Julien✌🏻️

1/ there is this sense when you are young that your accomplishments need to be a list of things that seem impressive to others. A list of several items you did. This isn't actually right, so here is another suggestion.

for the CEOs that are vibe coding apps going "but i don't know what Claude is doing," just remember, you didn't know what your developers were doing either

just because people CAN do it themselves, it doesn't mean they actually will

@Austen It’s the creative arts AI that’s supposedly slop. The code is likely fantastic

I beat a North Korean on chess.com the other day. I felt like a warrior for the West

@devchhatbar lol got it

if everything in your business is running smoothly, that's a red flag. growth creates chaos, and chaos creates opportunities. running smoothly = you're not pushing hard enough or growing fast enough. the mess isn't a sign something is wrong, it's a sign something is working. lean into it. broken startups are the ones actually growing

Mistakes you will make in your life and what to do about them (1) YOU WILL LEND SOMEONE MONEY AND ACTUALLY EXPECT IT BACK Do not do this. If you lend someone money, just act like you took them out for a beer, a meal, or sometimes, a weekend Airbnb. Just let it go. Otherwise it will create resentment, sometimes on both parts, and it will put power dynamics into the relationship where there is none. Instead, just give it away if you can at all handle it. Just assume it’s gone forever. Now, if you have another person that’s trying specifically to get out of the hole, and they’re like “can you lend me X, and I’ll repay specifically Y,” just accept those terms. You can still forget about it, but then the lack of repayment is on their conscience, not on yours. You don’t need more weight on your mind or your heart. Just let it go.

Netflix and Amazon will NEVER be your startup's blueprint. they're outliers, and honestly, copying them is one of the laziest things a founder can do. your market is different, your customers are different, and your startup's path will look nothing like theirs. stop looking up and start looking inward. focus on your market, your product, your customers, and become your own outlier.

Years ago I spoke to Nir at a coffee shop, and I remember him saying so clearly, I've done alright, but I haven't written a forever book like Atomic Habits. Well Nir, now you have. Well done.

20 years in business taught me this the hard way: if you embrace vulnerability as an entrepreneur, you’re already far ahead of most business owners. the more I understand leadership, the more I realize there are layers to vulnerability. admitting what you don’t know builds trust, humanizes your leadership, and shows your team you’re willing to learn and grow alongside your team. stop acting like you know everything. then people will actually believe you when you talk

@thefrenkel yeah and you can't tell that while lookikng at the horizon

@julien the horizon keeps moving anyway. the value is who you become while chasing it

commit long-term, because most people quit when it gets tough. you have to be prepared to outlast everyone else - because clarity, success, and real impact only come with time. as tobi from shopify said, “companies are not built to be short term. they take a long time to build, and you have to care for them for a long time.” decide you’re not doing this for two years but for 5, 10, or 20, and you’ll outlast the people who give up when it gets tough.

@jesslivingston it's charming

I often cringe when I see what an overly expressive face I have. But God, do I wish I knew who I was reacting to in this photo. I need more of this person (or people)!

in pursuit is actually enough - you don't need to even hit it

@andrewchen Good insight

the magic of cowork and openclaw and other AI products is that they replace our giant row of infinite browser tabs And lol - no, don't feel guilty, I have too many tabs too. AI makes it so that every workflow that required 4 browser tabs and a spreadsheet is getting collapsed into one AI-native experience Just as one quick example- think about how you used to research a person or a company: LinkedIn tab, X tab, Google tab, notes doc, slack open. now one prompt does it in 10 seconds. the "tab count" of a workflow is basically a proxy for how much AI can compress it if your product eliminates 6 tabs and a copy-paste loop, users will like it. If you can create a whole series of these workflows then your users will absolutely love it. Thus the biggest opportunities are workflows where people currently alt-tab 20+ times per task. Sales, recruiting, research, compliance, procurement. Boring? yes. Massive? also yes. But this is why these agentic tools are going to crush AI doesn't need to be superintelligent to be wildly useful. it just needs to be good enough to close the tabs

@garrytan Fantastic

Brokenness One whitepill on AI is that an incredible amount of the brokenness in our world is from irrationality: waste, limited attention, poor human systems that are abused or gamed with limited recourse. But intelligence on tap means all of those can go away. The brokenness will slowly but surely give way to functioning rational systems that are better for human beings. Think of the worst DMV in the world: slow, you have to pay bribes, the front door is not obvious, the workers are corrupt, the whole point of the DMV is to keep bad drivers from driving but let's say they are so bad at their jobs they manage to fail at that. It's a lack of rationality. The managers can't manage. The leadership doesn't care. The government is rotten. (Sounds like California, no?) Now think of the best one: it's orderly, it does the job, it functions, it helps people who should drive, it rejects those who shouldn't, everyone is safe, and nobody is inconvenienced more than they absolutely must. These are two very different visions. Guess what helps push society towards the 2nd? AI. That's a vision of the world that we can build. One that works for one another, instead of mired in brokenness.

If Travis K grows a mustache we are officially back

anyone who thinks billionaires are working hard for more money have their heads screwed on backwards

@TurnerNovak he seems like a cool guy

about to go meet Claude

@Noahpinion i guess that was the end of the date huh

On a date last year, a girl asked me what I'd do if she turned into a worm, and I told her I'd take her over to Anthropic and have them create an AI model to translate worm speech