Mark Zimmerman

[Megan McArdle @asymmetricinfo]

Companies, I know you need to acquire more customers. But for the love of all that is holy, can you please make the "login" button on your homepage at least as prominent as the "sign up" button? I shouldn't have to scroll through menus or google the damn login link to use a service I'm paying for.

[anu @anuatluru]

People are going to start aggressively revoking access to their attention.

Ping minimalism is coming.

[Dave Kline @dklineii]

At Bridgewater, I trained 100s of leaders on how to diagnose problems to their root cause.

Give me 2 minutes, and I'll show you how to solve the real problems on your team:

[Tim Urban @waitbutwhy]

School should teach kids how to crush life in the world they’ll be adults in.

Given that new AI magic wands keep appearing every few months, schools should focus less on teaching obsolete skills and more on teaching kids how to be the world’s most amazing wizards.

[Jenny Fielding @jefielding]

I’ve now caught up with 3 different super experienced founders who are ready for their next startup. Thing is, no big idea…

Interestingly, all 3 are thinking about bypassing idea stage and instead teaming up / buying into an existing startup. Likely seed stage, perhaps hit a wall and running low on cash. Lots of these around these days.

I love this concept and wonder if anyone is working on pairing up these folks up? Big opportunity right now to join forces as the market consolidates 💥

[Doug Monro @dougall]

@awilkinson I use @sanebox for this - what’s the difference?

[matt roberts @mattroberts]

PROUD to share that my old friend @DavidDufresne and I are starting something new @CMDCapital!

We aim to bring back conviction to earlystage investments, working with greatfounders andstanding as a lead cheque at a time whenthat seems to have fallenout of fashion here in🇨🇦

[Shreyas Doshi @shreyas]

Apple Pie Position:
A statement that instantly elevates the person who is saying it and is simultaneously hard for anyone else to push back on, and so everyone avoids the personal risk and just nods “yes”, even though its actual value in this specific situation might be relatively low, zero, or even negative.

Because everyone in the workplace wants to come across as smart & competent, especially during meetings, Apple Pie Positions end up being frequently employed by your colleagues.

Examples of Apple Pie Positions
(trigger warning: might feel too painful at times)

1) “We need to define the success metrics for <whatever is being discussed>”

Also seen in the wild as:
“How will you measure success here?”

2) “Do you have any data to back that up?”

(narrator: it is either impossible to get useful data in this situation or the effort to get useful data would be greater than just doing it)

3) “We need more scalable team processes”

4) “We have too many meetings”

5) “We need to sync more often”

6) “This is a two-way door, so let’s just decide quickly”

(narrator: it was actually a one-way door. or, it was a two-way door with a hungry lion on the other side of the door, so we kinda died)

7) “We need more metrics before making a decision here”

8) “We need a better go-to-market motion to improve product adoption”

(narrator: the problem is you’ve built the wrong product, no amount of GTM sorcery is going to fix that)

9) “We need to clarify our expectations from people in this role so we can set them up for success”

(narrator: the problem is that you’ve hired too many people whose work overlaps with other functions)

10) “We need better internal documentation!”

(narrator: yes we do. we also need 50 other things so let’s just finally admit that this ain’t happening. besides OpenAI will solve this for us in 2024, right?)

11) “Let us not forget [quote one of the company’s core values].”

(narrator: sometimes used as a weapon to justify one’s position, especially when faced with objective & rational counter-arguments for an issue)

12) “We need to replace our team meeting with written updates”

Fast forward a few weeks/months:

“People are missing live interactions with team members, they don't know what's going on across the team, nobody's reading the written updates. We need a meeting”

13) ��Our current org structure doesn’t set us up for optimal execution of our strategic goals. That's why we are announcing a re-org”

14) “We must not slow down our shipping velocity”

(narrator: usually applied to push back against a fairly rational measure that will cause a minor delay in shipping the product but will prevent bigger problems for the customers or the company further down the road)

15) “We need to post-mortem this”

(narrator: you should have pre-mortem'ed this, so you wouldn't have had to deal with an ugly post-mortem. and the systemic changes rarely happen and somehow we are doing another ugly post-mortem 3 months from now. repeat)

16) “After 13 amazing months as CxO, Bob has decided to leave for other personal pursuits. The company wouldn’t be the same without his contributions”

(narrator: this is not how it actually went down)

17) “We need an offsite so we can align the teams better with our strategic priorities”

(narrator: we said the same thing for the previous 6 offsites. it almost seems like we are doing offsites more than we are being onsites)

18) “Remember, we are a mission-driven company”

(narrator: particularly effective when justifying below-market salary / stock for current and prospective employees)

19) “We need to go on a customer listening tour to understand our customers better”

(narrator: no, you need to pay more attention to the customer research that’s already happened over the past 18 months that we haven’t done anything about. you then need to translate that into differentiated features, instead of just building me-too tablestakes)

20) “We need more apple pie”

(narrator: 🥧yum. yes we do)

[Mark Zimmerman @markzim]

A bold agenda for D.C. housing , by @mattyglesias substitute Toronto for D.C. and give me a strong mayor who runs on this… https://t.co/dsNu38cRy9

[Imperial Oil @ImperialOil]

We are proud to support the game that brings Canadians together!

[Toronto Maple Leafs @MapleLeafs]

Celebrating the spirit of hockey!

We teamed up with @ImperialOil to bring these future stars to see their heroes on ice thanks to the Esso Medals of Achievement program. Here’s how it went #EssoMedals

[matt roberts @mattroberts]

🇨🇦🚀

[Late Night with Seth Meyers @LateNightSeth]

Next Tuesday, February 1, marks the 40th anniversary of Late Night’s debut on @NBC. To celebrate, #LNSM will welcome a very special guest.

[Alex Cohen @anothercohen]

Finally accepting the reality that remote work + a few yearly meetups + localized co working is mostly the future for all jobs where we just smash keyboard buttons all day

[Mark Zimmerman @markzim]

Just read https://t.co/63rxMRInfd Achieves the high bar of simplifying powerful &amp; complex ideas. Worth a few click throughs for anyone scaling or advising those who are. @ryanpoissant @davidcrow @mattroberts @sleightell @markmacleod_ @KJsaysthis (thx @ribbonfarm)

[Irfan Dhalla @IrfanDhalla]

We are subsidizing, encouraging and supporting rapid antigen screening at businesses, where all staff can be vaccinated.

But, not at schools, even though kids under 12 cannot be vaccinated yet.

Thanks @SaraMojtehedz for reporting on this. https://t.co/xTOsGIhgQA

[Aaron Dignan @aarondignan]

There are companies and teams who care about the way they work together, and those that are “too busy.” 👀 Pay attention when choosing where to spend your wild and precious life. 🦗❤️

[tobi lutke @tobi]

Shopify will have the same internal policy for now. Any employee meetups will require proof of full vaccination. Because science.

[Mark Zimmerman @markzim]

"Finishing projects is part of what it means to deliver high quality work. It's not high quality if your perfectionism prevents you from finishing."

–@JamesClear

[David Crow @davidcrow]

🇨🇦$9.75MM https://t.co/c5rJtUpUHp

The first rule of fight club is to not announce funding, but go heads down and keep executing. Nice work. @kuljeevs and team doing it like the pros they are.
👏👏👏

keep knocking down targets 😍