Ashley V.

Couple people reached out about this GeekWire article yesterday by Taylor Soper covering supply chain tech in Seattle, asking more about it. I really believe Seattle is a great spot for the following reasons: 1. Modern supply chains are built from the ground up to serve customers. While Amazon helped cement this, others deserve credit for their commitment to customer focus. Many of those companies are in Seattle (Nordstrom etc). I really believe that every supply chain will fail to modernize if it doesn't reorient towards its respective customer at the center. The 90s era operating models of push-based cost management and misaligned incentives will prevent true modernization. Because Seattle has had so many companies with this at their cultural core, a lot of the supply chain tech talent here is committed to this attitude. 2. Technology, in particular cloud based software engineering, and supply chain operations are now so intimately intertwined, that you can't have an operator who isn't technical (or have someone who is technical but doesn't understand operations) and still expect to modernize. Seattle is also a technology epicenter, with Microsoft/Amazon and dozens of excellent public and private companies shedding supreme technical talent. It has allowed a higher hit rate of leading technologists to infiltrate logistics tech. 3. Similar to above, I believe most supply chain problems are probabilistic in nature. There is little certainty in supply chains. This means data is the root most important thing to modern supply chains, but also that true data science with real data scientists powering real ML and AI models is critical to successful supply chains. Data science talent is all over the place here in Seattle. 4. Lastly, hard to put a finger on this one, but there is something interesting about the intersection of the profiles of startups (high risk based profiles) and supply chains (low risk based profiles). Startups and startup culture embraces change. You have to in order to be successful. Seattle is definitely a top startup ecosystem in the country, so a lot of people here are comfortable pushing boundaries. Meanwhile, operations and supply chains are historically risk averse, and for good reason. Physical atoms are involved. It's the heartbeat of organizations. Most tech is 90s era on prem stuff. It's really hard to change. I think there is something compelling about each side counter balancing each other for the best ideas for innovation coming out of it. When I look at the startups on Taylor's list, it's a lot of ideas are targeting the highest value and most fertile problems of supply chains. I think the talent here is focused on meaningful change that industries can absorb, versus too risky of ideas that will never be adopted or too small of ideas that will never make an impact. https://lnkd.in/gm4bikHb

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Published a case study with one of our biggest customers yet. 🎉 • Community of 5500+ members • Running multiple 1-on-1 matching programs • Connecting 100s people each month Abbey (Burtis) Peterson is one of the most detail-oriented community operators I've ever met. That's why getting HTN successfully onboarded to Curated Connections was a major win! Some of the highlights from the case study: • "As our members continue to form meaningful connections with one another, it makes the community stickier." • "We’ve heard from 20+ members directly that they prefer this platform over other platforms we’ve tried." • "The Curated Connections team is highly receptive to feedback and quickly incorporates it. Link to read the entire case study in comments.

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Here is brutal advice for companies < $10 million. Firstly, I want to say this advice only comes from experience. I scaled Trade-In Tech to $14 million annually in 5 years. Then I grew Distribution Bros to $21 million annually in 2 years.

I’m now growing Inventoryy and we plan on doing the same thing. This is what I learned along the way… 1. Your business is worth nothing unless you have something proprietary. 
 2. The only true growth is when your profit doesn’t shrink. 3. A partner doesn’t make you 2x better, it makes you 100x better.
 4. Your data will be good to you, only if you are good to your data. Take this advice with a grain of salt… If you want to scale past $10 million, it will take a lot more. The underlying truth is it takes so much effort that any sane person would think you’re crazy for doing it. But that’s the level some love to play at.

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Talk to Buildstash and Robbie Cargill if you want to manage your game or app binaries.

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Making decisions with limited data is a key part of leadership 🔑 This ^ is an essential skill set that only becomes more important as you take on bigger roles at larger companies It’s one of the biggest reasons first time VPs struggle at startups. 😢 They are waiting for someone to ask for their opinion or hand them a decision they can execute on. 😫 Aka they just don’t recognize this as part of their job or feel incapable of making a call given the high stakes and limited data points. 🤷🏽‍♀️ When you are reporting to a CRO or VP sales, your job is to share your perspective with them and let THEM decide. ✅ But as a Head of sales reporting to the founder, your job is to MAKE the decision, convince the rest of the company (including the founder) of it and execute against it ✅ The accountability shift is massive. 🔑 And it starts with getting comfortable making decisions before you *need to* 💪 My approach 1️⃣ identify the key areas worth making changes / decisions in. Come up with a few options that could work 2️⃣ ask for folks close to the issues feedback on the few options and understand their why (important to note their specific vantage point / incentives involved here) 3️⃣ finally use data to validate / invalidate whatever way you are leaning (key is to NOT start with the data esp early stage!) 4️⃣ decide, communicate (why you made the call, the risks and next steps) and get to execution quickly Making decisions quickly to get to clarity > perfect decision making Happy building 🙌 #decisionmaking #leadership #CRO #salesmanagement #startups #founders #VPsales

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Last week, Zach and I headed to Seattle for 2 days of our executive offsite. The goal? To set our vision for 2025. We focused on: → Solidifying our vision, → And allocating resources across our 3 product lines. We answered critical questions like → How can we get our customers to find even more value? → How can we be the rising tide that lifts all boats for our target industries - moving & insurance → How and when can we scale Yembo beyond our first two verticals I think this was our most productive offsite yet! Looking forward to executing on these priorities in 2025 - making ideas into code and into customer life improvements!

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Now that we’ve delivered custom workforce management solutions for a few contractors in California, I’ve had a chance to really see the folks in the field and the management issues that trace back to the days when laptops were a luxury thing. (I’m talking about small to mid-sized organizations here.) It turned out to be quite a conservative vertical, with many still relying on outdated stuff. Challenges Faced by Field Service Businesses: A survey by Verizon Connect highlights the most challenging issues: - Customer satisfaction (56%) - Profit margins (48%) - Talent acquisition and retention (47%) Other challenges include: Technology Alignment: Many companies use multiple outdated technologies that don’t integrate whatsoever. Operational Cost Increase: Dispatches generate revenue but also generate crazy overhead. Talent Pool: Poor technology frustrates field staff, leading to higher turnover. When it comes to field service management, some industries are particularly notorious for poor management. The top five industries that struggle the most with FSM are: Telecommunications: Companies in this sector often face challenges with scheduling, dispatching, and maintaining the vast network infrastructure, leading to delays and inefficiencies​ Utilities: The management of services like electricity, water, and gas supply is complex, often plagued by outdated systems and equipment, leading to frequent service disruptions and customer dissatisfaction​ Healthcare: Field service in healthcare involves the maintenance and repair of critical medical equipment. Issues here can severely impact patient care and safety due to delays in service and equipment downtime​ Construction: Managing field services in construction is challenging due to the dynamic and fragmented nature of projects. Poor coordination and communication often result in project delays and increased costs​ Manufacturing: This industry deals with maintaining machinery and equipment both in-house and at customer sites. Ineffective FSM can lead to prolonged downtimes and significant productivity losses​ TBC

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"Probably the worst decision that I made as CEO of Loudcloud was to take ona. 10-year lease with a $30M letter of credit. We leased the space right before the dot-com crash. Rents dropped 10-fold in Menlo Park... worse yet, due to the recession, we couldn't hire so the space we already had was sufficient and we never ended up moving into the new building. So I basically lost $30M for nothing." This is from Ben Horowitz's recent interview with Big Think. Even a quarter century ago the typical office lease construct is misaligned with how a company needs to operate. Our industry could get away with this when office spaces had a monopoly on how and where work got done, but those days are dead. As global markets are crashing, we'll be looking at another disruptive cycle for businesses which will create more cost cutting pressure and the first thing to go when they roll will be inflexible leases. CRE needs to develop new offerings and fast. https://lnkd.in/ePuZgzkU

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Big day for the Rails Foundation: 1Password is the first new Core member to join the board since we launched. Looking forward to working with Jason Meller on the board. You might be thinking: 1Password? Rails? YES. 1Password recently acquired Kolide, a Rails app, and integrated it into the core of its XAM. With today’s world of remote work (and the apps we rely on at work) combined with the ever-increasing threat of data breaches and bad actors, this Rails app now handles “thousands of web requests per second, authorizes millions of authentication attempts, processes billions of asynchronous jobs each month, and consistently delivers four nines of annual uptime for customers”. Not bad for a Rails app, ey?

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~40% of Frec’s customers are engineers working in tech, many of whom expect frequent and large capital gains. They also prefer to self-manage their money, which makes Frec an ideal platform. Meet Evan: an engineering leader who upgraded from investing in ETFs to direct indexing. Direct indexing appealed to Evan because it offers comparable returns to his ETFs while saving him money on advisory and ETF fees. “ETFs are true and tested, and giving folks a different way of investing in the market while saving more money is really appealing.” He’s used many other robo-advisors and other fintech tools, but “Frec seems to maximize tax loss harvesting opportunities better than any other product that I’ve used.” He also likes Frec's transparent fee structure.  “I feel like with a lot of other companies, that’s muddled in with the cost of investments,” he told us, “and you don’t really know how much you’re paying or how much you’re not saving as a result. I think Frec does a really good job of laying all of that out and giving you a true understanding of the cost of these investment products.” Read more about his Frec journey here ⬇

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YC founders, here's a hard lesson I learned about interviewing: it's always necessary. Always. Regardless of the candidate, regardless how well you know them, regardless of how confident you are in their skills, always interview. Trust me, they won't be offended. They’ll feel excited to pass the interview, and you’ll be sure they fit. It’s fairer and more levelheaded. It also helps you - Avoid nepotism - Avoid ad hoc decisions - Create processes for better judgement I wish I had learned this sooner.

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what city should you build your startup in? I was in SF for a few days last week and I've been reflecting on this age old debate what I've noticed about this question, is that people always talk their bags. - if you live in LA, you'll talk about quality of life - if you live in NYC, you'll talk about how cosmopolitan NYC is - if you live in SF, you'll talk about how SF is coming back - if you live in St. Louis or some other random city, you'll talk about how great remote work is having lived in 3 major hubs - SF, LA, and now NYC - I've come up with a simple heuristic for making this decision: there's a spectrum: SF -> NYC -> .... -> middle of nowhere the more advantages you have, the further right you can (not "should") move. advantages include: - strong network (of investors, hires, customers, etc) - experience in startups - experience building great software - strong work ethic - credibility in startups (e.g. multi-time founder, worked at a top tech co) - traction with your company the reality is, because SF has so much density of people who have invested in and built the most influential tech companies in the world (even still after the pandemic) and because there's basically nothing to do there except work, it is the best place to passively accumulate these advantages. this means, for most unproven, non-conventional founders (esp. who are new), SF is the best place to be. and even for folks with every advantage, it's still crucial to visit SF and build relationships with people who live there. I remember hearing a stat that YC companies based in SF were 2-3x more likely to succeed than ones that weren't. so why am I living in NYC instead of SF? family at the end of the day, stacking advantages is irrelevant if you don't have your basics accounted for. NYC is the closest tech hub to a lot of family that lives in Pittsburgh. as I've gotten older, being close to them has become more important to me. additionally, meeting a partner to start my own family is just easier in NYC than SF, which is something I'd like to do soon. I've noticed that my effectiveness as a leader is just exponentially higher when I'm in a loving relationship. having spent 8+ years in SF (on top of graduating from Berkeley and growing up in the Bay Area), I've also accumulated a lot of the advantages listed above. that coupled with staying active on twitter/linkedin and visits to SF nearly every other month, give me many of the benefits of the city without having to live there. there are many exceptions that do not follow this heuristic, but startup success is a probability game and the more things you can do to increase that probability, the better. fwiw SF is also one of the most beautiful cities in the world, this is a pic I took while on a walk during the pandemic

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Me, Josh Segall, and 80 engineers hanging out 😹 We started throwing events exclusively for software engineers 1 year ago. I had 2 goals: 1) Find talented engineers and convince them to work at startups. 2) Find engineers who had their own ideas that wanted to build startups. While this event is somewhat tangential to startups, engineering talent is so SO important and I’m really seeing the results from hosting these after finding 2 CTOs and a few other key players too. I give folks this advice all the time- if you wanna build a tech company, go hangout with engineers and share what you’re building. If you’re a student, hangout at your engineering school. There you will find awesome partners critical to your success. Outside of my personal mission here, we’ve ended up building a really cool community. Surprise, I don’t like most networking events, but this is a space that I feel exceptionally comfortable in and I’m so happy we made it for others too.

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Story time: I talked to Plaid's DevRel team last month I learned 30% of devs who get API access NEVER onboard because they never make it through the integration process. Imagine you're Plaid and you worked super hard to get developers to use your products — but then they quit and use a competitor because yours is too hard. 𝑻𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 𝒎𝒆𝒂𝒏𝒔 𝒎𝒊𝒍𝒍𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝒍𝒐𝒔𝒕 𝒓𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒏𝒖𝒆 𝒐𝒏 𝑨𝑷𝑰 𝒖𝒔𝒂𝒈𝒆. This is the problem that we're aiming to solve at Layer. We add an Integration Expert (ie. extension) on top of VSCode to help DevRel teams at companies like Plaid make onboarding devs easier.  Like a cake with icing, VSCode is better with another Layer.

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InVision has experienced the biggest fall from glory in Silicon Valley's recent history. $350M raised with a peak valuation of $2B. And now they are shutting down. Not acquihired or "acquired by private equity" or strategic tuck-in. Just a hard stop. It's so easy to s**t on them. They got out-innovated, they were not product driven etc. etc. But, the truth is most startups that raised monster rounds in ZIRP days could face this deadend. You raised too much money: 1/ So you are too expensive to acquire 2/ So you raised your burn too high to finance a big GTM team 2/ So you got complacent on product 3/ So you got lazy on shipping There will be a lot more inVisions in the next 24 months as startups run out of capital. It's sad. The employees & founders at these companies gave it their all, but raising too much money sealed their fate. For the next gen of startup founders, heed this advice: raise little, keep your burn low, ship fast!

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🚀 Starting a company as a non-technical founder? Don't rush to give away half your equity or fly solo. I've seen two common paths: finding a technical co-founder or hiring an outsourced team. Both have their pitfalls. Instead, consider a Fractional CTO. With just 4-5 hours a week from a seasoned expert, you can tackle complex challenges without breaking the bank. Strong guidance can make all the difference. 💡 Ready to explore smarter options? Let's chat!

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where’s OpenAI ‘s sama? oh look. he’s in elon’s shadow. makes sense. he’s shorter. Lol. the island of cannibals that is silicon valley has a new co-chair as mayor of sf. unelected. uninfluential in washington. has weasled his way into a transition team for sf. I wonder is watching elon w trump he found his trump locally in sf. sama is a mirror. he was for pg. he was also for many others. including elon. I guess this is a way to perhaps shore up political points locally in sf. to protect himself as best as he can. washington is a country wide, global game. kinda reminds me of another rebranding. im just jenny from the block. https://lnkd.in/e_jNXXRD if ai companies are to flourish OpenAI Google Microsoft Amazon Apple will require that startups are not somehow impeded. this is a game of davids and goliaths. where the slingshot appears innocuous. that is llms, transformers, access to privileged data. this out of no-where announcement demonstrates that this is a defense tactic by sama. he speaks fondly of sf and has done nothing until now. so his disingenuous nature finds yet another loop hole to worm into. we would be more supportive of his efforts except he’s created an industry for himself through a con game approach. why is he ceo of OpenAI when he’s there 6-7 hours a week. forgive me. isn’t a ceo supposed to be singularly focussed. his game is getting funding that invests in companies that he’s already invested in and as it’s a non for profit there are no conflicts of interest applied. wow. he uses other peoples money to invest in what he’s already invested in. sounds like y combinator showed him how to play the sv players. the next trick will be to do something no one has ever done. take a multi-billy non for profit and flip to for profit. as a non for profit there is no reporting required. there are tax incentives. a moral narrative to spin. then. oooops. how do we monetize this. we believe he will not succeed. to do so would cannibalize capitalism as it’s structured. it also would create a new pathway for universities which are by definition research centres. creating this precedent would alter their business. given that elon has beef with sama. and elon has never been more on top of his game. well. we find local political maneuvering is a way of squirming. OpenAI investors chiefly Microsoft are about to be thrown under the bus. unwittingly. recall it’s the talent at OpenAI that makes it special. the a team has left. the b team is in place. 2025 will not be good for OpenAI elon will have his revenge. 44 millys invested. for what. for sama to throw his weight around. he’s a lightweight. just look at him. lol. source: https://lnkd.in/e9WtQ48k < . >

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"Do you think I should be a founder?" is a question I get asked a lot. It's #SeattleTechWeek and I'm seeing great quotes and advice being shared, so I wanted to share an early story before we had any funding. I had been trying for our initial funding for months. I was learning, we continued to work on the product, marketing, and investor pitch. We were improving but it was still one rejection after another. I will never forget the moment after a pitch that went particularly poorly. I found myself staring at my calendar realizing I didn't have anything next. No more pitches, no meetings... just nothingness. I had called every favor, exhausted every network connection I had, and I felt no closer than the day I quit my job. I opened my slides to iterate and look for improvements, but what was the point? Onward, let's go. There is always the next person you can approach. This person I didn't know well, he was a tech exec I'd worked with previously. I had a lot of respect for him, and noticed he was connected to an investor that I hadn't reached. Requested an intro and the he told me "Ozan... you have no customers, no revenue, and your team is quite small. Unfortunately there isn't enough here for me to justify the introduction." It seemed reasonable enough, and I thanked him for his time anyways. I thought... maybe asking for the intro was disrespectful. The next day I was sitting at my kitchen table across from my advisor and mentioned my failed attempt at securing the intro. I'll never forget him saying "Hmmmm, I don't know that person, but let me say something. Fuck that guy, fuck him. That's such a load of bullshit! You've quit your job where you were a top performer, you're putting everything on the line, you're dipping uncomfortably deep to the end of your savings, you're out there hustling with very little support, and he can't even do the bare minimum? No that's not reasonable, that's bullshit." It didn't matter whether or not the person was justified in not making an intro. It didn't matter if my advisor was biased towards my perspective. What did matter was that it was an extremely dark week for me, after so many rejections, with what seemed like no light at the end of the tunnel, and it reminded me that I'm not always wrong. "Do you think I should be a founder?" is therefore such a hard question to answer. It was mentioned this week that startups are hard and they're not for everyone. I don't say it, but the first thought in my head is always "If you have to ask, then probably not." It's a long, lonely journey. It's filled with dark days, doubt, very little support, and more often than not it doesn't feel logical. But - there are some amazing moments as well. When I have to sum it up I mention that it's an endless string of high highs and low lows. If you do it, the number one thing I'd say is never ever stop asking for favors. I'm still asking for them 6 years later, and the answer I usually get hasn't changed either. Push.

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