Nicholas Alexander MacAskill

Founder & CTO, Flocano Labs ⇌ Multidisciplinary Designer ⇌ AI, Web3 & Quant Engineering ⇌ Architect of the Software as Glass Philosophy

@flocanolabs

[Nicholas Alexander MacAskill @nicmacaskill]

It’s an incredible time to be alive. Period.

[PsudoMike 🇨🇦 @PsudoMike]

Wealthsimple's prediction markets let you bet on things like Loblaw and Dollarama same store sales, Air Canada's passenger load factor, and Shopify's merchandise volume before any of it gets reported. A securities lawyer told the Globe those are very attractive bets for someone who already knows the number. Our insider trading law was built around shares, not a data point a company hasn't published yet. I've spent years wiring fraud and KYC checks into payment systems. Same story every time. The product ships, the rule catches up later, usually after someone gets caught. RBC already bans staff with inside access from using the app. That tells you who trusts this least.

[Rohan Mayya @rohan_mayya]

everyone I know who has done something worthwhile has a period of wandering for 3-4 years in their 20s, just doing completely unrelated stuff

i've found almost no exceptions, seems like it's a rite of passage before doing something meaningful

[Dilip Kumar @kmr_dilip]

Bro to bro- do not try entrepreneurship if you don't have a high tolerance for uncertainty. For long periods of time, you genuinely won’t know if you’re early, wrong, unlucky, or just stupid. You need to be cheap before you can afford not to be. Because raising money and burning it is easy. Building something people are willing to pay for is hard. You need high self esteem and a low ego and you've to be comfortable being wrong, looking stupid and changing your mind. Most importantly, learn how to lose without becoming a loser. Because you’re going to lose a lot- money, people, deals & time. Just don’t lose your ability to think clearly. And btw, don’t go looking for motivation. It is useless after a while. What you really need is stamina. Both physical & mental.

[Zack Voell @zackvoell]

Nobody cares if you’re a doctor or a lawyer or even a software engineer anymore. Careers aren’t a status symbol. People only care if you have aura and money. Doesn’t matter if you’re an anesthesiologist or trading Pokémon cards

[Nicholas Alexander MacAskill @nicmacaskill]

@hthieblot https://t.co/S7MCLGDC3e

[Craig Weiss @craigweiss]

in the age of ai, people who understand excellent design are going to make the best products

[Kathryn @kathrynwu1]

Every founder should read Thinking in Bets.

A bad outcome doesn’t always mean you made a bad decision.

[signüll @signulll]

if you wanna grow a lot very quickly, you should start a company esp if you have something on your mind that you can’t dismiss easily. co building is one of the highest bandwidth ways to grow mainly cuz it compresses so many parts of life into a single endeavor.

i.e. you learn incentives, relationships, conflict, persuasion, leadership, hiring, failure, negotiation, power, trust, capital allocation, communication, & responsibility all in one fell swoop. almost every recurring dynamic in history eventually shows up in miniature inside a company.

this makes sense cuz a startup is essentially a simulator for human nature (both demand & supply). it forces you to confront what actually matters, strips away a lot of comforting abstractions (like a boss), & often gives you painful/brutal feedback when your model of the world is wrong which is what makes it such an extraordinary education.

[shweta @shwedotai]

The moat of your career isn’t what you know or who you know, it’s how long you’re willing to keep digging

[Paul Mit @pmitu]

Please hear my advice:

- YC won't accept you (low chance)
- Your startup (probably) won't go viral
- VCs won't chase you
- TechCrunch won't write about you
- No one is going to save you (sorry)

Build your product as if NONE of those will happen.

That will be more helpful.

[tobi lutke @tobi]

A huge amount of the Anti-AI code sentiment massively overestimates the quality of human code outside of a very small set of open source and high quality company codebases. Human Slop is everywhere and can trivially be improved on by any opus level model.

[Nicholas Alexander MacAskill @nicmacaskill]

When they ask us how we did it we'll say we did it out of love

[Nicholas Alexander MacAskill @nicmacaskill]

We thought we were building something but it was building us the entire time

[Nicholas Alexander MacAskill @nicmacaskill]

@JakeFleshner agentic swarms

[Jake Fleshner @JakeFleshner]

Pitch me your company in 2 words

Angel invested in 40+ companies and always looking for more

[Nicholas Alexander MacAskill @nicmacaskill]

@JakeFleshner agentic swarms

[Nicholas Alexander MacAskill @nicmacaskill]

@BusDownBonnor https://t.co/br80ljPqeI

[Craig Weiss @craigweiss]

our culture needs the same passion for tech as we do for sports

[Nicholas Alexander MacAskill @nicmacaskill]

@ishan__1111 love this mentality

[Ishan @ishan__1111]

I'm going to build a multi-billion dollar company out of Toronto. It will happen.