicole Perlroth, and Rubrik CEO and co-founder Bipul Sinha discuss the current world of cybersecurity, ransomware, and the need for everyone to adopt a "zero-trust" strategy to protect their data. You can read a transcript of this podcast here: https://greylock.com/greymatter/the-zero-trust-strategy/

The Future of Developer Tools, and the Tech Companies out to Improve it

by Polina Stavrovski
This post is by Polina Stavrovski from Seedcamp

This post was written with the wise support of Expert in Residence, David Mytton, founder of console.dev, and Eldad Fux, founder of Appwrite. 

Introduction

There are countless job roles that are slowly seen as becoming obsolete: the travel agent, the telemarketer, even referees. One role that is only developing, is, ironically, the developer. The ‘Rockstars of SaaS,’ some may say. And with that, come endless opportunities for dev tool plays. In our EiR Emeritus David Mytton’s post, ‘Focusing on Developers,’ David nods to Marc Andreessen’s declaration over a decade ago that ‘software is eating the world.’ In this day and age, we are witnessing that developer roles exist to create, build, and leverage that software across all industries and to then monetise through various streams as well. In fact, Tyler Jewell, MD at Dell Technologies Capital, assumes that developer-led products account for $40B in global annual revenue, in his ‘Developer Led Landscape’ post, and that’s forecasted to only keep growing. In 2020, the global IT industry accounted for $5.2 trillion, of which $624B is software. A strong dev tool improves a developer’s experience across an entire workflow and bridges the developer experience gap that Stephen O’Grady coins in his post:

“Developers are forced to borrow time from writing code and redirecting it towards managing the issues associated with highly complex, multi-factor developer tool chains held together in places by duct tape and baling wire. This, then, is the developer experience gap,” he explains. (Read more...)

The Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation at Stanford

by steve blank
This post is by steve blank from Steve Blank

penitus cogitare, cito agere – think deeply, act quickly

75 years ago, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) helped kickstart innovation in Silicon Valley with a series of grants to Fred Terman, Dean of Stanford’s Engineering school. Terman used the money to set up the Stanford Electronics Research Lab. He staffed it with his lab managers who built the first electronic warfare and electronic intelligence systems in WWII. This lab pushed the envelope of basic and applied research in microwave devices and electronics and within a few short years made Stanford a leader in these fields. The lab became ground zero for the wave of Stanford’s entrepreneurship and innovation in the 1950’s and 60’s and helped form what would later be called Silicon Valley.

75 years later, ONR just laid down a bet again, one we believe will be equally transformative. They’re the first sponsors of the new Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation at Stanford that Joe Felter, Raj Shah, and I have started.

Gordian What?

A Gordian Knot is a metaphor for an intractable problem. Today, the United States is facing several seemingly intractable national security problems simultaneously.

We intend to help solve them in Stanford’s Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation. Our motto of penitus cogitare, cito agere, think deeply, act quickly, embraces our unique intersection of deep problem understanding, combined with rapid solutions. The Center combines six unique strengths of Stanford and its location in Silicon Valley.

  1. The (Read more...)

Twitter – FIVE CEO’s…Same Business Model

by Howard Lindzon
This post is by Howard Lindzon from Howard Lindzon

Good morning everyone.

I wake up every morning and I check the trending bar on Stocktwits. Yes, it’s sad, but habits are habits and it’s better for me at age 56 than eating a bowl of Lucky Charms.

Yesterday I saw Twitter trending and that Jack Dorsey was ‘stepping down’ which meant that Eliot Management (with two board seats) had finally said to Jack GTFO.

I follow Twitter too closely because Twitter is my favorite product (since 2007), inspired Stocktwits and a lot of my best investments and I have expected it to be a public company worth multiple hundreds of billions which Stocktwits would draft and all would live happily and in peace for generations.

It was always clear to me that Twitter would integrate trading and betting (take a piece of billions of transactions a year – The Ultimate PFOF) and become the next sports and finance juggernaut…a Yahoo 2.0 (in the best way).

Instead they have became Yahoo in too many ways.

As Ben Thompson summed up this morning in his fantastic essay on Twitter and Jack’s ‘resignation’:

Moreover, the fact of the matter is that Twitter has now had one business model and five CEOs (counting Dorsey twice); maybe it’s worth changing the former before the next activist investor demands yet another change to the latter.

I have been brutally tough on Twitter, the executive team and the board (the worst board in modern tech history) because I see what Ben sums up so clearly. It (Read more...)