Amar Anand

My first @Medium post! Priorities when building your product: Utilities vs. Networks @amar/priorities-when-building-your-product-utilities-vs-networks-16aeeb70e9a3" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">medium.com/@amar/prioriti…

@lazereater @Divergent7651 Where do you get the scanner data from?

@Divergent7651 Sure. This is derived from the scanner data. This does not capture sales in untracked channels which include online and many smaller independent convenience, grocery or drug stores. As of Q2 more than half of $tpb ‘s NP sales were online.

Here is a summary of the latest scanner data that covers Q3 for $TPB. Note that the capture rate below does not adjust for wholesale or retail margins but gives a picture of how much of sales are in tracked channels.

@ramit Your friend is less wrong than you think. Professional photos that are obviously professionally taken in a single-day shoot comes across as extremely try-hard. Key is to have professional photos that look natural, which a very small percent of photographers do well

I had single guy friends in the 2010s who wanted to meet someone but refused to do a professional photo shoot for their profile because it was “weird” Some people are more committed to their internal story than getting what they want

@akramsrazor $CLBT

@visakanv Funny —t he highest form of human intelligence combining empathy, theory of mind, and cleverness

What are the emotional equivalents to “smart”, “sharp”, “clever”, “intelligent” etc? What adjectives would you use to describe someone who is emotionally savvy?

@AggieCapitalist My understanding was True Wind owns 18% of sun corp because True Wind wants them to spin out their CLBT stake and sun corp doesn’t want to (not sure why though been a minute since I took a look). I wonder if they wouldn’t want to sell it for same reasons

@amar Hm, I think they would want it/welcome it. A PE firm True Wind owns 18% of Sun Corp and 6% of CLBT...

Top buyout candidates: $ECN CN (most likely by JV partner $SKY) $PHIN (most likely by $APO) $TTAM (most likely by $CRH) $FLYW (most likely by large strategic FinTech or a bank) $FIVN (most likely by partner $CRM) $POWL (by a larger strategic) $RTO (PE consortium) $CLBT (by $AXON)

@ramit What’s your rational for city owned grocery stores?

I agree with 4.5 of these

@ValerieLi88 Run clubs or pickleball

One thing I don’t see being addressed enough is how to combat loneliness in SF. Esp as a founder. I know it’s a slightly uncomfortable and vulnerable topic, but me and my close friends share the same sentimate. It’s very small, weirdly quiet, with horrendously homogogous population. Not much entertainment, not much excitement (the only ones come in the form of new GPT releases). 99% of people around me are tech founders/engineers. If you don’t mention AI, B2B, Manos, and shit on Gemini at least twice before noon—you’re irrelevant. You can’t sit with us. How I see people combat it is - flying back to new york (guilty🙋🏻‍♀️), getting a dog (my cofounder @JoelRitossa ), or trying to find a gf/bf at another AI agent demo night (have yet to see one success). But I want to go to a concert with friends and just vibe. I want late-night conversations where I can actually open up and share struggles and fears. I just want to enjoy being a real human and connect with other real humans.🥺

@star_annise that kindergarten rizz

My coworker pretends to hate me, but he’s been copying my mannerisms and phrases

@CXCarroll Taxes

This boggles my mind. Imagine being retirement age and having a chance to sell equities at all time highs and buy treasuries at 5%. How do you not do that trade?

@FintwitFella @compoundpapi Consider putting a covered collar on if valuation gets too crazy. Sell some oom calls to buy some oom puts. Pretty tax-efficient if you have a super low basis.

@compoundpapi I think this is the way. I’m coming at it from an ingrained mindset of active mgmt and relative performance. Can lead to over thinking

@shreyas BTW I remember a time that you didn’t disagree with me. There’s a reason Dan gets prematurely promoted and Jessie founds a successful company 😉

@amar Probably. FWIW, in one on one advising settings, I find it better to advise people based on a thorough understanding what they want to achieve in their career & life vs. giving 1 standard advice. The latter is available everywhere, the former is rare & priceless.

For highly ambitious, talented, entrepreneurial product people in their 30s: it is counterproductive to create your inner professional identity around things like “I create awesome OKRs” or “I send great status updates” or “I respond quickly on Slack” or “I know the Kano model (and all my peers don’t)” or “I talk to 5 customers/week”, etc. etc. All of these are mere proxies. They are not the main thing. Often they are very poor proxies. If you must create an identity, consider making it about building winning products & successful businesses. That is the main, non-negotiable thing. This is a powerful reframing because, once you internalize it, you will see that most of the activities, qualities, and labels incentivized by large groups do little to secure success for your product & your company. Of course, you will still have to do some of these nonsense, low leverage activities. But you will stop getting the dopamine rush you get today with these activities. And that is a great first step that many product people never take. After you take this first step, you will begin to get more excited & energized by activities that actually determine your product’s success. These activities are not always glamorous & cool. And most of the time, your peers will be confused about why you aren’t doing the things everyone else is doing. Some jealous & cutthroat peers might even complain vocally. But you won’t care because you know exactly what game you’re playing, and why. You are playing to win, while everyone else is busy chasing their next dopamine hit to just get through their workday.

@karrisaarinen @pp3383 Overall depends if you’re a network (multi-player product) or a utility (single-player product). Networks win on size / network effects. Utilities win on quality Priorities when building your product: Utilities vs. Networks @amar/16aeeb70e9a3" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">medium.com/@amar/16aeeb70…

@karrisaarinen @pp3383 2) Lyft vs Uber Lyft launches true ride sharing ~9 months before Uber (uber was black car only). Uber raised a war chest and out spent Lyft to outgrow them. Dried up a lot of the growth capital in the space

For decades, startups have been told to prioritize growth over everything else. Profitability was seen as a unambitious or even wrong. Profitably is something you worry about later. Why worry now when money and valuations are easy to come by? But that thinking was always flawed in my mind. Growth based on excessive spend is not sustainable by nature and profitability isn't a unambitious; it's about controlling your own destiny. It means you don’t have to rely on investors for survival. It means you can focus on your unaltered vision and mission without distraction. And once you experience it, it’s hard to imagine doing things any other way. With @linear I wouldn't want to go back to the existential threat you have relying on investors funding you. I believe the future will belong to the "The Profitable Startup", the founder mode led, small elite teams. You can still raise, be ambitious but it's going to be on your terms.

@shreyas Completely agree

@shreyas Probably where we disagree. If someone in their 30s with some financial stability, true ambition, talent, and entrepreneurial mindset asked me for advice, I would recommend starting a company or putting themselves in a position to start one (EIR, part-time product work, etc.)

@amar That’s unfortunate. While I understand the sentiment and empathize with the experience, I suggest that folks find ways to make it work despite the challenges that larger companies will present to them. There are upsides to working in larger companies and there are downsides too.

@shreyas I do and and it didn’t work very well for me until I started my own company🤷🏾‍♂️

@amar Best to demand excellence of oneself. It’s amazing how much one can achieve simply with that.

@shreyas To elaborate: 1) Expecting excellence of your stakeholders will piss them off 2) PMs have no authority to coach up / manage out low performers 3) If you do manage to create an amazing product, it will get poached by a peer / superior who spends their time managing perception

@shreyas Yeah I couldn’t quite tell what you meant by entrepreneurial. If you’re founding your own company, completely agree. If you’re working for the nth series D company that claims they have an entrepreneurial culture, I think your tweet can be misleading.