👉 What Happened on Tech Twitter Last Week - Dec 15th

My startup almost died on Christmas, what Uber and AirBnB would have done differently, Elon Musk in 1999, and more!

Yo! It’s Brett again. Here’s all the juicy goodness that happened on Tech Twitter last week. It’s the holidays, so remember to tell your loved ones how much you care about them and to sign up for Tech Twitter TLDR and Crypto Twitter TLDR 😜

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🎄 Tales From Founder-Christmas Past

Kristen Anderson, co-founder & CEO of Catch Benefits, tells an incredible story of narrowly missing having to shut down her company as they struggled to raise money to keep them afloat over the holidays. In her words, “point of the story: put in the effort, build the network, never give up on hoping for luck.” Definitely click into this one.

Kristen Anderson @CatchKristen

A year ago today, we were almost out of money. We had a consulting client who owed us ~$450k, but was trying to negotiate down on the amount, despite work being fully delivered in September. Then, "the holidays" hit. 1/

🤯 Marketplace Madness

Lenny Rachitsky, xAirBnB exec and Tweeter of the Month for July has been sharing some incredible insights into marketplace businesses on Twitter and his newsletter. This thread highlights what the leaders of marketplace giants from Uber to OpenTable would have done differently.

Lenny Rachitsky 👋 @lennysan

What would you do differently if you could do it all over again? That's the last question I asked everyone I interviewed for my deep dive on marketplace growth. 🎉The eighth, and final (for now), post is live🎉 Read on for real-talk learnings. 👇 (1/13) lennyrachitsky.com/p/what-theyd-d…

lennyrachitsky.comWhat They’d Do Differently 🔮 Kickstarting and Scaling a Marketplace Business“At TaskRabbit, we scaled before had product market fit. We should have focused on fill rate — the percentage of tasks posted that were complete. It was well under 100%, and people who didn’t get matched never came back. The company instead skewed too far into top-line growth, and should have focuse…

🧙‍♂️ Predictions and Retrospectives

The onslaught of hot takes on the future and clickbaity retros on the past have begun. Since we’re rounding out the decade, there is even more juicy content than normal. Here are some good tweets of the sort from last week.

ᴅᴀᴠɪᴅ ᴘᴇʀᴇʟʟ ✌ @david_perell

Predictions for the 2020s: 1) Indian culture is going to explode as millions of people there get Internet access. 2) Mexico City will emerge as a global hub for remote work. Close to America. Great quality of life. 3) Teenagers will routinely build billion-dollar businesses.

🧑🏻‍💻☕️ @hunterwalk

“The year that everyone flipped negative on big tech” 🧐P

Barron Webster @WarronBebster

How much has changed this decade? In 2010, these things weren't invented yet: —Spotify —Netflix —Instagram/Snapchat/Twitter —Drones —Smartphones —Uber/Lyft —GPS —Video Games —Texting —Advil —SUVs —Websites —Microwaves —Cable TV —X-rays —Slack

let me know how i can be helpful @vcstarterkit

As we approach the end of the decade, we took a moment to highlight the top VCs going in to the 2020s

😂 Funny & Cool

nicole @nwilliams030

if👏you👏are👏attempting👏to👏rebuild👏an👏institution👏that is👏over👏at👏least👏a👏century👏old👏and👏have👏no👏historical👏knowledge👏of👏the 👏institutions👏successes & failures 👏you are👏needlessly👏ignoring👏a history of people👏trying to👏solve the👏same problem👏as you👏

Taylor Lorenz @TaylorLorenz

People who don't strip the tracking codes from URLs before sharing/texting/emailing them are monsters

Ire Aderinokun @ireaderinokun

Javascript be like

Peter Pham @peterpham

Leveling up my Christmas Tree game with some programmable lights mapped with computer vision. Pretty impressed @twinkly_led. Waiting for more scenes to drop. @Philips hue needs to catch up.

🤔 Interesting

Micah Rosenbloom @micahjay1

From what I’m hearing the hot “entrepreneurial” MBA career path at the moment in the search fund. Students get funded to search for a business to buy. In some cases, they buy QSR franchisees like Burger King. I thought you went to b-school so you DIDN’T have to flip burgers ;)

Jeff Morris Jr. @jmj

Beware of product people who use data as a crutch for a lack of taste. Beware of product people who use taste as a crutch for a lack of data.

Brianne Kimmel @briannekimmel

Game-like experiences will ride the next massive wave as gaming culture goes mainstream: - The gaming industry is now bigger than Hollywood Americans spent $43B on games in 2018 - The gaming tech stack = 759 startups+ - The end of ‘game shame' is here wfh.substack.com/p/how-superhum…

Jon Erlichman @JonErlichman

Elon Musk interview in 1999 as he waits for his McLaren F1 to be delivered:

nicole @nwilliams030

what viewing social media is like if you went to a Christian university

Paul Katsen @pavtalk

Whoa! Take a gander at @Google's future of the internet with this flow for buying movie tickets. Google opens the site in background, presents their own UI, then acts on your behalf on the underlying site. Very similar to their Duplex call bots, but for the internet.

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