don’t let this place fool you into thinking we aren’t the luckiest people in the world that we get to make things for other people who actually use the things we make if you made something today, thank you. if you used something (or bought!) someone made, thank you

Progress update

I need a maker palate cleanser this weekend I am going to build something new completely fresh not an existing idea I’ve been incubating, something silly and maybe even dumb just to feel the joy of hello world instead of maintenance

whispers: oh good, I’m not alone

I am the king of supplementation – or used to be. I've given it up, every last supplement. Here is my story why. worksinprogress.co/issue/aga… I wager that few people have supplemented more enthusiastically than me, or have subscribed to so many fad or esoteric diets. I have munched thumb-sized multivitamins. I have eaten ice cream and orange juice before bed to boost my overnight metabolism. I have chowed down on offal of all kinds – nature's multivitamin – for my skin, hair, and even my sleep. I have even consumed individual amino acids, for example glycine, a slightly sweet protein component prominent in skin and bone but not muscle meat, which people online claim improves their sleep. I have done it all. But I am here to tell you: you need not. In fact, my long-time rival @StuartJRitchie, who has always told me that supplementation is foolish, pointless, madeup, and fake, was more right than wrong when he claimed, again and again, that 'you just piss it oot'. I have put away my heavily researched list of the ideal supplements, I have given up looking. Why? Because 90% of 'studies' are BS, and you should simply ignore them. They are so often wrong that entire bodies of research often find the opposite of truth – as proven by later evidence. Read my first column in @WorksInProgMag: worksinprogress.co/issue/aga…

marry a nerd and you’ll never be bored a day in your life this Moog modular synthesizer is @MisterMorrill’s latest gear acquisition and it’s likely he’ll figure out how to hook it up to an LLM by later tonight

I made my first major job transition 7 years ago and it made me work through a lot of feelings at the time. As I make another one now, I can really feel the lessons and growth from that time. blog.alexmiller.net/posts/on…

There are only 130 US tech companies, public or private, valued at $10B or more (decacorns). That’s roughly 20 to 30 new companies per decade, for the last five decades. This year alone, with a quarter to go, there have been 42 decacorns minted privately. Either this is the most economically transformative event since the industrial revolution, or we’re getting a wee bit ahead of ourselves.

some thoughts I’ve collected from VC/LP dinner season: 1/ LPs are genuinely concerned about how quickly funds are deploying capital and this applies to both large funds in their portfolios and emerging VCs. the only difference is that mega funds have hot logos that allow them to keep vacuuming $$$ from everywhere, while for EMs, every new fundraise is an uphill battle (supported by early markups in the best cases). 2/ many emerging GPs spend a surprising amount of time (and deck slides) trying to “educate LPs” or explain why “venture is broken,” rather than showing why founders would choose them and what their actual edge is. imho, it feels like these decks are designed for retail LPs and more institutional LPs see this as a low-quality signal (sometimes even as manipulative). 3/ there’s a growing number of funds moving away from solely pre-seed/seed strategies, mixing them with other instruments like growth secondaries or liquid assets (crypto, public equities, etc.) to provide better liquidity. I’m sure there’s a market for these strategies, but most LPs with EM mandates are fine with a clear secondaries model for VC's portfolio rather than an "overengineered fund strategy" that will fix the industry. 4/ surprisingly, there are plenty of genuinely high-quality GPs who struggle with fundraising (many pursue highly risky, non-consensus strategies driven by media/community/academia leverages) that are difficult to underwrite, while some "vibe-investors" raise pretty large funds. imho, relationships matter more than most people want to admit, and LPs are still largely intolerant of new approaches to founder sourcing and continue to buy "GPs' networks" and pedigrees. 5/ everyone talks about pricing discipline, but once you start reviewing SOIs, you realize how just a few managers actually (a) execute the strategy they pitch, while (b) avoiding investing in "tier-3 companies", and (c) generating some early markups. most GPs still pitch themselves as disciplined investors targeting sub-$10M/$20M valuations, yet somehow end up participating in $60–100M rounds bc "they don’t want to miss out on generational founders.”

BREAKING: The U.S. Space Force has selected SIX commercial companies to provide satellite tracking and surveillance capabilities that can be rapidly expanded during a military crisis. The companies selected for its Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve (CASR) are: 1. Anduril 2. LeoLabs 3. Slingshot Aerospace 4. Intrack 5. EOS (Australia) 6. NorthStar Earth & Space (Canada) The program gives the Pentagon access to commercial systems capable of detecting and tracking satellites, monitoring suspicious orbital maneuvers and identifying debris or spacecraft breakups. Modeled on the Air Force's Civil Reserve Air Fleet, CASR is designed to let the military increase its use of commercial space capabilities during wartime without having to build and maintain all the infrastructure itself. The six companies have received initial operational contracts, with additional providers and capabilities expected to be added over time. The Space Force is also considering satellite communications, launch services and spacecraft tracking and command as future additions. Contract values were not disclosed.

To be direct about it: every company that considers themselves a “tech” company is currently building a much worse version of something they could buy off the shelf, and furthermore they often have several teams competing on this front Then they launch it after 3-6 months of building in a silo and can’t get their colleagues to use it for entirely predictable reasons Coding agents and their adjacent products are among the most competitive markets of all time. The benefits of a highly competitive market accrue to customers by virtue of this intense competition among suppliers. Econ 101 Is the internal team working on your agent platform really keeping pace with the market? Even if they put in the same hours (they don’t), they don’t have the breadth of customers and hard contact with the market to get the feedback necessary to make the product any good Big corporates that call their devs “IT” don’t delude themselves in this way. They buy the best, recognize their relative advantage (vendors will build almost anything for you because the competitive pressures demand it), and get back to work

asking a coworker a question without asking claude first is the new scheduling a meeting that could’ve been an email

super important honest advice to founders. if you are working on a dead end, get out. you don’t owe that to anyone, including investors (who regularly forgive and experience failure, and ideally care more about you doing your life’s work than a subpar outcome)

being present during meetings is really important to me in my coaching practice, and i built @groupthinkAI with that in mind

Large institutional companies can only exist longterm because they build Highly Structured Environments (HSEs), which get employees addicted to college-like artificial structure. They get new grads in young and train them so that they can only really deliver value within such a system, making it hard to do other things. One of the best reasons to work with a startup is to avoid this and to contact raw reality much more frequently.

When you build stuff for live meetings and calls you do NOT realize how much of your life will be testing live meetings and calls. You get it intellectually but you just do not understand how many of them you will start in a day, week, month or year and the latency of testing