Sunil Rajaraman

Founder of Hamlet. Entrepreneur, Writer, Investor.

[Sunil Rajaraman @subes01]

I think @dmorey is the real deal. @BillSimmons on the other hand - while amusing to listen to - is just not a very good basketball analyst. Prefer @ryenarussillo who actually knows what he’s saying.

[weisser @julianweisser]

A $2 trillion market hidden in plain sight.

He found it by losing an election.

Solo Founders Podcast ep 9 is live with @subes01 of Hamlet.

00:43 Running for city council in his hometown
06:54 The $2 trillion market everyone ignores
11:05 The minimum funding needed to win a local election
12:03 Most council votes are pre-decided
14:06 The newsletter that became a startup
19:46 Why advisors beat co-founders
33:23 "If you don't have an original insight, don't work on it"
42:53 His C-minus, D-plus pricing admission
50:30 The bear case for solo founders nobody admits
53:16 "Consensus produces average outcomes"

[Sunil Rajaraman @subes01]

‘Daredevil: Born Again’ is one of the top 5 shows I’ve ever watched. Absolutely incredible.

[Sunil Rajaraman @subes01]

Pickleball is like the vibe coding of actual sports.

[Sunil Rajaraman @subes01]

To my San Francisco friends - I wrote 20k words on the city’s comeback. What’s real about it? What needs fixing? To my knowledge, this is the most extensive analysis of San Francisco data that’s been done to date - I went through the effort of analyzing the sentiment of 1,000 + public meetings as part of this.

I’d be grateful if you’d consider giving me feedback, or sharing it. If you want access to the data, DM me and I’m happy to share it. I’d prefer if someone else who is more expert in public policy would go to down with the data.

https://t.co/pIJCTsBeva

[Sunil Rajaraman @subes01]

There's been a lot of discussion around an alleged fraud case in Minnesota around daycare centers in the past week. A citizen journalist took videos outside of the centers, which went viral and captivated the country. There is now a national discussion around fraud in government.

I have no opinion on the MN case and will wait for the facts to play out. I do have a strong opinion on local government though, and I'm glad people are finally starting to pay attention.

The vast majority of government employees work hard and do the right thing every single day. Local government is a thankless job - people just expect everything to work magically. But it's also true that fraud exists, perpetrated by a small number of people.

If you really want to root out fraud, you have to start by reading budgets. Your instinct about whether fraud exists, or your policy disagreements with local government, are not the same as fraud. Fraud is in the numbers.

It's hard for the average citizen to find and understand government documents - even when they're technically public. Budgets are scattered across hundreds of different websites with no standardization.

In the past 48 hours, I went down a rabbit hole and built BudgetAPI - a free site containing the official budgets for hundreds of state, county, and city governments. You can browse recent budget news, download documents, and analyze them yourself.

Budget transparency is good for everyone - citizens, governments, and anyone who cares about democracy. These documents are already public. They just weren't in one place. Now they are (https://t.co/dNJGiXH1tV)

[Sunil Rajaraman @subes01]

Anyone getting a trump phone?

[Sunil Rajaraman @subes01]

Whose AI do you trust the most?

OpenAI
Anthropic
Google
Meta
Grok

…or someone not on this list?

[Sunil Rajaraman @subes01]

@kaykas 😭

[Sunil Rajaraman @subes01]

Are we approaching end times?

[Sunil Rajaraman @subes01]

Which company would you bet your well-being on in a self driving vehicle?

[Sunil Rajaraman @subes01]

I’ve never been less excited about Apple.

[Sunil Rajaraman @subes01]

This can’t be good for America.

[Sunil Rajaraman @subes01]

It’s almost never a good sign when a company forces you to contact them to delete your account. It means they are trying to game retention numbers for future fundraises.

My assumption here is a lot of people are trying Lovable and tools like it 1x-2x and peacing out.

[Sunil Rajaraman @subes01]

At this present moment, what’s your opinion of Elon Musk?

[Sunil Rajaraman @subes01]

Can anyone explain the strategy here?

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

Trump makes a tariff announcement in Pennsylvania: "We are going to be imposing a 25% increase -- we're gonna bring it from 25% to 50%, the tariffs on steel into the US."

[Tyler Willis @tylerwillis]

You're almost certainly not using AI enough.

This whole sweet "app" is a 75 word prompt on Gemini + an uploaded video.

What an incredible time to be playful and just try using AI for things. It will often surprise you with how great it is (and, yes, also with how dumb it is).

[Garry Tan @garrytan]

Pretty much the worst thing to do is happening: instead of brain draining the world now the best startups will happen outside of the United States

Colossal blunder at the dawn of the age of intelligence

[Sunil Rajaraman @subes01]

@pitdesi This type of market has existed for a long long time. Remember Clearbanc? A lot of financial engineering involved, low returns.

[Sunil Rajaraman @subes01]

This is one of the best basketball games I’ve watched in my entire life.