Nick Haschka

I love the chance to provide valuable feedback to software vendors we are forced to use like Avetta compliance software who sells free vendor compliance software to large enterprises and charges the vendors 8k/year for the privilege

@ihtesham2005 4.0 at MIT is a B average. They have a 5 point GPA scale. 🤣

A CS student at MIT finished his final semester with a 4.0 GPA. I found his NotebookLM workflow buried in a Reddit thread at 2am. He deleted it an hour later. Here's exactly what he was doing. He never uploaded lecture slides and asked for a summary. His first prompt was always: "Here are my notes, the textbook chapter, and last year's past papers. Give me the 3 ways professors trick students on exams with this concept. Then generate a problem that combines it with everything from the last 3 weeks." He wasn't studying the material. He was studying how the material gets weaponized against you. But the move that made me close my laptop and stare at the ceiling was his second one. He uploaded every single assignment he'd gotten wrong all semester. Then asked: "Find the pattern in my mistakes. What's the one concept I keep misunderstanding in different forms?" Every other student was using NotebookLM as a search engine. He was using it as a mirror. His third prompt was saved as a shortcut on his phone. "Based on my notes and these past papers, what topic am I least prepared for right now? Give me the 5 questions most likely to appear on my final that I can't answer yet." Three prompts. Every single week. While his classmates were rereading slides the night before finals, he already knew exactly where he was going to fail. Then he fixed it. He didn't study harder. He just never let himself feel comfortable.

@HockJohannes Time to start on my 10 year reflection piece eh? Glad to hear someone read it! For those who didn’t: searchfunder.com/post/consideri…

I still remember reading @NickHaschka’s searchfunder post about learnings from “4 years in the trenches”. It was instrumental in shaping our search back then. We’ve recently entered year 5 of operating ourselves and I noticed how close year 5 felt back then vs how far away search feels right now. It’s easy to think in phases of “search” and “operating”. In reality, it’s mostly operating. For many searchers (including me), you will run this business at a minimum 2-3x as long as any job you ever had if you came up through the finance / consulting tree. We definitely took all the lesson from the initial post about the importance of getting in the game. In hindsight now I would add the importance of being in location / industry you enjoy because your excitement and energy over 5-10 years will drive a lot of the outcome.

@noahzweben I absolutely love this

Announcing a new Claude Code feature: Remote Control. It's rolling out now to Max users in research preview. Try it with /remote-control Start local sessions from the terminal, then continue them from your phone. Take a walk, see the sun, walk your dog without losing your flow.

What lower middle market PE firms are out there investing in field services businesses with significant focus and ambition around AI enablement? Looking for the types who believe building your own tech is the future.

If you’re a college student they say it’s hard out there to get a job. BS. It’s never been easier. You just have to do the right things to get hired, which happen to be totally different today than even 1 year ago. Find a company you’d like to work at. Spin up Claude code or Google AI Studio and have it build a demo related to something the company does or a function you’d want to work in. If you don’t have any ideas of what to build, ask it to brainstorm for you. Tell it what you’re doing and why. It will literally do the work for you. This is 1000 better than a cover letter or resume. Send the owner/hiring manager your demo. They will be impressed. You will get hired.

Has there ever been a campaign to eliminate Form 571L - a county-level business property tax assessment on all tangible personal property? Literally every business in existence is committing fraud by even filling out this form. It's a total heist. Who voted for this?

we should start by eliminating Form 571L - a county-level business property tax assessment on all tangible personal property. Literally every business in existence is committing fraud by even filling out this form.

now, let’s get rid of socialism at home.

Anyone who thinks the California government has a revenue problem is mathematically illiterate or part of the fraud. California does not have a revenue problem. It has a spending problem. Politicians and their henchmen stealing tens of billions of dollars PER YEAR from our pockets. Ask yourself why they can’t pass an audit! Ask yourself why they change the reporting rules on your pension! Do you start to see a pattern? Endless reams of money keep falling through the cracks with no accountability into the waiting hands of thieves. When is enough, enough? California will soon start to lose its grip on being the most vibrant state in America. The billionaires will leave. The millionaires and middle class will too. And once they are done taxing us of everything we have, and none of us are left, they will tax you. Now, if you’re frustrated about crime, healthcare and education you should be. I am, too: our approach to these issues is trash. Our results on these issues are also trash. So fix the problem: kick out the people who run the kleptocracy. Elect real leaders who are competent, firm, tough and high agency. But no matter what you do, if you keep asking for politicians to take people’s money, you are firmly part of the fraud not part of the solution…and everyone sees you.

If you've got young kids here's a holiday tradition worth copying: I take all the kids to the dollar store and they shop for presents for everyone. Typically each kid spends $5-10 total. They collaborate on parent gifts and hide their gifts to each other. They make all the decisions, do checkout, wrap and give the gifts themselves (sometimes with help from siblings). Starts at age 4. It's one of the most memorable experiences they have each Christmas.

@Sam_Rosati Agree and tired of hearing AI will destroy software developer jobs. Total nonsense.

@NickHaschka Those with dev experience will always have options

I’ve talked to several SMB owners in the last few weeks who are hiring their first internal software developer. These businesses previously never hired developers, but when dev work ROI goes 100x+ like it has, dev jobs don’t go away, they pop up in new places.

💯 if you’re still working directly in the AI apps and copy-pasting back and forth, you’re leaving 10x productivity capability on the table

This has been true for me!

Looking to meet leaders and engineers working in corporate IT and IT services building data center infra. Dm me if that’s you or you know ppl who can help! linkedin.com/posts/nhaschka…

When you do business with the government, let them know when they’re failing to meet your expectations about how they do business. Tell them you expect more from them. Because they won’t hear it from their bosses. Most people just roll over… ‘well it’s the government, of course it’s screwed up.’ Nothing will ever get better if you aren’t vocal about what you want to see them fix.

One of my favorite hacks for improving important comms emails is to put the following prompt into chatgpt or gemini. "Smart brevity this: <paste in email I wrote>" it's pretty darn reliable @SmartBrevity

Many of our techs take their trucks home. We have a pesky HOA one of our techs lives in that constantly calls to complain about the truck … imo these are losers who don’t do real work showing who they are. What can I say that will shut them up?

@sweatystartup Bay Area is absolutely booming, best local economy we’ve seen in many years. Who knows how long it last but sure feels fun right now.

We're in a silent recession. What I'm seeing: 1) Real estate struggling bad. None of my friends in this business are growing and many are going through very stressful situations trying to recap debt. 2) Home services are hungry. HVAC, plumbing, electrical in my area are slow and asking for work. 3) 5+ of my friends have gotten laid off in the last few months. A lot of talented folks too. 4) ECom getting crushed. Especially hunting, outdoor, etc. Consumer spending is way down. 5) Developers slowing way down so the entire trade sector is overstaffed. Great time to build or remodel. 6) My friend is a custom cabinet guy in Athens GA. For the first time in 20 years he's really hungry for work and doesn't have much on his schedule. 7) Recruiting is definitely slow compared to 2022 and even 2023. Businesses just not hiring / staffing their teams right now as a whole. Obviously certain industries are strong and businesses are still growing, as always, but not like 2022 where everyone was winning. What are you seeing out there?

We need an early career mechanical engineer who dreams of small business ownership to come to Norcal, and learn the ropes of smb operations. We'll teach you everything you need to know to run your own show one day (and help you get there). know anyone? call em out!