Solari Wakabi

Equestrian, Tennis player, Golfer and above all a Techpreneur.

[culture jpeg @culturejpg]

Muhammad Ali’s legendary "knockout" by a child is still one of the most wholesome sports clips ever

[Solari Wakabi @Solari777]

@sowelleconomics Are Namibia and South Africa representative of the rest of Africa? Don’t you think you’re biased to lump over fifty different countries into one bucket?

[Startup Archive @StartupArchive_]

Vinod Khosla: “70% of investors add negative value to a company”

When junior team members at Khosla Ventures ask Vinod if they can serve on portfolio company boards, Vinod responds:)

“You haven’t earned the right to advise an entrepreneur. Just because you got an MBA and joined a venture firm doesn’t mean you’re qualified to advise an entrepreneur.”

Vinod believes one of the best ways to earn that right (but not the only way) is to build a large company yourself:

“Have you gone through how hard it is, how uncertain it is, how traumatic it is to go through?… If somebody has never dealt with this decision-making under ambiguity, they’re not qualified to help you… Whose advice to trust on what topic is the single hardest decision an entrepreneur makes. It’s also where the right investors can really help you.”

He gives the example of asking a marketing executive at IBM for marketing advice:

“They’ve never dealt with things where the market isn’t established… They’re not qualified to invent whole new markets.”

He also recalls a recent argument with a co-investor who wanted their healthcare portfolio company to hire a healthcare executive from an established company:

“They wanted this healthcare person who had never dealt with change beyond 2% a year, and I’m like, experience doesn’t matter. The rate of learning matters [for a role like this].”

Video source: @ycombinator (2019)

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

JUST IN: Palantir CEO Alex Karp says the future belongs to the “neurodivergent.”

[slowme @slowsumi]

@shrav_10 explained it here
https://t.co/ts8Tx98TiK

[Manchester City US @ManCityUS]

Look at us. Who would’ve thought.

[Solari Wakabi @Solari777]

@Ilegvm WTF.

[Robert Sterling @RobertMSterling]

Jeff Bezos is worth $238 billion, even though Amazon has a $2.6 trillion market cap. In other words, he’s created $2.4 trillion of value for other shareholders—plus trillions more for employees, customers, suppliers, governments, and other stakeholders.

Jensen Huang is worth $164 billion, while NVIDIA’s market cap is $5 trillion. That’s $4.8 trillion of value for other people (not to mention the immeasurable value created for non-equity stakeholders).

Larry Page and Sergey Brin? $300 billion vs. $3.3 trillion. That’s $3 trillion of value for everyone else. And remember how bad search was before Google and how clunky email was before Gmail?

Mark Zuckerberg? $248 billion vs. $1.8 trillion.

The list goes on. There are hundreds more examples across technology, energy, medicine, manufacturing, and every other industry that keeps the American economy running and our society flourishing.

Billionaires don’t extract value from the rest of us. They create value FOR the rest of us, in exchange for just pennies on the dollar.

We should be grateful for every last one of them.

[DAN KOE @thedankoe]

A pattern I’ve noticed in successful people - that didn’t sacrifice their life for success - is that they physically worked very little, yet people see them as hard workers. Mentally, they were always thinking, plotting, and scheming. They worked in their mind. And once they were clear on their idea, they executed with speed that others couldn’t compete with.

[Solari Wakabi @Solari777]

@atensnut A cool 80 for me..!

[Eric Newcomer @EricNewcomer]

Andreessen Horowitz has returned at least $25B net to LPs since its was founded

[Lenny Rachitsky @lennysan]

My biggest takeaways from my chat with @joulee:

1. We're all becoming managers—of AI. Luckily, most management skills transfer directly to getting the most out of AI tools. Management is fundamentally about achieving outcomes with resources: “You have a North Star, you have a vision, and you’re trying to figure out how to use the resources that you have to get that thing done.” With AI, the principles remain the same.

2. Every strength is also a weakness. Julie shares how her thoughtfulness (strength) was connected to her slowness to speak up in meetings (weakness). “What you realize is these are two sides of the same coin.” Rather than trying to eliminate weaknesses, understand how they relate to your strengths and learn when each serves you best.

3. “Diagnose with data, treat with design.” Data helps identify problems and opportunities, but it won’t tell you what to build. “Data is not a tool that’s going to tell you what you should build or what the solution is ... it can tell you if you have a problem and where that problem or opportunity might be, but you still need to go back and undergo a very creative process.”

4. AI makes emotional regulation skills more important. When asked what she teaches her children, knowing AI will be part of their future, Julie focuses on emotional regulation: “We’re still human. We still have the same hardware that humans have had for thousands of years, and that’s not changing even as the tools and the environment around us change.”

5. Understanding yourself is the foundation of being a great manager. Julie wanted this topic to be chapter one of her book (the publishers pushed it to chapter five). “I really do fundamentally believe this, because all of us have things that we’re strong at and things that we’re weak at.” She introduces the concept of “dimensionality”—viewing yourself across infinite dimensions rather than as wholly good or bad.

6. The rate of change is accelerating, requiring managers to be “sturdy while flexible.” Julie uses the metaphor of a willow tree—sturdy but with flexible branches that bend in storms. “I think today management is really about this idea ... and that is a very hard thing to pull off.”

7. The danger of AI is making life too comfortable. Julie worries that AI might make it too easy to avoid challenges: “You can shortcut relationships ... you can shortcut hard feelings because now you can just watch TikTok instead of actually dealing with the very difficult emotion.” She teaches her children to still seek challenges despite having powerful tools.

[Solari Wakabi @Solari777]

Like plants, we too can experience greater growth while in the “valleys” of our lives. https://t.co/II5VvtcVBL via @JD_Wininger

[Peter Robinson @p_m_robinson]

THOMAS SOWELL AT 95. With Tom and Mary Sowell at Tom's birthday luncheon this very day, my wife and yours truly. Happy birthday to a genuinely great man!

[Solari Wakabi @Solari777]

“Some men are born great. Others achieve greatness. And some — like me — simply get added to the group chat by mistake.”

[Sundar Pichai @sundarpichai]

1/ A quick recap from another week of rapid shipping: 

Great response to our Gemini 2.5 Pro update now in preview. Find it in AI Studio, Vertex + @GeminiApp. 

And good news for @GeminiApp Pro plan members: your 2.5 Pro limit doubled from 50 to 100 queries per day.

[Sundar Pichai @sundarpichai]

Incredible to think that it’s been 100 years since the discovery of quantum mechanics, which fundamentally changed our understanding of nature. Applying those same principles for computation is perhaps the biggest engineering challenge of our time, but one with incredible potential payoff for science + humanity. #WorldQuantumDay

[Solari Wakabi @Solari777]

Gracias Steve…lots of great memories…

[Cricket Australia @CricketAus]

The great Steve Smith has called time on a superb ODI career 👏

[TechCrunch @TechCrunch]

New from @bayareawriter: Fintech startup Ramp has crossed $700 million in annualized revenue as of January of this year, according to a source familiar with the company’s internal operations https://t.co/jvmoUi0cdI

[Solari Wakabi @Solari777]

All the best

[ⁿᵉʷˢ Robert F. Kennedy Jr. @RobertKennedyJc]

This is the day the Lord has made;
We will rejoice and be glad in it.

-Psalms 118:24

Toady is our day! MAHA.

Good morning, everyone!