Pascal Levy-Garboua

@Briviagra D'accord sur presque tout. Ensuite tu regarderas ton salaire différemment quand tu auras une famille avec plusieurs enfants.... mais tu as le temps... et ton constat sur l'internalisation de cette théologie est tellement juste.

Hamas Declares War: In a bizarre twist of events, Hamas has officially declared war on me today, calling me a “suspicious figure,” after its leader, Basem Naim, came out against me because a Board of Peace official had retweeted a post of mine, triggering a cascade of events by the terror group and its online armies. Naim said that I am a “suspicious person” who has maligned Hamas and that my condemnation of the terror group is “fascist, racist, and extremist” because, according to Naim, my depictions of Hamas are “inaccurate.” He attacked the Board of Peace official for retweeting me, questioning how a “suspicious” person like me could be taken seriously. Hamas’s media office then issued statements on my page, while their outlets published articles inciting against me and accusing me of “marketing Zionist projects to eliminate the resistance and deport Gaza’s population,” all of which began trending on Gazan social media. Hamas didn’t just go after me; they also viciously attacked the UAE and its leadership, claiming I am “wholly financed by the Emirates” and an “agent of media empires they control.” They even targeted the Realign For Palestine initiative, falsely alleging that the UAE Foreign Ministry funds me (they don’t). Hilariously, they added that I write for “Zionist platforms like Haaretz to malign the resistance” and call for peace and reconciliation – interestingly, I’ve only ever written for Haaretz twice in 2017 and 2024. Unfortunately, attacks by Hamas’s leaders and government against me triggered an avalanche of online hate by the group’s members and terrorists, including those who were calling for there to be “operations like the 1972 Munich attack to deal with agents and those who seek to weaken the resistance in Western countries,” in reference to me. All of this started because of a post that called out Hamas for not allowing the construction of new accommodations for displaced Gazans near the Rafah area beyond the “Yellow Line,” and because I said that, like many other conflicts, civilians must not be left along with combatants if there is ever to be hope for the removal of terrorists and the reconstruction of Gaza for its people. Hamas knows exactly why my words hit a nerve. They know that moving civilians out of the red zone they control and creating a new reality beyond the “Yellow Line” with better housing, health, education, and security under an International Stabilization Force and a new Gaza police force is the only strategy that will weaken them. They fear any plan that removes their leverage, their ability to weaponize Gazans suffering, and their access to aid and resources. So if Hamas and Basem Naim want a war, they have one. And I’m only getting started. Now that we know what triggers them, this is precisely the strategy the Arab world, the international community, the United States, the European Union, the Board of Peace, Israel, and the United Nations must pursue, maximally and without hesitation.

@mdudas @RagingBitcoin Anything you want to share?

@paulichon Ou la plus chere. Une oeuvre d'art.

C’est l’une des tesla la moins cher. Moins cher qu’une Renault 5 électrique.

@matth1360 LaMinute, on sait que c'est Mehdi derriere.

Entre lui et la minute OM. Ils sont en mission contre Greenwood. La question c’est qui leur demande de faire ça? Car la c’est trop gros

@BetterCallMedhi Et tu as tous les haters du PSG aussi qui y vont pour le faire chier. Plus les bots de NAK.

je ne suis pas forcément fan de Mbappé mais là on dépasse le stade du sport pour entrer dans une hystérie collective inquiétante pour moi on est en plein dans ce que René Girard appelait le mécanisme du bouc émissaire, en gros quand une communauté est en crise ou frustrée, elle converge vers une victime unique pour évacuer sa propre violence en réalité Mbappé est devenu le réceptacle des échecs de tout un système et on sacrifie l'individu pour ne pas avoir à regarder les failles collectives du club ce que je trouve vraiment choquant c’est qu’on traite un humain comme une variable d'ajustement émotionnelle

@AlanaDLevin @firstc0in would be interested to read

Hot take: it's arguably too early for compute to become the next great commodity market @firstc0in, me, and some of the other folks at Variant have been working on an essay about why. Comment or dm if you want to read it (and/or tell us why we're wrong)

@gaganbiyani How can Maven avoid these traps on the market side and on the innovation side?

People have asked me how I feel about Udemy’s sale to Coursera. Honestly, I’m kinda pissed about it. I want to be clear - I’m grateful for the opportunity to start and benefit from Udemy’s success. It changed my life. But there’s another side to Udemy. A story of what could have been. After our Series B, founders owned less than 30% of the company. Our investors took over and installed their own CEO to run it. We all liked this new CEO and honestly, for years it looked like a brilliant move. The company kept growing and growing. They launched B2B and built a $500M ARR business. Eventually, the company IPO’ed for $3B. Yet all along there were clear cracks under the surface. Over Udemy’s history, there have been 7 CEO’s. The board replaced the second CEO with dud after dud. I’d often try to meet with the board or the new CEO, and was completely ignored. Eren had influence as Chairman of the Board but Oktay and I were so ignored they didn’t even invite us to the IPO. LOL WTF. There are like 50+ people invited to these things and nobody thought: “oh maybe we should invite the people who fucking invented the thing we’re all celebrating.” It shows how little respect they had for founders and for product innovation as a discipline. I think they wanted a CEO they could control, a buttoned-up suit instead of a brash founder/CEO that is risk-taking, visionary, but a bit of a pain. For awhile, it looked like it didn’t even matter who was CEO - the company was run by the incredibly talented team that reported to them anyways. Well, it worked until it didn’t. The company made no major product innovations for 15 years. Instead, they took the original idea (video-based courses) and sold it in every place imaginable. It got us to $800M run-rate. That’s no joke; that takes serious execution and a great team that hustled hard to win the market. But eventually the consumer business stopped growing. The B2B business has now flattened out as well. Meanwhile, Coursera was catching up. Original Coursera was a far worse product than Udemy, but it got a ton of press. Learning ivory tower bullshit from academics doesn’t get you a real education, but it does create prestige. They raised from better investors on better terms, and had better leadership. Udemy to this day has more revenue than Coursera, but Coursera won the court of investor opinion. They got higher multiples from both private and public markets. Coursera innovated heavily. They added corporate courses to their university catalog, built fully-online degree programs, and offered a B2B competitor that kept Udemy on its toes. Still, the Udemy B2B business (and team) out-performed and so the two companies were deadlocked. Coursera was better at B2C, Udemy at B2B. A merger was inevitable. But WHY IN GODS NAME did we sell to Coursera instead of the other way around? Why are the combined companies under $3B in market cap? Three reasons: First, edtech didn’t live up to its promise. While these two companies had solid revenue and cash positions, their growth slowed, and public markets balked. This meant compressed multiples and significantly lower valuations. Second, the companies stopped innovating. They are selling a product to businesses that their customers don’t love. They were category leaders, but they lead the category into mediocrity. They captured a significant share of learning and development (L&D) spending, but L&D as a whole actually lost budget within their organizations. That’s Udemy’s fault, and it doesn’t even realize it. That brings me to my final point: I personally believe Udemy traded upside opportunity for downside risk. Us founders were unproven and young. We made lots of mistakes, including fighting amongst ourselves. A good investor would have supported us through it because they believe founders drive the highest long-term returns. Instead, they brought in outside CEOs to replace us. I sometimes wonder if they recognize this error; everyone makes mistakes and maybe they learned from it. Either way - the consequences are real. By ignoring the founders, Udemy failed to innovate, which led to slowing growth which led to mediocre public market results. Furthermore, they don’t have a good evangelist and public markets don’t like a headless horse. I sold my Udemy stock awhile ago. I think the merger was critical for both companies’ survival. Now, though, the new combined entity needs to innovate again. On B2B, Coursera needs to help L&D become the heroes of the AI era so the entire market starts growing again. On B2C, they need to build the most educational AI product on the planet. (I’d focus on the former, since the latter is a lot harder and riskier). Coursera can still achieve our original vision and likely build a $10B+ company in the meantime. Even though I’ve got no stake in its future, I’m mission-driven and I REALLY hope they figure it out. The current education system sucks and the world deserves something better.

@tomosman Be careful the local propaganda from shiite influencers. And none of us were on Apple Maps in Lebanon 2 months ago.... On a separate note: x.com/MarkIssaTexts/…

@2pasc I see them in Google Maps just not Apple.

Ok i immediately saw this and thought bullshit. So did this screen recording and errrr it's pretty strange. Were there any Lebanese villages / small towns on Apple Maps before?

@tomosman Apple Maps doesn't show the name of any town in Lebanon except for Beyrut and Tyr - but it shows restaurants or local town features. Weird indeed. But it is true even in the north where there are not combats, so I would not see it as a conspiracy or anything like it.

@2pasc and Apple Maps?

@JoshuaRosenthal So no college for your 3?

@2pasc Actually, I'm in that exact situation [x3]. You don't have to prepare for 4 years, but can actually build a biz w/o being an engineer [aka how not just engineers use phones/web]. So learn the non-engineer way to AI build her own biz AND explore 'side threads' of her interests.

The university path, as you know it, was a 40-year blip / delayed adolescence midcurve function of the 'Great Digitization' w/ 'analysts' turning manual ops to bits, but w/o real, global compute. The future is back to historic real builds AND real compute for IRL biz [barbell].

@tomosman You have only lived on islands...you don't know what it is to have shitty neighbours :-)

@2pasc Insanity on all fronts.

Don't worry it's ok because they told them to evacuate before they bomb them. If anything the patients of these Hospitals should be thanking them. Any suggestion that this isn't entirely just, for our own protection and by the command of god is antisemitic.

@bznotes Ask christian Lebanese folks what they think about removing Hezbollah....

Somebody needs to stop the crazy Israelis. Enough.

@JesseTinsley Now the issue is that a $2m ARR SaaS with $100k EBITDA never would sell for less than $2m unless the founder is forced to by tough circumstances.

@JesseTinsley Besides SaaS is under long-term cash flow threat from AI itself, so if you pay 4x EBITDA, you need massive EBITDA increase to make your money. I am testing it out, but it is likely that the opportunity sits more for larger SaaS with less EBITDA, but a higher revenue base.

Interestingly also the easiest way to becoming a Billionaire. Thats how I did it in less than ~2 years. Buy SaaS companies , integrate, create ebitda, rinse and repeat at scale. Literally no one else is doing this because the private credit market is in shambles right now.