Nipul Chokshi💯

Sworn enemy to meaningless jargon, unnecessary complexity and a stifling status quo. Marketing @atriumhq @DunBradstreet @Lattice_Engines @yammer @marketo.

[Nipul Chokshi💯 @nipulc]

oh @claudeai you have such a way with words...

[Greg Hunkins @greghunkins]

Succession Doomer Themed
Ep. 1: You Are Not Serious People

[Sahil Bloom @SahilBloom]

WARNING: Emotional post (but worth reading or bookmarking for later).

Time is cruel. But that cruelty carries the seeds of beauty.

Last weekend, my family and I made our annual pilgrimage to a small community in northwest Connecticut.

We started going when I was 18 months old. I met my two best friends there. I caught my first fish there. I had my first crush there.

But perhaps most importantly, I played my first game of catch there.

As I remember it, I was probably about five years old. My dad had a softball and a couple of old baseball gloves. And there, in the tall, overgrown grass, we threw the ball back and forth.

As the years wore on, I got bigger and the ball started moving faster.

We played catch damn near every single day when I was a kid.

It didn't really matter what time of year or what time of day. We'd play catch in the snow in January. In the early morning light before school. In the dim light of the evenings when he got home from work.

In high school, when I started getting college scholarship offers, we played catch. While on the team at Stanford, when my family went on vacation, we played catch.

But then, my career ended. And with it, our game of catch.

Time is a funny thing.

Usually, it goes unnoticed. It exists, but not really. Only in some abstract sense. It flows under the surface. Adjacent to your reality, but not exactly in it.

The routines of life make it go faster. You settle into patterns. Paths with gravity. You take a job. You establish a place. You start a family. The days start blending together. They become weeks, months, years, even decades.

But then, something breaks. There's some collision. Suddenly, time gets thrust to the surface.

Time goes unnoticed, until it's the only thing you notice.

I've felt that most painfully with my parents.

My dad is 70 now.

In some ways, that 70-year-old version feels like a stranger to me.

I think the image we have of our parents never really changes from the one we establish as kids. I still see my dad as the young, vibrant, athletic young man. The one who could hit the ball farther than anyone I knew. The one who could toss me up on his shoulders in a flash. The one who could beat me in a race (but usually let me win). I still see that young dad in his eyes, in his energy, in his curiosity for life.

In some painful sense, I imagine the 70-year-old version feels like a stranger to him, too.

Time is cruel. But that cruelty carries the seeds of beauty.

The most beautiful things in life are made beautiful by their impermanence.

So, what are we to do about all of this?

Perhaps we must simply give in to time. Embrace its unending, relentless flow. Live as we are. Do as we can.

But what if, in truth, we have a bit more power than that?

What if it's possible, in some imperfect, impermanent way, to control time? To bend time and space. To really be there. To really feel it. To embrace it, without giving in to it.

To live as we want. To do as we dream.

That theory is what brings me back to last Sunday, when I felt compelled to unlock one of the old cabinets in my parent's cottage.

It was a cabinet that, when opened, had the feel of a time capsule. Dust and cobwebs everywhere. A musty smell. Like reaching into it was reaching back in time.

I pulled out my old baseball glove. And my dad's old catcher's mitt.

I walked outside, where I found my dad playing with his grandsons on the swings.

I held up the two gloves, a smile across my face.

"Hey, Dad, wanna have a catch?"

I smiled. He smiled. We walked side by side out onto the field.

And there, in the tall, overgrown grass, we threw the ball back and forth.

As we did, something amazing happened.

Time melted away. 30 years disappeared. He wasn't 70. I wasn't 35.

I was that little boy again. And he was my young dad. Just playing catch for no purpose at all.

It was just a game of catch. But it was so much more.

[Manny Medina @medinism]

Despite what the downers, Miro getting acquired by @bendingspoons is good news

Some employees are getting money

All investors are getting their money back

Early investors are getting compensated for the risk they took

Employees who joined late are not getting much. They didn’t take much risk. Late investors are getting their cash back. They didn’t take much risk and got to distribute

SaaS companies getting to liquidity is good news for the system

I don’t see any of the complainers doing anything about the SaaS market frozen up.

Raise a glass. Toast. And get back to work

[Gokul Rajaram @gokulr]

The ARR multiple fallacy

ARR multiple is not the right way to think about sub-20% growers.

Simple framework:

If you’re growing sub-20%, you get a 10-30x EBIDTA or FCF multiple. If you use this rubric, Miro is very fairly valued by Bending Spoons.

Only 30%+ growers get the luxury of an ARR multiple.

The reason is that 30% growth means you’re doubling in 3 years and so the revenue base will be 2x in 36 months, and the margin structure will look different at 2x scale. Cash flow today is a rounding error against that. So you value the trajectory, and ARR is the cleanest proxy for trajectory.

At 15% growth, doubling takes 5 years. That's close enough to "never" that the market stops paying for the future and starts paying for the present. The present is earnings. If you're not producing them, you're not a growth company anymore. You're a bad value company.

The mistake founders make is anchoring to the multiple they had at 40% growth and thinking the ARR multiple just compresses. It doesn't compress. It gets replaced. You cross 30% on the way down and the entire valuation framework switches out from under you.

Which is why the worst place to be is 20-30% growth with no FCF. Growth investors won't pay for it. Value investors can't. You're priced by whoever is least excited,a really painful place to be.

[Nipul Chokshi💯 @nipulc]

Hey @strongapp your Apple Watch integration is the worst

Impossible to login with 1Password

[Gabriella Garcia @reallygabriella]

As COO of a fast-growing company, I spend a lot of time noticing what stopped scaling. Last month it was Slack.

Put a few hundred people in a channel and Slack stops being a conversation and starts being noise.

So here is how Warp communicates, in 4 pillars:

1/ Threads, always. Reply in the thread, not the channel. One topic per thread, and if the conversation shifts you start a new message. A channel should be readable by someone who joined it five minutes ago.

2/ Communicate concisely. Ayush wrote our Bottom Line Up Front doc in December and it comes down to one thing. The ask or the conclusion goes in the first line, context after. Batch your thoughts into one message instead of five short ones back to back. Easier to read, easier to search, less noise for the people it wasn't for.

3/ Channels over DMs. If the answer could help someone else now or later, it goes in a channel. DMs are for private or sensitive things only. A customer issue debugged in a DM helps exactly two people. Three months later someone solves it again from scratch.

4/ Close the loop. If you're tagged and don't react, the sender has to assume you didn't see it.

👀 is seen and on it. ✅ is resolved. 👍 is an FYI that needs nothing.

Banter is exempt. None of that needs threading or batching.

Public channels let people self-serve instead of asking the same question twice. That runs both ways: before you ask, search. The answer is often already sitting in a channel, and we protect deep work here, so an avoidable ping that pulls someone out of focus is a cost the whole team pays.

And at an AI-native company, your channels are also what your agents read. A decision buried in a DM is invisible to every person and every agent who needs it later. As far as the company is concerned, it never happened.

We're 70 people today and will be a few hundred soon.

If you want to join us as we scale, we have 20 open roles right now. Link in the comments to apply.

[Nipul Chokshi💯 @nipulc]

Brilliant!

[Peter Kazanjy @Kazanjy]

You can just vibe code your kid a word problem app that they can set the theme for arbitrarily.

Pokémon percentages!

[Nipul Chokshi💯 @nipulc]

@pitdesi Looks super cool

[Nipul Chokshi💯 @nipulc]

@brookeleblanc If it works it’s gonna get copied! Gotta keep getting better

[Nipul Chokshi💯 @nipulc]

@kyleplacy 🙋‍♂️

[Nipul Chokshi💯 @nipulc]

.@FSSydney I was staying there earlier this week but left something in the room - what’s the best way for me to retrieve it?

[Reza Khadjavi @rezakhadjavi]

https://t.co/wOsfG8PpdS

[JJ Englert @JJEnglert]

If you think you're AI Native, here's a good test:

When you're heading to bed tonight, are you asking yourself:

"What agents can I be running over night to get a head start on my day tomorrow"

If that's an honest thought, you're among the top .01% of AI users right now.

[Nipul Chokshi💯 @nipulc]

@brettberson …and with an English accent

[Nipul Chokshi💯 @nipulc]

hey @DoorDash I placed an order yesterday. It never arrived. You charged me. and now have denied my request for a refund.

what's the reason for the denial? I never got my stuff!! cc @t_xu

[Brett Berson @brettberson]

Anecdotal ranking of the hardest elite executives to hire right now:
1. Marketing
2. Sales
3. Engineering

[Mike Vernal @mvernal]

https://t.co/n7pVVA3uXu

[The Tennessee Holler @TheTNHoller]

CONAN AT HARVARD: “No university in our nation has produced more Nobel laureates or white collar criminals… so whether you choose good or evil, know that you are among the very best.”

[Nipul Chokshi💯 @nipulc]

@LoganTGott System