Tim Ahmann

All about startups and partnerships.

[Elad Gil @eladgil]

People at major AI labs (using internal models) 3-4 months ahead of startup silicon valley engineers

SV founders/eng 3-6 months ahead of NY

NY founders/eng 6-12 months ahead of rest of world

Most people have no idea how fast AI shifting as 1-2 years behind SOTA

"The future is here, just not equally distributed" - Robert Heinlein

[Patrick OShaughnessy @patrick_oshag]

Hiroki Asai spent 18 years as creative director at Apple under Steve Jobs. He was described as "a silent force who could channel Steve."

He taught Brian two of the most important principles:

"The first was simplicity. Startups are naturally simple because you have no money.

Lack of abundance creates natural constraints.

Once you raise money and hire a bunch of people, you go in a lot of directions and lose your sense of focus.

You start to lose your muscle for simplicity.

Hiroki taught me that simplicity is not removing things. Simplicity is distilling something so fundamentally that you understand its essence.

The second was a sense of craft and details. How you do anything is how you do everything. Everything must be perfect.

John Wooden, the winningest coach in college basketball history at UCLA. The first hour on his team, he spends an hour teaching you how to put your socks on.

Bill Walsh said the way you tuck your jersey into your pants was one of 10,000 details that determined whether you won.

Don't focus on winning. Focus on getting all the inputs perfect.

We do focus on growth, but we kind of stopped focusing on growth. We started focusing on making everything perfect.

If everything is perfect and you don't grow, then you focus on the wrong inputs. But if you have the right inputs and make them perfect, then you'll grow really fast."

[Lenny Rachitsky @lennysan]

My biggest takeaways from @rabois:

1. The team you build is the company you build. Founders get distracted by markets, customers, and technology. If you have the right people, those problems get easier. If you have the wrong people, none of those things save you.

2. Build your company on undiscovered talent. The only way to scale an organization against incumbents with infinite budgets is to find talent that large companies’ hiring machines will misprocess. In practice, this often means skewing younger—not because young people are inherently better but because they have fewer data points, which means typical evaluation systems can’t categorize them accurately. This is where the alpha often is.

3. Hire more “barrels,” not “ammunition.” A “barrel” is someone who can take an idea from zero to outcome without hand-holding. Most companies have only a handful of these people. Hiring more people without expanding the number of barrels doesn’t increase output; it increases coordination tax and creates drag. The ratio of barrels to ammunition is what determines the number of important things a company can pursue simultaneously.

4. CMOs are becoming the #1 consumer of AI tokens. At a few of Keith’s top portfolio companies, the heaviest user of AI is the chief marketing officer. These CMOs are running analytics, shipping campaigns, and generating insights that previously required entire teams of deputies.

5. The three signs a company will win: operating tempo, internal talent development, and “the relentless application of force” from the top. Keith identifies a consistent pattern across his best portfolio companies. First, operating tempo: Ramp shipped physical cards in three months when the industry standard was 9 to 12. Second, talent development through internal promotion rather than senior external hires; the CMO at one of his top companies was the previous chief of staff. Third, the CEO’s willingness to push harder as things improve, not less. Mike Moritz told a friend of Keith’s that the most common trait of the best CEOs is “the relentless application of force.” Complacency is the natural by-product of success, and the CEO’s job is to offset it.

6. For consumer products, talking to customers is not just unhelpful; it’s actively harmful. Keith refuses to let companies he advises conduct consumer research. His argument: Consumer decisions are subconscious. Ask any Porsche owner why they bought the car, and 99% will cite every reason except the real one. Once misleading customer feedback enters the organization, it locks into people’s brains and distorts every subsequent decision.

7. Keith believes the PM role may not survive the AI era. Taking customer inputs, building a sequential year-long roadmap, and coordinating between teams are structurally incoherent when AI capabilities change weekly. The skill that matters now across all three roles—PM, designer, engineer—is business acumen: understanding the company’s equation and knowing what to build next.

8. Great hiring comes from great referencing. Run at least 20 references, and keep going until you hit negative feedback. Ask specific, forward-looking questions (e.g. “Would you start a company with them?”). If every reference is positive, you haven’t gone deep enough.

9. Use a 30-day feedback loop to sharpen your hiring instinct. Thirty days after every hire, ask: would I hire this person again? This is as predictive as waiting years, and dramatically faster for improving your judgment. Make this a habit, and your hiring quality will compound.

10. Criticize in public, not private—it optimizes for the system. Keith endorses a management practice that most people find confrontational: delivering negative feedback in front of the team, not behind closed doors. Private criticism optimizes for the individual, but the rest of the company doesn’t know the issue is being addressed, which breeds anxiety and suspicion. Public criticism lets colleagues see that leadership is aware, creates opportunities for others to volunteer help, and turns feedback into a team-building exercise.

Full conversation: https://t.co/5MI134kdx5

[Kpaxs @Kpaxs]

When someone proposes a timeline and the leader asks "why not sooner?" they are not just expressing impatience. They are doing something more precise: they are requiring the person to articulate the actual constraint that makes the longer timeline necessary.

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

My information consumption is now 1/4 X, 1/4 podcast interviews of the smartest practitioners, 1/4 talking to the leading AI models, and 1/4 reading old books. The opportunity cost of anything else is far too high, and rising daily.

[Tim Ahmann @TimAhmann]

@TweetsOfSumit True - luckily everyone with basic culinary knowledge can tell from menu and pics alone whether a restaurant is the real deal or not

[sumit 🏴 @wh0sumit]

high-agency people are rare, and once you work with them, you can’t unsee the difference.

a high-agency person doesn’t wait to be told what to do. they don’t wait for clarity, tools, permission, or a perfect plan. they step in, observe what’s broken, what’s missing, what’s needed and they start moving. even if they’re wrong at first, they move. momentum matters more than perfection.

most people aren’t born this way. agency is something you build. it starts with taking responsibility for your own day. knowing what you’re working on, why you’re working on it, and whether it’s actually helping the team. it means replacing “i can’t because…” with “i’ll figure out how.” it means caring enough to close loops without being asked.

for people who don’t have high agency yet, the fastest way to build is :

> stop waiting for instructions
> pick one problem and own it end to end
> communicate progress, not excuses
> treat the company’s problems like your own

agency grows when you put yourself in uncomfortable situations and still choose to act.

when we look for people to join our team, we don’t just look at skills. skills can be learned. agency is harder.

we look for signals people who’ve built things on their own, taken responsibility without a title, figured things out when no one was guiding them. people who don’t disappear when things get messy.

early teams don’t need passengers. they need people who can think, decide, and act. people who see problems and feel an internal responsibility to fix them. that’s what high agency looks like.

you can teach tools. you can teach process.
but agency? that comes from within.

[Joe Gebbia @jgebbia]

Great to be back on American Optimist talking National Design Studio @ndstudio 🇺🇸 with @JTLonsdale

[GregGutfeld @greggutfeld]

my piece on @ScottAdamsSays

https://t.co/3MkFNm8tJO

[Naval @naval]

RIP @ScottAdamsSays - one of the most original, insightful, and fearless thinkers who ever lived. 😞🙏

[Naval @naval]

The three forms of capital are knowledge, reputation, and capital.

[Joe Lonsdale @JTLonsdale]

Our friend @jgebbia is doing amazing work as the Chief Design Officer of the USA.

Proud to support his team along with others - they are working on hundreds of key government sites, and just getting going!

[Tim Ahmann @TimAhmann]

@WillManidis @Beuysaunt

[Scott Adams @ScottAdamsSays]

I have a favor to ask.

If my work helped you, or someone you know, please follow my biographer and good friend @joelpollak and leave a comment here in case he wants to follow up with you on DMs.

It gives me great joy to learn about any contribution I made.

I tried to be useful.

[American Debunk @AmericanDebunk]

Arguably Scott Adams’ greatest livestream video ever- The User Interface for Reality.

If you know, you know.

[Tim Ahmann @TimAhmann]

@ScottAdamsSays Praying for you and sending strength

[Tim Ahmann @TimAhmann]

@anymanfitness Congrats, this is the way 💪

[Tim Ahmann @TimAhmann]

@ScottAdamsSays Make @ScottAdamsSays Healthy Again

[Tim Ahmann @TimAhmann]

@jayplemons @drpatrick Make @ScottAdamsSays Healthy Again

[Tim Ahmann @TimAhmann]

@TweetsOfSumit