Founded Xobni and Kite, MIT, YC 2006, VP Eng Affirm; adam.net | linkedin.com/in/adamsmith314 | opsgo.cc/anonymous-feedback
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Watch @typesfast pitch Flexport to Paul Graham and Sam Altman for the first time at Startup School 2013:
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The best piece of advice for early stage startup recruiting I can fit into a tweet: Don’t interview candidates who are also interviewing at FB, Google, etc. These folks always end up joining BigCo. The precision on this heuristic is unreal: 100% out of n ≈ 10 offers we’ve made.
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I just published my GPT-4 prompts for turning an audio transcript into well-structured text here: gist.github.com/adamsmith/2a…
I use this alongside my integration with Apple Voice Memos that I also open sourced here: gist.github.com/adamsmith/80…
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Paul cooking dinner for us every week during YC was such a great, non-obvious design choice on many levels. During YC we worked as hard as we could, which was stressful and tiring. The care and warmth of each dinner was understated, empathetic, and nourishing.
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Who is doing the most to fix SF? In order:
1st place: Those putting in work, like @DavidSacks & @cyantist
2nd place: Those leaving SF and being vocal about it, like @rabois & @JTLonsdale because ultimately competition is needed to motivate
Last place: Everyone else in SF
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I just published “Entrepreneurial Careers: Beyond the Fairy Tale Narrative” medium.com/p/entrepreneurial…
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Kite, smart copilot for programmers, launches publicly today!! Check it out: kite.com the future of programming, we think!
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An excerpt from Andy Grove's autobiography. He is in post-war Hungry and applying to immigrate to the US.
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Kite launches Line-of-Code Completions, goes cloudless, and secures $17 million in funding. Excited! kite.com/blog/launching-line… #kite #python
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Steve Jobs: "Innovation has nothing to do with R&D dollars. [..] It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it."
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Beginner entrepreneur mistake: stubbornly sticking to something because you've sold others on that thing. Commitment consistency is deadly!
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I’m optimistic. Yes, we were probably slow off the line. Yes, our government has issues. But our country has deep capacity, a great work ethic, and innovative people and companies. Let’s do it!
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Today we are launching Kite for JavaScript. The reception from the JS community has been amazing so far.
We're also launching Kite Pro and announcing that 250,000 Python devs use Kite every month.
Thread 👇
250,000 monthly developers now use @kitehq, which leverages deep learning for both Python and JavaScript code completion venturebeat.com/2020/05/12/k…
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👋 Howdy howdy! I think Sunless sent you my email. (I don’t have yours.) Let me know when works best, ideally afternoon/evening pacific time, but I can be flexible too.
I will bring a couple replay files. (I'm on PC, and I'm a diamond player.)
🎸 🙌
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My friend and colleague Sean Ellis (@SeanEllis) published a book on Growth Hacking -- a.co/c0L1sWM -- awesome!
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First blog post in three years : ) Entrepreneurial Careers: Beyond the Fairy Tale Narrative — adamsmith.cc/entrepreneurial…
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Unreasonably fancy feature request: as I approach my destination in my car, I want Spotify to choose the final song so it ends just as I’m arriving.
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I can’t wait for LLM-powered Gmail filters:
“Auto archive all unsolicited emails I’m unlikely to respond to”
“Put all transactional e-commerce emails here”
“Archive newsletters I haven’t read after seven days”
“Archive emails from trips that have passed”
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The crypto folks get this wrong: the original US fed policy was non-intervention, but after disastrous outcomes we learned how to improve by modulating the money supply. People in the US who complain about printed money in general don’t know the history of the 1800s US fed policy
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Elevator convo going up to my apartment—Me: How was your day? Her: Long, you? Me: Same Her: Did that S3 outage get you today? ..ah SF 😂
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Wanted: smart speaker system that knows where I am in the room and adjusts the relative volume of each speaker accordingly.
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Cialdini is a good start. (The full book is amazingly well-written.) en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infl…
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I don’t get it when someone in group #1 criticizes those in group #2. If anything, they should criticize the folks who are in SF and not actively helping, which is also a 1,000x larger group
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Kite would be impossible without our amazing team, advisors, investors. Silicon Valley is an amazing place. We hope to knock your socks off.
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I'm thrilled to report that Xobni has been acquired by Yahoo!! As this 7yr journey ends I feel awe, and thanks.Excited for next adventure :)
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Cool idea! Could use a few RFC-3161 servers, see en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trus…
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Another observation is that the tails matter more to startups because startups are small. That could explain why large companies focus more on averages
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Top 10 Tools Trending Now: @kitehq @metabase @CodeFactor_io @electronjs @onesignal @logstash @JIRA @getbotpress stackshare.io/trending/tools
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With federal long term cap gains now at 20%, 3.8 medicare surcharge, and prop 30, *long term capital gains* rate in Cali is now 37.1%..damn.
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The 'startups are overvalued' trope is starting to get old. Especially when coming from some of the most self interested VCs in the valley.
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Kite is now powering Python completions on Coderpad. Our AI line-of-code completions will help you code faster in your next remote technical interview. 🎉
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Wrong timing
Related filter: Did your startup fail but a competitor succeeded, or did everyone going after that market near that time fail?
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My three basic criteria for a good startup idea: clear business model, technically challenging, strong proxy for demand
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To clarify: My tweet was mostly about @jeffiel’s misguided roasting of people who are leaving SF. My point is they’re doing more to enact change than the median person who is staying in SF.
My latest: A parade of tech leaders has left San Francisco during the pandemic for Austin, Miami and elsewhere and nastily blasted the city on the way out. @jeffiel, CEO of @twilio, has words for them — and shares why he’s more committed to SF than ever. sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heat…
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My fiancée Helen and our dog are on the left side of this opening bell shot. Congrats Helen! And our dog Dani is finally getting the international recognition she deserves 😂😂😂
Affirm is now #NasdaqListed ($AFRM)! We’re excited about this huge step forward as we bring our mission to life.
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Yes. Is becoming a VC a hack on this?
Separately, is it scary that you needed a rich proven founder to start SpaceX, vs being able to access VC funding?
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Increasingly any personal coding project, even if it’s 100 lines of code, starts with “Let’s find the building blocks, if not 90% of the thing, on Github”
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Joe Rogan’s new @naval podcast is amazing. Naval serves up Marc Andreessen-level insights about life. piped.video/3qHkcs3kG44
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Initially AI will help us write code, but with time code will be replaced by AI models themselves. What year will be Peak Code?
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Pushing the button on my umbrella is the closest I've ever gotten to turning on a light saber.
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It’s always magical waking up with an insight or two after a late night working on something. Magical and surreal.
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Amazon should let customers write comparative reviews. "I bought X and Y and here's how they compare."
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I hereby present to you: the 237 occupations in California requiring licenses to operate. In other words, the occupations with low supply and high consumer prices. ...Cemetery managers, really? what a grift 😂
source: search.dca.ca.gov/
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Healthy tech companies make a healthy Valley. Congrats to Snapchat and Twitter on the progress announced in their recent earnings calls!!
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Trifecta of characteristics to look for in startup recruiting: broad curiosity, high output, high aptitude. You really need all three.
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I hope to one day meet a Chipotle food scientist. I would worship at their feet for a solid minute then casually request they fix the bug that causes 15% of their chips to end up with a ton of salt stuck to them.
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It’s possible the Taylor Swift comparison is because of streaming’s effect on album sales. Jagged Little Pill was nothing short of incredible though! 🎸
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It's worth pointing out that your population distribution graphic is qualitatively off for sufficiently differentiated schools. For example, the bottom 2% Math SAT score at MIT is the 88th percentile score at TAMU.
Some good points in thread, though
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Great work team! Excited to bring Kite to Linux!
We're thrilled to announce that Kite works on Linux! Python developers using Linux can now use Kite's Line-of-Code Completions to code faster. Read more about the (long awaited!) Linux support on our blog: owlskip.com/s/linux-ki #linux #python
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One of the better descriptions of the emotional experience of being a CEO, from @ryan_caldbeck ryancaldbeck.co/2021/10/08/m…
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Chief Executive Philosopher Naval Ravikant (@naval) killingbuddha.co/blog/2016/2…
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iOS hack: use Text Replacements to set up shortcuts for writing emojis. On my phone "sm" turns into 😊. "tada" turns into 🎉. "hrt" turns into ❤️. Makes typing emojis about 3x faster. Settings -> System -> Keyboard -> Text Replacements.
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Hip people used to say "machine learning" instead of "AI". Now that "machine learning" has become the buzzward, call it "statistics".
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Movie dubbing into other languages with deepfakes tech to align lip motions and synthesize translated audio in the voice of the original actor.
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We are looking for our first engineering manager at Kite. This is an exceptional opportunity to lead an established, seasoned engineering team. Please pass this on to anyone who may be interested! jobs.lever.co/kite/d0e7ecdb-…
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Sounds in language often correlate with meaning. For example, all of these words relate to the nose: sniff, snout, snot, snore, sneeze.
LLM embeddings place semantically-similar words together
It would be fun to study the similarity of syntax and semantics using LLMs 🙂
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Hi there, the main difference between IntelliCode's AI and Kite's AI is that Kite can complete up to whole lines of code, whereas IntelliCode just sorts normal completions. You can try it out on the sandbox at kite.com!
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Phew. Great work Sam, Greg, Emmett, and others! We actually ended up better than we started, and given the rocky start that's a big testament to this team.
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My favorite recent product: Front (@FrontApp). So dope. Useful for anytime multiple people are using the same email account.
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I respectfully disagree. Competition in free markets is a good thing because it forces players to be more efficient, rational. This applies to people, companies, and governments. Governments’ monopolies will erode over time w mobility, IT -> good for world.
I’ve found the Amazon HQ2 spectacle pretty distasteful. Conducting a reverse auction to maximize tax incentives should probably be illegal... but Federalism. So states and metros will continue to compete in a Prisoner’s Dilemma race to the bottom.
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"Thinking you know exactly where you're going is a kind of lack of humility that doesn't let you invent." -Bezos (Code interview on youtube)
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😂, delightful point. The problem is as a hiring manager you rely on the signals you have at the top of the funnel.
Same problem if you see someone from a school with sports admissions
This whole process would be better if people just listed SAT score on their LinkedIn profile.
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🎉🚀 📈
Kite adds support for 11 new languages to its AI code completion tool tcrn.ch/2FOAblB by @fredericl
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I found this book in an Airbnb. It is from 1984. If these jokes were tasteless then, imagine now 🙂
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I don’t use a lot of what I learned in college, but one thing I took away from the best classes were examples of craftsmanship the teachers put into the classes. They were such smart, hardworking, energetic and thoughtful professors building cohesive, uplifting experiences.
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To be clear, (1) employee liquidity is a sufficient but not necessary condition for excess demand. If a company doesn’t offer it that doesn’t mean they don’t have excess demand. (2) Private markets are not very efficient — sometimes lack of excess demand means the company...
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The thing I respect so much about @FrontApp is that they re-implemented their own highly sophisticated email client. Attachments, sending undo, etc etc etc. A huge schlep. paulgraham.com/schlep.html
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This tweet got a strong response — 150 retweets — so I wanted to give some background, caveats, and debunk some of the common criticisms. A thread 🧵...
The best piece of advice for early stage startup recruiting I can fit into a tweet: Don’t interview candidates who are also interviewing at FB, Google, etc. These folks always end up joining BigCo. The precision on this heuristic is unreal: 100% out of n ≈ 10 offers we’ve made.
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Awesome coverage of Kite's public launch by @EPro at VentureBeat!
Kite, a cloud-powered developer environment, takes flight on Windows and Mac wp.me/p8wLEc-9gBB by @EPro
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New (to me) Marc Andreessen GSB interview. Insightful as always piped.video/watch?v=P-T2VAcH…
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I generally enjoy your writings Steven, but you go 13,000 words before even referencing the 30% app-store fee, signaling your year-2000 lens is distorting your perspective of the core issues in today's case
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A team member just got into the H1B lottery! (40% chance this yr) Incredibly grateful, and looking forward to this system getting fixed!
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Startups taking PPP stimulus loans is not a black-and-white issue, but anyone else notice how those decrying it are VC's, whose capital _competes_ with PPP?
Reminds me of the Charlie Munger quote: “Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.”
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Bezos doesn't like "empty nest" (too negative). "Super grownups", instead. (Also "work life harmony" vs "work life balance"; not zero sum)
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Killer point. This means there is no sustained democratization.
(Hence why we focus on new markets and disruptive opportunities.)
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The 5-year clock does not reset upon gifting. Also if held less than 5 years you can still get QSBS; google for ‘QSBS rollover’
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Uber was the fastest growing company ever by finding a workaround for a government-granted monopoly (taxicab medallions). Hims, Roman, and other telemedicine + mail pharmacy companies are workarounds for gov-granted monopoly on meds that should be over-the-counter but aren't.
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If your team uses JupyterLab, the new Kite integration will help you code much easier and faster. Proud of this team! venturebeat.com/2020/08/04/k…
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Everything JavaScript-related is free. There's no difference between Kite Free and Kite Pro for JavaScript devs today. We will likely add paid enhancements for JS down the road.
(Kite Pro adds enhanced functionality for Python developers.)
Sorry for any confusion!
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Reflecting on what made Apple’s eco ad so cringe: First, it portrays Mother Nature as an asshole, which seems off. Second, it’s very preachy.
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There are 300k pharmacists in the US. Pharmacies give out 100M+ flu shots per year. The commercial sector is already capable of handling this scale.
You may not need to set strict ordering rules — just pay pharmacies more when they vaccinate higher priority people.
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