Marc Geffen

R&D (research, design). Clear thinking about mixed feelings.

[Marc Geffen @Marc_it]

an underrated favorite feeling:

when you find a new writer that you love and realize they have a very deep catalogue that will nourish you for years

[Marc Geffen @Marc_it]

@WisprFlow: don't know if I've ever felt more delight in an onboarding and overall experience for a product I've been introduced to in an enterprise/work context

[Marc Geffen @Marc_it]

@regyperlera what APIs are you using for live insurance data, etc?

[Marc Geffen @Marc_it]

continually surprised by the paradox of how much and also how little can get done in a day

[Marc Geffen @Marc_it]

yeah yeah @WillManidis is on a generational essay run but we’re underpricing his contribution of aesthetically saving us from eye-gouge-worthy-AI-essay-cover-image-slop

[Marc Geffen @Marc_it]

@johncoogan @tbpn i banking secret sauce: you gotta dogfood

[Marc Geffen @Marc_it]

Have been building a graph like this for everything I’ve read, but using what now look like lesser tools. Want this version of memory…

[Daniel Park @danifesto]

I’ll share a small part of https://t.co/UQ4RFIKUwO

Back in med school, I became obsessed with augmenting memory and dreamed of a Notion or Obsidian that completes itself. Today, we’ve built something close.

My self-awareness is sharper and everything feels connected. I genuinely believe AI does not replace humans. It amplifies us.

Huge respect to our engineers and designers who made this crazy thing real.

Bubbles are the episodic units of my life that the system interprets from my raw data. Clouds are the system’s questions, its hypotheses about who I am.
When I answer a cloud, it becomes a bubble again.

There is so much personal data that I cannot fully demo it. Wish I could. This system understands me more deeply than anyone.

Want to try it? Retweet and comment “memory.”
I’ll DM you an access code to skip the waitlist.

[Daniel Park @danifesto]

I’ll share a small part of https://t.co/UQ4RFIKUwO

Back in med school, I became obsessed with augmenting memory and dreamed of a Notion or Obsidian that completes itself. Today, we’ve built something close.

My self-awareness is sharper and everything feels connected. I genuinely believe AI does not replace humans. It amplifies us.

Huge respect to our engineers and designers who made this crazy thing real.

Bubbles are the episodic units of my life that the system interprets from my raw data. Clouds are the system’s questions, its hypotheses about who I am.
When I answer a cloud, it becomes a bubble again.

There is so much personal data that I cannot fully demo it. Wish I could. This system understands me more deeply than anyone.

Want to try it? Retweet and comment “memory.”
I’ll DM you an access code to skip the waitlist.

[Marc Geffen @Marc_it]

@katieeperry it’s called the peninsula

[Marc Geffen @Marc_it]

this from @nayafia just showed up and it’s about to jump a hefty stack of summer reads that’s building on the nightstand

[Marc Geffen @Marc_it]

@sama guy fucking loves a semicolon

[Marc Geffen @Marc_it]

@simonsarris We knew our kid was allergic to egg. Asked pediatrician about whether kid should get a certain vaccine, given it had egg protein. She wasn’t aware of the ingredients and shut down any questioning about it. Incredibly disappointing + eye opening

[Marc Geffen @Marc_it]

when Cliff throws out “Alabama” as an example location in a Carvana story and is mentally searching for a city name, and @patrick_oshag nonchalantly hits him with “Mobile” …in my head i dapped up Patrick

[Patrick OShaughnessy @patrick_oshag]

Cliff Sosin has run one of the most interesting portfolios in public markets—nearly $2B concentrated in just a few companies, which he always knows better than anyone.

Over many years, I’ve enjoyed conversations with him on a million topics, and finally convinced him to talk about investing with me for everyone to hear.

We start talking about investing overall, and then spend a large part of the conversation hearing his side of the Carvana investing story—one for the ages.

Enjoy

Timestamps
0:32 Early Career & Discovering Investing
1:49 Starting the Firm
7:23 Defining a Good Business
12:31 Contained vs. Uncontained Businesses
15:30 Mental Models & Market Insights
30:13 The Role of ESG in Investing
34:26 The Carvana Investment Story
41:01 The Complexity of Car Transactions
46:43 Economies of Scale and Trust
49:40 Management Insights
59:07 Operational Issues & Market Challenges
1:19:17 The Role of Word of Mouth in Carvana's Growth
1:20:28 Identifying Early Adopters
1:27:19 The Apollo Deal and Debt Restructuring
1:28:23 Personal Reflections on Investment Decision
1:34:21 The Psychological Toll of Investment
1:45:16 Future Investment Strategies and AI
1:54:51 The Kindest Thing Anyone Has Ever Done For Cliff

[Marc Geffen @Marc_it]

All these years I thought I was kind of falling behind by focusing on honing my writing skill (relative to applied design, analytics, engineering...)

but articulation and legibility increasingly feel like superpowers in a world where I can vibe code

[Marc Geffen @Marc_it]

wordceling my way into shape rotation w/ @Replit and it’s a beautiful thing

[Marc Geffen @Marc_it]

Art is a place to put feelings you don’t quite understand and to test ideas that have no obvious utility for others

[Marc Geffen @Marc_it]

Ghibli trending is prob kicking off a mass mispronunciation event worse than when Boomers started trying to say Chipotle

[Marc Geffen @Marc_it]

“…I am well pleased that you have not admitted or encouraged the [unqualified] young gentlemen you mention, we must set our faces against all such applications and get rid of them on the best terms we can. They will not answer our purposes.”

(from Undaunted Courage)

[Marc Geffen @Marc_it]

The enterprise “must depend on a judicious selection of our men; their qualifycations should be such as perfectly fit them for the service, otherwise they will rather clog than further the objects in view…”

-Meriwhether Lewis on hiring

[Marc Geffen @Marc_it]

thinking about the CEOs of the top AI model companies all being in constant conversation with their respective models about how to optimize / win

[Marc Geffen @Marc_it]

@damccormick13 i just might ingest 4 Create gummies (instead of the usual 3) ahead of game time for max amp