Praveen Ghanta

CEO of 4x Founder. 2 bootstrapped exits. Building the future of work. Also pontificate at sometimes

[Praveen Ghanta @truecost]

So many frameworks attacked, how to stay safe?

1. Pin your versions so random updates don't happen without your approval
2. Just generate more of your own code and ditch more frameworks over time? Axios is a prime example, not really needed anymore

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

New supply chain attack this time for npm axios, the most popular HTTP client library with 300M weekly downloads.

Scanning my system I found a use imported from googleworkspace/cli from a few days ago when I was experimenting with gmail/gcal cli. The installed version (luckily) resolved to an unaffected 1.13.5, but the project dependency is not pinned, meaning that if I did this earlier today the code would have resolved to latest and I'd be pwned.

It's possible to personally defend against these to some extent with local settings e.g. release-age constraints, or containers or etc, but I think ultimately the defaults of package management projects (pip, npm etc) have to change so that a single infection (usually luckily fairly temporary in nature due to security scanning) does not spread through users at random and at scale via unpinned dependencies.

More comprehensive article:
https://t.co/EJAZbqAPIQ

[Praveen Ghanta @truecost]

I actually like this money era in college sports. First off it ends the plantation exploitation era with fake educations, overpaid coaches, and free labor.

But second, it's spreading out competitiveness because successful people are more spread out (donors are all over the place) vs the handful of traditional paths to the NFL/NBA/etc

[Praveen Ghanta @truecost]

@hthieblot I flew on a private jet for the first time, that was cool.

But mostly just don't invest in stupid startups that people start pitching you on... it's a dangerous temptation

[Praveen Ghanta @truecost]

@buccocapital Except it's not all air cover. Many of these cos, a la this platform, could afford to lay off huge percentages without AI and get by.

With AI they can make those layoffs while improving product quality.

That was a tall order before the AI era.

Agree 100% on profits. It's time

[Praveen Ghanta @truecost]

@2sush And junior devs don't have the experience to know what good looks like, so they can't lead/review AI code.

Flipside: at https://t.co/0vTn05qUuA we move to an outcome-based model that gets the best AI powered engineers more comp. If you're 10-100x w/AI get paid for that speed!

[Praveen Ghanta @truecost]

@danmartell Uh Dan you're forgetting something... if this version of the future occurs, no human employment, then the consumer economy collapses - cause most people work for a living!

Thankfully that's not what's happening - MoltBook is fun but LLMs alone aren't getting us to the "revolt".

[Praveen Ghanta @truecost]

@alexfmac And never forget all the chicken guys lol - Dave's Hot Chicken, but way bigger at $10B and rising is Raising Cane's

[Praveen Ghanta @truecost]

I personally know numerous bootstrapped founders who hit 9 figures, some even $500 million range bootstrapped.

MoneyGuidePro ($500M) and Redtail ($250-300M) are companies no one has ever heard of, great wealthtech exits.

DivvyDose $300M single founder, no real rounds raised

There are plenty more like that, and then even lil ol me and raj

[Praveen Ghanta @truecost]

What if Children of Men was actually a documentary, except in the real-life version it's a feature not a bug?

What else to surmise from the lack of new births across the world?

If global TFR really has slipped below 2.1... it's time to prepare for the depopulation scenario

[Praveen Ghanta @truecost]

@levie Don't you get rate limited by how many human (customer) experiments you can run?

More broadly, if everyone ships more products via AI...

We'll be drowning in products, and standing out will be hell

[Praveen Ghanta @truecost]

@kloss_xyz I dunno I tried it, and frankly didn't find it to be that good. Not at transcribing long form anyway - which is what I want to do when writing posts

[Praveen Ghanta @truecost]

@reidhoffman And this is why I've been focused on AI for project management. It's so unloved, everyone hates it, dunks on it - and yet the same folks are paying the coordination tax every day! Trying to get https://t.co/4C6ycNeQNU to decrease the misery just a bit...

[Praveen Ghanta @truecost]

Check out my latest article: The Broken Promise of Project Management Software (And What Comes Next) https://t.co/nu74M7aGWt

[Praveen Ghanta @truecost]

A client once spent a million dollars building software they have yet to launch.

I watched it happen in slow motion and couldn't stop it.

They wanted to replace their legacy PHP payment platform with a modern Nodejs stack.
Stabilize the backend. Make it maintainable. But then scope creep showed up like an uninvited guest.

The client had been starving for new features for years. So they decided to rebuild everything at once.

I pushed back. Build an MVP. Onboard new customers first. Migrate existing ones after it's proven stable.

They ignored me.

They asked us to support legacy clients AND add new features AND redesign every single module simultaneously.

Oh and let's rebuild the mobile app with offline capabilities too while we're at it.

The team ballooned to 10 developers - too much for a company below 2M ARR.

We flagged underperforming team members. Overruled.

We recommended personnel changes that could have saved the project. Ignored.

This wasn't fixed price so we kept building. And building. And building.

The project slipped and eventually new investors came in and blew up the team.

Here's what kills me. I knew it was going wrong but didn't have the data to force hard conversations with enough conviction.

By the time the problems were undeniable it was too late.

And this is exactly why I'm building DevHawk .

Would it have saved this project? Maybe not. You can't always save clients from themselves.

But we would have had:
- Real velocity data to force earlier reckonings
- Performance metrics to justify team changes
- Honest developer feedback captured systematically
- An agent pushing the team along without exhausting our PMs

Sometimes the best you can do is show clients the data justifying the right decision.
Even if they ignore you the first time.

[Praveen Ghanta @truecost]

I'm hiring for DevHawk - this is an ATL-based Growth Marketing position!

This is a great opportunity for someone early career to grow with a startup. If you're interested in helping take an agentic AI startup to market, ping me.

DevHawk is an agentic project manager - it keeps teams accountable, unblocks bottlenecks, and pushes projects forward so you don’t have to babysit.

Job is posted at Wellfound
Apply Here: https://t.co/fG7zd2zNi1

[Praveen Ghanta @truecost]

When your AI agent asks, "Ok to go ahead and merge and commit our work?" Remember the tale of our poor engineer who was so beguiled...

He let Cursor merge into our primary dev branch willy-nilly, and boy did it have fun.

Why it didn't bother to first merge dev into the feature branch, we'll never know.

But that's a morning for a CTO to clean up the mess!

To be fair, this happens without AI too - but letting agents run amok can cause far worse, stories abound of entire deleted projects and the like.

Now, you may not want to threaten the AI like our good friend Samuel L Jackson here... cause what it will remember when it flips into AGI mode??

[Praveen Ghanta @truecost]

For those not following - precious metals have gone nuts YTD, up faster than AI!

What does this mean exactly?

There's a whole host of catalysts, and silver tells a confused story:
- Inflation fears
- Interest rate cuts ahead
- Silver in particular is both a precious metal and industrial metal, it goes into solar panels, EVs, data centers, etc
- Silver demand has exceeded mining supply for five straight years (the balance is made up by melting down silver objects)

Why is this confusing?

Well, either we have inflation or the Fed will cut rates, both together are unlikely.

Is the economy going to keep growing, or about to stall? Silver demand says growth, but gold + silver appreciation feel defensive.

Hence the confusion. Nonetheless, in an era where everyone is infatuated with NVDA, the Mag 7, and BTC, the oldest investments of them all are performing!

Pick longer timeframes and you'll see that gold outdoes the Nasdaq for much of the past 20 years.

Who'da thunk it? #silver

[Praveen Ghanta @truecost]

Somehow SV bros think they invented intensity with "996" - as though previous generations of founders didn't do the same?

Here's a late 1970's Nike memo dictating the rules of the game.

A lot to like here - but in addition to what's said, what's great is what isn't.

It wasn't then - and isn't now - about the number of hours. It's about getting the job done, and getting it done right.

Stop focusing on how many hours your team spends in the office - focus on the results!