Mahmoud Rusty Abdelkader

~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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This week Jam hosted 15 DevRel for an off-the-record dinner Here's 7 quick bites about what we learned about The Art of DevRel: 1. The best DevRels work closely with engineering and product. It’s not just about sharing what they're building with devs, it’s also about sharing dev feedback with product. When you get that feedback loop right, that’s how you get magical developer experiences. 2. DevRel should help the entire engineering team do DevRel Like how HR enables any manager to hire, DevRel should enable any engineer to write blogs, create tutorials, give talks, etc. Swyx’s “DevRel as a Service” post was big topic of discussion— will link it in the comments. 3. No 2 companies do devrel the same. No 2 people do devrel the same way There is a lot of art here that’s not science. It’s about finding the right fit person for your exact company Like how there is founder market fit, there is a devrel company fit too 4. Reporting up was a huge point of discussion The best devrels over-communicate internally in the company what is happening on their side Communication creates trust, and trust creates freedom for devrel to do things that don’t scale that builds real community (and results). 5. DevRel is always on; you are always representing the company Community never takes time off, devs around the world are building nights, weekends and holidays You have to love helping people build - truly - to love devrel (and it’s so inspiring to meet people who do) 6. The best DevRel build genuine relationships They become friends with community members and devs The best community and relationships aren’t measurable But can have immeasurable impact on the trajectory of a product/company 7. Last one: Are developers on LinkedIn? Consensus: yes - yes, they are.

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B2B product people, I highly recommend signing up for Run the Business, ibrahim bashir's substack. I paid for a 12 month founding member plan and have gotten at least 10x my money in value in just 2 weeks; the live Q&A in the webinars is super high quality. Check it out: https://lnkd.in/gr7-izSD #B2B #ProductManagement #ProductDevelopment #ProfessionalDevelopment #substack

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We are thrilled to announce the close of Billables AI's $3.9m seed round, with participation from a leading group of VCs and AI expert investors in Silicon Valley. While this is a great milestone, what’s even more exciting is what this funding helps us accomplish. “How will you use this investment?”, you ask? Let me break it down with a handy lil’ acronym - C.R.E.A.M. (😉): Cultivating more advancements in AI including more personalization to make your billable reports yours. Releasing more integrations to help firms streamline their workflows. Enhancing our user-first, design-driven experience to deliver the most beautiful timesheets you ever did see. Adding more productivity features including reporting and budgeting tools. Maximizing our presence in market. If I’ve already been annoying you to date, just you wait (and apologies in advance). --------------- Thank you to our investors at Wing Venture Capital, f7 Ventures, SignalFire, Alumni Ventures, Darkmode Ventures, our partner law firms… and of course, The Wu-Tang Clan.

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Is AI's future locked into trillion-dollar investments, or is there a more democratic path forward? I recently spoke with Eugene Cheah, founder of Recursal AI and co-lead on the open-source RWKV project, who's working to democratize AI by tackling some of the core constraints of transformers. Listen in on our full conversation here: https://lnkd.in/gKrrVRjp

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𝗔𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗜𝗻𝗱𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘆-𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰 𝘀𝗼𝗳𝘁𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀! We're conducting a benchmarking study to define success metrics specifically for vertical software companies. 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀: Existing SaaS benchmarks just don't cut it for your unique industry needs. This research will provide the data-driven insights to measure and optimize your vertical software business. 𝗖𝗮𝗻 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗛𝗲𝗹𝗽? A few minutes of your time can make a big difference.

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One of my favorite advantages of Y Combinator is that thousands of YC veterans have specific advice for you. Sometimes, that advice isn't public. But this essay is one of the best, and anyone can read it. Paul Graham's "Do Things That Don't Scale" describes a common thread between almost every successful company. Here are a few of his examples: Recruiting - "You can't wait for users to come to you. You have to go out and get them." He describes Stripe (one of the most successful YC companies ever) not waiting to onboard users who wanted to sign up in the early days. If they agreed, one of the Collison brothers (the founders) would simply use their laptop to sign them up on the spot. Instead of being shy and lazy about it, they were bold. Initial fragility - "Almost all startups are initially fragile. Founders ... unconsciously judge larval startups by the standards of established ones." It's fine if reporters and juggernauts dismiss your startup, but dangerous if you start to dismiss or doubt your own. Delight your users - "Your first users should feel that signing up with you was one of the best choices they ever made." Wufoo (one of the early YC startups) sent each new user a hand-written thank you note. This is one of many ways you can delight them - try to make them TOO happy. Experience - "The feedback you get from engaging directly with your earliest users will be the best you ever get." Laser focus on an "insanely great" attention to users. He explains that the product doesn't have to be insanely great at the beginning, but the user's experience does. That means over-engaging, which is fine. It promotes a tight feedback loop. Fire - A narrow focus is critical. "It's like keeping a fire contained at first to get it really hot before adding more logs." Startups who build things for themselves ("I was so sick of experiencing X, so I created Y solution") will do this without even thinking about it. Manual - "There's a more extreme variant where you don't just use your software, but are your software." Essentially, do things manually that you would automate later. A feature doesn't have to be code complete if you can get away with it at the beginning. There are more in the article - I highly recommend reading it. But my main takeaway is the most successful companies didn't automate and scale every single action from Day One. In PG's words, "startups take off because the founders make them take off. There may be a handful that just grew by themselves, but usually it takes some sort of push to get them going." That usually means manually doing things that don't scale.

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

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Over the past few months at Assembled, we've been exploring how Large Language Models (LLMs) can enhance our engineering workflows. One area where they've made a significant impact is in writing comprehensive tests. Traditionally, writing thorough tests can be time consuming and sometimes gets sidelined due to tight deadlines. By leveraging LLMs, we've been able to generate robust tests much more quickly—tasks that used to take hours now take just minutes. This shift has brought: - Increased adoption of testing: Engineers who previously wrote fewer tests are now consistently incorporating them into their workflow. - Time savings: We've collectively saved hundreds of hours, allowing us to focus more on developing new features and refining existing ones. - Enhanced code quality: Our codebase is better tested, giving us greater confidence in our deployments. I've shared more about our approach, including examples and lessons learned, in a recent blog post. 👉 Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gKw3djQu We're excited about the progress we're making and the insights we've gained. If you're interested in the intersection of LLMs and software engineering, or if you're passionate about building tools that transform customer support, I'd love to connect. P.S. We're hiring! Check out our open roles: https://lnkd.in/gSr_wqV7

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"Context is king!" In a recent insightful discussion with Edo Liberty, Founder and CEO of Pinecone, alongside Derrick Harris and Satish Talluri from Andreessen Horowitz, the importance of how vector databases and #RAG can deliver the most relevant context for AI products. At Perigon, we understand that to extract the maximum value from LLMs, providing the right context is essential. This isn’t just about recognizing the subject matter—which many conversational AI applications can manage—it’s also about ensuring temporal relevance. Without it, even the most sophisticated AI can miss the mark, delivering outdated or irrelevant information. Why does this matter? Because in a world where data is constantly evolving, the accuracy and relevance of the information provided by AI must be on par with what we would find if we did the exploration ourselves for it to be trustworthy. I invite you to experience this firsthand through Perigon’s chat feature on our homepage. Powered by our API, it not only captures subject matter accurately but also ensures the information is timely, tapping into real-time, dynamic data from across the web. Check it out and see the difference real context makes: www.goperigon.com #AI #ConversationalAI

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Having worked at Cruise and Waymo on self-driving taught me many things. I hope to bring some of these learnings to healthcare so it too can soon have the magical, "no-driver-at-the-wheel" moment. Here's a short conversation I had with Louie Cai, MD on this topic!

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Did you know that DevHuddle is a force multiplier for ALL software development stakeholders? Check out how we help folks like Product Managers, Support Teams, and Managers by providing an easy way to track what's going into your source code. Stop by to sign up for an account and learn more at https://devhuddle.ai #innovation #chat #productivity #software-development

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Favorite quotables from the Humanloop launch event: ➡️ On engineers’ approach to LLMs: “You hit the API and got a response. Ok great- that doesn’t mean the output is valid or good!" 🫠 -Brianna Connelly ➡️ On prompting: “Non technical people are driving 100% of the best prompting” 😯 -Brianna Connelly ➡️ On being an effective AI Engineer: “You have to upskill and become an engineer/data scientist hybrid to succeed” 📝 -Noam Rubin ➡️ On vibing your way to a half baked AI feature: “LLMs are almost too easy to use!” ✨ -Noam Rubin P.S. Sign of a high value tech event: Diet Coke runs out way before beer. Can't wait to try HumanLoop evals and congrats on the launch Raza Habib Jordan Burgess Andrei Bratu Harry X. 🚀

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Just published a new post on my Fireside PM substack. This one summarizes top 10 takeaways from my hour long podcast interview with Ziad Ismail, former CPO of unicorn startup and former founder and current COO & CPO at Xembly. Read here: https://lnkd.in/gbNRznST #productmanagement #startups #leadership #strategy

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Looking for a contract project (10 hours/week) where I'd love to help you go from 0 to 1 with an LLM-powered product or feature quickly. A bit about me: - Launched https://jakeai.org/ and went from idea to first revenue in 2 weeks. - Built two bootstrapped startups that generated a total of $200K in revenue. The first one was an AI analyst for business angels. The second one was a hilarious chatbot psychologist, Josef Freudman. - ex LLM-product builder at Reface🇺🇦, a16z-backed gen AI company. What I can help with: - Taking LLM-powered products from 0 to 1 fast - literally taking an idea and validating/iterating it. - Validating and implementing an LLM-powered feature in your product. Who I can help the most: - Startups that want to launch and get their first customers. - Startups and companies exploring the launch of a new product or feature. If this sounds like something that could help you out, feel free to message me here on LinkedIn or by email: [email protected]

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Too often, we get caught up in pursuing perfect outcomes, forgetting that innovation is a journey of trial and error. Check out my full Dialog interview with Mourad Zerroug, CTO at Splash (SplashThat.com): https://lnkd.in/eMgEyBt9

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If you're thinking of submitting your YC application or are in the midst of the application process, check out this video by Dalton Caldwell. It covers everything that YC looks for in an application and was a great resource for me during my own journey. Take a look! #YC #startup #entrepreneurship

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Great essay by Omar El-Ayat and Nic Poulos. If you are a domain expert founder building vertical software, I highly recommend checking out Euclid Ventures as a first-check/ preseed investor.

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