Ola

Chamath after making $4B from a seed investment in Groq (just announced $20B sale to NVIDIA) One of the best venture outcomes of all time

Before you laugh at kids who believe in Santa, remember there are grown men who believe that Cristiano Ronaldo is a better footballer than Lionel Messi.

The company hired me to lead their "Agile Transformation." I don't know what Agile means. Nobody does. That's why it works. I make $425,000 a year. To move sticky notes. From left to right. On a board. The board is digital now. The sticky notes cost $80,000 in Jira licenses. Progress. Day one, I said "we need to break down silos." Everyone nodded. Silos are bad. I don't know why. But destroying them is a career. My career. I introduced "squads." Squads are teams. But disrupted. We disrupted the teams into teams. Different names. Same people. Same problems. But Agile problems now. Agile problems are strategic. A senior engineer asked what we're actually changing. I said, "The mindset." He asked what that means. I said, "It's a journey." He asked where we're going. I said, "Toward agility." He asked what agility means. I pointed at the sticky notes. They were moving left to right. That's velocity. We have velocity now. The VP of Engineering said two-week sprints don't fit their work. I said, "That's waterfall thinking." Waterfall is bad. Like silos. I don't know what waterfall is. But I know it's bad. She stopped talking. Waterfall accusations end conversations. We had a retrospective. In the retro, we discussed what went wrong. Everything went wrong. We put it on sticky notes. Then we moved the sticky notes. Into a column called "Parking Lot." The Parking Lot is where problems go to die. It's full. We don't look at it. That's agile. Velocity is up 40%. I defined velocity. I also defined the points. I also defined the stories. We're crushing it. At the things I made up. To measure. Ourselves. The CEO asked for ROI. I showed a chart. The chart went up. Charts should go up. This one did. I didn't label the Y-axis. Nobody asked. Leadership is confidence. We do standups now. Every day. We stand. For 45 minutes. Standing is agile. Sitting is waterfall. My legs hurt. But we're transforming. The transformation is now "Phase 3." Phase 1 was assessment. Phase 2 was implementation. Phase 3 is "continuous improvement." Continuous means forever. Forever means job security. I'm very secure. My contract was extended. Three more years. For "cultural impact." The culture is confused. But impacted. Agile transformation isn't about being agile. It's about transforming. Continuously. Toward more transformation. The destination is the journey. The journey is billable.

Last quarter I rolled out Microsoft Copilot to 4,000 employees. $30 per seat per month. $1.4 million annually. I called it "digital transformation." The board loved that phrase. They approved it in eleven minutes. No one asked what it would actually do. Including me. I told everyone it would "10x productivity." That's not a real number. But it sounds like one. HR asked how we'd measure the 10x. I said we'd "leverage analytics dashboards." They stopped asking. Three months later I checked the usage reports. 47 people had opened it. 12 had used it more than once. One of them was me. I used it to summarize an email I could have read in 30 seconds. It took 45 seconds. Plus the time it took to fix the hallucinations. But I called it a "pilot success." Success means the pilot didn't visibly fail. The CFO asked about ROI. I showed him a graph. The graph went up and to the right. It measured "AI enablement." I made that metric up. He nodded approvingly. We're "AI-enabled" now. I don't know what that means. But it's in our investor deck. A senior developer asked why we didn't use Claude or ChatGPT. I said we needed "enterprise-grade security." He asked what that meant. I said "compliance." He asked which compliance. I said "all of them." He looked skeptical. I scheduled him for a "career development conversation." He stopped asking questions. Microsoft sent a case study team. They wanted to feature us as a success story. I told them we "saved 40,000 hours." I calculated that number by multiplying employees by a number I made up. They didn't verify it. They never do. Now we're on Microsoft's website. "Global enterprise achieves 40,000 hours of productivity gains with Copilot." The CEO shared it on LinkedIn. He got 3,000 likes. He's never used Copilot. None of the executives have. We have an exemption. "Strategic focus requires minimal digital distraction." I wrote that policy. The licenses renew next month. I'm requesting an expansion. 5,000 more seats. We haven't used the first 4,000. But this time we'll "drive adoption." Adoption means mandatory training. Training means a 45-minute webinar no one watches. But completion will be tracked. Completion is a metric. Metrics go in dashboards. Dashboards go in board presentations. Board presentations get me promoted. I'll be SVP by Q3. I still don't know what Copilot does. But I know what it's for. It's for showing we're "investing in AI." Investment means spending. Spending means commitment. Commitment means we're serious about the future. The future is whatever I say it is. As long as the graph goes up and to the right.

Nobody is as confused as Barcelona fans right now 😂

Confused?? If I play against Messi, I’ll still support Messi.

Happy Dec 18 to those of us who celebrate

EXACTLY 3 YEARS AGO. ARGENTINA WON THE WORLD CUP.

This is why Men pull back ‼️‼️

no

Tell me something that’s none of my business 🤲🏾

Man scrolls, Man sees, Man stops, Man nods, Man tears up, Man smiles.