Marina Tassi

Nerd for gaming, technology, philosophy, & cooking. Converting theory to practice. Leading wallet @ Republic

[John Suh @john_ssuh]

Increasingly, I believe companies may need to be rebuilt from the ground up, where you have a single timeline of all observability + product metrics + file changes laid out in a retrievable system, like Datadog + Posthog + Google Drive + Slack (really unified filesystem of Claude Code chats + Codex chats). This might be the new data foundation for any and all companies to maximize AI. Needs to be rebuilt because keeping track of diffs on existing system basically impossible to produce longitudinal information on decisions and rollbacks, something coding agent storage companies are actively trying to figure out, but this should extend to businesses as a whole.

Highly skeptical existing businesses will adopt this though because it means overhauling everything about their instrumentation and business data, but I think businesses built on this foundation probably can execute 100x better and faster

[Marina Tassi @marinaltassi]

@howard Dude the product slop that’s gonna come out of this era because of this. Not looking forward to it.

[Marina Tassi @marinaltassi]

Feels unethical but is hard to disagree with once you witness someone actually doing the 100x thing.

This is the best time in history to turn a layoff into a lean startup situation. Find a human problem and solve it with AI.

[Zeb Evans @DJ_CURFEW]

Today we reduced headcount by 22%. The business is the strongest it's ever been. So I think it's important to be direct about what I'm seeing and why.

First, I made this decision and I own it. I did it because the way to operate at the highest level of productivity is changing, and to win the future, ClickUp needs to change with it.

Second, this wasn't about cutting costs. Most savings from this change will flow directly back into the people who stay. We'll be introducing million-dollar salary bands. If you create outsized impact using AI, you'll be paid outside of traditional bands.

Most importantly, I have the deepest gratitude for those affected. We're doing this from a position of strength specifically so we can take care of people properly. Everyone affected receives a package aimed at honoring their contributions and easing the transition.

I only see two options: wait for this to play out gradually in the market or be honest about what I'm seeing and act proactively.

THE 100X ORGANIZATION
The primary change is that we're restructuring around what I call 100x org. The goal is 100x output. The roles required to build at the highest level are fundamentally different than they were a year ago.

Incremental improvements to existing systems won't get us there. We need new ones. That means creating enough disruption to rebuild rather than iterate on what's already broken.

The common narrative is that AI makes everyone more productive. It doesn't. Many of the workflows of today, if left unchanged, create bottlenecks in AI systems.

These roles will evolve. But waiting for that to happen naturally means falling behind now.

The 100x org is actually heavily dependent on people - infinitely more than today. This is only possible with 10x people that have embraced and adopted new ways of working.

THE BUILDERS, AGENT MANAGERS, AND FRONT-LINERS

— THE BUILDERS: 10X ENGINEERS
I don't think most companies have internalized what's actually happening with AI in engineering. The common narrative is that AI makes all engineers more productive. That may be true in isolation, but at an organization level - that is the farthest thing from reality.

Here's what we've validated recently at ClickUp: the great engineers, the ones who can orchestrate, architect, and review, are becoming 100x engineers. They're not writing code. They're directing agents that write code. The skill is judgment.

AI makes the best engineers wildly more productive, and everyone else using AI slows these engineers down.
Think about it - the bottlenecks are (1) orchestration - telling AI what to do, and (2) reviewing - what AI did. Everything is leapfrogged and no longer needed.
So who do you want orchestrating and reviewing code?

And how do you want your best engineers to spend their time?

If your best engineers are spending time reviewing other people's code, then this is inherently an inefficient bottleneck. These engineers can review their agent's code much faster than reviewing human code.

The new world is about enabling your 10x engineers to become 100x.

The wrong strategy is to push every engineer to use infinite tokens. Companies doing this are celebrating 500% more pull requests. But customer outcomes don't match the volume of code being generated.

I call this the great reckoning of AI coding, and every company will face this soon if not already.

More code is just another bottleneck to the best engineers, and ultimately to your company's impact as well.

— THE BUILDERS: 10X PRODUCT MANAGERS
Product management and design roles are merging.

Designers that have customer focus, become more like product managers.

And product managers that have intuition for UX become more like designers.

The bottleneck of user research is gone. It takes us just one mention of an agent to kickoff research and analyze results.

The bottleneck of product <> design iteration is also gone. The product builder iterates on their own, along with agents and skills that ensure alignment with quality and strategy.

Also controversial today - I believe that the wrong strategy is to have your PMs shipping code - that just introduces another bottleneck that the best engineers will waste their time on.

To be clear, PMs should be coding but they should do this in a playground to iterate, validate, and scope. That code should not go to production.

Everything outside of managing systems, orchestrating AI, and reviewing output becomes a bottleneck.
That's why the other roles that are critical along with these are the systems managers (to reduce bottlenecks) along with a bottleneck you can't replace - customer meeting time.

— THE SYSTEM MANAGERS
Ironically, the people that automate their jobs with AI will always have a job. They become owners of the AI systems - agent managers. We have many examples of these people at ClickUp.

The underlying systems in which we operate are absolutely critical to get right. I think most companies are delusional to think they can iterate on existing systems and compete in this new world.

You must create enough disruption so that old systems are deprecated entirely. If there's any definition for 'AI native' that's what it is.

— THE FRONT-LINERS
In a world that will become saturated with AI communication, the human touch will matter more than anything to customers.

This is a bottleneck that you shouldn't replace - even when agents are high enough quality to do video meetings.

One-on-one meeting time with customers is something that shouldn't be automated. The systems around the meetings should be - so that front-liners spend nearly 100% of their time with customers.

REWARDING 100X IMPACT
In a world where companies are able to do so much more with less, where does that excess money go?
In our case, much of the savings in this new operating model will flow directly back to those that enabled it.

We must reward people that create productivity accordingly. This aligns incentives on both sides. Plus, in a world where your best people create 100x impact, you can't afford to lose them.

You should aim to retain these employees for decades. The context they have and their ability to efficiently orchestrate and review will be nearly impossible to replace.

Compensation bands of today should be thrown out the door. We're introducing $1 million cash/year salary bands with a path available to nearly everyone in the company if they produce 100x impact by creating or managing AI systems.

THE FUTURE
Nearly every company will make changes like these. The ones that do it proactively will define what comes next.

The future is not fewer people. It's different work, new roles, and better rewards for those who embrace it. We're already seeing entirely new roles emerge, like Agent Managers, that didn't exist a year ago.

ClickUp is positioning to lead this shift, not just internally, but for our customers too. I've never been more certain about where we're headed.

[Marina Tassi @marinaltassi]

You know what I love about product management? The art. Putting a new product out there is deeply personal. It’s a POV that you are sharing for people to relate or not. Even a logistical product has elements of that and you can tell when any product loses its heart.

[fig @ecdsafu]

Squid went through a very similar thing to this, and it's been long enough now that I feel comfortable getting it off my chest

It was a huge wake up call and drastically updated my view of DeFi at the time

TLDR:
- The block builder and MEV searcher should return the money. This is obviously the right thing to do and hopefully will set a precedent.
- Infra and apps are all responsible for user losses, especially when they direct their users to a "decentralized' protocol.
- DeFi 1.0 protocol+app and "code is law" models can't work as the basis for global finance. DeFi protocols should be minimized to extremely basic settlement mechanisms onchain, with most application and trade logic offchain. Truly "open" markets are disproven imo. DeFi works best when combining the exit hatch characteristics of self custody which the reg arb bringing global, 24/7 availability.

Now for Squid story time:

Around Christmas 2023, a user bridged $600k USDC from Ethereum to DYDX on the DYDX interface, using the Squid API under the hood.

They only received $350k, resulting in a $250k loss in one transaction due to slippage. The Osmosis pools for axlUSDC/USDC only had 350k liquidity of USDC in it.

The $250k got picked up by an Osmosis MEV function they had built into the chain. This $250k USDC was immediately used to buy OSMO, and the OSMO was sitting in the Osmosis treasury.

Apples for apples:
- Aave is DYDX
- CowSwap is Squid
- Uniswap is Osmosis AMM
- The Block Builder and MEV Searcher are Osmosis.

In contrast to Aave, the DYDX bridge UI didn't show any price impact warning. No red text or checkboxes to continue. The user may have seen the expected output on the UI ($350k), but even that might have been hidden, depending on the version of the UI he used.

We had warned the DYDX team of this issue for months before the incident happened, but startups move fast and they didn't get to adding a price impact warning.

From our point of view, Squid "worked as intended" (also a phrase that Stani used toward CowSwap).
- Squid returned the correct quote for this bridge (600k USDC -> 350k USDC),
- Squid returned the price impact (25%)
- slippage was set correctly (DYDX asked for 0.1% slippage via our API, meaning anything up to 0.1% worse than the current market rate is acceptable)

But this wasn't enough to protect our partner or their user.

This was our big wake up call. If Squid worked exactly as intended, how can we expect our design to be successful in the real world if users can get completely wrecked?

We had started building Squid in 2021, in DeFi 1.0 where "code is law" and application logic followed the same wild west product approach as self custodying your Bitcoin. It's dangerous even for the most hardcore nerd, but outright unusable and extremely unsafe for many normal people. An immutable, deterministic approach to trade, used by humans who are very much not immutable or deterministic.

So we built this to protect users and our partners:
- Don't return any quote if the price impact was >3%, or if the user would lose $3k or more.
- Allow users to opt in by turning on "degen mode", but don't make it easy for them. We don't tell our partners to even add a "degen mode" button. The trading apps who need this feature ask us about it directly when needed.

This user had said that $250k was a large personal amount of money for them. We felt terrible.

In TradFi, this problem doesn't exist. Code has a bug, someone ends up with money that they shouldn't have, then they return it.

So in our case, who should pay the user back?
- DYDX is just a front end, but they had a critical issue with UX and had neglected to solve it despite warnings
- Squid (and the Osmosis AMM pools) "worked as intended", but clearly shouldn't have let this route be handed to a user or executed
- Osmosis base protocol had received the users funds, but had converted them to OSMO, and were sitting in the Osmosis community pool

DYDX had 10s of millions of dollars in their treasury and had recently filled a user who lost $8m from a liquidation on their protocol. But they went completely quiet on this. The user was dead to them.

Squid had always refunded users in full for any loss our protocol had caused from a bug, but this wasn't technically a bug, and $250k was a large chunk of our treasury at the time. We were still a small team, trying to survive a bear market.

Osmosis had done nothing wrong, but they now had the user's money, so I thought it made sense for them to just give it back.

So I spent the 12 days of Christmas lobbying the Osmosis community to give back this money that had landed in their lap. Drafting governance forum posts and talking with people who had influence in the community.

The response was extremely negative, instead of returning the user's funds, the community laughed at the user, and decided to burn the OSMO that had been bought with the user's lost funds. This would to reduce the OSMO supply and hopefully pump their token. There was a solid contingent who were supportive of the user and our proposal, but they were outnumbered.

I thought this was detestable behavior, but things were very sensitive in Cosmos, notoriously political and touchy. It was pointless to push it further.

In the end, Squid sent a small portion of funds to the user to try help them somewhat. We wish we could have sent them more. DYDX and Osmosis gave nothing as far as we knew.

We all know what it's like to accidentally fat finger something. Not saving a game, deleting some photos. It's awful, and you pray for a way to reverse it, take your hard drive to a specialist to look at the electrons and recover your memories.

Humans are not perfectly rational, and they make mistakes. We need to live in a world which is forgiving and allows us to operate to the best of our abilities. Finance is a very harsh world, and in certain cases we can't and shouldn't protect our users from themselves, but we should try to do the right thing when it's available to us and avoid blatant stealing or loss of funds.

For me, this was a very painful Christmas, and a moment where I grew out of DeFi 1.0. DeFi 2.0 Squid would build products which have the user in mind, not the dream-state vision of people who were pumping their ETH bags in 2020.

Smart contracts should not be used for core business logic. They should be reduced as much as possible to only settlement. Intents solve this nicely, and many projects are building their products to be much more forgiving and user friendly.

Aave and CowSwap (and all crypto swap products) should update their guardrails on their products to not allow a trade like this to happen again, but I'm glad for the transparency of DeFi bringing this to light, and I hope the block builder and MEV searcher return the user's funds!

[Patrick Collins @PatrickAlphaC]

My gut reaction: “this is upsetting”

…but the more I work in the industry I start to understand these moves more. I’ve dedicated mine and my teams life to doing everything we can to make people’s lives easier in web3. Free tools like Solodit and Updraft so everyone can learn security, and we try to figure out how to make them both free and financially sustainable (ads, jobs board, even our audits to some extent, etc).

It can be tough to spend engineering resources on free stuff. Ledger has salaries to pay, and I want them to keep making a wallet that is secure.

However, if I was a wallet competitor, the door seems WIDE open to make a better product.

Some wallets already have transaction decoding like:
- @gridplus
- @KeystoneWallet

And neither of them charge a fee, so just keep that in mind.

The most egregious part of the ledger post though, is them saying it’s free. This is blatantly false. Ship a product like this, sure, justify its costs, sure, but don’t lie.

[Marina Tassi @marinaltassi]

@ChainLinkGod I honestly wondered the same thing for a long time. I kinda always thought that crypto would be apolitical unless the end goal is top down control.

But what individual votes for that so why make this opinion public? It’s gotta be a paid for take to appease someone in power.

[Marina Tassi @marinaltassi]

@ma1ybe It’s beyond inconsiderate. He considered it and chose to proceed. Something flips when you truly understand your partner consciously recognizes their own selfishness is harming you and still moves forward.

[Marina Tassi @marinaltassi]

@big_duca Used to feel bad, but being overly nice to the individual often means I’m being not so nice to the group.

[Ro 🌻 @rokav_]

working in crypto

[Marina Tassi @marinaltassi]

I am building an everything product as a platform though. But it’s all to support my theory that good standalone products that are well integrated into a product suite are the superior UX.

[Marina Tassi @marinaltassi]

I don’t wanna build an everything app - I wanna have 100 mini really good products with clear purpose and die hard users. And then I’ll put in small print “A Tassi Product” at the bottom of all of them

[Marina Tassi @marinaltassi]

I remember when I worked on the mobile app team for a large grocery retailer and we changed a small feature of the app and started getting death threats. I wanna build a product that good lol

[Marina Tassi @marinaltassi]

@m_franceschetti Cleannn incident response my guy - considering yall for my next mattress

[Marina Tassi @marinaltassi]

Btw I also think privately owned monopolies are bad so don’t come at me, but regulation to force break down monopolies instead of incentivizing competition is a terrible approach that just creates unnecessary inefficiency.

[Marina Tassi @marinaltassi]

I wonder what happens when she finds out that small open source tech projects maintained by a community of approximately 3 devs in their free time can break the entire internet also.

[Elizabeth Warren @SenWarren]

If a company can break the entire internet, they are too big. Period.

It's time to break up Big Tech.

[Marina Tassi @marinaltassi]

@LefterisJP Interesting opinion I used to struggle with. Concluded that you don’t need to avoid the big players for day to day efficiency, you just need to have an out in an extended emergency. So yeah the fact that you can run your own node is enough and very much not a joke.

[Marina Tassi @marinaltassi]

Weird. I was just thinking we have too much plant based imitation meat and not enough meat based imitation plants

[Marina Tassi @marinaltassi]

Being a crypto PM at a tradfi institution just means doing business transformation which is very unsexy work. If you’re a newbie, just go heads first into a crypto startup instead.

[Marina Tassi @marinaltassi]

@Ruesavatar @curdmudgeon1 @Gingercappe Group projects would’ve been my first thought at helping people come to this conclusion earlier.

Did you not notice because you carried the group projects and they were short term compared to the garden?