Awais Ibrahim

Building Squadly

[Awais Ibrahim @awaisibrahim]

Done beats perfect.

[Awais Ibrahim @awaisibrahim]

The right “no” is sometimes the most valuable decision of the week.

[Awais Ibrahim @awaisibrahim]

The Spartans didn’t defend everywhere—they defended what they could hold.

[Awais Ibrahim @awaisibrahim]

What separates good work from great isn't talent but persistence.

[Awais Ibrahim @awaisibrahim]

The most valuable skill isn't inspiration but the ability to work without it.

[Awais Ibrahim @awaisibrahim]

Philosophy without execution is poetry. Execution without philosophy is chaos.

[Mark Manson @Markmanson]

Social media says: do everything, everywhere, all at once.

Reality says: focus on doing one or two things extremely well, in one place, consistently, over a long period of time.

[Startup Archive @StartupArchive_]

Perplexity founder Aravind Srinivas explains the “user is never wrong” philosophy of Larry Page

Aravind recounts a story of Larry Page’s meeting with the CEO of Excite. Excite was the #2 search engine behind Yahoo at the time, and they were interested in buying Google. The two CEOs compared the search results of their products side-by-side.

When Google’s results were clearly better, Excite’s CEO tried to excuse his product’s performance: “If you typed the query this way, it would’ve worked.”

Aravind believes this is an important difference in philosophy between Google and Excite. Larry Page believed that a search engine should give high quality answers regardless of what the user typed:

“You do all the magic behind the scenes so that even if the user was lazy, even if there were typos… they still got the answer and they love the product.”

Today Google dominates search, and most people have never heard of Excite.

Aravind believes the best AI products will adopt this same philosophy and that “prompt engineering” won’t be a long-term thing.

“I think you want to make products work where a user doesn’t even ask for something. You know that they want it and you give it to them… People are lazy and a better product should be one that allows you to be more lazy, not less. Products need to have some magic to them, and the magic comes from letting you be more lazy.”

Video source: @lexfridman (2024)

[Awais Ibrahim @awaisibrahim]

~John Collison, Co-founder of Stripe

[Awais Ibrahim @awaisibrahim]

As you become an adult, you realize that things around you weren't just always there; people made them happen. But only recently have I started to internalize how much tenacity *everything* requires. That hotel, that park, that railway. The world is a museum of passion projects.

[Awais Ibrahim @awaisibrahim]

You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems."

[Awais Ibrahim @awaisibrahim]

"Don't be afraid your life will end; be afraid that it will never begin."

— Grace Hansen

[Awais Ibrahim @awaisibrahim]

Happy #Monday everyone doing nothing that is of no use

[Awais Ibrahim @awaisibrahim]

"You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight."
— Jim Rohn

[Awais Ibrahim @awaisibrahim]

@JeremyMcLellan There is no going back

[Awais Ibrahim @awaisibrahim]

Sheer volume of topics I’ve learned from these podcast easily outgrow my entire formal education. Thanks @joerogan @lexfridman @ThePakistanExp1 @JackRhysider #SpotifyWrapped2023

[Awais Ibrahim @awaisibrahim]

Happy #Thursday X

[Awais Ibrahim @awaisibrahim]

https://t.co/70cBtrTgx3