Co-Founder of @transformerlab ex CEO of tulip.com, Well.ca. Engineer at heart.
Toronto, Ontario
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When I started my first startup in Canada, I went out to raise money from local VCs. The first one (in Hamilton) offered to take 70% of the company in a seed deal. I politely said that wouldn't work and he called me a "smarmy loser" in front of my team.
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A long time ago, there was a secret meeting of the top minds at BlackBerry. Their job was to save the company over a single weekend.
I don't think this story has ever been told.
It's been long enough that I think it's ok to share...
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22 years ago I was goofing around on my spare time while working at Blackberry and I made a mobile game called Brickbreaker.
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The next local VC I talked to loved what we were doing. They did full due diligence on every supplier and detail about our algorithmic marketing. Then they started a competitor.
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Back then if you complained about bad term sheets from VCs who want to take 50% of your business on the first cheque in, people would think you were arrogant and greedy. It was even sadder when you couldn't get any term sheet, let alone a bad term sheet.
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It turned out that the customer dropped his BlackBerry in the toilet and tried to "dry it out" by putting it in the microwave.
He was so ashamed, that he made up a story and dug himself too deep. He admitted it all in the end.
The company was saved.
😓
Use a bowl of rice.
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The next VC was the biggest in Waterloo. They had standard deal terms which they bragged about. For Series A deals they took 50% of your company in common shares. They passed saying we weren't good enough.
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Entrepreneurs (like myself) should pay more tax on their gains. It's not fair that the average worker pays a higher tax rate than folks who stand to make tens of millions on a company exit.
Together, we can build a fair AND entrepreneurial society.
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A few days ago at a @betakit conference I spoke on the on the 🇨🇦 government's proposed changes to the capital gains inclusion rate.
Afterwards, a # of people approached me asking for more clarification on my views. Here we go...
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VC in Canada is way way way WAY better now. The VC industry here had to start competing with US VCs which forced them to change approach and terms.
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I never thought this would happen: I am using my Linux box with a GPU less and less these days.
Inference and training speed using Apple MLX is blazing on my new Mac M3.
This is a video of Mistral 7b (4bit) getting 30-40 tok/s
@transformerlab @awnihannun #mlx
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Two days until I announce the new software project I've been working on. Put a lot of my heart into this.
Will launch at Toronto New Demos by @internetvin. Thursday night, Jan 11, 7pm.
The event is sold out. Can't wait to share more after the event.
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18 years ago, I was an undergrad student when I was sued in a multimillion dollar lawsuit by Atari for infringing on Steve Job's and Wozniak's copyright.
(For making a game called BrickBreaker during an internship -- I didn't release it but my company took it)
It was not fun!
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Transformer Lab is what I’ve been working on.
The hope behind Transformer Lab is to make it possible for any person with access to a GPU to do things previously restricted to a small group of Machine Learning specialists.
All Opensource.
transformerlab.ai/
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LLM Inference demo using @transformerlab on my Mac M1 16GB using three different models (1.1B, 2.7B, 7B 4-bit quantized). It's finally possible to do real LLM work on a Mac!
Training coming soon... :)
cc @awnihannun
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We have a rule in our family that anyone can call a family meeting and it has to be taken seriously.
5 year old held his first today. I step out of work.
“In today’s meeting we have to discuss how I need a Lego set called the Arctic Explorer and I can’t wait until my bday.”
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There is a weird thing these days for me and my Muslim and Arab friends.
Every day we wake up to photos of dead children on our phones. And every night we scroll through more. Literally.
And then we go on with our days because that's what we're supposed to do.
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Instead of an office space I got a membership at the Royal Ontario Museum. This is my view while I code today.
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Well.ca around 2008. Things are much better in Canada now.
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As you've probably seen, the tech entrepreneur community in Canada has had a lot to say about the government's Capital Gains Inclusion Rate change.
I share below my earlier posts about why I think this change is good for Canada
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Huge update to @transformerlab -- we now support Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) out of the box. It works on MLX, NVIDIA, and CPU backends.
With RAG, you can search your documents / PDFs, tech using LLMs, on your local machine. Give it a try and let me know what you think!
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Are you angry about the proposed changes to Canada's tax laws?
It looks like someone is finally doing something about it!
The crowdfunding site below can hopefully make a difference.
saveourceos.com/
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I used to run a grocery + beauty + health retailer for part of my career. Here are some of the secrets of pricing I wasn't supposed to share:
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A customer had sent in a returned BlackBerry. I saw pictures. It looked like a bomb had gone off from inside.
The customer was irate. He said it spontaneously exploded. (I know).
The device arrived on Friday. The authorities and media were to be alerted on Monday.
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A key to being an entrepreneur is to never be satisfied with what you have. Be hungry.
But a key to being *happy* is to be content what you already have. Be accepting.
How do you balance the two?
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Then he had the stupidest idea.
He put a BlackBerry in the microwave.
BOOM. 💥
The microwaved BlackBerry looked the same as the return. 🎉
The shape of a mobile device's internal antenna is designed to have strips of metal like a fork. Perfect for microwave ⚡️ arcing
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Proud to announce that @transformerlab was selected as a member of the 2024 Mozilla Builders Accelerator, one of 14 projects accepted this year. I can’t wait for the next 12 weeks of development on open source, local AI. blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/…
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F-it. I am going to reveal all the things Canadians are told to keep secret.
If you ask a Canadian about the things I'm about to tell you, they will deny it. But it's time we come clean.
A 🧵of things that are normal in Canada but feel strange to outsiders...
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Today Tulip is announcing the biggest product we’ve ever made.
For the last 4 yrs we’ve been secretly building the world’s best enterprise POS. Big, global retailers will finally have the choice to move to a POS that was built on modern architecture, for the tomorrow’s customer.
Introducing Tulip’s new enterprise Point of Sale (POS) solution! Unlike archaic, monolithic POS systems, Tulip Checkout is created for how modern omnichannel retail operates. tulip.com/media/the-new-ente… #retail #retailtech #retailtransformation #digitaltransformation #mPOS
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Leadership flew in 5 or 6 of the company's top technical staff. Top secret. They had the weekend to reverse engineer what could have happened and save the company. No one could leave or tell their family.
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Oh dear God. Every day I do what I can to not share these things I see about the horrific things happening in Gaza. Every day I tell myself, "you are not in politics, people don't want to hear what you say." Are we just supposed to watch this and scroll?
Surgeon, Dr. Mark Perlmutter, on what he witnessed in his first month in Gaza. On @CBSSunday
“No toddler gets shot twice by mistake by the world’s best sniper.”
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If the batteries in BlackBerry devices were found to have even a *tiny* possibility of randomly exploding, as evidenced by this return, tens of millions of devices would need to be recalled. The stock would crash. It wasn't clear if the company could recover.
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15 years ago, it felt like a founder could pick any industry and build a "software is eating the world" high growth startup in that space.
Now, I find a list of 100 software startups in niches of niches I didn't even know existed.
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As the weekend passed, the team felt defeated.
They spoke to the customer who insisted he just put the device on a table and BOOM. Anything else you can share? No, he said.
A top engineer felt like giving up. He went to the break room and started pacing, test devices in hand.
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Even if your answer is wrong, it gets part marks.
I went from the bottom of the class to the top but it also make me lose faith in school.
This lesson ("rewriting answers gets better marks than understanding the material") makes me think about modern LLM benchmarks.
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This is updated Transformer Lab. The UI got a bit of a refresh today -- will be in next release in a day or two. github.com/transformerlab/tr…
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I talk to startups about the difference between anime hero stories vs US cartoon hero stories. The big thing I notice is that for US heroes, their skills magically appear. While for anime heroes, they have raw talent but then have to grind for years to master their skill.
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When I worked on Microsoft Office in 2006, they had something called the "four users rule."
The idea is that if you want to know EVERYTHING wrong with your application, all you need is four users to test the product in front of you while you film them.
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They took dozens of the same type of BlackBerry, trying to make the new ones explode in the same way. They tried overloading the power draw. Shorting the battery leads. Many experiments were done but no matter what they did, nothing looked like the returned Blackberry.
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If I was the prime minister of Canada, the first unimportant rule I would enforce is the standardization of food spiciness reporting.
It's 2024, none of us should have to say "When you say 'hot' how hot is hot?
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Every time I buy something from Facebook Marketplace it's like I win two times.
First, the thrill of getting the thing I want for cheap.
Second, the thrill of arriving back home, not murdered.
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This part of @michael_nielsen 's post deserves it's own tweet:
A surprising number of people have asked me versions of "Is the Physics Nobel Prize today really for Physics?"
What counts as a field is surprisingly complicated. As a rough and incomplete classification, a field can be:
1. Based on exploration of and development of a set of agreed-upon deep principles. The Maxwell-Lorentz equations, quantum field theory, general relativity, and quantum computing are each (separately!) examples of fields in this sense
2. Based on exploration of some (more or less) agreed-upon set of questions. The search for a basic fundamental theory and quantum information are both examples of fields having this flavour. The questions tend to shift over time, sometimes substantially, and such fields sometimes fission or fusion or change substantially as a result
3. A group of people investigating a common domain of application. Examples of fields with this flavour are atomic physics, optical physics, and condensed matter physics. This can be viewed as a case of 2. It's striking how much internal variation there can be - understanding (say) the fractional quantum Hall effect is very different than understanding spin glasses, yet both are part of condensed matter physics. In some sense the question behind condensed matter unifies many different fields of type 1
4. A philosophical, organizational, and political treaty among fields of types 1-3. That's what "Physics" is, in the sense of the prize. It's interesting that antenna design is currently not regarded as part of Physics (it's more EE), while quantum computing to some extent is part of Physics. That's partly a contingent choice: it could have been different if history had just been a tiny bit different. However, to some extent it also represents some general philosophy of "what Physics is about". Ideas like quantum error-correction and topological quantum computers required deep fundamental insights into physics. My guess - it's just a guess - is that, over time, quantum computing will become more detached from Physics, as it becomes more and more commercial, and more and more engineering
Today's Physics prize falls outside the usual type 4 philosophical, organizational, and political treaty of "what physics is". People at Caltech used to tell me that John Hopfield had "left physics", and that's why he'd gone to Princeton (from Caltech). But then, a lot of physicists in the 1990s didn't think quantum computing was part of physics. I'm sure some still don't. So: it really is somewhat contingent
My own point of view: there is just one nature. I'm delighted when people have and share deep insights into nature, and I don't care so much what we label it. I'm especially delighted by the incredible progress in the past few decades in developing the design sciences. That is: understanding the fundamental principles underlying the incredible systems latent in nature, and which we humans are gradually learning to build. John Hopfield and Geoff Hinton have made enormous contributions to understanding what possibilities lie latent in nature. It so happens that their work falls largely outside the usual Nobel classification, but I am happy to celebrate them for their remarkable contributions, and physics seems as apt an area as any
Congratulations to them both!
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Successfully finetuned an LLM on a Macbook Pro, without using a separate GPU. This is a big milestone. Will release the code soon.
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My home office is cold. Should I turn on my mini heater? Or should I train a large language model?
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My new startup is planning on raising capital in the US.
Completely unrelated.. I want to express my support for Trump, crypto currency stuff, and whatever weird defence industry weapon startup things you manly mans are building.
Sending hugs! xoxo
Ben Horowitz
Bill Ackman
Cameron Winklevoss
Doug Leone
Elon Musk
Eoghan McCabe
Ken Howery
Kyle Samani
Marc Andreessen
Jacob Helberg
Joe Lonsdale
Palmer Luckey
Peter Thiel
Shaun Maguire
Trevor Traina
Tushar Jain
Tyler Winklevoss
Come on in, the water’s warm.
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There is a term "builders" that we use in the startup community. You know them when you meet them.
True builders care about "monetization" only in as much as it helps them build more.
The world is a more fun place when builders are unleashed.
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🇨🇦🤖🚀
Vantage points: Serial entrepreneur @aliasaria on the #CDNtech "bubble" and how to beat the US #BKtownhall betakit.com/vantage-points-s…
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The AI I signed up for to help *me* raise capital just messaged me to tell me that *it* raised capital.
@Boardy_ai
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Exiting news at @transformerlab -- we had our first intern join the team and she's great!
Transformer Lab v0.3.7 is out!
Mistral v0.3 and Aya 23 are now available in the gallery. And a Linux AppImage build is available. Check out our release notes on Github to see all the updates.
github.com/transformerlab/tr…
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Similar vibe in Canada's tech scene too.
I suspect the vibe shift in tech is much more extensive than we realize.
An anecdote:
I was invited last week to a private group chat with about 50 tech leaders. Many CEOs and founders everyone knows. Many very big names.
The plan was to debate Trump vs. Biden through the lens of tech. But interestingly, there were apparently no Biden supporters in the group. None. The group organizer had to go find and pull in known Biden supporters to speak for that side.
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Building great products is fun. But nothing beats the raw thrill of knowing that you were a small part of generating outsized returns to your investors’ LPs.
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Went to get my covid 💉 today. In the tiny room, there was so much 🇨🇦 innovation by people I know.
- The fridge that held the vaccines was by @jimestill Danby
- I booked the vaccine appointment on @medmehealth by Purya Sarmadi
- The posters showed @JoinLeague by @mserbinis
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First off, the app was written in C. But it had no malloc. I had to pre-create every potential object in arrays and then manage those (hiding them if not needed) in the app.
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So this is absolutely not true. But maybe because you're a bit younger than I am.
Early peak of RIM, around 1999, it was a HUGE status symbol to get a coop there, and very hard to get in.
But there was a noticiable "hire fast" time around 2003 when the bar was lowered.
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All of this had to be efficient. I profiled every instruction and allocation to the processor level. These devices ran on a 386 chip originally powered by a single AA battery (!) performance and battery life meant everything to the company and the users.
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We are finally ready to show Transformer Lab to the world. I would love if you could try it out. We have big plans!
Today is our first official public release!
Want to dig deeper on LLMs but don't know how to get started? Transformer Lab was created for this.
Fully supports MLX which means you can run models efficiently on Apple macOS... & can also train them in the GUI. Link in profile.
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Six years ago, the president of the US instituted a "Muslim Ban" after calling for "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the h*** is going on."
I will never forget.
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to go after the ball hit. Should it bounce directly back from where it came if it hit a corner? What if the corner is part of a wall of bricks? What if previous ball position is in the SW corner, should I flip the x or y dx?
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You can read about it here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brick_…
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Being an extremist is easy.
Whether it is capitalism, your religion, your country, your industry, or your political side -- if you aren't able to be critical, you have taken the easy path.
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The device was powered by an i386 processor. It didn't support floating point math. So in the game, to calculate angles and decimal points, I'd use 32 bit integers but only use the first 16 bits for the unsigned integer part. All FP math had to be faked in C, shifting <-->
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The FastChat LLM serving library from @lmsysorg (31k Github stars) now natively supports Apple MLX for serving. Docs here github.com/lm-sys/FastChat/b… . Proud to work on this. FastChat is a good way to run models because it handles prompt formatting and OpenAI SDK.
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A big lesson I learned in software development happened during an emergency in our ecommerce shipping department. There was a spike in volume and developers had to redesign everything, while also helping pick-pack orders. It was all hands on deck.
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One of the greatest gifts in life is being in love with your work.
My first job was teaching kids science. We'd spend summer days catching crawfish and counting their legs. I was exhausted every day. I would have done the work for free.
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To this day, that warehouse still plays the super mario coin sound every time you grab the right item. 🪙🎶
I try to remind myself of those days every time I work on sofware. We make better things if we find time to stand in the shoes of the real end user as we build.
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Trained my first language model using RLHF today. Will make this easy for everyone in @transformerlab ASAP.
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First time founder: "This will be so fun!"
Second time founder: "This will be a huge success if I avoid the two things that I didn't plan for last time, retain more equity, and retain controll."
Third time founder: "This will be painful no matter what I do"
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In all the ways the world tries to divide us, every motion is a distraction from the core thing: that Love is everything, and our only meaningful job is to promote and spread it.
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Why you gotta be like that? Please take a bit of VC. Just a taste. You'll like it, I promise. Just a small note, no cap. Look I crossed out the board seat part. We throw an exclusive conference every year, you're invited. Al Gore and Dua Lipa are on our advisory board. Puhleeze.
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A long time ago, a friend of mine was in charge of setting up the first datacenter in India for one of the big 3 cloud providers. One day the mob came and left a note: we will burn down your building unless you pay us protection $.
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Canadian hospitals are free but the parking is how they make money. It’s not unusual to drive to the emergency room for a broken finger and end up paying $20k or even $30k in parking fees. But you can challenge the fees and sometimes get up to 50% off.
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I opensourced BrickCrusher2020 today. It is a BrickBreaker clone for @playdate by me, the original creator of BrickBreaker for BlackBerry.
I learned the Lua programming language to make it. Lots of fun. Enjoy!
github.com/aliasaria/BrickCr…
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They were a public company. They ignored the message. But more letters and messages came until it was impossible to ignore.
How does a publicly traded, well respected US company pay off the mob and file their taxes?
Answer: you ask for fake taxi receipts.
The mob agreed.
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I love this so much. The venture-backed startup world has changed so much. And so, too, must we all change. To find your life's work is the greatest gift in the world and more important than any other measure of success.
Many of you said I buried the lede…
I left a16z ~ I’m off to do my life’s work! More soon. 😉
The idea of starting a venture-backed company has become famous, easy and playbooked.
Capital and “support” for founders are abundant.
More tech startups and founders are AMAZING.
AND, more founders ought to be thoughtful about working on their “life’s work” - a long-term commitment to a worthwhile personal mission.
This keeps you going in the tough moments.
Engaging in life’s work looks and feels like 1) turning surprises into lucky breaks, 2) intrinsic motivation, 3) marching forward with courage and conviction, 4) doing purposeful work day-to-day, 5) keeping time in tension: intentionally thinking in decades while executing in moments.
Stories from James Carse, @jesslivingston, @annimaniac, @peterthiel, Diane Greene, Whitney Wolfe Herd, @parkerconrad, @samhinkie @JeffBezos below.
While you’re on the journey of your life’s work, don’t be afraid to have fun, make friends, and break rules to make your own. See you in the arena 👋
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Every day I log into my email and delete all the msgs from B2B marketers who use tools to find my address and msg me.
Every day the BDR team at my co uses the *same* tools to find client addresses to do the same to others who also delete them.
B2B marketing needs to change.
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In the past I've managed high-growth development teams from 5 to 250 people.
In our current company @transformerlab we've found the following routine works best to manage the team and stay productive:
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This is scary to read. 😢
This was posted by Mohammad Magadli, journalist and Palestinian citizen of Israel.
It's a video of a girl in Gaza, maybe 7 or 8, walking barefoot with her injured sister.
“I'm tired, I have been carrying her for an hour and I can’t now”.
Brace yourself for the responses.
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Space was limited. The whole app compiled down to 120kb. The black and white bitmap images for the loading screen took up half the space.
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Planning on starting a new Super AGI company but I am stuck trying to decide if I should use an capped or uncapped SAFE note.
Definitely will used cracked engineers tho
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Gaurav @gjain at Afore isn't jus one of the good investors. He's the best. Highly recommend trying to connect with him if you get t he chance.
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You want to be productive with LLMs on an Apple Mac. Why buy a second computer with a GPU when you already have a Mac? Ok so first... what model of a Mac should you buy?
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