• building consumer social apps • vc warm intros @pollenround • alum @spc
Los Angeles, CA
Joined February 2013
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re: BeReal
when BeReal was killing it a couple years back, i got many DMs from investors i had pitched to/raised from for my first startup called one minute. it was ~identical to BeReal's mechanism (notif based photo/video submission) but from 2015.
i told them all the same thing:
"i wouldn't invest. my startup one minute died because most average consumers don't consistently have exciting moments to share every single day. and nothing tech/product wise could sustainably change the existing behavior when i tried."
its demise was not from lack of capital (raised from greylock, michael birch, and many other wonderful investors). it was entirely from the inability to preserve retention.
in the beginning, it had the same crazy rise just like BeReal. on day 1, it gained 50K+ users out of nowhere. i sucked at marketing then, but people were just clicking with the funky concept itself. it was growing on its own because when one person receives the notification, they would scream "one minute" in their class, and 10+ people would take it together.
but i wasn't sustainable. there are two types of inventions: the type that sparks and dies, and the other type that survives and thrives.
it's hard enough to catch the lightning, but you have to capture it in your bottle. only psychos like me stick with consumer social. it's not as hard as space tech ofc, yet really elusive and hard to predict.
it was hard then, it is still hard now.
for pre pmf consumer social, no VC no founder can show you the ways. none.
if anyone claims they are “consumer social gurus” tell them to go eat ass.
even the instagram founders tried building one from 0 to 1 again (artifact) but folded -they were the only free agents other than myspace tom. naval tried. marc andreessen tried long ago. the list goes on including the young super novas who garnered tens of millions in downloads in matter of weeks, folded.
there is no advisor who can teach you the ways into long term pmf - i don’t mean tactical growth material. the real dna of a new david who can take on the goliaths.
there are likely less than 10 people in the world who might even have any clues, most are still running their companies: jack dorsey, mark zuck, evan spiegel, but even if all of them were to form a company together and try there is higher chance of flopping than not.
you are the best in your world view. just observe the culture out there in the wild and shoot your shots. now is the best time in decades to build in consumer social. so we might as well try.
yes cfo turning into ceo for frontier tech companies is ofc the only way to save it
New: Some members of Nvidia’s board favor appointing Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress as interim CEO
semafor.com/article/11/11/20…
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this was surgically written for jensen
Had a little time on my hands this morning to do some writing… send along to someone you know who may benefit
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“Practical principles to counter a modern-day coup/psyop/struggle session”
1) Own what you did but fiercely resist accommodating the mob, resist owning half-truths or actions/behaviors you didn’t do.
2) The op is not about your past actions, it’s about your enemies and this event as their opportunity
3) No matter how bad it gets, nothing is as bad as it seems.
4) Find the enemies at the very root of the op and find every creative problem-solving tool at your disposal to neutralize them.
5) People will throw their grandmother under the bus if they believe doing so will protect their reputation. They can become highly useful idiots in the op. Their power and access must be fiercely and quickly cut off.
6) Do not hesitate in cutting off anyone you suspect of disloyalty.
7) Build a team of close and loyal patriots and have one of them run a dedicated, well-resourced war room to put the rebellion to rest.
8) Use your patriots and regular meditation to buoy your psychological resistance to the op.
9) Your enemies aren’t as smart or hard working as you. Outsmart and outwork them as a way of life until the op is over.
10) Think about the op as if it were in the past. What are the difficult things you procrastinated on or avoided that would have stopped the op? Do them.
11) Never be ashamed of the op. Business as usual. Continue on with optimism and joy in your everyday work and its mission.
12) Download telegram and use it as your messaging application for all sensitive communications.
this comes up over and over again in @FoundersPodcast
great founders are not replaceable especially S+ tiers like jensen huang.
SV used to routinely replace founders of startups with “professional” ceos and look how they all ate shit.
You’d think we’d have learned from Steve Jobs and Travis Kalanick that one does not just simply replace the founder…
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people thinking nvidia can just run the same without jensen are brainless.
imagine michael schumacher at his prime racing F1 at full speed.
mid track you swap the driver to your uber driver.
F1 car: nvidia =
michael schumacher: jensen huang
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if this happens, dumping all my nvidia and all in on spacex.
nvidia is nothing without its jensen
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zuck being unfuckable by the board is a good reference for the current nvdia/jensen situation.
it was only possible because facebook grew too fast for investors to even negotiate against zuck.
it was zuck’s way or high way and unfortunately it is extremely rare (snap was similar afaik)
why @Meta is so formidable boils down to one simple fact.
zuck is structurally engineered to sit on the throne forever til he decides to step away.
in short, nobody can fuck with him at meta. no investors, no stock prices, not even his wife can stop him.
napoleon once said “men are only controlled by two things: fear and self interest.”
well, zuck has no fear, and his self interest of world domination is vast.
he can be as nimble as a startup can be even at the cost of short term sacrifice.
VR was a flop? i don’t think so. they probably learned far more about consumer appetite for VR space than any standing company in existence and we will know it when the time is right.
colossal loss from that direction? doesn’t matter. even if he lost everything on a bet, instagram facebook whatsapp will generate infinite cash to stand again.
plus, nobody can fuck with him. board, public, nobody. and he’s not the shy and safe type.
remember when timeline rolled out? people were signing petitions to undo it. zuck did it anyway and it became the bread and butter of the company.
elon has preemptively deployed his seed round so wide that i forget who he is even currently with or what his marital status even is at any given time.
once jensen survives this arc, might be worth benchmarking elon.
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sitting in a uber ride (mustang) and saw that the driver didn’t have his hands on the wheel so thought ‘mustang has fsd??’
turns out he just didn’t have his hands on the wheel at that moment.
praying for a safe arrival lol (hands are back on the wheel)
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interesting how the biggest webtoon company (naver webtoon) is starting to push the character ai angle harder recently.
directionally very right since they already have tons of characters and existing world views.
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it’s time to reimagine entrepreneurship as a creative pursuit of art and play over lifetime, rather than a cutthroat race over the size of the pie.
one piece author had decided on how the story would end decades ago. the series was supposed to be a 5y long piece, but he improvised a lot on his way towards the end game, and turned it into an adventure of his life time.
the series has become the world’s most popular manga of all time.
if you gotta suffer to birth something, why not suffer while telling your own story. this episode reinforced that lesson on my spirit.
thank you for this episode @davidsenra
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damn @FoundersPodcast covering oda the author of one piece.
how can one not listen to this episode
apple is rarely the first to things. they specialize in coming in later and taking it all.
iphone was way after windows phone
apple watch was way after samsung watch
siri is not late as long as your iphone is in your pocket.
NEW in Power On: Apple CEO John Ternus held a closed-door meeting with Craig Federighi in the last few weeks, pushing his software chief to accelerate Apple’s AI road map and move beyond Siri improvements amid concerns about falling behind rivals. bloomberg.com/news/newslette…
i wish apple had launched an AI centric ring or Airpods rather than the hamburger phone and the touch macbook
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