Lenny T.

Half of LinkedIn has already weighed in on Paul Graham's recent essay Founder Mode, which criticized the approach of running large companies with "efficient managers." The discussion was sparked by Brian Chesky, who, during an event at YC, lamented that hired management nearly destroyed his company. Everyone in attendance nodded in agreement. Let’s set aside the fact that guys in Patagonia vests may not be the best sample for assessing the success of "Founder Mode." The success of some of these individuals is hard to replicate, not just in other countries, but even in the U.S. under high-interest-rate conditions. Survivorship bias in action. The key question here is: are motivation and accountability for the company’s mission the critical factors for a startup's success? In my opinion, they come second, right after the ability to continuously learn and adapt to changes in the company. For example, the founders of Instagram stepped aside at the right time (maybe unwillingly), allowing efficient managers to build the second-largest social network in the world and a huge cash cow for Meta. An efficient manager, Imran Khan, came to Snapchat from Alibaba, helping the company make a great IPO and improving a lot as a CSO. Bill Gates handed over management to one of his early employees, Steve Ballmer, who in turn passed it to Satya Nadella, allowing Microsoft to become one of the world’s largest companies. Steve Jobs long resisted the necessity of releasing the iPhone and was ultimately convinced by multiple managers, who saved the company, which at the time was relying on a single product line. My conclusion from the stories above: one must constantly learn and evolve to align with the product's tempo. If you fall short due to a lack of skills, motivation, or health, it's better to let more flexible and competent people handle these challenges. You can't blame failure in people management on an inherent flaw in the hired management system.

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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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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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Looking for advice to handle tough times? 🚀  📕𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙃𝙖𝙧𝙙 𝙏𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝘼𝙗𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙃𝙖𝙧𝙙 𝙏𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙨 by Ben Horowitz isn't your typical business book—it's a raw, no-nonsense guide to surviving the toughest moments in entrepreneurship, leadership and business. Whether you're making gut-wrenching decisions or leading through crises, this book gives you the playbook for the problems no one else talks about. As a professional navigating today's business landscape, this book has been invaluable to me. #BusinessLeadership #EntrepreneurshipChallenges

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a note on intuition and building products (via mike knoop, founder - zapier, go follow him on twttr) -- Wisdom for founding teams is "talk to users". Over the last 10 years this has become the playbook for doing 0 to 1 work. As the advice became dogma, some founders forgot why it exists, and a new failure mode emerged: "the blind walk to product-market fit". YC popularized "talk to users" in response to the classic mistake of coming up with some idea in isolation, building in secret for months or years, and launching just to learn no one cares. Talking to users forces faster contact with reality. Your initial idea and and intuition are likely wrong in material ways, so you want to shrink the time to learn this. At Zapier, I tell teams to try and model this behavior: ship in the AM, demo to users in the PM. If you do this, you get 5-7 hits on reality per week compared to a team on a 2-week release process (or worse). This all makes sense and many founders conclude their idea, intuition, or experience don't really matter. They model finding pmf as y=mx+b where cycle time is "m" and the initial idea is "b". In this model, founder intuition gives them an initial head start but impact is quickly overtaken by iteration speed. This leads them to heavily discount or even outright ignore their own experience and intuition -- many get stuck doing a fast cycle, but ultimately directionless, traversal through the pmf maze. The modeling mistake here is the "m" term is decomposed into (iteration speed) * (intuition). Every time you make contact with reality, you learn something new. And you get to decide what to do with that new information. Should you ignore it? Update but carry on? Change directions entirely? This is why intuition is important. Your idea and experience do not just establish initial position on the Y-axis. They are a multiplier on every decision or change you make. The faster your iteration speed, the more overall impact your experience can have. If you're ideas are right, they are right faster. If they are wrong, they are wrong more obviously. All other things equal, founders with experience in a domain outperform blank-slate founders doing the blind walk.

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As the last pieces of Twitter get spread to the wind, I can help but reminisce about the impact Twitter HQ had on my life and the hilarious strategic importance of it in the Klout story. In 2008 Binh Tran and I moved from LA up to SF to try and grow Klout. We bounced around borrowing desks from friends like Nova Spivack until we were finally ready to get our own spot. We ended up finding a space on the first floor of what was then Twitter HQ. At that point we had added Gregarious Narain so the whole team was only 3 people. The office space we found in Twitter HQ was huge though and was more appropriate for a team of 20 and costs way more than we wanted to spend. Our relationship with Twitter was critical so we decided that it was worth spending the money (that we really didn't have) to get the office. To make it work we sublet space to awesome founders like Jonathan Strauss Dan Martell Mark Hendrickson Xavier Damman. This created a huge amount of energy around our office. We were really dependent on Twitter data so being in the same building was was an important strategic bet for us. The personal relationships I built with those early Twitter team members were super helpful and are still important friendships today. What I didn't expect though was the amount of business we would be able to get just by being in the same building as Twitter. It felt like every CMO, brand manager, major advertiser would make the pilgrimage to SF to learn about social. They would all tweet about how excited they were to go visit Twitter HQ and I would reply to them all telling them to stop by Klout HQ on the first floor. It was hilarious how many huge execs we had in our office when we were just a tiny team. Our first paying customers ended up being brands like Starbucks, Audi, Nike, Virgin America, Fox, etc just because we got to meet them as they were leaving their meetings with Twitter. I love how random things like this can completely change your trajectory as a startup. This was an amazingly fun time that completely changed my life. I've already mourned what twitter has become but still sad to see it fully leave SF. https://lnkd.in/gBg_jpAm

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Interesting to see so many big names like Skims, Chime, and Stripe choosing to delay their IPOs. It’s a tough market out there, and it looks like 2025 might be the year to watch. Patience and strategic planning are the name of the game. 📈 #technews #ipo #startups

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Google Too Big for Their Britches. They all Fall. One or two squeaky wheels here and there doesn’t attract too much attention but when you have a parking lot full of complaints honking in unison, it’s hard to ignore. As of 2024, there have been multiple antitrust lawsuits filed against Google, with at least five major cases brought by either the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) or state attorneys general since 2020. These lawsuits primarily target Google’s monopolistic practices in search and digital advertising markets. One of the most notable cases, initiated in October 2020, accuses Google of using anti-competitive tactics to maintain its dominance in search engines, particularly by making deals with companies like Apple to secure default placement on their devices. Another significant lawsuit, led by the Texas attorney general in 2020, focuses on Google’s control over the digital advertising ecosystem. In this case, Google is accused of monopolizing both sides of the ad marketplace, disadvantaging smaller competitors. “ There are also coalition cases from over 30 states claiming Google discriminates against specific vertical search companies, like Yelp and Tripadvisor, by prioritizing its services in search results.​ Antitrust Issues: The central focus of the legal cases against Google is the alleged abuse of its dominant position in online search and advertising, which may have stifled competition. Potential Penalties: Experts suggest that if Google is found liable, it could face substantial fines and damages, possibly amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars. Operational Impact: These large financial penalties could dramatically affect Google's business strategies and profitability, potentially leading to significant layoffs and restructuring. Google’s meteoric rise to become the dominant force in search and digital advertising has made it not just a technology company, but a gatekeeper of the internet itself. With nearly 90% of all searches going through Google, it holds unparalleled control over how information is accessed, influencing markets and, in many ways, the public discourse. By leveraging exclusivity agreements and monopolizing the ad-tech market, it has effectively created an ecosystem that taxes businesses that need online visibility, making it clear that Google has grown "too big for its britches." The recent antitrust rulings and investigations serve as a stark reminder that no company, regardless of its size or technological prowess, is above the law. As Google faces more scrutiny, the legal outcomes will shape its future and the broader digital landscape, pushing for a more competitive and fairer marketplace. It is time for Google to acknowledge that unchecked dominance stifles the very innovation it once championed, and real change is needed to restore balance.​ https://webpro.com

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Authorization is one of the more complex (and, let's face it, thankless) tasks about building an application. Oso has emerged as the leader in abstracting #authorization as an independent service; just like authentication.

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This is a standard Amazon meeting invite. If you think this is too process oriented, please reconsider: - Early-stage companies are naturally entropic and have limited time to prove utility before ceasing to exist. The mere act of filling out this template reinforces whether you even need a meeting in the first place. Time management is everything - One-way vs. two-way door decisions. One-way decisions are company making/breaking because you can't easily reverse them. Founders often think only stereotypical big decisions are one-way. This is wrong. In aggregate, make a series of poorly thought-out two-way decisions and you can irreversibly set your company back. Limited runway = little margin of error - Critical vs. Additional attendees. Empower team members by letting them know they're critical for a decision. As a founder, it let's you quickly realize what can be delegated and where you still need full ownership. Sometimes a little bit of process can dramatically streamline how a business operates and ultimately the outcome

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An intriguing startup called Fragment is shaking up the ledgering game. 💡 If you’ve ever dealt with tracking customer balances, you know how tedious it can be—Fragment's API aims to simplify that by offering real-time, double-entry accounting without the accounting jargon overload.📊 Founders Thomas Neckel and Omi Chowdhury are onto something big here, especially with their track record of successful startups. With early adopters like TruckSmarter and Nala already onboard, it's exciting to see where this tech goes. 🚀 #Fintech #Startup #Innovation #AccountingTech #TechTrends https://lnkd.in/eUrC-tJE

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My cofounder twisted my arm to join a "B2B Product-Market Fit" bootcamp. I was skeptical, but it wound up being insanely useful - probably the highest ROI thing we've ever done. Here's why: WHY I WAS SKEPTICAL: Yes, product-market fit is "the only thing that matters." But it's a vague concept. It's a vague, ethereal thing that nobody seems to understand. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing you can teach or learn. I'd also tried all the "best practices" out there (ideation exercises, customer interviews, experimentation, etc.) and found that they... didn't really work. So a bootcamp about product-market fit seemed like the best way to incinerate money and time. WHY I DID IT: My cofounder and I met with Rob Snyder, who's got founder experience and started this weird Product-Market Fit bootcamp... geared towards MBA/consulting/i-banking as well as product and developer types. In our first 30-min meeting, Rob didn't try to sell us on the bootcamp... he just helped us make a TON of progress in our business. I was still skeptical… But we decided to do the bootcamp & schedule weekly 1:1s with Rob. Why not -- it was more affordable than a sales coach, and Rob actually speaks at a founder level WHAT HAPPENED: The bootcamp is insane, like nothing else I've experienced. It approaches product-market fit from first principles, but is highly actionable. So we made a bunch of progress on our business, but I also built mental models about product-market fit and scaling that help me feel confident that I'm focused on the right things. It also didn't take a ton of time, maybe 2-3 hours per week. Not at all a distraction, with a very high signal:noise ratio. My favorite part has been getting a ton of feedback from Rob and from other founders in the program. We review each others' sales decks, sales calls, outreach messages... and debug things to get closer to "pull", vs "push." It was cool to see that there were pre-revenue companies all the way to companies with $2M+ ARR... each trying to find repeatable pull and deepen their understanding of product-market fit. SO WHAT: Our startup feels different now. We're getting a lot of traction, our sales conversations are smooth, and I know exactly what matters & doesn't. We feel pull in sales calls, customers say, "we're cutting budget... Konko is the only thing we're investing in." This is energizing to hear, and a lot of this comes from the work we've done as part of this bootcamp. If you're a B2B startup, $0-$2M ARR, and customers aren't pulling the product out of your hands... you should apply to the next Product-Market Fit bootcamp. We're coming back for our second round, it starts July 8, DM me for an intro to Rob! (Or just DM Rob Snyder)

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This is a perspective I've been thinking about for a while, and I appreciate how colorfully pg puts it here. However, he does not explicitly define Founder Mode, except for contrasting it with being "a faker." I don't disagree, but I think I have a more subtle take. With the "don't just hire good people and let them figure it out" sentiment - I think that advice hits failure modes because people take it too literally and end up abdicating their authority instead of scaling it. I also think some founders should fully step away from their company as their involvement can hinder the company's success instead of nurture it. In both cases, you're not making decisions grounded in reality. I do know that managers and leaders who aren't zoomed in and present in the day-to-day work with their teams tend to make really crappy decisions. And because they have large areas of ownership, they can really steer the company into the rocks because they are - unwittingly or otherwise - willfully flying blind. So if being in Founder Mode means that you're in the work with skin in the game and not just phoning in your remit, you've got your hands in the dirt enough to understand what's growing and what's dying, you're constantly responding and adapting to the dynamics of your context, you're making timely decisions that keep your teams productive and grounded, and you're hiring good people and empowering them to do their best work, then I don't see much of a difference between being in Founder Mode versus being someone who is owning their work. That's just doing your damn job, and doing it well.

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We struggled to hire engineers for our first startup in college. As non-tech founders, finding the right talent was: - saturated - not transparent - a daunting experience We went through: → Various directories → Google searches → Friends’ recommendations Unfortunately, we got burned. We lost money, time, and energy. Determined to solve this problem, we moved to Berlin to test our hypothesis: “Are we the only ones struggling to hire tech talent, or is this a common problem?” Turns out, it’s a widespread issue. That’s how we built our company– to help others avoid the same pitfalls. 👍 if you’ve been there ♻️ repost to help others learn

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We like writing engineering content Our engineers are at the center of what we build and our accountants experience. We're defining what AI-native looks like for accounting. We like writing engineering content because we want engineers who join us to know how we think about problems. This week, our very own Matthew Duong wrote a piece on Single Sign-On (SSO), breaking down the essentials and actionable tips (link in the comments) For founders, improving the login process and making it easier to access your platform means a simpler experience. For enterprises, it means reducing the number of passwords users need to remember, reducing the risk of security breaches. Shout out to Amer Taleb who joined us recently and took our content game to a new level. We have a lot more coming soon: new product features, employee spotlights, and our view of the AI Accounting space. Happy Friday from everyone at Truewind!

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Great session James Newell and thanks for hosting Jon Prentice and SVB! In terms of the answers and perspective shared from Voyager Capital and James…. The Good (for Seattle investing and VCs) —— * the opportunity in Seattle (and the wider PNW / Cascadia region) that Voyager is still capitalizing on, is that there is a ton of potential in Seed to Series A investing that isn’t as accessible elsewhere. * SF and other markets are saturated and less engaged as investors at this stage. * talent pool here is massive, especially on the engineering and product side. What would be a “Game Changer” for Seattle —— * there is a talent shortage especially in terms of sales and marketers locally. * Few sales and marketers want to do $0 - $1M journey again if prior successful. * Angels are more private here, and may not feel the need to give back to the start up community if that isn’t how they made their wealth Outside of Seattle specific feedback: —— * Founders need to be doers, not “leaders of leaders” (an issue with those coming from big tech); talent need to meet the stage and act accordingly. * AI as a tool and business foundation is only important in terms of delivering business value. * AI powered firms need to show they have an ability to access proprietary data or be linked intimately to workflows or both to be a sound investment [this is established consensus among investors] * Investing, especially very early stage, should be run as a process. Be your own best BDR for fundraising. And finally …. The top 2 pieces of advice most often given to founders…. 1) Try to avoid VC capital to the degree you can [which means you have a capital efficient business]. 2) find a co-founder to complement your skills vs doing it all on your own.

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https://lnkd.in/gdGKdeAW - New project I built using a combination of Replit Agent, Perplexity search API using llama-3.1-sonar & OpenAI API Assistant. You're not sure how to vote on that? Take a quiz about your core values then this app will research it/them and help you decide.

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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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