John Zeratsky

Supporting startups with capital and sprints @charactercap. Author of SPRINT, CLICK, and MAKE TIME.

[John Zeratsky @jazer]

@danimalnelson hello

[John Zeratsky @jazer]

👏

[Ashley Mayer @ashleymayer]

Midjourney spa membership tiers:

Basic: one visit/month
Pro: unlimited visits and an annual full-body ultrasound scan
Elite: all the benefits of Pro plus a sixth finger on each hand

[John Zeratsky @jazer]

very real. thx for posting this @SherryYanJiang!

[Sherry Jiang is in sf ✈️ @SherryYanJiang]

i feel both incredibly inspired and terribly lonely every time i visit sf

inspired bc so many people betting on themselves, so many interesting builders i got to learn from

but the conversations can become formulaic. name drop yc this, a16z that. "how many users."

cool... but nobody asks "what did you see in your life that made you care about this problem" or "what's the hardest thing you've learned building this"

and being in consumer is its own kind of lonely. most people either have zero interest or they think the play is generate ai slop and sell it as fast as possible

real consumer takes time. it takes taste. it takes giving a shit about the person on the other end

but that doesn't earn you social points in sf

anyway - i'm going to keep building the things i actually care about, the way i know how to build them. bc making something that matters to users is worth it.

[John Zeratsky @jazer]

@Padday Amazing Paul, excited for you!!

[John Zeratsky @jazer]

@eoghan @salesforce @fin_ai wowowow, congrats guys

[John Zeratsky @jazer]

@maruthisandeep Good point, and more faithful to the original 😉

[John Zeratsky @jazer]

Here’s something delightful…

We invested in a company that sells to governments. And sometimes when they win a contract, the actual moment of approval is captured on video at a council meeting or similar.

The other day the founder sent us a message that said, “we just signed ______!” and included a timestamped YouTube link to the meeting where they approved the contract.

A small thing, but a fun way to celebrate the moment.

[John Zeratsky @jazer]

Sort of a tortured “Anna Karenina principle” for startups:

Each successful startup needs something different, but all unsuccessful startups need the same thing - to hypothesize, build, test, learn, and repeat until they find their own success

[John Zeratsky @jazer]

@saranormous Even moar!

[John Zeratsky @jazer]

Highly recommend everyone read this article by @saranormous - very relevant to opportunity, moat, and strategy in the current era

Specifically, I think this idea of »can the model's correctness only be verified with internal/privileged data« is powerful

My highlights attached!

[sarah guo @saranormous]

https://t.co/Hw02laH9yp

[John Zeratsky @jazer]

@saranormous Moar highlights!

[John Zeratsky @jazer]

handy little launch from our portco @ExtendHQ

[Kushal Byatnal @kushalbyatnal]

Introducing Extend UI — open-source components for document agents

- 14 components & examples for PDF, DOCX, and XLSX viewers, plus bounding box citations, file upload, e-signature, and more
- fully customizable
- MIT licensed

when we started, we tried every file viewer and document component library we could find

unfortunately, none of them had all the functionality (and polish) that we wanted, so we ended up building our own for @ExtendHQ

it was only ever meant to be internal, but enough customers kept asking for it that we decided to give it back to the community

it's useful for building agents, user-facing document flows, or internal tools

we use and maintain it for Extend ourselves, so it'll keep getting better over time (and it's battle tested on millions of pages running through our system every day)

it also works with design system agents like @magicpatterns for faster exploration and prototyping

available today on the @shadcn component registry! some examples in 🧵

[John Zeratsky @jazer]

@kushalbyatnal oh man these are SO good, great launch guys!

[John Zeratsky @jazer]

this: "even the 'pitch' / business they are giving you is just a litmus test on the person"

[sam lessin 🏴‍☠️ @lessin]

In this era the founder quality is basically all that matters... it is insane to see the gap between excelent founders vs. those who are merely good -- even the 'pitch' / business they are giving you is just a litmus test on the person.

[John Zeratsky @jazer]

everything that can be software, will be software

[Mandy Lu @mandylu]

daily reminder

[John Zeratsky @jazer]

@cullenroche congrats! great milestone!

[John Zeratsky @jazer]

Cullen's defined duration approach has been revelatory for me / my financial planning

[Cullen Roche @cullenroche]

6 months after launch and I'm excited to announce that the Defined Duration ETF Suite has reached $100 million in AUM.

We launched the Defined Duration ETFs to help planners connect time horizons with assets. It’s exciting to see the concept resonating.

Learn more at https://t.co/UwRFKKDvZ2

[John Zeratsky @jazer]

@kushalbyatnal would you guys give it a rest already?

[John Zeratsky @jazer]

@VinnyLingham @RumiDotAI @Decidr_ai @DavidBrudenell @DavidSacks @friedberg @m2jr @dafrankel @hit_ch Congrats Vinny!