Bryan Offutt

Co-founder/Partner @hanabicapital

Prev Partner @IndexVentures, Infra Eng/PM@ Palantir + MemSQL

[Bryan Offutt @BryanOffutt]

@pavelprata 9 is not talked about enough. Particularly the increase in multiple that is potentially required to hit a decent IRR.

10 is 100% true. But if you are trying to win most helpful, a platform slide or team is not the solution.

[Bryan Offutt @BryanOffutt]

@lennypruss No can do, requires too much introspection.

[Bryan Offutt @BryanOffutt]

@shayanshafii @akothari @NotionHQ @ivan If I had known all I had to do to meet Bob Weir was hoard domains I would have structured my time over the last 10 years very differently.

[Bryan Offutt @BryanOffutt]

@itunpredictable That is called inheritance. Everything before is just fee stream.

[Bryan Offutt @BryanOffutt]

@m13v_ True! Though analogy I think still holds.

Github stars don't always mean something will translate to a good paid product. Ppl make this mistake often (could go on about this).

Youtube views don't mean someone could make a good full length movie.

But they are signals.

[Bryan Offutt @BryanOffutt]

The YouTuber —> feature film pipeline feels similar to the open source —> company pipeline in that you know you have distribution/PMF before you raise a dollar.

Not terribly surprising that Obsession (which was excellent) and Backrooms are doing well.

[Bryan Offutt @BryanOffutt]

@shreyanj98 Yes true. Though, I guess that is the equivalent of the "will people pay for this or just use the open source".

The distribution doesn't guarantee monetization, but it does certainly help/give you a head start.

Also doesn't hurt that the movies are actually good.

[Bryan Offutt @BryanOffutt]

In the year of our lord 2026, when ~50% of the S&Ps value is tech, is every week not “tech week”?

[Bryan Offutt @BryanOffutt]

@itunpredictable @jmduke Hiking. That’s the only other time.

[Bryan Offutt @BryanOffutt]

Truly wild that civilization scale insider trading and/or pump and dump seems to have become a core tenant of the admins economic policy.

[Bryan Offutt @BryanOffutt]

@itunpredictable @richardartoul The human brain.

[Bryan Offutt @BryanOffutt]

@pmarca A core thread of Senecas writing is literally him reflecting on the cost of his own wealth and success.

[Bryan Offutt @BryanOffutt]

@jimstewartson And record defaults on consumer debt.

[Bryan Offutt @BryanOffutt]

For better or worse, this chart outlines one the most impressive achievements in the history of marketing, and perhaps capitalism.

[Noah @antibearthesis]

The Magnificent 7 has an imposter.

[Bryan Offutt @BryanOffutt]

@itunpredictable If you don’t have great revenue/happy customers, you report fake revenue.

If you don’t have great fake revenue, you report the product.

if you don’t have a great product, you report the vision.

If you don’t have a great vision, you report the dollars raised or hours worked.

[Bryan Offutt @BryanOffutt]

@karrisaarinen It is easy to mistake activity for productivity.

[Karri Saarinen @karrisaarinen]

The fallacy of this is that more creates more. More hours, more hiring, more something.

And it is true in a sense. If you put in more work, more work will happen. But I think for most startups, the leverage is really in how differently you approach the problem, how well you cultivate your team, and the strategy.

Any large company can outspend you on hours. They have thousands or tens of thousands more people, spending more hours. If hours worked were the metric, every large company and government organization would always win and do the best work. More hours, better output.

This thinking is often representative of younger founders, where the startup becomes their identity and life. They have a hard time doing anything else, and cannot understand that your work is not the person that is you. But activities outside of work can grow you as a person too and make you do better work.

I’ve never worked this way. As a designer, I always saw the need to take a step back, to take a break. At times, I might work 12 hours or 16 hours, or whatever amount was needed, but it wasn’t the norm. You just can't grind design, you need inspiration. But taking that step away from the work, would give me more perspective, inspiration and I could approach the problem differently or I could just see the solution.

Grinding is never good for any creative problem, and startups or creating new products are often mostly about creative problem solving. Grinding works ok for email jobs, or where you just executing on very clear playbook.

With Linear, we’ve never worked this way. We work reasonable hours, 5 days a week. All of us founders have families. Many of our employees have families. I personally stop every evening, spend time with the family, cook dinner for the family, eat dinner together, and focus on things outside of work. Sometimes I work in the late evenings or weekends, but to me the pride is that I don’t need to. Company should be succesful without it.

My goal is to build a company that is sustainable in the long term, and doesn’t require heroics or personal sacrifices every single day.

There are times when our team is heroic. Launches, incidents, some other work that just needs to be done. They will work late into the night because they know it is the right thing. But we don’t require that every day or every week, and the more this happens, the more I think it is a failure of our company and leadership. The team and the leaders should always keep a reserve to use when something is needed.

Our thinking was also that quality, which we value, doesn’t emerge from working more or stressing people more. It emerges when you create the conditions for it to emerge. Often it is the appreciation, space, time, and how the person feels. A person who is rested will do better work.

I wouldn’t attribute much of our success to working a lot. The success came from having clear thinking, ideas, and focus to do the right things.

I sometimes wish we could move the culture more toward a Zen master.

Real mastery is not exerting the most effort. It is achieving the outcome with the least necessary effort.

[Bryan Offutt @BryanOffutt]

@jay_wooow Episode 1 dunks on Ayn Rand, I’m in.

[Bryan Offutt @BryanOffutt]

Old Jobs interviews are so interesting in that you can hear the obvious spiritual influence of 1960s counter culture. From a worldview perspective, it has an interesting amount of overlap with interviews with ppl like Bob Weir.

Feel like there is no equivalent today.

[Bryan Offutt @BryanOffutt]

@jay_wooow Very true! The arc of time reveals many things…