Rezkin

Investor: Category Winners & Diversify. It's not about timing the market, it's about time in the market. Losers react, Winners anticipate.

[Rep. Wesley Hunt Press Office @RepWPH]

🚨 New York Democrats just voted to erase "Mother" and "Father”.

Governor Kathy Hochul will be replacing "mother" with "gestating parent" and "father" with "non-gestating parent."

This isn't inclusion, it's insanity.

While New Yorkers battle sky-high taxes, crime, and failing schools, The state is obsessed with rewriting biology and the English language. Real parents don't need woke bureaucrats redefining them.

Reject this nonsense.

[African Hub @AfricanHub_]

This is what Africans are going through in Saudi Arabia

Your thoughts on this

[Evan @StockMKTNewz]

Mark Zuckerberg just unveiled the most advanced glasses the world has ever seen with “Orion” the prototype for its upcoming AR Glasses

[Dilmer 🔜 XRCC 🇩🇪 @Dilmerv]

This is Project Orion AR Glasses, and Mark Zuckerberg is showing them live right now on stage during #MetaConnect 2024 👓🚀

[Rob Schneider 🇺🇸 @RobSchneider]

Be careful of Political parties that warn of a threat to Democracy while they themselves arrest their political opponents, work with Tech companies to censor those that disagree with them, allow men in women’s sports & bathrooms, encourage child mutilation surgeries, fire Federal workers & nurses for not getting experimental gene therapies, threaten to expand the Supreme Court and eliminate the Electoral College, cause rampant inflation, increase the cost of groceries by 26 percent, allow 11 million people to illegally cross the border, and push the entire World close to World War III.

[Hillel Fuld @HilzFuld]

But sure, Israel is the aggressor.

[Wide Awake Media @wideawake_media]

"The dam is finally cracking."

Award-winning journalist Alex Newman breaks down how the "man-made global warming" narrative is finally crumbling.

"Three new peer-reviewed papers, published in major prestigious scientific journals... completely undermine the alleged scientific consensus on man-made global warming."

Credit: @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU

[Imtiaz Mahmood @ImtiazMadmood]

Raping the adopted daughters made easy in Iran.

[Max Brodeur-Urbas @MaxBrodeurUrbas]

During YC demo day a VC asked us if AI could automate their deal flow

Claude 3.5 Sonnet now analyzes every pitch deck they get emailed

It instantly:
-Extracts all metrics from pdf
-Finds all founder LinkedIns + extracts their background
-Writes to Notion + sends a link in Slack

[Queen of the Flumps @TheMistressRox]

I think @HJoyceGender is a bloody legend.

[Kirk Lubimov @KirkLubimov]

Canada's lowest tax jurisdiction has higher taxes than America's highest tax jurisdiction.

And what do we have to offer people for all their taxes? A declining standard of living.

A generation is being priced out with record unaffordability and robbed from opportunity.

If you want to have a successful country tomorrow, you need people to invest today and for that they need disposable income.

[Max Brodeur-Urbas @MaxBrodeurUrbas]

Since YC ended, we've had 10+ demo calls a day

Every morning, Claude 3.5 Sonnet sends me detailed research reports about everyone I'm meeting

At 8am, I get a
-Text with a TLDR about my day
-Detailed email with research about every customer (ARR, company summary, industry etc)

[GREG ISENBERG @gregisenberg]

In 2013, at 23, I felt on top of the world.

I'd just sold my company for $5M. Well, kinda.

I'll tell you the story of how I lost it all.

The $5M was in stock in a VC-backed company. But not just any stock.

This company wasn't just any company.

The company was doing $35M in revenue, with 70% gross margins.

It was backed by Silicon Valley's who's who. I was living the dream. Or so I thought.

My thinking was simple: Worst case? We'd cut staff, print $20M/year.

And that rate, I'd easy be able to get my $5M of stock out, maybe even more.

How could it go wrong?

Spoiler alert: It did. Lol.

Slowly, then all at once, we became a zombie company.

Revenue started declining. Growth stalled. VCs lost interest.

Here's the thing about the VC model. They care about growth and the next big unicorn.

We looked like a donkey with a party hat.

Suddenly, no one wanted to fund us. We had to sell. Fast.

We found a buyer. People congratulated us. But I knew the truth: This wasn't a success.

The outcome? We got nothing. Zip. Nada. My $5M paper fortune? Gone with the wind.

But here's the silver lining: I learned this lesson at 23, not 43.

Fast forward to today:

I run a different kind of company. We're profitable. We grow steadily. No VC money. No paper valuations.

The best part of my job now is sending out profit shares. 2x a year.

Our team's reaction is priceless: "Wow, thank you! This is real?"

They're used to VC-backed startups:

1. Equity worth millions (on paper)
2. Promises of future riches
3. Reality - 90%+ of the time worth nothing

I've been there, worn the t-shirt. VC equity is just gravy. Maybe it pays off, probably not.

But profit shares? That's real money.

In your bank account. Buy a car. Put a down payment on a house. Live your life now, not in some hypothetical future.

This is why we're seeing the rise of the dividend startup.

More and more people are choosing real money over paper unicorns.

Here's my lesson learned:

Build a business that prints cash, not promises.

Focus on profitability, not vanity metrics.

Grow steadily, not at all costs.

Your team will thank you.

Your stress levels will thank you.

Your bank account will definitely thank you.

Your family or future family will thank you.

Am I grateful for my $5M lesson? Absolutely. It shaped who I am today.

So here's to failing young, learning fast, and building businesses that matter.

Real value. Real profits. Real impact.

I'm not saying you can't build a VC-backed business and build wealth. You totally can.

But the odds are stacked against you. And in 2024, easier than ever to build and find customers, building a "small business" like a micro-saas or niche marketplace could be quite the adventure and retirement plan in its own way.

And most employees think when they join a VC-backed rocketship, that their stock is as good as gold.

It usually isn't.

Sharing this story in case it's useful to someone.

The rise of the dividend startup isn't just coming.

It's here.

[Max 📟 @MaxNordau]

I made a movie poster for “Can’t Hardly Kuwait.”

It’s the story of the time Kuwait kicked 400,000 Palestinian Arabs out of their country in 1991, which was not a Nakba for some reason.

[Madni Aghadi @hey_madni]

4. Prompt: A Japanese animated film of a young woman standing on a ship and looking back at camera.

[Madni Aghadi @hey_madni]

Runway AI dropped Gen-3 Alpha just a day ago.

And people are going crazy over it.

10 wild examples:

1. Young woman driving a car