Brett Schneider

eng @meritfirstus

[Brett Schneider @brettcschneids]

MeritFirst is live!

We’ve been quietly building software over the past few months to give more people a fair shot at life-changing opportunities. I’ve seen too many people get overlooked because of where they went to school or the companies they’ve worked for, and it feels like it’s time for a change. We’re leveling the playing field and helping companies hire for performance, not pedigree.

It’s early, but companies are already making hires they say they never would have found through traditional channels. That kind of feedback confirms we’re solving a real problem for both sides of the hiring table.

The team behind this is the real deal. Thoughtful, sharp, and fully locked in on the mission. I feel lucky to build alongside them and help push this forward.

[Zack Ganieany @zganieany]

We raised $6M+ for @MeritFirstUS, co-led by @8vc (@JTLonsdale @andrewoetting) and @slow (@lessin) with participation from @rauchg to restore merit to hiring and help revitalize the American Dream, where opportunity is promised and outcomes are earned.

[Brett Schneider @brettcschneids]

@drpepperfan2080 slimed out as an api

[Brett Schneider @brettcschneids]

@drpepperfan2080 👀👀👀

[Zack Ganieany @zganieany]

Today we're launching a new MeritFirst Hiring Series to get top talent in front of leaders at top organizations.

Hiring has gotten worse for candidates and companies at the same time. AI generated resumes are making an already bad top of funnel problem worse. Candidates with real skills are being overlooked.

We’re letting candidates prove what they can do and have their work speak for itself.

Here's how it works 🧵

[Brett Schneider @brettcschneids]

@jamesperkins The team is firing on all cylinders, so fired up about deploy!

[Brett Schneider @brettcschneids]

@meimakes @interaction 🔥 thank you!

[Brett Schneider @brettcschneids]

@meimakes @interaction https://t.co/eVTcxN0epN

[Brett Schneider @brettcschneids]

@meimakes @interaction very nice, thank you!

[Brett Schneider @brettcschneids]

@zeeg Hono on unkey deploy is the way 👀

[Brett Schneider @brettcschneids]

Get you a designer that ships 🚢

[MeritFirst @MeritFirstUS]

Our founding designer shipped code to production.

Hire people who do things or keep managing people who don't.

Read about it here: https://t.co/idd6FHW55m

[Brett Schneider @brettcschneids]

@MeritFirstUS Willing to throw in a 10k referral bonus here

[david friedberg @friedberg]

why not just raise income tax rates?

because your real intent is not to just “provide healthcare”.

you’re masking that you are proposing the creation of, for the first time in the 250 years of this American republic, an organized government seizure of private property from citizens.

you’re calling it a “wealth tax” or a “billionaires tax” or “millionaires tax” or whatever nom du jour polls well. but at the end of the day, it’s the seizure of private property from citizens by the government. citizens that earned money, paid their fair taxes on those earnings (53% if they live in California) and are now being told they need to hand over after-tax assets because the government has failed to provide promised services with the revenue it’s collected, and are now re-casting their own failure to be a socio-economic inequity that must be justly resolved... a slippery slope that has never gone anywhere good (see economic effects in USSR, Cuba, Venezuela, France and Norway wealth tax etc.)

the American founders fled tyranny in Europe and this amazing nation was populated by immigrants (myself and your parents) from around the world not just looking for a “better life” but for a place where they could have freedom from tyrannical governments that can take what they want from private citizens. a great nation borne of property rights, the rule of law, and endowed freedoms to believe, speak, or act. these principles led to the greatest run of innovations, successes, and widespread increase in prosperity, for all citizens, ever seen.

the citizens, the individuals, not the institutions, delivered this progress. those who invented, who toiled, who bled, who sacrificed, who took risk and persevered, who led, and who changed the world, are not charlatans, kleptocrats, or oligarchs. they’re what made us all better off. prosperity is a measure of america’s success, not its failure.

it is your principle that is so offensive, as evidenced by the broad disdain for your flippant flirtation with the darkest of human fantasy - socialism. you and other neo-socialists have led so many of us to reflect on America’s history and what it is becoming. that now leads so many to consider, so unnecessarily, leaving their homes for a place where everyone stands up to shout down the principle you suggest. because if your ideas are now considered moderate, it’s clear this titanic is sinking.

that a “simple tax” of taking assets that have been earned, through toil and tribulation, rightly taxed, and preserved, should now be unjustly seized, is your solution to a problem of obvious government mismanagement and outright fraud, tells us that your true motivation lies not in giving people healthcare but in cutting down success and deleting the system of prosperity and opportunity for all.

i don’t care, and neither should anyone else, what the sum total market value of a private citizens private assets might be. it is none of my business and should be none of yours. because, again, once you open that pandora’s box, we might as well study Lord of the Flies … there is literally nothing stopping 51% of citizens demanding that their government go out and seize 100% of the private property of the 49%.

want to give healthcare to people in need? do your job and fix healthcare. make it affordable. want to be lazy about it? then do your job lazily and raise income taxes.

want to take private property from private citizens who have paid their fair share of taxes and legally earned their property, then honestly declare that it is envy, not inequity, that you strive to resolve…

[Zack Ganieany @zganieany]

Director of @USOPM @skupor and team are doing important work to bring merit back to the government.

From his recent appearance on @JTLonsdale’s podcast:

Referring to a @DOGE engineer: “There was a quote from someone in gov’t which said we never would have hired this guy because he doesn’t have a bachelors degree or 10 years experience … this is exactly the problem with these very rigid proxies for merit as opposed to merit.

If he can perform at the level of a GS14 or GS15 which is a very senior level in govt, I don’t give a sh*t if he has a college degree or if he has 10 years experience. We should evaluate him and bring him in at the level that’s appropriate to his skill set.

We’re trying to eliminate barriers like that and evaluate people for who they are and what their capabilities are, and put aside these other things that are just proxies for skills but don’t actually measure real skills.”

We share that vision at @MeritFirstUS and hear similar quotes from companies all the time surprised about exceptional, non-traditional talent: “I never would have interviewed this person before…”

America is filled with incredible talent waiting to be unleashed. We can’t let opportunity be gated by outdated proxies.

Excited to see these efforts and @USTechForce move forward.

[sarah guo @saranormous]

https://t.co/0gHndlZbMl

[MeritFirst @MeritFirstUS]

🚀 exciting new career opportunities

our friends at @rorrawater are looking to add two key leaders to the team:
🔹 operations director
🔹 marketing director

links in the comments!

[david friedberg @friedberg]

what if the AI creates/enables/unlocks new higher-paying jobs? by trying to prevent organizational evolution due to technology, you are limiting technology’s ability to create more value for workers.

if you had done this with the emergence of the tractor to protect loss of jobs on farms, we’d have very expensive food, no industrial revolution, and a shitty standard of living for workers. if you had done this with the emergence of the automobile, we’d have lost the economic explosion that arose from highways, lower cost transportation, and countless networked industries. if you had done this with the emergence of the computer and the internet, your entire district would still be based on an economy of oranges and plums.

humanity’s ability to compete, organize, and carry itself forward is a magical miracle. in every truly free society, tech evolution has improved the lives of absolutely everyone. in every society where a government stood up to create barriers and gates to tech evolution in the name of “workers rights”, standards of living went into a freefall.

your view is luddite at best and authoritarian at its heart. limiting freedom of choice, controlling the rights of workers and capital providers, is the core activity of socialism and will cause unbelievable unintended damage. well-intentiined, sure, but examining the consequences and n-th order effects, it’s clear how this model deeply harms workers, employment standards, wage growth etc.

i urge you to deeply study the social and economic history of technology evolutions, speak to folks in your district, and avoid the socialist trap the Dem party seems to be swirling into…

[Zack Ganieany @zganieany]

Announcing: Intern & New‑Grad Merit Series
To everyone who feels like the job hunt has turned into resume roulette, we hear you. The system is broken.

We’re launching a series of brief, role‑specific assessments so students and new grads can prove real ability and get a real look from great companies who value merit.

For candidates
- Pick a track: Software, Product/Strategy & Ops, Marketing, Sales, Consulting, Investor Roles (PE/VC), Investment Banking, Strategic Finance
- Take a short assessment: Practical prompts that measure how you think and execute.
- Get matched: We share your responses and profile with partner companies on a rolling basis. If there’s a fit, they’ll reach out directly.

For companies
Join our early partner list for a first look at pre‑vetted intern and new grad candidates.

Link to learn more and participate below!

[Startup Archive @StartupArchive_]

Keith Rabois: “I tell founders not to worry about runway. Worry about lift.”

“If you think about lift in a plane context, a company is only valuable if you achieve lift. Runway is a tactic for achieving lift, and you may need to extend the runway so that you have more time to get lift. But unless you’re actually achieving lift with that extra time, it doesn’t help you.”

Keith continues:

“I hate when a founder is like, ‘I want to raise this much money because it gives me two years runway.’… That is a stupid way to think about your fundraising.”

Instead, founders should ask themselves what they need to achieve to achieve lift, and then work backwards from that.

When Keith invests at Khosla Ventures and Founders Fund, they write internal memos about the three key risks to the company. Usually you can’t achieve all three in one financing, so founders should be asking themselves, What’s the most important inflection? And then structure their financing to achieve that.

Keith advises founders that it’s ok to let their runway go very low if they feel like they’re approaching lift:

“A lot of founders get very bad advice like ‘Oh, you need to have this much runway or you won’t be able to raise money from strength.’ That’s nonsense. If you have traction - if you hit a viral coefficient of 1 with three months of runway - almost every VC on the planet knows how to invest in that company, and it will not be a problem.”

Video source: @khoslaventures (2024)

[Brett Schneider @brettcschneids]

@zganieany makes so much sense, been trying to open that thing for the past hour