Diego Montes

Engineering Director at @Ebury_Fintech && Researcher at @EPHYSLAB_UVigo || Previously: @Amazon , @Etsy, @NitroHQ and @Frescocooks
(My posts are my own)

[Dave Kline @dklineii]

People won't resist change if you make it an experiment.

[claire vo 🖤 @clairevo]

As you become more senior in your career, you’re not hired for some shiny happy opportunity, you’re hired to fix something.

You’ll probably inherit mess (product, tech, org), but if you’re good—you don’t complain.

It’s not your fault, but it is your problem.

So get to work 💪

[Dave Kline @dklineii]

The basic math of leadership:

1. Figure out the 80/20.
2. Take action at 70% confidence.
3. Use the data to make 1% improvements.

Combine them to become one in a million.

[Dear Son. @DearS_o_n]

Son,

It took me 9 years to learn this, but I’ll teach it to you in 3 minutes:

[Andrew Gazdecki @agazdecki]

Startup founders: “The best product wins.”

Microsoft: “The best distribution wins.”

[Aaron Smith @aaronsmith]

You probably know the start of this Olympic story, but do you know how it finished?

This photo is of Eric Moussambani, aka 'Eric the Eel' from Equatorial Guinea, competing in the 100m Freestyle event at the Sydney 2000 Olympics, alone.

Why?

/1

[Wes Kao 🏛 @wes_kao]

We will always have too much work.

My solution for this used to be simple: brute force.

I would use my raw energy to power through. I have an obsessive personality and a high pain tolerance, so this actually worked pretty well in my twenties and early thirties.

I learned a lot this way and am glad I did it.

But if you only use brute force, eventually you'll hit a point of diminishing returns. Your plate literally cannot be piled any higher. (For real this time.)

This is when you might need to practice some new skills:

Practice learning how to deal with conflict.

Practice talking about trade-offs.

Practice explaining your POV.

Practice delegating.

Practice building in buffers.

Practice disagreeing respectfully.

Practice identifying where you have leverage.

Practice saying no to what won't really move the needle.

In my experience, these are the hard parts of maturing and continuing to improve as an operator, that aren't as easily solved by putting in more hours.

[George Mack @george__mack]

How to spot high agency people:

[Fresco @FrescoCooks]

We are live from #SKS2024 in Seattle discussing how #smart kitchen platforms and #AI cooking companions solve fundamental needs of consumers. Today, Jennifer Tuohy from The @verge will moderate a session with Fresco CEO Ben Harris & Innit’s @kbpersonal!

[Bojan Tunguz @tunguz]

Very cute.

[Diego Montes @dapmontes]

@Su_Bayo @aetherlux Vin esto tarde. Hai link para velo?

[Diego Montes @dapmontes]

@Lau_Rguz Congrats!!!

[Wes Kao 🏛 @wes_kao]

It’s not your manager’s responsibility to teach you. It’s their responsibility to create the circumstances for you to learn. There’s a difference.

Sometimes this involves sitting down and teaching you, but 95% of the time, it involves:

• You taking the lead
• You learning on your own
• You asking specific questions
• You keeping your manager informed on what you need (budget, reimbursement for a course, access to resources)

Don’t wait for your manager to create a structured lesson plan for you. It won't happen.

[Diego Montes @dapmontes]

What a great gift!

[Luiza Jarovsky, PhD @LuizaJarovsky]

🚨BREAKING: The European Parliament has just APPROVED the AI Act. What everyone should know:

➵ The AI Act follows a risk-based approach. Some AI systems are banned, such as those involving:

- Cognitive behavioral manipulation of people or specific vulnerable groups;
- Social scoring: classifying people based on behavior, socioeconomic status, or personal characteristics;
- Biometric identification and categorization of people;
- Real-time and remote biometric identification systems, such as facial recognition.

➵ Some AI systems fall in the "high-risk" category, such as those involving:

- Critical infrastructures (e.g. transport) that could put the life and health of citizens at risk;
- Educational or vocational training that may determine the access to education and professional course of someone’s life (e.g. scoring of exams);
- Safety components of products (e.g. AI application in robot-assisted surgery);
- Employment, management of workers, and access to self-employment (e.g. CV-sorting software for recruitment procedures);
- Essential private and public services (e.g. credit scoring denying citizens opportunity to obtain a loan);
law enforcement that may interfere with people’s fundamental rights (e.g. evaluation of the reliability of evidence);
- Migration, asylum, and border control management (e.g. automated examination of visa applications);
- Administration of justice and democratic processes (e.g. AI solutions to search for court rulings).

➵ High-risk AI systems will be assessed before being put on the market and also throughout their lifecycle. People will have the right to file complaints about AI systems to designated national authorities.

➵ Generative AI, like ChatGPT, will not be classified as high-risk but will have to comply with transparency requirements and EU copyright law. Some of the obligations are:

- Disclosing that the content was generated by AI;
- Designing the model to prevent it from generating illegal content;
- Publishing summaries of copyrighted data used for training.

➵ The AI Act is expected to officially become law by May or June, and its provisions will start taking effect in stages:
- 6 months later: countries will be required to ban prohibited AI systems;
- 1 year later: rules for general-purpose AI systems will start applying;
- 2 years later: the whole AI Act will be enforceable.

➵ Fines for non-compliance can be up to 35 million Euros or 7% of worldwide annual turnover.

➵ If you want to learn more about the AI Act, including challenges, opportunities, and practical insights, join my live session with @BertuzLuca, @JcMalgieri & @RistoUuk on April 4th (register using the link below).

[Fresco @FrescoCooks]

Thank you to @pierce and @jp2e at @verge for featuring Fresco on their latest podcast.

In case you missed it, tune in below 👇
https://t.co/oW7rScIYwO

[GREG ISENBERG @gregisenberg]

My rules for being a founder (after selling 3 companies):

- Pay your invoices fast. People appreciate it
- Recurring meetings are mostly useless
- Your best internet ideas come when you are off the internet
- Create products no one asks for but everyone wants
- Really interesting people apply for Chief of Staff roles
- You need 1000 bad ideas to get to 1 good idea

- Social posts are MVP V1, group chats are MVP V2, products is mvp v3

- Avoid VC unless it's a competitive advantage or you're building deeptech, cleantech, AI chips etc

- Be a rifle not a shotgun. Rifles are targeted, shotguns aren't. The internet rewards targeted products

- Products are like airbnbs. The ones that get booked up the most are the unique experienced ones

- Be a community billionaire. Meaning, create value with many micro-communities

-Buy the ticket, take the chance. My best opportunities came from hopping on a plane to meet someone

- Build communities to avoid reliance on ads

- We’re all in the trust business. Do things that make people trust you

- 100% passive income from startups doesn’t exist.

- Multiple products, multiple revenue streams in case something dries up

- Be the creator or partner with the creator but always have a creator involved

- Freedom from venture, freedom from ads makes me happy. No bosses or micro-bosses

- Do things to put you in the zone to come up with the ideas

- Celebrate all wins, little and big

- Everyone with an internet connection can build an empire

- Be proud or what you're doing or don't do it

- The best ideas are capital light, defendable, have network effects & increased demand

- Dividends > exits

- You can take over your world not the world. Gotta start somewhere niche

- If you can turn your jealousy of others into inspiration of others, you instantly become more productive

- Don’t lose money monthly, make cash flow

- Never call GMV ARR when it's GMV

- Brands: people like brands. Community-based brands: people love brands

- Google Trends/Reddit is a goldmine for startup ideas

- Work with people who will be fun to work with

- Be on time, send cal invites, do the little things

- Whoever is latest to the meeting pays for the coffee, food, drinks.

- Create the things you wish existed

- The most important decision you can make on any given day to be productive: ignore the noise

- "You can get what you want - if you help enough other people get what they want.”

- Every sale has some urgency. No urgency, no sale

- Never care what others think unless it's a loved one

- Sometimes you need to overdose on caffeine, put some headphones on and ship your heart out

- Every startup you start ask yourself what's your unfair advantage. You'll need one

- Checking your email isn't working. People go in these "infinite loops" from app to app checking only to realize the day is over.

- The best products don't necessarily win, the best brand does

- I find all my business partners from either people I grew up with or people I find fascinating on the internet, and nothing in between.

- Find true fans. “10 people who yell make more noise than 10,000 people who are silent”

- My retirement plan. Pick niche. Build community. Create product. Dominate niche. Hire operators. Don't raise venture capital.

- You’d be surprised how many startups spend millions of dollars a year of other people’s money trying to scale a business without an offer that resonates.

- TikTok reviewers are the new search engines.

- Reality is the ultimate "virtual reality”

- Every company is made out of thin air. Anything is possible.

- Find cheerleaders. People above you, people below you, people on your level

- Underspend on material pocessions, overspend on people, experiences, that move you faster

- Some unfair advantages: internet audiences, being "nerdy", spy software, being early

- Create products that reinforce the identity. Those outperform.

- On creating content: the post brings the people, the replies bring the gold

I hope this got you thinking. Reply if it did.

You can follow me @gregisenberg for more.

[Nassim Nicholas Taleb @nntaleb]

Cognitive decline doesn't start when you forget the names of people you know; it starts when you forget the names of your enemies.

[Peter Yang @petergyang]

When people talk about strategy, they think about the market and competitors.

But often, what holds a company back is its internal culture.

Examples include a culture where people:

- Move too slow
- Are afraid to fail
- Lose touch with customers
- Aren't willing to speak the truth

I love this observation that Richard Rumelt made after 45 years as a strategy professor.

As they say: "Culture eats strategy for breakfast."

📌 Will be sharing more unfiltered thoughts about strategy in my newsletter soon: https://t.co/NSo5VypmoS

[murat 🍥 @mayfer]

"Make a multiplayer drawing app where the strokes appear on everyone else's screens in realtime. let user pick a name and color. save users to db on login"

2m48s, no bugs:
- users & drawings persist to sqlite
- socket multiplayer

one-shot video (claude 3 opus) demo at end