Yalon David Gordon

Product @unit_co_. Prev: Rivet Health (acq.), @ibm, and @columbia. I like to think about weird + hard problems that affect daily life.

[Itai Damti @itaidamti]

Today, we’re announcing that we’ve doubled our annual transactions volumes in the last 12 months, and reached $100 billion.

This is an especially sweet moment for us. It took us 5.5 years to reach the first $50 billion.

What I’m most proud of is the character and unusual choices that led to it.

We chose the most valuable problems, not the easiest ones. We saw huge value in building a system DEEP and BROAD enough to replace 10-15 vendors that banks + fintech programs typically use, starting with a core system. Many people that had 10x our knowledge tried to help and tamper our ambitions: “why build a core system?”, “why operations and not just tech?”, “why not partner with a vendor that already built a credit card ledger?”

Today, Unit could be installed on any bank - immediately. There is no dependency on legacy tech. All money movement happens directly with the Federal Reserve and card networks. Banks and the programs they power do business at scale, with 10x better security, oversight, and modularity.

We built heads-down while there was widespread skepticism. Until recently, the category of modern financial infrastructure has been attacked non stop. For years. People questioned it from every single angle: is it sound? Valuable? Sustainable? We weren’t phased. We had the field context that many skeptics didn’t have, and we saw the proof points every day.

We made changes along the way when they were needed. We took no shortcuts and turned down high-risk deals that could make us bigger.

Importantly, we put ourselves on an independent financial trajectory, so that we don’t have to take shortcuts OR depend on the opinions of others.

Proud of our team for the hard work and character. Grateful to our customers (old and new) that placed trust in us. And to millions of end-users who have access to better financial services... without knowing that Unit exists 😉

Back to work.

https://t.co/qVYsLIC72o

[Yalon David Gordon @yd_gordon]

@eeismann Great post. With features being commoditized in the AI era you’ve articulated what I think will become *the* competitive advantage left in software in the next few years

[Yalon David Gordon @yd_gordon]

Passover in Palo Alto:
1. Thought leader son
2. Contrarian son
3. Midwit son
4. Low agency son who doesn't even know how to ask a question!

[Yalon David Gordon @yd_gordon]

Getting hired as a wordcel PM and then acting like a jr dev with your Claude code seat is the new applying to Stanford as a communications major so you can transfer to CS your sophomore year

[Yalon David Gordon @yd_gordon]

Those who like running know that the first 3 miles of a run suck.

Those who don’t like running don’t regularly run > 3 miles so their experience of running is that it sucks.

Makes you wonder what else is like that

[Yalon David Gordon @yd_gordon]

Turns out it’s an engineering best practice to never schedule jobs for XX:00 or XX:30 because so much happens during those times that it overloads critical infrastructure

[Yalon David Gordon @yd_gordon]

A disproportionate # of world events have happened at XX:00 or XX:30

[Yalon David Gordon @yd_gordon]

Everyone wants to be in fintech

[no more docile users @WTTDOTM]

Lawyers are expensive, but *looking* like you have a lawyer is free.

Today, I'm happy to announce my latest project, Heavyweight! Heavyweight lets you take any complaint you have, and make it look like a scary legal document without ever actually claiming to be from a lawyer.

[Yalon David Gordon @yd_gordon]

Being extra nice to chat when you reeaaally need it not to hallucinate this time 👍

[Yalon David Gordon @yd_gordon]

I’m happy to share that I’ve joined @unit_co_ to build a new product in embedded finance.

If you're in Fintech and/or based in the TLV area I'd love to chat!

[Yalon David Gordon @yd_gordon]

Boy group chats

[Yalon David Gordon @yd_gordon]

@shaunmmaguire did you see this

[Yalon David Gordon @yd_gordon]

Boy group chats

[Yalon David Gordon @yd_gordon]

@jasonleowsg Learned this lesson the hard way.

I think we need new words for this.

“Minimum viable vision” = good enough to get real ARR

“Minimum viable tool??” = good enough to fully accomplish something valuable

[Jay Alto @theJayAlto]

it's called luck maxxing. luck is just randomness that goes your way. two variables you can control. increase your exposure to randomness by putting yourself out there. make it go your way by being irrationally resilient. do both and i guarantee your ‘luck’ will increase.

[Yalon David Gordon @yd_gordon]

A disproportionate # of world events have happened at XX:00 or XX:30

[Dani Grant @thedanigrant]

PMF is a lot easier to solve if you split it into 2 steps:

Promise Market Fit: Will people buy a product with your promise?

Product Market Fit: Once they buy & sign up, do they stay?

Once you have a promise people want, keep iterating until your product fulfills the promise

[Yalon David Gordon @yd_gordon]

While shipping features and managing tech debt can often seem at odds, this blog does a great job showing how you can sometimes do both. YMMV depending on product maturity https://t.co/RecYaSfgC7

[Yalon David Gordon @yd_gordon]

@Molson_Hart This is the X equivalent of smoking Tide Pods

[Syd Steyerhart @SydSteyerhart]

There's good evidence showing that people who believe they are lucky tend to have better outcomes. This cannot be overstated.

[Kyle Harrison @kwharrison13]

the more you learn about literally anything, the more shocked you become that anything works at all.