Varun Singh

13.4K posts

Varun Singh banner
Varun Singh

Varun Singh

@VarunJuice

Founder & President @moveworks (acq. by @servicenow) , previously PM @facebook, founding team @sefaira (acq. by @sketchup) Meditations 5.20☕️

Katılım Mart 2009
328 Takip Edilen2.2K Takipçiler
Varun Singh
Varun Singh@VarunJuice·
Great point, but founder greatness is invariant of market performance IMO. Brian chesky is as great a founder as Vlad or Dylan.
Anu Hariharan@anuhariharan

To those commenting on Figma's stock price. Reminder from 2021 - When Robinhood fell at least 80% from its IPO price, investors thought they were toast. But that was far from the truth (see pic below). Great founders know to thrive in any market! Maintaining excellence is incredibly hard but NEVER bet against great founders. Founders who have seen pain know to grind much harder and survive and @zoink is exceptional at it.

English
0
0
1
259
Varun Singh
Varun Singh@VarunJuice·
I really enjoyed THE MASTER SWITCH but it's incredible how far Tim Wu has fallen. In his fit to justify price controls, he seems to have lost bearing of simple facts (like airlines don't own airports) or ability to understand why people go to airports in the first place vs stadiums.
Tim Wu@superwuster

Another data point for the "beer wars" with @mattyglesias @jasonfurman are airports. Airports, including Newark, SLC, and Portland by law mandate "street prices" (i.e., ban price gouging). The question is: do airlines raise ticket prices in response? I doubt it, but don't know. Above all it shows that at issue is a complex and empirical question, not something solvable with pure economic theory and a few "moves" that renforce the dogma.

English
0
0
1
211
Varun Singh
Varun Singh@VarunJuice·
@VishalLugani He interviewed me in 1990 when I was joining DPS RKP in middle school. Truly a giant of education in India.
English
1
0
1
241
Vishal Lugani
Vishal Lugani@VishalLugani·
My grandfather RS Lugani, who dedicated his life to being an educator, was the founding headmaster / principal of DPS RK Puram in 1972. Were he still alive today, I would’ve been so excited to send this tweet to him. In a way he was actually the OG VC in our family…
Deedy@deedydas

Every single one of these $100M+ companies were started by alumni from a single Computer Science club in a non-American high school. Cartesia Inception Labs General Catalyst CVF Wispr Flow Affinity Snapdeal Sugar boAt It's Exun Clan in Delhi Public School, RK Puram in India.

English
25
29
834
96.6K
Varun Singh
Varun Singh@VarunJuice·
I graduated from Delhi Public School RK Puram. It isn't some random high school in India - it's arguably the most well known and most prestigious high school in the country. To wit, 29 of the 45 students in my section of the graduating class passed the prestigious IIT Entrance exams.
Deedy@deedydas

Every single one of these $100M+ companies were started by alumni from a single Computer Science club in a non-American high school. Cartesia Inception Labs General Catalyst CVF Wispr Flow Affinity Snapdeal Sugar boAt It's Exun Clan in Delhi Public School, RK Puram in India.

English
19
16
573
133.5K
Varun Singh
Varun Singh@VarunJuice·
"These are the founders who start after the crash. They’ll hire from the ashes, build on cheaper infrastructure, and learn from the mistakes of those who burned. LinkedIn in 2002, Stripe in 2010, Slack in 2013 — all fire followers." For anyone who thinks it's too late and all ideas are taken, just give it a few years 🙂
Mamoon Hamid@mamoonha

Really thoughtful piece written by @dionlim who’s seen previous cycles of boom and bust. I think this one has real staying power! open.substack.com/pub/ceodinner/…

English
0
0
7
3.2K
Varun Singh
Varun Singh@VarunJuice·
@adityaag Did you show him how long it takes to make a sora video when he asked you if we need all this compute? 😁
English
0
0
0
254
Aditya Agarwal
Aditya Agarwal@adityaag·
I was having dinner with a very smart Wall Street investor last week. His general tone was that: "You Silicon Valley folks are overbuilding everything. Is this sustainable? Do we actually need all this compute?" This is much to think about qualitatively imo. Exponential curves (both in terms of expenditure and benefit) rarely make sense. So we went through this: --> He was using AI on a daily basis for both his job and personally (generating content, reviewing content, efficiency for mundane tasks, health related goals) --> How his kids were using AI (storytelling, homework, entertainment) --> How his parents are using AI As we went through this, we did the thought experiment for how much more demand each of them had. At the end, the question turned to: "How do we build more compute capacity quickly so that we stay in the lead relative to China?"
English
29
18
393
150.1K
Varun Singh
Varun Singh@VarunJuice·
FB has been doing this since the day they were founded - and yes, it's brilliant.
Sachin Rekhi@sachinrekhi

This is how Anthropic decides what to build next—and it's brilliant. Instead of endless spec documents and roadmap debates, the Claude Code team has cracked the code on feature prioritization: prototype first, decide later. Here's their process (shared by Catherine Wu, Product Lead at Anthropic): Step 1: Idea → Prototype Got a feature idea? Skip the spec. Build a working prototype using Claude Code instead. Step 2: Internal Launch Ship that prototype to all Anthropic engineers immediately. No polish required—just functionality. Step 3: Watch & Listen Track usage religiously. Collect feedback actively. Let real behavior, not opinions, guide decisions. Step 4: Data-Driven Prioritization - High usage + positive feedback → roadmap priority - Low engagement or complaints → back to iteration This "prototype-first product shaping" flips traditional product development on its head. Instead of guessing what users want, they're measuring what users actually use. The beauty? They're dogfooding their own tool to build their own tool. The feedback loop is immediate, honest, and impossible to ignore. The takeaway: Your best product decisions come from real user behavior, not theoretical frameworks. Sometimes the fastest way to validate an idea isn't a survey or interview—it's a working prototype.

English
0
0
1
733
Varun Singh
Varun Singh@VarunJuice·
And we didn't even get to reporting, governance, analytics, overrides for everything, UAT for each update, regular escalations for talking to the wrong team or sending an extra notification, regularly explaining how your "users" aren't that unique, or how your process isn't that unique
claire vo 🖤@clairevo

Everyone wants enterprise b2b ACV, no one wants 6-12 month sales cycles, 200 point security questionnaires, redlines, net 60, white glove onboarding, services partner ecosystem, last minute procurement negotiation step, 14 page MSAs, champions that leave the company. 90-180 day activations, features built to save churn, Europe->Asia timezone sales calls, cringe outbound campaigns, SCIM, data deletion and portability process, msft ecosystem integrations (teams!), or EU data residency.

English
0
0
0
513
Varun Singh
Varun Singh@VarunJuice·
@deedydas For undergrads. I'm willing to bet that 90+% of entrepreneurial and economic activity is driven by international graduate students.
English
0
0
1
854
Deedy
Deedy@deedydas·
🚨 Trump just forced a 15% cap on international undergrads (5% from one country) on 9 US universities. This is one of 10 asks to the unis. If they don't comply, federal benefits will be cut. Dartmouth, USC and Vanderbilt will be affected. Read the full memo here:
Deedy tweet media
English
71
94
796
103.2K
Varun Singh
Varun Singh@VarunJuice·
Sora has created a huge problem for Meta. It's the first time they can't bring their network and engineering advantage to bear against a new kind of social network. First, sora is fun and addictive. It's been a long time my wife has enjoyed any social network and she really likes sora. Second, sora makes content production easy and fun. FB had a very hard time keeping content production flowing - especially in a social construct. Third, as meta becomes an entertainment app, social has become a weak underbelly. It's something FB is unable to address as it wrestles against TikTok. But most importantly, meta is so far behind in video models that it can't simply create a new app that comes close to what sora does. Curious what you think @benthompson
English
0
0
3
470
Varun Singh
Varun Singh@VarunJuice·
Reminds me a lot from Rational Ritual by Michael Chwe. press.princeton.edu/books/paperbac…
Steven Pinker@sapinker

Why do people hoard toilet paper at the first sign of an emergency? Why are Super Bowl ads filled with ads for crypto? Why, in American presidential primary voting, do citizens typically select the candidate they believe is preferred by others rather than their favorite? Why did Russian authorities arrest a protester who carried a blank sign? Why is it so hard for nervous lovers to say goodbye at the end of a phone call? Why does everyone agree that if we were completely honest all the time, life would be unbearable? Find out here: bit.ly/3SMQ11N

English
0
0
0
375
Varun Singh
Varun Singh@VarunJuice·
I swear if they show one of these robots loading and emptying the dishwasher instead of these silly abuse videos, I'd preorder one each for my friends and family.
Kyle Chan@kyleichan

x.com/TheHumanoidHub… The story of Chinese robot startup Noetix is pretty amazing: - Started by 27-year-old Tsinghua dropout - Verge of bankruptcy last year - Won 2nd place in Beijing Robot Half-Marathon - Now valuation surged to $200 million - Wants to be first to make 10,000 humanoid robots - Still relies on chips from Intel and STMicroelectronics - But has been preparing substitutes from China in case of sanctions, such as GigaDevice's GD32 chip Bloomberg interview with founder and write-up: bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

English
0
0
0
315
Varun Singh
Varun Singh@VarunJuice·
@lulumeservey Someone presented this Q to Zuck at an FB all hands 10 years ago when I was there. His answer was simple and insightful. He said "People want to do good work, and make good money". That's a simple creed that guides Zuck. He doesn't fall into the false choice between the two
English
0
0
4
65
Lulu Cheng Meservey
Lulu Cheng Meservey@lulumeservey·
Mission and vision DO matter. This post is itself is a victim of narrative fallacy. It relies on the availability heuristic to assume that “no amount of mission and vision will supersede” a big bag of money, because the only announcements we’ve seen are from the people who chose the money. Picture the Abraham Wald airplane with bullet holes. The would-be analyst doesn’t account for the many other people who have turned down massive offers because they sought a different “mission and vision.” Incredibly, he attempts to calculate a conversion rate while looking at the numerator, ignoring the denominator. Since we’re being frameworks bros: also on display is the false consensus effect, a bias where someone overestimates how much other others share their personal views. Reducing all companies “to the same basic economic equation,” selling mission and vision as “a lie,” and automatically choosing to build wealth “when given the chance”? These may represent the op’s personal views, but it’s a mistake to assume everyone else feels the same way, especially based on a small sample size with, again, non-representative results. This isn’t analysis, it’s projection. Of course there are biases on my end too, not least wishful thinking. I really want to believe that mission ultimately matters more than money. Maybe I’m wrong. But I think I’m right, and he’s the one that’s wrong.
Lulu Cheng Meservey tweet media
English
65
16
573
324.5K
Varun Singh
Varun Singh@VarunJuice·
@garrytan I would say something stronger - you should commit to it. Making it work can take a long time but at that price point, the odds of becoming a large co increase dramatically if you can make it work.
English
1
0
1
216
Garry Tan
Garry Tan@garrytan·
I think one of the biggest mistakes I see new founders make is thinking the only way their AI product will be bought will be through an enterprise sales gate If the product will be sold for <$1000/mo you should *try* to do some sort of "free trial" even if very short or limited
English
73
34
1.3K
161.3K
Varun Singh
Varun Singh@VarunJuice·
@saranormous On the margins, this is a scale invariant phenomena. From startups to large public cos, CEOs and founders are quite involved on the marginal deals.
English
0
0
2
179
sarah guo
sarah guo@saranormous·
underestimated: the number of customer deals for startups really driven by founders, even at $50-100M+ of ARR
English
21
1
146
18.5K
Varun Singh
Varun Singh@VarunJuice·
@lefttailguy There's a significant distinction between what OpenAI is doing vs Glean. OpenAI uses reasoning models to inject queries into a search API of an underlying platform whereas Glean relied on indexing all the data primarily. Search stack is being rewritten in the Agentic era.
English
0
0
2
236
illiquid
illiquid@lefttailguy·
It continues. More anti-competitor (Glean), not pro-customer moves by horizontal SaaS incumbents (Atlassian, Notion, etc.) following Salesforce. Atlassian salty Glean rejected an acquisition offer in 2023. It's pretty obvious to me that Glean is at the center of the horizontal software debate/seen as the biggest threat to incumbents. Glean has a vision of a winner take all top-down OS-like dynamic for enterprise software: "database of intentions" + agentic workflows. OpenAI recently copied this vision with their new "connectors" and Google with AgentSpace. I think Snowflake will come in with a big acquisition offer for Glean relatively soon.
illiquid tweet media
illiquid@lefttailguy

It begins. An anti-competitor, not pro-customer move by $CRM. Never a good sign. It's the customer's data--they’ll just start dumping more and more into Snowflake, Clickhouse, etc and querying from there.

English
2
1
27
4.8K
Varun Singh
Varun Singh@VarunJuice·
@amir This is what @bgurley described in his recent interview as revenue cycling and counting across multiple layers - from apps, to LLM makers, to compute providers. And what's unclear is gross margins along this path for various parties.
English
0
0
0
102

Keşfet

@VishalLugani @adityaag @deedydas @benthompson @lulumeservey @garrytan @elonmusk @BarackObama