๐ What Happened on Tech Twitter Last Week - Oct 6
What to ask when interviewing at a startup, Paul Graham's secret project, dealing with a quarter-life crisis
Yo! Hereโs what happened on Tech Twitter the week of October 6th - October 13th.
As always, reply with feedback and forward this to your friends!
SF is (S)F-ing itself up
SF is planning on establishing an Office of Emerging Technology that requires startups testing or launching โtech devicesโ in SF to seek approval from the city first. Everyone is triggered and sharing their favorite cynical hot takes on why SF sucks.
๐ฅThe Hottest Take ๐ฅ
The doomsday Directive 10-289 scenario we all fear probably wonโt come to fruition. The Office will likely only impact startups in transportation, real estate, and other city-related spaces - pretty sure NIMBYs donโt care about the data enrichment product my startup is launching this week. While we do need innovation in these spaces, a temporary move back to super high margin, pure software businesses might be a breath of fresh air for investors soured by the beating physical businesses like Uber have taken in public markets lately.
Alternatively, if this legislation makes it truly impossible to start a company in SF then maybe we can all finally move to NYC and LA like weโve been saying we would for-literally-ever.
Almost any other city in the world would be proud to have Airbnb and Uber founded there.
San Francisco wants to make sure that never happens again.
sfexaminer.com/news/sf-to-estโฆ
To all the founders and technologists in SF, NYC would love to have you build and work here. Itโs a great place to test and build โatomโ based startups.
We might not have the warm weather and homogeneous tech culture but itโs a more diverse, interesting and fun city to live in!
Balaji S. Srinivasan @balajis
Surprise Blackout!
PG&E said they were going to shut off power for 30 counties in California with not much notice. While it was less eventful than the hype, people were still triggered.
Hey @PGE4Me, are you going to provide those supplies for people who can't afford them?
Replace the food for people on limited or fixed incomes who just lost everything in their fridge?
What about disabled people who need power for their essential medical devices? #pgeshutdown
PG&E @PGE4Me
Been mystified how PG&E ($PGC) can declare bankruptcy, & yet stock still has value. This video below helps explain. The wildfire settlement is a massive unknown swing factor. Looks like PG&E is using bankruptcy to gain leverage in that negotiation.
Financial News 24/7 @cottonwood100
Tweets that make you think
New blog post! The next decade of work will be about passions, not gigs. New platforms and tools allow people to earn a livelihood using their creativity and unique skills.
Thread ๐
a16z.com/2019/10/08/pasโฆ
Underappreciated phenomenon:
Working at a high-growth, margin-focused startup is a real-life MBA where you get paid six figures plus equity to learn how to build a business instead of paying six figures and going into debt to learn how to build a theoretical one.
Questions to ask instead of โwhat do you do?โ
๐ What are you most passionate about?
๐ง Whatโs been on your mind a lot lately?
๐ฅ Whatโs on fire in your life right now?
๐ Whatโs the latest new thing youโve learned?
๐ What are you most looking forward to?
After launching a zero-to-one product, donโt declare it a failure until your push notification approval rate is higher than 50%. Anything lower is likely distorting your data and preventing network effects from forming.
A I spend my time with deeply generative people building companies, organisations, products, brands, art, I have concluded that some people are just born to be world-creators, that they have to make a world in which they can exist, because they weren't happy with what they found.
In China. Only coffee shop near us:
- doesnโt accept btc
- doesnโt accept usd
- doesnโt accept credit cards
- doesnโt accept chinese fiat
Only accepts wechat pay. And you can only order with their wechat mini app.
You can learn basically anything for free.
The things you should pay for: feedback/mentorship, access to a network, a forcing function to be disciplined.
The inflation is here, itโs just not evenly distributed.
The areas tech touches (televisions, software, phones) have experienced hyperdeflation.
The areas subsidized or regulated by the state (healthcare, education) have experienced real price increases.
I know I am in the minority. Even at Spark I waited a year after joining to try to have a baby because I was told in my 20s that it was only fair to your employer to put a year in before mat leave. (Of course, ironically, it took much longer than that.)
SaaS startups who start by selling to other startups see two advantages:
1. More customer momentum
2. Uninhibited product innovation
Big companies come with too many questions, constraints, pessimism that slows innovation and your ability to ship a disruptive product
Scientific papers have become harder to read.
In an analyses of 700,000 English-language papers published between 1881 and 2015, technical jargon has ๐ including unnecessary lexicon like โrobustโ, โsignificantโ, โfurthermoreโ and โunderlying.โ
Q: How do I motivate my eng team to hit deadlines? It feels like they've been dragging their feet and nothing Iโve done has helped.
๐ 5 ways to build understanding + 10 ways to motivate (1/20) ๐
When interviewing at startups, you should ask hard questions:
* Whatโs your path to profitability?
* How much fundraising is required to get there?
* How much will employees get diluted?
* Whatโs your burn?
* How much runway is left?
You are interviewing the company too.
One prediction I have for world scale AR for TikTok:
- a rise of the "short-form animated video" genre as we see storytellers take the mundane of their day 2 day lives to create their own stories,
- creating a cottage industry of "storytelling as a service" VFX tools
Seriously, on Twitter you can interact with:
โข CEOs
โข Celebrities
โข Journalists
โข Brands
โข Politicians
โข Athletes
โข Comedians
โข Authors
โข Musicians
โข Like-minded people
โข Unlike-minded people
โข Millions of people
โข One specific person
Thereโs nothing else like it
Tweets that start discussions (click in!)
My favorite for โpopular now, but obsolete in 10 yearsโ โ
- parking lots
- pro football
- game consoles
- factory farmed meat
- gas stations
- laptops (replaced by tablets!)
- real estate agents
- social networks
Agree or disagree?
One of the things I'd love debunked or confirmed is whether making a smaller business ($1-5M/year) requires just as much perseverance, optimism, & hard work as making a giant business ($100M/year). What is the natural benefit of something smaller in scale?
What is your productivity stack?
My current setup is a combination of:
- Desktop: Gmail (Streak + Clearbit Connect)
- Mobile: Outlook
- Fantastical
- Bear (Notes)
- Todoist
Tweets that make you laugh
why does every instagram influencer have their own swimwear line now, itโs like a platform specific b2c virus
SF quarter-life crisis in 3 steps: 1) life-changing acid trip at Burning Man, 2) 2-month stint at monastery in Thailand, 3) becoming a passive-income growth hacker
Getting app notifications that my friends who work at WeWork are creating Signal accounts must be a positive sign right?
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| BEING A FAN OF |
| @stripe's LANDING |
| PAGES AND EXECUTION |
| ABILITY IS NOT A |
| PERSONALITY TRAIT |
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Another reason I love to go see his shows.
Zedd @Zedd
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