Allen Stone

Son. Husband. Dad. Entrepreneur. Risk-taker. Dolce far niente in 🇮🇹
Founder @huxxco
Love mountain biking and attempting to be funny / insightful.

[Allen Stone @_AllenStone]

@DJ_CURFEW Massive dissonance between:
- cutting headcount for AI workflow improvement
- AI automations can't handle simple task and due date assignments
- support tickets take months to close

We've put more man-hours in troubleshooting/rebuilding CU AI for CU support than it's saved us.

[Allen Stone @_AllenStone]

Literally TEN. SECONDS. LATER.

@GoogleWorkspace We can't be serious right now.

[Allen Stone @_AllenStone]

Current workflow with @GoogleWorkspace:
- Dismiss a Gemini notification so I can...
- Dismiss another Gemini notification so I can...
- Finally get to work

All after relentless Gemini emails across my companies, all without unsubscribe links (CAN-SPAM violation much?). Enough.

[Allen Stone @_AllenStone]

@JonAcuff The Accidental Creative by @toddhenry

[Allen Stone @_AllenStone]

@JonAcuff Clear Thinking by @shaneparrish

[Allen Stone @_AllenStone]

@OpenAI 404 on the pricing page

[Allen Stone @_AllenStone]

.@Ryanair amirite or...?

[Allen Stone @_AllenStone]

"A sign of character is the ability to learn from people you might not like."

A Tiny Thought in today's @farnamstreet newsletter https://t.co/ZcRiRwUA5z

[Allen Stone @_AllenStone]

@Jason The real question is why isn't it ALWAYS trending #1?

[Allen Stone @_AllenStone]

Literally one of the best articles on business that I've ever read in my life. Don't miss the importance of this.

[Meka Asonye @BigMekaStyle]

The biggest hack for founder-led selling that too many people forget about: unlocking language-market fit. When you figure out the exact words to explain your product or service to prospective customers in a way that makes them go “wait, that’s EXACTLY what I’m looking for” you’ll find that selling gets A LOT easier. Great advice from @matthlerner in this @firstround Review article: https://t.co/cDDjEVLxT2

[Allen Stone @_AllenStone]

@Kayodeodeleye @scottbelsky It takes time, skill, resources, and luck to find that alignment. With finite limits of those, founders make concessions on priorities (or are simply prone to poor judgement calls due to stress) in order to keep the ship afloat. This is where the incentives become a problem.

[Allen Stone @_AllenStone]

@Kayodeodeleye @scottbelsky Raising capital is a search for alignment between founder and funder. Product, industry, stage, talent, network, etc. Alignment of priorities is often absent. Some funders want the moonshot. Some founders want profitability. Neither is wrong. They simply aren't aligned.

[Shane Parrish @shaneparrish]

Why write an essay when you can type a few words and have AI generate one for you? Why write an email when AI can auto-respond for you with all the typical pleasantries and talking points?

While AI doing these things for you is likely to happen, it’s not necessarily a good thing. Even when these tools exist, they are not a replacement for writing.

Writing is the process by which you realize that you do not understand what you are talking about. Importantly, writing is also the process by which you figure it out.

Writing about something teaches you about what you know, what you don’t know, and how to think. Writing about something is one of the best ways to learn about it. Writing is not just a vehicle to share ideas with others but also a way to understand them better yourself.

Paul Graham put it this way: “A good writer doesn’t just think, and then write down what he thought, as a sort of transcript. A good writer will almost always discover new things in the process of writing.”

There is another important element to writing that often gets overlooked. Writing requires the compression of an idea. When done poorly, compression removes insights. When done well, compression keeps the insights and removes the rest. Compression requires both thinking and understanding, which is one reason writing is so important.

Great writing requires you to position your idea in a way that will resonate with the reader. Average writers start with what they want to say without considering how it will land with the reader. Great writers understand the journey starts with what the reader desires. Think of the difference as starting at the beginning or the end of a maze. When you start at the beginning, you have to convince people the path is the right one. When you start at the end, they already know you’re taking them where they want to go.

In a world of average writing available on demand, every organization will start communicating like a big one. The signal-to-noise ratio will change for the worse. If you’ve ever read a government communication, you understand how a lot of words can say nothing. Bandwidth will be filled with common ideas, verbose communication, and ambiguous jargon. In the future, information will become even more of a substitute for thought than it already is.

Many things can be done by tools that write for you, but they won’t help you learn to think or understand a problem with deep fluency. And you need deep fluency to solve hard problems.

A world of common thinking available on demand will tempt people to outsource their thinking and disproportionately reward people who don’t. In the future, clear thinking will become more valuable, not less.

[Allen Stone @_AllenStone]

"We unconsciously rearrange the world into arbitrary hierarchies to make sense of the world, maintain our beliefs, and feel better."

A Tiny Thought worth reading in the @farnamstreet weekly newsletter full of timeless ideas and insights.

https://t.co/A3bFFH2YwS

[Allen Stone @_AllenStone]

@seobrien Haven't tried it myself, but have seen people put a rubber band over the stripped screw head then use a screwdriver.

[Allen Stone @_AllenStone]

"Today, not tomorrow. Tomorrow is where dreams go to die."

A Tiny Thought worth reading in @farnamstreet's Sunday Newsletter

https://t.co/WLhuejzjtD

[Allen Stone @_AllenStone]

@wp_acf Can't submit a support ticket because it keeps saying "Potential SPAM Detected". What alternative exists to contact support?

[Allen Stone @_AllenStone]

@Alitalia @Alitalia Can you please help me by informing the Alitalia counter at JFK that the 17:10 flight from JFK > FCO that I will be arriving and checking in a dog? Thanks for helping to make this right.

[Allen Stone @_AllenStone]

@Alitalia Flying JFK > FCO. Originally booked for 26 September, changed to 27 September. Traveling with a dog in the hold and need to confirm that reservation updated. 5+ hours today trying to call support and get disconnected while on hold every time. Need confirmation ASAP.

[Allen Stone @_AllenStone]

@Alitalia @Alitalia I finally got through after 2 more hours of holding, and the support agent said I should have called yesterday about the dog because now only the airport can handle it. Definitely frustrating.