Jimmy

i have so many questions

[Jimmy @jimxyew]

@aschwags3 @jspujji GA

[Jimmy @jimxyew]

High agency + ai = you can do incredible things

[Paul S. Conyngham @paul_conyngham]

https://t.co/bpa3HHt8Mg

[Ivan Zhao @ivanhzhao]

https://t.co/fxHYR6S29D

[Lukas Ziegler @lukas_m_ziegler]

A new unicorn in robotics! 🦄

@geckorobotics from Pittsburgh has reached a $1.25 billion valuation after raising $125 million in new funding.

They build robots and AI software to inspect and improve important infrastructure like power plants, factories, and military systems.

That's a great example of a modern robotics company that doesn’t JUST build robots. 📊

A positive sign for the entire robotics market.

[Jimmy @jimxyew]

@icon Icon

[Jimmy @jimxyew]

@obviceo Growth deck

[Yegor Denisov-Blanch @yegordb]

I’m at Stanford and I research software engineering productivity.

We have data on the performance of >50k engineers from 100s of companies.

Inspired by @deedydas, our research shows:

~9.5% of software engineers do virtually nothing: Ghost Engineers (0.1x-ers)

[Matt Turck @mattturck]

Us: “Super productive week, I’m fully caught up on email and almost done with my big presentation!”

Elon:

[Paul Graham @paulg]

You just have to ask "What counts as progress for this company?" and then do that. There is always some answer. And experienced investors (which are the ones you want anyway) know that this is as much as they can expect.

[Shenzhen Pages @ShenzhenPages]

A new world record was set last week in Shenzhen when an 8,100 drone formation lifted off to show a stunning performance

[Brian Chesky @bchesky]

Airbnb launched 16 years ago today. It was actually our 3rd launch as nobody noticed the first 2

[Aaron Levie @levie]

At the start of any new technology trend it's critical to ask yourself, if you were to start your company over again in *today's* environment, how would you approach the emerging technology. Whether it was mainframe to PC, PC to mobile, or on-prem to cloud, a new technology means a new value proposition for your customers, and how you respond becomes a critical strategic decision. There are countless lessons from history around companies not adapting either quickly enough or a way that is hobbled by their legacy, and then ultimately miss the full potential of the market shift. 

It's insanely clear that if we were starting Box from scratch tomorrow, AI would be something considered as a core part of our platform that would deliver intelligent content management experiences to customers. AI wouldn't be seen as a "separate" concept from the platform itself, but instead, the core reason you'd want a platform to manage your information. This is not only why Box AI is baked into our Enterprise Plus plan for customers (as opposed to being a separately priced product), but also why we removed limits on usage last week for core end-user use-cases.

And we believe this is going to be the expectation of most enterprise software in the future. Going forward, it's hard to imagine there will be "software" and then "software with AI". Just as there's little software without a mobile experience today, and increasingly less software that distinguishes between being cloud and on-prem.

Software will be infused with AI, and the expectation from customers will be that any software can do intelligent things to make work more productive and workflows more efficient. In a decade from now, it will seem like a foreign concept that AI products were separate appendages of existing software products. And especially as the performance of GPUs goes up, the cost of AI tokens go down, and the quality of models improve, we know that intelligent experiences in software will be the default, not secondary.

The continued lesson in technology is, time and time again, to build for the future state, not how things look today.

[GREG ISENBERG @gregisenberg]

In 2013, at 23, I felt on top of the world.

I'd just sold my company for $5M. Well, kinda.

I'll tell you the story of how I lost it all.

The $5M was in stock in a VC-backed company. But not just any stock.

This company wasn't just any company.

The company was doing $35M in revenue, with 70% gross margins.

It was backed by Silicon Valley's who's who. I was living the dream. Or so I thought.

My thinking was simple: Worst case? We'd cut staff, print $20M/year.

And that rate, I'd easy be able to get my $5M of stock out, maybe even more.

How could it go wrong?

Spoiler alert: It did. Lol.

Slowly, then all at once, we became a zombie company.

Revenue started declining. Growth stalled. VCs lost interest.

Here's the thing about the VC model. They care about growth and the next big unicorn.

We looked like a donkey with a party hat.

Suddenly, no one wanted to fund us. We had to sell. Fast.

We found a buyer. People congratulated us. But I knew the truth: This wasn't a success.

The outcome? We got nothing. Zip. Nada. My $5M paper fortune? Gone with the wind.

But here's the silver lining: I learned this lesson at 23, not 43.

Fast forward to today:

I run a different kind of company. We're profitable. We grow steadily. No VC money. No paper valuations.

The best part of my job now is sending out profit shares. 2x a year.

Our team's reaction is priceless: "Wow, thank you! This is real?"

They're used to VC-backed startups:

1. Equity worth millions (on paper)
2. Promises of future riches
3. Reality - 90%+ of the time worth nothing

I've been there, worn the t-shirt. VC equity is just gravy. Maybe it pays off, probably not.

But profit shares? That's real money.

In your bank account. Buy a car. Put a down payment on a house. Live your life now, not in some hypothetical future.

This is why we're seeing the rise of the dividend startup.

More and more people are choosing real money over paper unicorns.

Here's my lesson learned:

Build a business that prints cash, not promises.

Focus on profitability, not vanity metrics.

Grow steadily, not at all costs.

Your team will thank you.

Your stress levels will thank you.

Your bank account will definitely thank you.

Your family or future family will thank you.

Am I grateful for my $5M lesson? Absolutely. It shaped who I am today.

So here's to failing young, learning fast, and building businesses that matter.

Real value. Real profits. Real impact.

I'm not saying you can't build a VC-backed business and build wealth. You totally can.

But the odds are stacked against you. And in 2024, easier than ever to build and find customers, building a "small business" like a micro-saas or niche marketplace could be quite the adventure and retirement plan in its own way.

And most employees think when they join a VC-backed rocketship, that their stock is as good as gold.

It usually isn't.

Sharing this story in case it's useful to someone.

The rise of the dividend startup isn't just coming.

It's here.

[Jimmy @jimxyew]

Flying car have arrived!

I’m truly impressed by China XiaoPeng flying car flight demo today.

It’s open for pre-sale by year end.

This feels like watching Wright brothers testing their flying machine.

[Jason Fried @jasonfried]

I’ve been doing this for 25 years, so I’m often asked why I’m still in it and how I stay motivated.

It ain’t the money, as I’ve been fortunate enough to make more than I’ll ever be able to spend.

I enjoy the work and we have a great crew, each a true pleasure to work with. I remain filled with ideas. So that’s part of it.

But it’s more that than. It’s more of a justice thing, really.

Look at the screenshot attached below.

This is software my neighborhood uses to manage guest parking passes. It’s shit. Maybe you recognize it, maybe you don’t, but the name doesn’t matter.

You know what the company charges for the privilege of using it? $10,000/year. $10,000 A YEAR! $10,000 year after year of our HOA budget goes to this crap. It feels borderline criminal.

I’m still doing this because the world is flooded with overpriced, crappy, subpar software. It hurts people, and it hurts the economy.

I feel a moral obligation to do what I can to replace bad options with great options, at vastly reduced prices. I even want to replace great options with equally great options, just at reduced prices. Good software should not be expensive.

Software is an absolute miracle. You can make exceptionally good stuff at exceptionally reasonable prices. It’s not like hardware manufacturing where you have to cut all sorts of corners to keep costs in check, or charge a ton for stuff that’s truly well made. Raw materials, machinery, manufacturing, physics — this stuff costs a lot to get right. Software does not.

Yet bad — and great software, frankly — remains way over priced. And some is absolute highway robbery. Like this parking pass software. It’s clear no one cared about it — it’s just built to some spec by people who will never use it. It’s all there, the features tick the boxes, and technically it works, but we’d never ever find it acceptable if it was a physical product. But since it’s software, it can suck and we can still be sold on a $10,000/year contract.

This fuels me.

So hell yeah I’m motivated. And the more bad stuff I bump into, or even great stuff with silly numbers attached, the more motivated I get. It’s a deep well that keeps on providing.

To that end, we’ve just started working on two more new products this year. We’re on a tear. We’re going to keep on putting quality stuff out there at reasonable prices. Not just to prove that it can be done, but because it must be done.

[Jimmy @jimxyew]

@chris__pc I’m guessing there’s a military base nearby or this forest reserve is used for military training

[Dwarkesh Patel @dwarkesh_sp]

Zuck on:

- Llama 3
- open sourcing towards AGI
- custom silicon, synthetic data, & energy constraints on scaling
- Caeser Augustus, intelligence explosion, bioweapons, $10b models, & much more

Enjoy!

Links below

[Balaji @balajis]

Like everything else in Sulzberger’s paper, the NYT bestseller list is fake.

They were forced to admit in court that it’s not a ranked list. It’s actually “editorial content” and they can exclude books they don’t like.
https://t.co/xdL2s15XeI

[Jimmy @jimxyew]

@imgyf Shouldn’t be right? Most thing are gov controlled (aka subsidised) from grocery ntuc, staple food kopitiam, to housing HDB. Icing on the cake is JB trip & cheap shopee item from china. Every country’s Michelin restaurant is expensive by local standard.

[Jimmy @jimxyew]

@marclou Keep posting your win. It’s inspired me. Small wins beget more wins!

Haters gonna hate.