Austin Nichols

Sales Leadership @Samsara. Coach @galileovc. Mentor @startup_nevada. Views/bad jokes = my own.

[TechCrunch @TechCrunch]

AI is turning connected cars into pothole-finding machines https://t.co/dzsCBRXPZL

[Will Compton @_willcompton]

Holy shit man

Take two minutes to listen to this

[Chris Peters @chrismpeters]

When I was at ESPN, I was asked to have Jack Hughes write a letter to his future self during his draft year. This passage stands out today... https://t.co/UYVdduvOkw

[rex volcano @RexVolcano]

gorgeous day to rent a 2018 Toyota Prius and drive it through Donner Pass without chains or snow tires

[SGM Mike Vining @ Blasting Through Official @BlastingThrough]

I'm Mike Vining, SGM USA (Retired). Welcome to my official X account. In the next several months, I'll share EOD and Delta Force memories. And I'll offer info on moral injury and PTSD. I'm calling this account "Blasting Through," because that's the title of my book, a memoir, due for release in August 2026.

[Austin Nichols @AustinSNichols]

At the (east coast) capital of capital @nyse with the @samsara team. Let’s goooooo

[Chris Orlob @Chris_Orlob]

Tech sales is one of those rare careers that breaks social classes, fast.

People who grew up in lower class backgrounds can very quickly break into the upper class with the right skills and the right role.

Tech sales is an equalizer career.

[Samsara @Samsara]

The Samsara Safety Report is here. Based on aggregated data from thousands of Samsara-powered fleets, this first-of-its-kind global benchmarking analysis shows how AI is helping reduce crashes and change driver behavior at scale: https://t.co/mREDQi2JLR

[Austin Nichols @AustinSNichols]

Epic week at the @NYSE with the @Samsara sales and BizOps leadership teams!

[Robert Sterling @RobertMSterling]

(Warning: long rant)

My liberal friends are completely oblivious about how radicalizing the last week has been for tens of millions of normal Americans. Zero clue.

I’m not talking about people who are “online”; I mean regular, everyday Americans. “Normies.” People who scroll through Facebook posts and Instagram reels from the Dutch Bros drive thru line. Political moderates who have water cooler chats about Mahomes touchdowns and Bon Jovi concerts, not Twitter threads or Rachel Maddow monologues.

Millions of them. Tens of millions. They’re logging on, they’re engaging, and they’re furious.

And I’ll be candid: They blame you guys. They blame the left.

Regardless of whether you believe it to be justified, they think you’re the bad guys here. And they are reacting accordingly.

I can already hear some of you racing toward the comments to start screeching in moral indignation, so I’m going to be blunt: Shut up and listen to what I’m telling you. Your movement will lose any semblance of relevance if you don’t develop some small measure of self-awareness, and—absent someone force-feeding you bitter medicine—you guys collectively lack the humility to do this on your own.

Here are the facts:

Fact 1. Tens of millions of Americans started the week seeing a 23-year-old blonde woman—a young woman in whom virtually every parent watching pictured their own daughter—stabbed in the neck by a career criminal. These people then found out the murderer had been released from jail 14 times over.

Fact 2. Two days later, tens of millions of Americans watched a video of Charlie Kirk get murdered speaking to college students. Millions of these people knew who Charlie was; millions of them didn’t. Upon seeing the video, however, these normal Americans from across the land and across the political spectrum agreed that he was the victim of a terrible, fundamentally unjustifiable crime, and their hearts broke in sympathy for his family. Good people who had never even heard the name Charlie Kirk before wept.

Fact 3. Immediately after seeing the footage of a peaceful young man get shot in the neck, these same people logged onto Facebook and Instagram (remember, we are talking about regular Americans, not perpetually online Twitter or Bluesky users) and saw some of their local nurses, school teachers, college administrators, and retail workers celebrating this horrific crime. Not just defending it, but cheering it.

These are all facts. You may not like the implications of these facts, and we can certainly debate the underlying causes thereof, but, indisputably, they are nevertheless factual statements.

Here’s what it means for you, the Democrats reading this:

These normal, middle-of-the-road, non-political citizens just become politically active. They realized that politics cares about them, even if they don’t particularly care about politics. After watching Iryna Zarutska and Charlie Kirk both bleed out from the neck, they think their lives and the physical safety of their families—the bedrock of human society, the foundation of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—depend on political activation, whether they desire it or not.

These people are now sprinting—not jogging, not walking, but racing—to the right. Because they blame you guys for everything that just happened.

When they see footage of Decarlos Brown stabbing a Ukrainian refugee to death, they don’t see just one demon-possessed man. They picture every university administrator, HR bureaucrat, and DEI apparatchik that ever lectured them about systemic racism, the “carceral state,” or the need to release violent crime suspects without bail in the name of social justice.

They then think back to conversations they’ve had with their cop friends—their buddy from high school who quit the force after getting tired of being called a racist, their friend at the local YMCA who vents about having to release career criminals because Soros-funded prosecutors aren’t willing to file charges—and they realize everything the left has told them over the last five years has been utter bullshit.

And they blame you. Because, even if you count yourself as a moderate Democrat, your party supported the district attorneys, city council members, and mayors that let fictitious concerns about mental health and racial justice supersede very real concerns for their family’s safety.

When these Americans see blood erupt from the side of Charlie Kirk’s neck, they don’t see just a martyred political activist. They think of every extreme leftist they’ve ever met who (1) calls anyone to the right of Hillary Clinton a fascist and (2) constantly jokes—“jokes”—about punching Nazis and “bashing the fash.”

They realize that there really do exist people who wish to see them dead for their moderately conservative political beliefs, their Christian faith, and even the color of their skin. They ask themselves if the violence visited upon Charlie might one day show up on their own doorstep.

And they blame you. Because, even if you’re just a center-of-the-road liberal, you lacked the courage to police your own ranks. You let modern-day Maoist red guards run loose across every facet of society, and what started with social-media struggle sessions has now turned to 30-06 bullet holes.

When these Americans log onto social media and see their neighbors justifying, celebrating, glorifying murder, they realize that some who walk among them are soulless ghouls at best, literally demon-possessed at worst. These people—whether they faithfully attend church every Sunday or only attend with relatives once a year, on Christmas Eve—start talking about things like spiritual warfare. They implicitly understand that no normal human casually celebrates the mortal demise of a peaceful person.

And they blame you. Because, even if you condemned Charlie Kirk’s murder, they probably haven’t seen you condemn those in your own movement who cheered it on. They view you as complicit in allowing heartless fellow travelers to celebrate death, and it repulses them.

For all of these situations, what has your response been? Nothing but bullshit.

In response to Iryna Zarutska bleeding out on the floor of a train, you post bullshit statistics about reductions in reported crime, when everyone who’s ever been to a major urban center in the last decade knows that actual crime has skyrocketed, only for victims not to waste their time reporting it to cops that don’t have the manpower to respond and prosecutors that seek to downgrade as many felonies as possible to misdemeanor citations.

In response to a 31-year-old man taking a bullet to the neck in front of his family, you post nothing but bullshit whataboutism.

> “What about January 6th?” (Honest answer: After you let Liz Cheney spend two years operating a star chamber in the House, combined with countless other failed attempts at “lawfare” against Trump, no one cares anymore.)

> “What about Mike Lee making a dumb joke on Twitter about some guy in a mask in Minnesota?” (No one outside of Utah, DC, or Twitter knows who Mike Lee even is.)

> “What about Paul Pelosi?” (That’s not comparable to Charlie Kirk getting shot, and we all know it. And, again, Paul who?)

> “What about regulations on assault rifles?” (That’s not going to get you very far when one of these killers used a knife and the other one used a common hunting rifle.)

In response to teachers, healthcare workers, and thousands of other liberals cheering on Charlie’s murder, it’s nothing but more bullshit and misdirection.

> “It’s not THAT many people celebrating!” (Yes, it is. Everyone has seen it on their Facebook and Instagram feeds.)

> “I thought you guys didn’t support cancel culture.” (We don’t cancel people over their opinions; we’re more than happy to see people lose their jobs—especially their taxpayer-funded jobs—for actively cheering on murder, though. If you can’t see the difference, that’s your own shortcoming.)

All bullshit. Not even smart bullshit, but stale, mid-grade, low-IQ bullshit. Ordinary Americans see right through it, and they don’t like how it smells.

You probably don’t like hearing this. But you need to hear it.

Because I’m right, and, as you reflect on this, you know I’m right. The ranks of my political movement gained millions of righteously angry new members this week. We have a mandate to ensure these crimes never happen again, and that’s exactly what we are now going to do.

If you want to keep a seat at the table as we do so, you’d better clean house and start policing your own.

[Am Yisrael Chai 🐙 @AmYisraelChai_X]

Remembering The Heroes of 9/11

TODD: Hello? Operator, listen to me... I can’t speak very loud – this is an emergency. I’m a passenger on a United flight to San Francisco, we have a situation here. Our plane has been hijacked, can you understand me?

LISA: (exhaling a deep breath to herself) I understand… can the hijackers see you talking on the phone?

TODD: No.

LISA: Can you tell me how many hijackers are on the plane?

TODD: There are three that we know of.

LISA: Can you see any weapons? What kind of weapons do they have?

TODD: Yes… they don’t have guns… they have knives; they took over the plane with knives.

LISA: Do you mean, like steak knives?

TODD: No, these are razor knives… like box cutters.

LISA: Can you tell what country these people are from?

TODD: No... I don’t know, they sound like they’re from the Middle East.

LISA: Have they said what they want?

TODD: Someone from the cockpit announced that there was a bomb on board. He said that he was the captain, and to stay in our seats, and stay quiet. He said that they were meeting these hijacker’s demands, and returning to the airport… It was very broken English, and I’m telling you… it sounded fake.

LISA: Ok sir, please give me your name.

TODD: My name is Todd Beamer.

LISA: Ok Todd… my name is Lisa... Do you know your flight number? If you can’t remember, it’s on your ticket.

TODD: It’s United Flight 93.

LISA: Now Todd, can you try to tell me exactly what happened?

TODD: Ok. Two of the hijackers were sitting in first class near the cockpit; a third was sitting near the back of the coach section. The two up front got into the cockpit somehow, and there was shouting. The third hijacker said he had a bomb. It looks like a bomb. He’s got it tied to his waist with a red belt of some kind.

LISA: Is the door to the cockpit open?

TODD: No, the hijackers shut it behind them.

LISA: Has anyone been injured?

TODD: Yes… They… they killed one passenger sitting in first class. There’s been lots of shouting, we don’t know if the pilots are dead or alive. A flight attendant told me that the pilot and copilot had been forced from the cockpit and may have been wounded.

LISA: Where is the third hijacker now Todd?

TODD: He’s near the back of the plane. They forced most of the passengers into first class, there are fourteen of us here in the back. Five are flight attendants; he hasn’t noticed that I slipped into this pantry to get the phone. The guy with the bomb ordered us to sit on the floor in the rear of the plane. Oh Jesus… help.

LISA: Todd; are you ok? Tell me what’s happening.

TODD: Hello.. We’re going down… I think we’re going to crash. Wait - wait a minute. No, we’re leveling off… we’re ok. I think we may be turning around… that’s it - we changed directions. Do you hear me… we’re flying east again.

LISA: Ok Todd… what’s going on with the other passengers?

TODD: Everyone is… really scared. A few passengers with cell phones have made calls to relatives; a guy, Jeremy, was talking to his wife just before the hijacking started. She told him hijackers had crashed two planes into the World Trade Center… Lisa is that true?

LISA: Todd… I have to tell you the truth… it’s very bad. The World Trade Center is gone. Both of the towers have been destroyed.

TODD: Oh G-d... help us!

LISA: A third plane was taken over by terrorists. It crashed into the Pentagon in Washington DC. Our country is under attack... And I’m afraid that your plane may be part of their plan.

TODD: Oh dear G-d, dear G-d… Lisa, will you do something for me?

LISA: I’ll try… if I can… Yes.

TODD: I want you to call my wife and my kids for me and tell them what’s happened. Promise me you’ll call.

LISA: I promise - I’ll call.

TODD: Our home number is 201-333-1073... You have the same name as my wife… Lisa... We’ve been married for ten years. She’s pregnant with our third child. Tell her that I love her.. (choking up). I’ll always love her… (Clears throat) We have two boys; David, he’s three, and Andrew, he’s one... Tell them… (choking up), tell them that their daddy loves them and that he is so proud of them. (Clears throat again). Our baby is due January 12th… I saw an ultra sound… it was great… we still don’t know if it’s a girl or a boy… Lisa?

LISA: (barely able to speak) I’ll tell them, I promise Todd.

TODD: I’m going back to the group... if I can get back I will.

LISA: Todd, leave this line open; are you still there?...

LISA: (dials a phone number)... Hello, FBI, my name is Lisa Jefferson, I’m a telephone supervisor for GTE. I need to report a terrorist hijacking of a United Airlines Flight 93… Yes I’ll hold.

GOODWIN: Hello, this is Agent Goodwin, I understand you have a hijacking situation?

LISA: Yes sir, I’ve been talking with a passenger, a Todd Beamer, on Flight 93 who managed to get to an air-phone unnoticed.

GOODWIN: Where did this flight originate, and what was its destination?

LISA: The flight left Newark, New Jersey at 8 a.m. departing for San Francisco. The hijackers took over the plane shortly after takeoff and several minutes later the plane changed course - it’s now flying east.

GOODWIN: Ms. Jefferson… I need to talk to someone aboard that plane. Can you get me thru to the plane’s phone?

LISA: I still have that line open sir, I can patch you through on a conference call, hold a mo…

TODD: Hello Lisa, Lisa are you there?

LISA: Yes, I’m here. Todd, I made a call to the FBI, Agent Goodwin is on the line and will be talking to you as well.

TODD: The others all know that this isn’t a normal hijacking. Jeremy called his wife again, on his cell phone. She told him more about the World Trade Center.

GOODWIN: Hello Todd, this is Agent Goodwin with the FBI. We have been monitoring your flight. Your plane is on a course for Washington, DC. The terrorists crashed two planes into the World Trade Center and one into the Pentagon. Our best guess is that they plan to fly your plane into either the White House or the Capital Building.

TODD: I understand… hold on… I’ll… I’ll be back.

LISA: Mr. Goodwin, how much time do they have before they get to Washington?

GOODWIN: Not long ma’am. They changed course over Cleveland, they’re approaching Pittsburgh now. Washington may be twenty minutes away.

TODD: (breathing a little heavier) The plane seems to be changing directions just a little, it’s getting pretty rough up here. The plane is flying real erratic… we’re not going to make it out of here. Listen to me - I want you to hear this - I have talked with the others and we decided that we won’t be pawns in the hijackers suicidal plot.

LISA: Todd, what are you going to do?

TODD: We’ve hatched a plan. Four of us are going to rush the hijacker who has the bomb. After we take him out, we’ll break into the cockpit. A stewardess is getting some boiling water to throw on the hijackers at the controls. We’ll get them, and we’ll take them out. Lisa, will you do one last thing for me?

LISA: Yes… what is it?

TODD: Would you pray with me?

They pray:

Our father which art in Heaven
Hallowed be thy name,
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive us our trespasses
As we forgive our trespassers,
And lead us not into temptation
But deliver us from evil
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, For ever.
Amen

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want
He makes me to lie down in green pastures
He leads me beside the still waters
He restores my soul
He leads me in paths of righteousness
for His name’s sake
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.

TODD: (softer) G-d help me. Jesus help me (clears throat and louder),

Are you guys ready?...

Let’s Roll...

[First Student @FirstStudentInc]

First Student is partnering with @Samsara to enhance our HALO™ technology platform and equip our ~46K vehicle fleet with AI-powered technology - creating the industry’s most advanced safety and performance ecosystem.

Learn more:
https://t.co/hucZ5JukKc

[benahorowitz.eth @bhorowitz]

We are outta Delaware and now in Nevada https://t.co/iY9PCA06hY We’re Leaving Delaware, And We Think You Should Consider Leaving Too | Andreessen Horowitz @JoeLombardoNV

[BuccoCapital Bloke @buccocapital]

Almost everyone I know who did 5+ yrs at a great scale up ($1-$20B) has become successful

- Better education than grad school
- An embedded network
- Strong market signal, especially if promoted multiple times

Putting yourself on the right playing field is underrated

[Christopher Hale @ChristopherHale]

“If you think the world is selfish and rotten, go to the cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer overlooking Omaha Beach. See what one group of men did for another on D-Day, June 6th, 1944.” — Andy Rooney

[BuccoCapital Bloke @buccocapital]

The boring way to get rich:
1. Play the right game. Pick the right company and the right job
2. Work your ass off
3. Put yourself in as many positions as possible to get lucky
4. Save a lot, early
5. Don’t interrupt compounding
6. Live within your means
7. Don’t divorce
8. Wait

[The Peel @ThePeelPod]

Episode #94: Samsara’s 10-Year Journey to $26 Billion Public Company

Sanjit Biswas is the Co-founder and CEO of @Samsara, the platform digitizing physical transportation and safety operations.

We unpack building Samsara from zero to run rating revenue at over $1.6 billion and a $26 billion public company in ten years.

We get into how AI is impacting the physical world, how Samsara uses AI internally, and how their products prevent over 200,000 deaths per year.

Sanjit has built two unicorns, and he shares everything he’s learned along the way, including what most founders and investors get wrong about hardware, thinking customer-first instead of product-first, how to know when you have product market fit, mastering sales as a technical founder, and how to spend more time with your customers.

We also talk about getting his high school online in the 90’s, and the research project that turned into Sanjit’s first company, Meraki, and its $1.2 billion dollar sale to Cisco in 2012.

Thanks @boltdotnew for supporting this episode (check out their Hackathon with $1m in prizes!)

Full episode here on X, or grab a link in the replies.

Timestamps:
4:26 Samsara: Helping the world of physical operations
8:44 Preventing 200,000 deaths per year
11:19 AI opportunities in transportation
14:43 Samsara’s internal AI tools
16:58 What people get wrong starting hardware companies
19:04 Starting Samsara customer-first instead of product-first
22:23 Find adjacent products for your customers
23:49 Sequencing the product roadmap
26:28 How to know you have product market fit
34:52 How to spend more time with customers and build feedback loops
43:00 70-20-10 framework for allocating capital
45:07 Importance of selling new products to existing customers
49:15 Revisiting the product roadmap based on new technology
50:38 Why Sanjit credits focus to hitting $1B revenue in nine years
53:41 Learning to love sales as a technical founder
57:06 Getting his high school online in the 90’s
1:01:46 The research project that turned into Sanjit’s first company, Meraki
1:04:01 Importance of asymmetric risk when starting a company
1:05:41 Early days of Meraki taking off
1:09:19 Surviving and doubling during the financial crisis
1:16:00 Cisco acquiring Meraki for $1.2B
1:18:15 Inside Meraki’s post-acquisition integration
1:20:48 Differences between Meraki and Samsara
1:24:19 Almost starting an renewable energy company
1:25:52 The power of small teams
1:28:49 One-shotting Bill Gates’ biography at 10-years old

[Just T.J. the Army Vet @thomas_garrard]

They knew the price, and they still offered to pay.

[Samsara @Samsara]

Remembering those who made the ultimate sacrifice. #MemorialDay