Fred Oliveira 🧠

perpetual 0 to 1 machine, working towards better AI futures. @lisbonai_ @capitalfactory @snyksec @gumroad @techcrunch @oreillymedia

[Fred Oliveira 🧠 @f]

Most things that cause me anxiety are coordination problems.

[Fred Oliveira 🧠 @f]

@mattzcarey ahem who's the hook up here, those sweatshirts are *nice*

[Thomas Gauvin @thomasgauvin]

Ok but why does @Cloudflare merch go so hard

[Fred Oliveira 🧠 @f]

@RhysSullivan mostly because of the character we picked, really

[Fred Oliveira 🧠 @f]

@mattzcarey my wife absolutely hates the noise from my Niche Zero every morning

[Fred Oliveira 🧠 @f]

if tensors excite you, ssh.

[rod @rodfernn]

We just raised a historic funding round for Portugal, backed by some of the country’s top unicorn founders. And we're now looking for the best young talent to join us.

So we built something to find them. It's called Arcus - a series of trials. No resume. No application forms. Just a terminal and a problem to solve.

The first trial is live: Ode Triunfal, with €3k in prizes. Access it through 'ssh augustalabs[dot]ai'.

More info in the comments.

We're just getting started.

[Fred Oliveira 🧠 @f]

at this point I am ready to pay people at Anthropic to slide "never use the words 'honest' and 'lands' anywhere" into the Claude constitution.

[Fred Oliveira 🧠 @f]

@0xvrea accented languages, am i right

[Fred Oliveira 🧠 @f]

@natolambert @allen_ai looking forward to what's next from you! Godspeed

[Fred Oliveira 🧠 @f]

😂 absolutely not.

[Harry Stebbings @HarryStebbings]

"If you are not working 7 days per week, you are going to lose".

Corgi Insurance is the most intense workplace culture in startups.

- The company works 7 days per week.

- Founder (@nico_laqua) lives and sleeps in the office.

- He built a cafe in the office because there was no local cafe that was open 24/7.

- 2/3 of the first 30 team members have the Corgi logo as a tattoo.

Today I went behind the scenes with Nico, who has used this culture to scale the company to a $2.6BN valuation in just two years.

My condensed notes below:

1. If You Are Not Working 7 Days Per Week, You Are Going to Lose:

Whatever you can get done in 5 days, you'll get more done in 6 and 7. If you are trying to solve the world’s hardest problems, a standard 5-day workweek will not cut it.

2. Work Trials Repel the Mediocre:

Corgi forces candidates into mock work trials over the weekend. If seeing a full office on a Saturday scares them, they don't belong. True intensity acts as a natural filter to attract killers and repel clock-watchers.

3. Lead from the Front Lines

You can’t demand 7-day weeks while sitting on a yacht. Nico sleeps 3–4 hours a night on a mattress inside the office. If you want your troops to bleed, you have to be in the trenches with them.

4. Culture Only Means One Thing: Winning

Forget superficial jargon like "hackers" or "ex-founders." Strip away the corporate fluff. A great startup culture is aggressively optimized around one single word: Winning.

5. Lifespan vs. Victories

Building something world-historic requires radical sacrifice. When asked if he'd rather build a trillion-dollar company and die at 50, or fail and live to 80, the answer was easy. "I would rather measure my lifespan in victories."

6. Reject the Comfort of "Quiet Quitting."

If you are operating in a hyper-growth environment and your days off happen to be Saturday and Sunday every single week, you are quiet quitting. To win, you must deliberately bypass the off-ramps of personal comfort and low volatility.

Corgi isn't for everyone—and that’s exactly the point.

[Fred Oliveira 🧠 @f]

I was a fan of Zig as a project before, but now I'm a fan of Andrew as a human too. Great interview. https://t.co/3qECYSOqtk

[Fred Oliveira 🧠 @f]

@etnshow that framing of Dario's headshot is pure gold

[Fred Oliveira 🧠 @f]

@antirez can't go wrong with a little DeepSea

[Fred Oliveira 🧠 @f]

@jxnlco @shadcn put me in, coach

[Fred Oliveira 🧠 @f]

@BardIonson @lisbonai_ I think we would! Let me take this to the rest of the team! Can you email me at fred at lisbonai dot org? Thank you!

[Fred Oliveira 🧠 @f]

we're a few months away from this year's edition of lisbonAI. Awesome location and we're shaping up a sick speaker lineup this year.

[Lisbon AI @lisbonai_]

This is a calling.

For the ones who'd rather talk inference and evals.

LISBON AI. 23–24 September. Champalimaud, Centre for the Unknown.

Stay close. News very soon.

https://t.co/hxsSXs0bi8

[Fred Oliveira 🧠 @f]

@Pze_pos @ericzakariasson you get inside one of these teslers and everything's battery

[Fred Oliveira 🧠 @f]

@LukeberryPi é o que dá estar a ficar velho, velho.

[Fred Oliveira 🧠 @f]

@shadcn @theo ghostty (or other libghostty-powered terminals) are super fast. That's what I'd recommend.

[Fred Oliveira 🧠 @f]

@antirez to keep you sharp, of course

[Fred Oliveira 🧠 @f]

if your website has a long animation before it shows anything useful, I am guaranteed to not visit more than once.

[Fred Oliveira 🧠 @f]

@badlogicgames @mitsuhiko yesterday I was reading @deanwball argue against a bunch of people on what the definition of thinking is. We are too quick to cling to absolutes because we hate not knowing shit. The thread: https://t.co/HB0Yb2hnJu

[Audrey Horne Updates and Rumors @credenzaclear2]

bro you want the force of saying “you’re wrong to deny AI consciousness” without making the full commitment of saying “AI has consciousness”

[Fred Oliveira 🧠 @f]

that's the point! I can make no such claim. But I can mention the uncertainty!

Just like we can't provide substantive evidence for what makes our consciousness emerge out of brain activity (go ask global workspace theorists about how they feel about everyone else's ideas), we can't point to the matrices and say "nothing there! just maths!" because with us, we could (absurdly, of course) reduce it to "nothing there! just electricity!"