Anthony Sistilli

founder & youtuber - prev: eng @stripe, founder @rib_gg (acquired), top 30 @starcraft player

[Anthony Sistilli @sistilli]

Theo breaks down the state of tech, founders, and being a creator all in one sitting

"I'm gunna say things I'm gunna get in trouble for"

We go over:
- His journey to where he is today
- The current state of tech
- How to become an exceptional engineer
- The downsides that come h being a creator
- How he handles criticism

Highlights:
05:03 - Dev job market & who's struggling
07:12 - How to become an exceptional engineer
20:38 - Get a job first, then startup
27:08 - YC vs other accelerators
39:07 - Creator-founders and why they're bad
56:18 - How Theo handles criticism
01:14:53 - Passion, depth, and "10x agency"
01:28:27 - "Make what you wish existed"
01:30:16 - How to get good at public speaking

Definitely one of the most interesting discussions i've had in a while

his authenticity & passion for what he does is contagious and honestly such a breath of fresh air in tech

[Anthony Sistilli @sistilli]

Startups are the new dropshipping - the majority of people are just focused on money, status, and signalling

[Daniel Martinez @coderpr0grammer]

This is incredibly low signal

Chasing a VC is exactly what YC would tell you not to do.

They would tell you to be relentlessly resourceful in finding customers.

This just shows you’re doing everything to please VCs instead of focusing on customers.

[Anthony Sistilli @sistilli]

3 albums so he can go #1, 2, and 3 - he's the big 3 now

[FearBuck @FearedBuck]

OFFICIAL ALBUM COVERS FOR DRAKE’S 3 ALBUMS DROPPING AT MIDNIGHT

- ICEMAN
- HABITI
- MAID OF HONOUR

[Anthony Sistilli @sistilli]

@antho_builds yessirrr

[Anthony Sistilli @sistilli]

we have some of the best engineering talent leave canada every year because building in Canada is horrible

fix the leak before adding more water

[IRCC @CitImmCanada]

Canada is seeking top talent, including:
• medical doctors, researchers and senior managers with Canadian work experience
• workers with French-language proficiency
• health care and social services professionals
• tradespersons
• educators
• professionals in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) occupations
• professionals in transport occupations

These categories provide clear pathways to permanent residence for top international talent.

Find out how Express Entry category-based rounds of invitations work: https://t.co/GJ3QpiLVcL

[Anthony Sistilli @sistilli]

@MitcheIl i feel like the people on X have a small intersection of the type of video's they'd watch here vs youtube

curious what kind of videos you'd think would do well here?

[Anthony Sistilli @sistilli]

@paulswaney3 oh okay guess that settles that

[Anthony Sistilli @sistilli]

paul it sounds like you might not understand how social media works at all

[Paul W. Swaney III @paulswaney3]

Young people massively underestimate how their public social media can kill high-paying job offers

I have personally seen 5 offer letters pulled in NY over social media content. All were 300k plus total comp roles. Real cases

If you are aiming for 85k forever, you are probably fine

If you want bigger things, read this

[Anthony Sistilli @sistilli]

holy shit lmao

[moneyfetishist @moneyfetishist]

Paul

You peaked at Engagement Manager at McKinsey

In 2015

During the easiest economic conditions in a century

Your other credential is Operations Manager at Amazon

40,000 people hold that title simultaneously

That is your resume

That is what you are standing on when you tell strangers how to conduct themselves professionally

You have publicly discussed failing with matchmaking services

You have posted multiple times about entitled women

You pay for a service designed to produce dates and it produces nothing and you blame the product

The man who cannot generate interest through a system engineered to generate interest is giving unsolicited professional advice to strangers at midnight

You look like you moderate 4 Discord servers

You post like someone whose opinions have never been requested in a room with a door

You carry the energy of a man who corners people at conferences and doesn't notice them looking for the exit

Then you posted a 7-tweet thread about social media killing $300K job offers

You used your own social media to publicly police a stranger's selfie

And then lectured the internet about how employers judge social media

You are the red flag in your own thread

I scrolled through the profile you decided to correct

It is mostly pictures/selfies of her running

Running consistently

Which if your McKinsey brain could still produce a thought without a 2x2 matrix you would recognise as a signal of discipline, accountability, and someone who can commit to something long term

That is literally the trait you claim to value in your thread about professional credibility

And you looked at it and saw a selfie problem

Because your pattern recognition is so broken by whatever is happening in your personal life that you cannot process a woman being visible without experiencing it as something that needs to be corrected

You absolute fucking moron

The information was right there

You had the data

You drew the wrong conclusion

That is not a social media literacy issue

That is a you issue

And it explains the matchmaking results better than anything I could write

If I was hiring and saw a candidate doing what you did I would pull the offer before the background check finished

Zero social calibration

Zero awareness of how unsolicited corrections land

HR incident within 90 days

"Could care less if you listen"

It is "couldn't care less"

"Could care less" means you care

Based on 4 follow-up replies to someone who was clearly not interested you care significantly

About a stranger's selfie

At midnight

"Genuine feedback from a place of kindness"

Every person who cannot mind their own business uses this sentence

It is not kindness

It is the compulsion to correct people who did not ask by someone whose authority to correct is visible to nobody except himself

The Halo Effect is one of the most documented cognitive biases in existence

Decades of research

Every industry

Presentation affects perception

You know this

You resent it

And you process that resentment by lecturing strangers instead of fixing yourself

Paul

You are a loser

I say this because the pattern is specific

A man who is unhappy

Who cannot generate the respect he believes he deserves

Who processes that by diminishing strangers who did nothing to him

It has never worked

It will never work

You are the common variable in every failed interaction you have described on this platform

And maybe if you stopped spending your evenings correcting strangers on the internet and started being a genuinely decent person things would change

Not because you learned a technique

Because you became someone people don't instinctively avoid

That is the only thing that has ever worked

It is free

It requires becoming less of what you currently are

You are not going to do this

You are going to read this and feel attacked and post something about how "the haters prove the message resonated" and learn absolutely nothing

Because that is what you do

That is all you do

NGMI

Everyone can see it Paul

Except you

I scrolled through the person's profile you decided to correct

Most of the pictures are running content

That is someone who gets up and runs

That is discipline

That is accountability to yourself

That is the exact quality you claim to value in your shitty thread about high-performance careers

A person who runs consistently and posts about it is demonstrating the same trait you lecture people about from your McKinsey Engagement Manager pedestal. but your ex-consulting brain can't produce that thought without a 2x2 matrix and a hypothesis-driven framework to arrive at a conclusion that a normal human being sees in 3 seconds

you are genuinely never going to make it, to the place where you think your heading

and speaking of things you produced that nobody asked for

"I wrote the book nobody in a corner office wants you to read"

"Reviewed by 7 consulting partners and PE MDs who refused to be named"

Refused to be named

7 people reviewed your book and not a single one of them was willing to have their name associated with it publicly

You framed this as mystique

This is not mystique

This is 7 people who read your book and said "sure Paul it's fine but please do not tell anyone I was involved"

that is a restraining order from your own endorsers

"Every email you send is a power move. Most people just don't know the rules"

You are writing about email power moves

In 2026

A man who peaked at middle management 12 years ago wrote a book about email strategy and got 7 anonymous reviews from people who are embarrassed to know him and then went on the internet to tell a stranger that their selfie is unprofessional

This is the most complete portrait of a man who has absolutely nothing going on that I have ever assembled and I did not have to try hard because you provided all the materials yourself

You are a clown Paul

An actual clown

With a book nobody will read

Reviews nobody will claim

Opinions nobody requested

And a matchmaking profile that produces the same results as your career advice: nothing, for anyone, ever

Everyone can see it

Except you

[Anthony Sistilli @sistilli]

@theo "what if instead of understanding how something works we brute force the fuck out of it - constantly"

[Anthony Sistilli @sistilli]

startup founders doing shady shit thinking itll never backfire

[Dr. Simon @goddek]

His muscle memory made him start walking on all fours.

[Anthony Sistilli @sistilli]

@nizzyabi bro ate a bunch of scrub daddies for breakfast

[Anthony Sistilli @sistilli]

needing this many accounts says volumes about the quality of the content

[Alex Nguyen @alexcooldev]

I thought having 40 TikTok accounts was already insane.

But this guy running 600 accounts with 69k posted videos. 🫠

At this point, organic growth is no longer about “posting content.”
It’s about building a distribution machine.

Virality depends on luck.
But volume increases luck.

i need more accounts 🥴

[Anthony Sistilli @sistilli]

@jasonfreedman W investor

[Anthony Sistilli @sistilli]

@lukepierceops show us who’s asking you for qts 👀

[Anthony Sistilli @sistilli]

fitbit is still around?

[Rjey @RjeyTech]

If you bought a Whoop, I feel sorry for you.

Google’s Fitbit Air just made it look silly

- $100 one time payment vs Whoop’s $199–$359/year forever

- Free tier actually works HR, sleep, SpO2, HRV, recovery, no paywall

- Optional $10/mo for Gemini Health Coach (vs Whoop where the sub is mandatory)

- Gemini analyzes meal photos, not just biometrics. Whoop can’t touch that

- Conversational health AI ask questions like why was I tired Tuesday?and get a real answer

- Open data platform Apple Watch, Garmin, third-party data all flow into Google Health

- 7-day battery, 5-min quick charge = full day

-Whoop just got a $10B valuation… and Google undercut them by 50% on day one

[Anthony Sistilli @sistilli]

the world needs a startup that flags bullshit self proclaimed titles like “the worlds first personal intelligence”

like i get that’s what you might have pitched your investors but the rest of the world isn’t that stupid

[akash · vellum.ai @asharma_53]

We’ve raised 25M to build the world’s first Personal Intelligence.

Introducing Vellum: AI that belongs to you.

My assistant @ash_vellum has his own X (like grok), tag him and he'll answer.

[Anthony Sistilli @sistilli]

@joshmo_dev yeah i’ll have to resort to that more often ty man

[Anthony Sistilli @sistilli]

After having a baby i’ve realized how much AI content has really changed Google for the worse.

I only use Google if i want authentic human written information, and all the top 10 websites with baby information is just plastered with low effort AI slop GEO/SEO farming sites.

If I wanted info from an AI i would have just asked one.

[Anthony Sistilli @sistilli]

@ArtenesDev haha yeah it’s crazy… reddit search sucks without google and google sucks without reddit