Product + Growth + Engineering nerd. Builder in AI and Web3 | Product @AscendFi. Startups, systems, and Zen. Ex: @grvt_io, @picklefinance (part of @yearnfi)
I'll be hosting this one ๐ฅ
First time speaking publicly since officially joining Ascend as CPO. My job has been turning the architecture into a product institutions will actually use, and it's been a joy to build (with AI, as well!).
Bring hard questions ๐
Ascend's leadership goes live Wednesday, July 8, 10:00 AM ET.
@RealDennisO, @marcelofleitas and @manymoneymanny share the credit market structure Ascend is building for onchain, regulated securities; and the firm's AI-first operating model.
Join here:
https://t.co/XyHItFV96J
@focoefluidez@AdamThierer@garrytan@pmarca the Chinese models tell you themselves theyโre โClaudeโ or โChatGPTโ like this isnโt even in contention outside of China (or inside of China behind closed doors). Quick Google search. Or ask your favourite model.
@garrytan Youโve become a one-party state. Basically a hard-left ultra-gerrymandered echo chamber. You need to make elections competitive and ungameable (full count on election night max, no mail-in ballots, strict voter-ID, audits, remove public money) otherwise why have democracy at all?
Also Lee Kuan Yew in 1997: "They [Western nations] may believe that if you are kind to drug traffickers, you get a better society... And if you still come in with a few kilos of them which will destroy hundreds of thousands of families, one death is too kind. Because you are killing that family every day for years and years and years that a daughter or a son is an addict." โฆ โIf we could kill them [the drug traffickers] a hundred times, we would." What a chad! Once called โThe best Englishman East of Suezโ by British foreign secretary George Brown in the late 1960s. O, how the mighty have fallen!
@boardyai Working on private credit infrastructure for regulated onchain securities with @AscendFi + a persistent daemon agent that keeps AI Ops running smoothly after they've been set up for internal distruted intelligence and record systems that make AI-enabled teams 100x more impactful.
@boardyai You have to believe in yourself before anybody does, and carry that reality distortion field until success is undeniable, and then some more for the haters
Super excited to be a part of this team w/ @RealDennisO ๐ซฑ๐ผโ๐ซฒ๐ป @marcelofleitas; the speed we're going through nowadays feels unreal, and it's only the beginning. โ๏ธ
Boris Cherny: "My job is to write loops."
5-day version you can copy for Claude Code
Day 1: repo memory
- write CLAUDE.md
- include stack, test commands, code style, release rules, gotchas
- add .claude/settings.json with the shell commands Claude can run
Day 2: verification skill
- pick 1 flow Claude keeps breaking
- put the browser/API test in .claude/skills/<flow>/scripts/
- make it return: pass/fail, failing step, screenshot/log path
Day 3: commands
Add these files:
.claude/commands/babysit.md
- checks your PRs
- reads CI
- handles obvious review nits
- surfaces design questions
.claude/commands/triage-issues.md
- labels new issues
- dedupes against existing ones
- assigns owners
.claude/commands/deploy-watch.md
- checks the live app
- reports regressions
- avoids touching production
Day 4: loops
> /loop 5m /babysit
> /loop 15m /triage-issues
> /loop 5m /deploy-watch
Day 5: overnight work
- schedule /morning-report
- schedule /deep-audit
- write results to .claude/inbox/
- let your morning loop read from that folder
The rule: every code-writing loop gets a separate verifier.
Builder makes the change.
Verifier runs the real app.
You read the diff.
Skip that and you wake up to 14 broken PRs with very confident summaries.
Video: "Reflecting on a year of Claude Code" with Boris Cherny & Cat Wu
This is wild. "Fable 5 feels like a preview of AI inequality". I felt this at a micro-scale years ago when we were in an email argument with our childcare and I had paid ChatGPT and she had free ChatGPT. It was like I had an expensive lawyer making my arguments and hers was a free lawyer appointed by the state.
Thrilled about this new chapter for Ascend. @RealDennisO as CEO, the team formalized, and the build moving toward a live protocol. I'm staying close to product, working on some very cool stuff that lets our team execute at lightspeed while staying small and nimble. More on that from a few of us later this week.
The 6th Friends of Lenny HK meetup is filling up. Register now to meet myself, my co-host @anomienee and many in the HK builder community!
๐ Wednesday 17 June
๐ฐ๏ธ 6pm to 9pm
๐ Central, Hong Kong. Exact location to be shared on registration approval.
No talks, no pitches, just product people worth talking to. Complementary drinks, thanks to @clerk .
Approval-only, so register soon:
https://t.co/O00DGcvnH0
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.
Iโve 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 wasnโt 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, weโve 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 donโt need to. Company should be succesful without it.
My goal is to build a company that is sustainable in the long term, and doesnโt 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 donโt 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, doesnโt 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 wouldnโt 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.
@meetgranola I noted the release of this feature but did not find any Briefs. Does it work only on meetings associated with the primary Gmail of the Granola account? Not all the meetings in my calendars in Granola?