Adam Fishman

| | Advisor | Partner @Reforge. Prev: @resortpass @imperfectfoods @patreon @Lyft. @UMich. Dad.

[Adam Fishman @fishmanaf]

@mattpasternack @once_reading Thanks for joining me Matt - I learned a ton and am now a Science of Reading convert!

[Matt Pasternack @mattpasternack]

Really enjoyed getting to hang out for an hour with @fishmanaf on his Startup Dad podcast to talk about @once_reading, autonomy, and raising young children.

Adam's great and I'm thrilled to have found another podcast to add to my subscriptions list.

https://t.co/U8ccJMfDio

[Adam Fishman @fishmanaf]

Why yes @claudeai, I think I will.

[Adam Fishman @fishmanaf]

Literally giving a talk on this tomorrow with @kristaseiden - check it out: https://t.co/2I7Z3HTaVe

[Boris Cherny @bcherny]

As engineering, product, design, DS, etc. melt into a new kind of role, I was reflecting on what roles might look like in the future. For example, when I look at the Claude Code team I see what I think is five archetypes:

1. Prototyper: comes up with brand new ideas; churns out many ideas, most of which don't ship
2. Builder: quickly turns a prototype/idea into production-grade product/infra
3. Sweeper: cleans up the UI, simplifies the code and system, unships, optimizes performance
4. Grower: takes a product that has been built and iterates on it to improve Product-Market Fit
5. Maintainer: owns a mature system to make it secure, reliable, fast, and efficient as it scales

Many people span across 2 roles, and sometimes 3 roles. I also notice that these roles are not really tied to job function -- eg. across Anthropic, some designers match category 1, some 2, some 3; same for engineers, PM, DS.

A healthy team needs a mix of these, depending on the product:

- A product that is new and pre-PMF needs people that are strong at 1+2+3
- A product that is growing and has found PMF needs 2+3+4 and some 5
- A product that has strong PMF needs 3+4+5 and some 2

Maybe product roles of the future will look more like this, and less like the domain-specific roles of today?

[Adam Fishman @fishmanaf]

You certainly learn to adapt and focus better as you get older and if you have kids Alex :-). You don’t have much choice.

[alex gutierrez @alexmountcode]

@fishmanaf @typesfast @HarryStebbings @fambotAI mad respect to the founders shipping code with kids in the house

BUILDING A STARTUP WITH TODDLERS AROUND IS UNMATCHED CHAOS

i can barely keep my side projects alive in a quiet sf apartment

[Adam Fishman @fishmanaf]

The latest from @typesfast and @HarryStebbings talks about how hard it is to work from home when you have young kids. @fambotAI founder, David Reich, took it a step further. He gave a masterclass on founding and fatherhood in today's Startup Dad.

[CCF @CCF_Families]

@CCF_Families Treasurer @pettsric was featured on @fishmanaf's Start Up Dad podcast to discuss fatherhood, including what it means to be an "involved" dad, the cultural expectations of fatherhood, the importance of paternity leave, and more.

Check it out!
https://t.co/W4ItjQVqR1

[Adam Fishman @fishmanaf]

@samyamiam You’re not watching every Patreon employee, Sam?!? 😆

[Adam Fishman @fishmanaf]

I found this part of my conversation with @pettsric on why Dads don't take paternity leave *fascinating.*

[Adam Fishman @fishmanaf]

@clairevo @jessegenet She has an agent named… Claire. Wait a second…

[Adam Fishman @fishmanaf]

@tugcekasikci @lennysan I would happily turn around and donate them all. I’ve read many of them.

[Adam Fishman @fishmanaf]

I’m not sure that physical (observable) labor is really in dispute or incorrect. As I talked to Allison Daminger about on Startup Dad it’s the mental load and invisible labor that fall disproportionately on women/Moms.

[Brad Wilcox @BradWilcoxIFS]

Myth: Dads don't do their fair share.

Truth: Dads actually spend slightly more total time on family work (paid work, housework & childcare) than moms — nearly 60 hours/week.

Source: @aibm_org

[Adam Fishman @fishmanaf]

"Kids, I have to go out and be Adam tonight... taking a break from Dad."

Spot on from Ben Norment of Stork Exchange...

[Adam Fishman @fishmanaf]

So… I’m in a book! And not just any book, but @darbysaxbe amazing new book called “Dad Brain: The New Science of Fatherhood And How It Shapes Men’s Lives.”

I’m in there with some good company too - @ericries, @StewFriedman, @TVietor08 and past Startup Dad guest @sullivanpaul.

I got the chance to share some or my story that led to the creation of Startup Dad, the “business case” for Dad Brain, being the first person at Lyft to have a kid and fumbling through those early days as a Dad + Startup employee pretending that I was sleeping enough or didn’t need to get home to the family.

But the best thing I shared is my morning coffee routine with some fellow Dads in front of our kids school. It’s my Coffee Klatch and helps me start each day fresh, rejuvenated and talking Dad and community topics with my “Dadvisory Board” (a future Startup Dad episode gets into this concept).

Darby’s telling of these stories and her entire book is both academically fascinating and expertly written. It’s witty, funny, and approachable. You could read it on the beach on vacation and you’d love it. And Darby has quickly become one of my favorite experts on the science behind becoming a Dad.

Give it a read - you can get it everywhere books are sold - and it just started shipping yesterday.

Thanks Darby Saxbe for including me. It’s an honor!

[Adam Fishman @fishmanaf]

@petergyang Atta boy Peter! Excited for you to bet on yourself. You’re gonna rock it.

[Adam Fishman @fishmanaf]

@lennysan Saline nasal spray too Lenny!!!

[Adam Fishman @fishmanaf]

We've fairly quickly gone from prompt engineering is everything to prompt engineering is dead... and long live AI loops!

No one killed prompt engineering, sorry. It's just that as AI labs have introduced goals and loops you can now design repeatable multi-agent workflows that continually execute until they get to the result you want.

In between raising his chickens, @mvanhorn wrote and fired of a thing late last night that went bananas here.

Just like "loops" transformed Growth, so to will they transform Engineering and product building. And people who think it's just cron jobs on steroids are discounting the fact that there's an LLM decision maker in the midst vs. a fixed script with no decision making.

But before everyone goes YoU HaVe To GeT On ThE LoOp TrAiN Or ElSe YoU'Re BeHinD. Just remember that loops are basically feedback systems minus most of the humans (eventually).

Build -> Test -> Review -> Validate -> Build -> ... -> Goal Complete

Each one of those steps needs to be a skill that is created by a human being (likely by prompting an AI, but still...). Otherwise you get AI slop at every step of the process and a crappy result on your end goal.

Concretely I wouldn't extrapolate this to "agents build everything autonomously" right now it would be "build some reliable background workflows for repetitive engineering tasks that are verified by humans initially."

Thanks for this Matt! Gave us a lot to think about.

[Matt Van Horn @mvanhorn]

https://t.co/DM0CAuyprS

[Adam Fishman @fishmanaf]

@LundahlHorses @a16z @pmarca That is absolutely what happened!

[Adam Fishman @fishmanaf]

Lyft Series C we had the whole @a16z team come to our tiny office in SoMa with one conference room. Middle of the meeting @pmarca stands up during the pitch and walks over to the wall with all the post-it notes stuck on it from a brainstorm. Exceptional power move; not paying any attention to signal he’d already decided.

But the better power move was us lowering all their chairs and raising ours before they arrived.

$62M Series C. Miss those days.

[Matthew Prince 🌥 @eastdakota]

Two of our worst VC stories:

1. A Sequoia partner passed on Cloudflare because he didn’t think a woman could lead a security infrastructure company. Seriously. 🙄

2. I got introduced to @pmarca. Meeting got scheduled for a Monday, which should have been a clue. I thought it was just a casual meeting. He thought it was a pitch and brought the whole @a16z partnership team. Hilarity ensued. 🤪 At one point one of them said: “You don’t seem very prepared.” Which was true because I wasn’t. I framed the rejection letter they sent.

[Adam Fishman @fishmanaf]

@Super_PK_ @a16z @pmarca Not on the pod, but my newsletter - yes.

[Adam Fishman @fishmanaf]

@michaelcassau @a16z @pmarca 🙏