Dean Sutton

Company Builder & CEO of General Intelligence. Prev founder of @WonderFi (acq, $HOOD). Fond of anything with pages, on water or with 8 or more cylinders

[Dean Sutton @DeanSutton]

Wanna bet?

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

You will live in the pod, eat the bugs, use the only AI, and live on UBI.

[Vlad Tenev @vladtenev]

Robinhood has officially arrived in Canada. 🇨🇦

We’ve closed our acquisition of WonderFi, marking our entry into Canada through one of the most well-respected crypto platforms in the country.

With 1 million international funded customers, Robinhood’s mission is going global.

[SRG @SimeonGarratt]

Bill C-22 is asking Canadian tech a YES or NO question:

Give us a backdoor with no lock, or leave.

The answers are already clear.

[Dean Sutton @DeanSutton]

📉

[Tim Draper @TimDraper]

While @websummit was again a well-oiled machine for technology and networking, Vancouver, BC, Canada has become a city of drug addicts and vagrants as far as the eye can see. The once booming and gorgeous metropolis has taken socialist policies to such an extreme that people now don't own the property they thought they did (ancestors of the native tribes do), where the average worker earns $60k Canadian (net $35k), while the homeless get $80k of value tax free with free needles, drugs (yes, drugs) and cell phones. Note that the public employees get ($100k) far more than the taxpayer who they work for. Human incentives are everything. They are backwards in BC.

[Dean Sutton @DeanSutton]

Sad reality, and even missing some other bearish elements driving the continued decline, with zero line of sight to any positives as a precursor to turnaround support

[Dean Sutton @DeanSutton]

@jspujji GA

[Dean Sutton @DeanSutton]

AI slop, AI slop everywhere.
Even the viral how-to's in creating more AI slop are continuing to rise & blanket X & the internet...
(for the minute)
AI will power most things, for sure.
It already is.

But in parallel, I look forward to this next era of authentic, irreplaceable, analog, human creation and connection that will become invaluable.

[Chad Hurley @Chad_Hurley]

Hope everyone enjoys their last year of meaningful work!

[Dean Sutton @DeanSutton]

Tough decisions define real leaders. This is a very hard move, one that takes real conviction.
This is no small shift we're in the midst of, and there will be much more of this.

[jack @jack]

we're making @blocks smaller today. here's my note to the company.

####

today we're making one of the hardest decisions in the history of our company: we're reducing our organization by nearly half, from over 10,000 people to just under 6,000. that means over 4,000 of you are being asked to leave or entering into consultation. i'll be straight about what's happening, why, and what it means for everyone.

first off, if you're one of the people affected, you'll receive your salary for 20 weeks + 1 week per year of tenure, equity vested through the end of may, 6 months of health care, your corporate devices, and $5,000 to put toward whatever you need to help you in this transition (if you’re outside the U.S. you’ll receive similar support but exact details are going to vary based on local requirements). i want you to know that before anything else. everyone will be notified today, whether you're being asked to leave, entering consultation, or asked to stay.

we're not making this decision because we're in trouble. our business is strong. gross profit continues to grow, we continue to serve more and more customers, and profitability is improving. but something has changed. we're already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company. and that's accelerating rapidly.

i had two options: cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out, or be honest about where we are and act on it now. i chose the latter. repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus, and to the trust that customers and shareholders place in our ability to lead. i'd rather take a hard, clear action now and build from a position we believe in than manage a slow reduction of people toward the same outcome. a smaller company also gives us the space to grow our business the right way, on our own terms, instead of constantly reacting to market pressures.

a decision at this scale carries risk. but so does standing still. we've done a full review to determine the roles and people we require to reliably grow the business from here, and we've pressure-tested those decisions from multiple angles. i accept that we may have gotten some of them wrong, and we've built in flexibility to account for that, and do the right thing for our customers.

we're not going to just disappear people from slack and email and pretend they were never here. communication channels will stay open through thursday evening (pacific) so everyone can say goodbye properly, and share whatever you wish. i'll also be hosting a live video session to thank everyone at 3:35pm pacific. i know doing it this way might feel awkward. i'd rather it feel awkward and human than efficient and cold.

to those of you leaving…i’m grateful for you, and i’m sorry to put you through this. you built what this company is today. that's a fact that i'll honor forever. this decision is not a reflection of what you contributed. you will be a great contributor to any organization going forward.

to those staying…i made this decision, and i'll own it. what i'm asking of you is to build with me. we're going to build this company with intelligence at the core of everything we do. how we work, how we create, how we serve our customers. our customers will feel this shift too, and we're going to help them navigate it: towards a future where they can build their own features directly, composed of our capabilities and served through our interfaces. that's what i'm focused on now. expect a note from me tomorrow.

jack

[Naval @naval]

Careers are dead. Jobs are dying. Opportunities arising.

[Matt Shumer @mattshumer_]

https://t.co/ivXRKXJvQg

[Dean Sutton @DeanSutton]

Steady, lads.

[Dean Sutton @DeanSutton]

Fun times.
We all touching grass?
Hit me on the telly when the red greens itself.

[Dean Sutton @DeanSutton]

Knives are flying, but OOF! Did Anthropic ever nail it with those ad videos... lmao

Egos and feelings are hurt - this will be interesting to see whats cooked next.

[TJR @_TJRTrades]

Coinbase turned into Robinhood and Robinhood turned into Coinbase

[Dean Sutton @DeanSutton]

An ethos of unwavering independence, reflected in the type of tools & technologies you use & assets you hold. Observe the world as it is, not as you wish it to be, and act accordingly.

[tobi lutke @tobi]

What you are actually doing here is to bribe nokia to put these jobs into Canada by paying hundreds of thousands of dollars per job from taxpayer money. What this does is to lower the cost basis of nokia per employee. This has been going on for decades, called FDI which all civil servants think is a good thing. I spent a lot of time explaining to civil servants in ottawa that its not good for our economy that American and Oversees branch offices can employ Canadians at half the cost to all the canadian companies around them due to these subsidies. We should not do them at all, they are toxic, at least in the tech sector.

It's never meat to be this way, but the situation that very often arises is: It's strictly worse inside of Canada to be a Canadian company compared to a company headquartered everywhere else.

This is a bad situation, because the fruits of the subsidized labor will accrue to the wealth of other countries and not Canada. It's tax payer money invested into locking up scarce high tech talent in jobs where they no longer contribute to the Canadian economy directly. Why

[Kevin O'Leary aka Mr. Wonderful @kevinolearytv]

Exciting News! @RobinhoodApp is acquiring @WonderFi and I couldn’t be more excited. Why? This deal is going to transform cross-border trading. We’re finally connecting crypto between Canada and the U.S. right before stablecoin regulations hit. FX trading is about to get a major upgrade.

No more outrageous bank fees. You’ll be able to move money between your Canadian and U.S. accounts instantly and at a fraction of the cost.

[Josh Scott @shua_scott]

After spending years gobbling up other Canadian #crypto companies, Toronto-based @WonderFi has agreed to be acquired by US trading platform @RobinhoodApp for $250M CAD. $WNDR $HOOD #CDNtech https://t.co/s4DCWM5bKD

[Vlad Tenev @vladtenev]

Proud to enter Canada with @WonderFi as we unlock new possibilities, drive innovation, and bring the next wave of customers into the crypto space.