"AI" in Logistics. It’s Already Here — Matt from @terminal49 and I discuss what the AI hype is all about it. We are at a technology inflection point in AI. We explore the significance of LLM's (large language models) and how the technology could accelerate innovation in logistics tech. Is AI just a bunch'a hype or is there potential?

Just witnessed a shooting at West Oakland Bart station. 2 police men. 1 black man.

I'll bet you a $1000 that this won't happen. You built a cool toy. Software engineering is an order of magnitude more complicated than generating a form with their fields that submits to a database. Engineers + AI = More stronger engineers

He was also tazed. I heard a pop then saw man on ground with 2 cops on him. Man yelled "they shot me.. They shot me"

Outdated virtue signaling. Interviews are bi-directional. A company is not doing candidate a favor by offering them an interview. If anything the company should put in the extra effort if they like a candidate.

The bizarre thing is that the cop yelled out that the guy shot himself.

I think he is doing a fine job. Not everyone needs to present like Steve Jobs. Perhaps you can start by sharing *why* he is bad at presenting? What can he improve? How would you do it better?

This new stove top espresso maker by 9barista is a work of art 😍 Looks kinda like Moka pot that actually makes espresso.

Ok logistics/ shipping container nerds. Check out this miniature version of @PortOfRotterdam

I’m thrilled to announce @terminal49 's Series A Funding 🎉 This milestone puts us one step closer to advancing our mission of automating global trade. Really happy to be working with @whatthedanheck @elizabethjcain @stage2capital & @nathan_owen @grandvcp who lead the round.

That's probably because you haven't discovered San Francisco, and you have a myopic view of the city. It starts with diversifying your social circle outside of tech.

I am a proud startup dad today. ✅ @terminal_49 has been profitable for the past three months with ~ 18% MOM over the last 12 months. 😬 I was feeling anxious to start the year today, but it's been a good day so far.

Watching the @nodoubt Coachella stream brings me back memories of my teenage ears. So I went back the memory lane and rediscovered the fan site I had built. Once upon a time in 2002 I used to run the most prolific @gwenstefani and No Doubt fan Site and forums. web.archive.org/web/20030203… Then I met a girl... (now wife)

Umm.. that’s exactly how toddlers are trained to pee.

What's the goal of correcting perception? If a piece of technology is not accessible or works behind the scene it's the job of the org to change that. ChatGPT stands out because the average person can use it and feel powerful using it.

Most people on this threaddon't have a big enough business to buy Docusign's enterprise product. I used to think they are just a doc signature company. Then I noticed of my banks using it to manage all kinds of financial products through it, and then it clicked for me.

No one cares. Go start a company and run it the way you feel best.

Avasarala is such a bad ass. @SAghdashloo is incredible in the expanse.

Looking for a Rails + Postgres Expert I am looking for a consultant that can help us improve API performance for one of our core APIs at @terminal49 Our Stack: Rails API-only, Postgres, Redis. APIClient: Our application and API customers Data and problems: We have an API with a large number of query params that can return 100s to 10000s of records (paginated). Internally it’s doing a ton of joins and serializing data into JSONAPI Spec. We want to get the performance under 1s (ideally lower) for requests that range beween 2-10 seconds. DM if you are interested or mention someone that could be a good fit.

Happy Birthday @Stammy 🥳 Gosh we look like babies in these photos.

Tomorrow is the last day of my second two-week paternity leave. It’s been so wonderful spending the whole day with him. I am excited yet a bit overwhelmed about work next week. Two weeks away as a founder seems like eternity.

This is how you design a Credit Card form on the web. dl.dropbox.com/u/113417/picp… by @stammy for @picplum #design #ux #interaction

@tapplastics ? Could built pretty easily with some plexiglass + epoxy + band saw.

Visiting my parents for a few weeks and I am reminded my dad is a much bigger geek than me.

Running my first board meeting with external investors tomorrow. Wish me luck!

We wouldn't be here without our seed investors who believed in me in the early days and stuck with us. Thanks to @garrytan @JamesTamplin @immad @parulia @ndrewlee @anamitra @gjain @Initialized @AforeVC @kylevogt @boxgroup @nkatragadda @michaelandma @Liquid2V for supporting me.

What's there to copy here? A search box and bunch of prompt recommendations with emojis? Is that supposed to be interesting? You are complaining that someone copied the design of your spoon?

Sneak peak of the new @terminal49 website that's launching soon.

Great! Sharing the amount isn’t necessary or inspiring. I believe that’s why lots of folks in this are trolling you. Donate/pledge/tip but announcing the amount takes away from the gesture IMO.

how it started: how it’s going:

Hopefully he wasn't fatally shot. He was awake when they carried him out on a stretcher.

I have doubts about "the most significant audio breakthroughs in audio engineering in nearly 100 years" in terms of it's impact but open to being surprised when I get to listen to it.

New office! Who wants to attend our office warming?

Happy’ish Thursday! ⁦@BrentTerhune⁩

What sample size is that?

Guess what’s the first word my son has learned? 🤦‍♂️

so the more i use @convex the more i love it. I think we might be using it in production.

Startups are hard. It's harder with a kid. It's tough when they are sick and you have to keep them home. It's challenging when you get sick from whatever they have. It gets harder when your partner also works your startup.

Guess which area is @heroku postgres and which area is @crunchydata?

$TSLA at $22 (IPO)

It's dead equity. Not helpful for the company and the ex-founder. Company needs to convince the founder who left to cancel a bunch of shares (less than 10% ownership post cancel). The side effect of cancellation is reducing the total outstanding shares. Which will help increase the ownership of the existing shareholders. Without tax consequences or new grants. That's the only way the company viability. Most graceful way to deal with the situation. Value of the equity can still go to zero but at least there is some potential.

The strategy is called survival.

We have a trampoline problem... Sometimes we make silly family videos

5 weeks sober today. It's been good challenge with all the conferences and networking events. I have been making friends with alcohol free beers. They have gotten a lot better.

Some things are not meant to be understood by all.

Just moved a legacy app (app, worker, redis, postgres) from @heroku to @getRender. Cost went from $150/m to $30/month.

Work/life balance, 2019 Mom: Zia, are you a full-stack developer? Dad: he's a half-stack

That's a pathetic response coming from a builder/founder. How would you feel if people say the same about your own product without providing any reason?

Curious how the @terminal49 container tracking platform works? I did a demo at the @JOC_Events TPM conference. Here we discuss the origins of Terminal49, and a few other topics. piped.video/watch?v=cvahE4qk…

I used to think this way but now I am constantly trying to learn from people more experienced and smarter than me. Sure, I could probably figure out something If I spend enough time at it... but you can get their more efficiently with guidance and mentorship.

Happy Friday 🤓

Bessemer (@BessemerVP) estimates that the supply chain software market can expand to north of $100 billion of SaaS revenue by 2030. Great to see @terminal49 mentioned as one of the key players in the visibility space. We are just getting warmed up 😎 bvp.com/atlas/roadmap-supply…

Happy Diwali 🪔

According to one of the other witnesses, the guy was trying to commit suicide.

For the past 3 nights my son has asked me to read the founding sales book by @Kazanjy

Excited to open @terminal49's office space in downtown Berkeley. Just got the keys! Excited about NOT working from home anymore. Moving from fully distributed to hybrid will be a process but we are leaning into it.

So the @terminal49 eng team built this really awesome tool to identify ocean carriers for any bill of lading or booking number. Especially for numbers that don't have a carrier prefix. ⁉ Why did we make this? We built this because many logistics operators have shipment numbers but they don't always know the ocean carrier. This makes it challenging to identify and track the number (and related containers) on a specific ocean carrier. Since we have successfully tracked millions of unique shipments we were able to create an algorithm to predict a ocean carrier with high probability. 🪄 It works like magic! Check it out. loom.com/share/45bf3768cf194…

It's pretty amazing that a $300/year Docusign subscription has helped close over a million in ARR in less than 12 months.

Hosted a customer dinner at a Vegas conference tonight and consumed zero alcohol. Feeling proud.

That's @Stammy and me in 2011 when we were working on @picplum

I hear you but that's what customer feedback is for. That's why constantly talking to customers is good for sanity. Especially visiting them in person. Every time i notice depression kicking in I try to visit a few customers.

Been following @vercel story for some time and been very intrigued. Few days ago @mattyturner shared that Heroku was having issues with @emberjs builds and @terminal_49 UI builds stopped deploying. Within 24h I was able to move over our prod/stg CI builds. I am Impressed!

Insane wipeout/dust storm hit burning man this afternoon. It devastated a lot of camps. Ours included. Time to rebuild.

This is true. When we started Terminal49 we built a trucking service to move containers from port to warehouse. Overtime we pivoted into SAAS. We still run the trucking service on the side. It generated > $1M/y with 1 person managing it.

Burn baby burn!! Thanks for the stream @burningman @motorbikematt

Happy birthday to me! So much to be thankful for. Especially these two. I am a lucky guy.

I would say Berkeley over Oakland but I am biased.

Longer video of the aftermath. facebook.com/dodeja/videos/1…

Finding smart people to join your company is harder than raising money.

Not true. Investors put money in pre revenue startups all the time. Heard of "pre seed"?

Contrarian take: You only get to throw one, may be a few events in your life where you get to bring together friends and family for a joyous celebration. Use it to express yourself. Use the opportunity to make it memorable. You won't regret it.

Wow @linear @karrisaarinen sent me a sick "supply kit". Love the details and the curation. Very Linear. Thank you!

Happy Diwali from our family to yours 🪔

Good morning from the Matterhorn. This is a good spot to enjoy an espresso, and do some writing.

Check out the @brexHQ and @terminal49 billboard in Time Square

Ghee is really easy to make. Buying ghee from the store is like buying pre-packages boiled eggs.

Phew.. Just did a webinar announcing @terminal49's Rail Product. Really happy to have over 50% attendance. Not so happy about the uhms in the recording. Thankfully I have @descript to edit all those out.

Talk to an order of magnitude more people before building anything.

The UI is intentional. That itself is called design.

Sachin is a good man and is taking action to address some of the issues that face SF.

We just got our first container booking on terminal49.com! @phmulin @terminal_49

I am feeling energized! Nothing like meeting your co-workers and customers in person. Working in solitude at home for years is taking a toll on me.

Every Tuesday I look forward to seeing all these faces. We are a small team @terminal49 across 5 countries. I am so proud of how much we have accomplished over the last year. Interested in building software infrastructure to automate global trade? DM me

Visiting my parents this week. My dad was very excited to show me his overkill 10G home network infrastructure. - 2Gb symmetrical fiber - Ubiquiti UDM SE - Ubiquiti USW 24POE - Ubiquiti U6 LR AP - 2.5 G switch in his "workshop"

It's like wearing shorts on a cold SF day. I might have an opinion but it doesn't matter.

Same here. As soon as it opened the auth flow, I figured something was wrong.

It's a good feeling when someone recommends your company on reddit. teddit.net/r/supplychain/com…

We are also launching our new website 🙌🏽 A little bit more about the announcement at terminal49.com/blog/series-a…

Coming up on 3 weeks in Spain. After spending some time in Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia and Ibiza I have noticed that the quality of life in Spain is really high. People here know how to live well. Quality of life in the US doesn't even come close.

My wife got a birthday present and personal barista 😇

My kind of car.   🤤

This is like engineering/hacking 101 for true software engineers.

9/10 people I talk to who manage shipping containers still use spreadsheets. Copying and pasting container numbers and updating ETA and other statuses. We want wave a magic wand and help automate these spreadsheets! ✨ We are building a @zapier application for @terminal_49!

Ahh I miss those days. simpler times :)

How to end a Friday with a bang? Warm brownie with three kinds of ice cream (pistachio, cherry garcia and malted vanilla) with hot fudge and sprinkles.

🎨 I'm hiring a frontend product designer at @terminal49 (we automate container tracking and execution) We are building the next-gen of our product. What I call "Airtable of logistics". This will take our product exp from single player to multi-player

Happy New Year, everyone! There is a lot to be thankful for, especially for these two. Over the past few weeks, I've had the chance to slow down a bit. This pause gave me time to reflect on the past and think about the year ahead. I appreciated that most of my coworkers and my family were also able to slow down. I realize it's a luxury, so it's one of the many things I'm thankful for. Last year was challenging for @terminal49. The "post-COVID" era shocked the supply chain, and container volumes collapsed. In 2022, the logistics and supply chain economy thrived due to the volume boom (everyone was buying things) and sky-high transportation rates. Then, as people started returning to work, many got laid off, interest rates kept increasing, and the stimulus ran out. Service providers did a great job meeting demand in 2022. The shock not only brought the volumes down but also took transportation rates to rock bottom. This led to excess transportation supply (both workers and assets) and thin margins. We had to meet our customers with this new reality and adjust how we operated. One day business can be great; the next day, the market can completely change. We survived and learned a lot in the process. I am really fortunate to have a team and partners that supported the company along the way. It was a great reminder that you can have product-market fit one day and lose it the next. The market is brutal and unforgiving. This should just make us stronger, right? Let's see. We have a lot more to do with renewed focus. Our business is growing again, and I am really excited about the products we are building to serve our customers (logistics service providers -- we are working hard to make your life better!). The good news is that global trade is here to stay. People still need great tools, and we are here to build them. With that, I wish you a great year ahead. May you overcome the challenges that come your way. Don't forget to ask for help! We need each other to succeed in our endeavors. Let's go!

I felt similarly in January! Never been sick for that long. Still have a lingering cough.