Blake Hall

Yesterday, I took my family to Arlington National Cemetery to visit my friends, Garrett Slaughter and Captain John Ryan Dennison Memorial. They are buried in Section 60, also known as "The Saddest Acre in America," because many who are buried there died young after 9/11. One mother had a lawn chair, with flowers on either side, pulled right up to the headstone of her son, a Marine. It looked like she had been sitting there all day. A family of four with two teenage daughters wept over another grave nearby. For my part, I felt an overwhelming wave of sorrow as I approached Garrett's grave with my daughters and my son. We put flowers on his grave. I told my children a few funny stories about our time together at Vanderbilt, Ranger School, and then in the Army. And then, we walked to Ryan's grave and spent some time with him. Ryan was a bright light full of positivity and passion wherever he went. I miss my friends... Shortly before D-Day, 2nd Lieutenant Jack Lundberg wrote a letter to his family that began, "Now that I am actually here, I see my chances of returning to you all are quite slim, therefore I want to write this letter now while I am yet able." He went on to write, "We of the United States have something to fight for — never more fully have I realized that. There just is no other country with comparable wealth, advancement, or standard of living. The U.S.A. is worth a sacrifice!" He was killed a few weeks later. But, his spirit -- the resolute determination to protect a nation based on freedom no matter the cost. That remains. It's why I'm so proud of Garrett and Ryan even while I am devastated I'll never watch them play with my kids.

I agree with the approach but disagree with the diagnosis. First, people are super busy. Second, your champion doesn’t understand your product as well as you do. Third, the telephone game is undefeated when it comes to diluting value and failing to address predictable objections. A sales person who is willing to do the work to package up content that is meant to be distributed through the company via your champion solves all three problems. Net-net, if you don’t care enough about your own product to make value super easy to consume, then don’t expect your champion to do your job for you.

one of the best sales advice we picked up during YC is the "McKinsey Model" a lot of deals at early-stage startups die for the same reason: your champion is afraid to advocate for your product if they push for it internally and it doesn't work out, their job is on the line so they never come back to you and hit you with the "we need to align internally first" that's why you need to be their McKinsey consultant: instead of them pitching, you personally take the blame after every demo, send them: - a one-pager - a security doc - an ROI calculator with their numbers - useful context/overview of your industry that can help with what they're struggling with right now - a pre-written slack message they can forward make it as easy as possible for your champion to forward your material without them feeling responsible for integrating your solution or "fighting" for it

Meet Joan Rodriguez-Vogel, Special Assistant to the CEO at @IDme. After 12 years on Capitol Hill, Joan now supports our Founder and CEO @Blake_Hall keep priorities moving and follow-through strong—so @IDme can stay focused on keeping people safe online while making it easy to access benefits and essential services. We’re proud to spotlight team members like Joan who help make that impact possible.

🚨 Here is the full 40 minutes of my crew and I exposing California fraud, Minnesota was big but California is even bigger... We uncovered over $170,000,000 in fraud as these fraudsters live in luxury with no consequences. Like it and share it, the fraud must STOP. We ALL work way too hard and pay too much in taxes for this to be happening. These fraudsters have been able to defraud American taxpayers for years without any pushback from the public and politicians. It is time to EXPOSE IT ALL and end America's fraud crisis.

The Iranian women’s national football team refused to sing the anthem of the Islamic Regime. Tonight. At the opening match of the Asian Cup. In front of the entire world. So, to all liberal Western women: Watch and learn. THIS is what real feminism looks like.

M Street and Wisconsin in Georgetown taken over by a large crowd of celebrating Iranians, chanting USA USA … not what I was expecting during my run today.

It’s 1 AM in Iran right now and everyone is out in the streets celebrating. Iranians deserve a life with freedom. 🦁

HAPPENING NOW: In Ottawa, en route to the US Embassy chanting thanks to the USA. Immense happiness today for Iranian Canadians, who came here to flee a tyrannical regime, who now feel hope for their loved ones back in Iran.

"Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead. This is not only Justice for the people of Iran, but for all Great Americans, and those people from many Countries throughout the World, that have been killed or mutilated by Khamenei..." - President Donald J. Trump

@brhodes Coward. Your narcissism knows no limits. You were never qualified for your job. Now, you’re defending a regime that just slaughtered tens of thousands of innocent young people to defend a deal you made that didn’t work? Pathetic.

There is no legal basis for this war. There is no imminent threat that demands this war. There is no stated objective for this war.

Unbelievable 😂 Iranian high school students are THANKING president Trump for striking the regime in Iran. “I love Trump!” One student says

American forces are bombing Kata’ib Hezbollah (KH) bases in Iraq. This is a good thing. In 2007, Qais Khazali, a KH leader and Iranian proxy, kidnapped and executed American soldiers, including Captain Brian Freeman. He was bragging about his role only several months ago. Like many other terrorist leaders, we caught Qais — then released him. There was no justice for the Americans he executed. It’s long past time we settle the score. I hope that day is today.

Those of us who fought in Iraq remember what Iran did to kill and maim our friends. Today, their families get some measure of justice. Now, it is up to the young people of Iran to take their country back.

Woman cutting her birthday cake in Iran 1973, 5 years before the Islamic Revolution

@camhigby Pretty crazy. I’m former Army Infantry. We use a SALUTE report upon observation of enemy forces. Looks like they have prior military personnel involved.

🧵🚨 MINNEAPOLIS SIGNAL INFILTRATED The quasi police force uses a system called “SALUTE” which calls out the size of federal units, activity, locations, uniforms, times and locations. They then instruct their ICE chasers to follow and confront agents at their known locations.

🧵🚨 MINNEAPOLIS SIGNAL INFILTRATED I have infiltrated organizational signal groups all around Minneapolis with the sole intention of tracking down federal agents and impeding/assaulting/and obstructing them. BUCKLE UP ALL WILL BE REVEALED Each area of the city has a signal or several signals. Let’s start with a screen recording of all members of the south side group to start.

@IlyaAbyzov Congrats on the acquisition! Would love to talk about how our IdP at Veterans Affairs, CMS, and other healthcare companies can unlock data to feed into your app. network.id.me/press-releases…

Working on Torch 🔥 Unified health record + LLM in one iOS app. Syncs records from hospitals, labs, Function, One Med, PDFs etc. Makes it simple & fast to get all your health data in one place + get LLM help making sense of it. Reply/RT for TestFlight invite. More below ⬇️

@elonmusk Exactly. The way you find fraud is though identity verification so if there is no identity verification then there is no way to prove fraud. That’s what corrupt actors and politicians want - plausible deniability so they can steal money and power.

No ID, automatic voter registration by states and mail in ballots enable massive fraud. Those factors also make it impossible to prove fraud, since there is no ID and no one actually showed up! You can’t conduct exit polls accurately or even count how many people went in to vote.

“This feels like a breath of fresh air”: Venezuelans in South Florida poured into the streets of Doral early Saturday, celebrating the U.S. military action in Venezuela that led to the arrest of President Nicolás Maduro. People carried Venezuela’s flag and sang together in the early morning hours. “It's not an act of war. It's an act of freedom,” one Venezuelan said.

@GovPressOffice @chamath @IDme We definitely stopped a lot of pandemic era unemployment fraud together. Axios and NBC News covered the impact. Pretty clear we stopped a ton of fraud.

@chamath If you don’t believe us, we hope you’ll believe @IDme — a fraud-prevention tool used by many of the companies you’ve currently invested in: network.id.me/press-releases…

This is insane. With no desire to stop the fraud, California politicians insist that they will start taxing property and assets of the richest Californians now. When these richest Californians leave, which I guarantee they will, especially when they understand the extent of the rot, the middle class will be the only group left to plug the hole because they are the largest collective taxpayers in the state.

Fraud tied to other programs that continues today — student aid as an example — is a more complicated story. We have the tools to stop the fraud but implementation isn’t consistent. Until there is a standard level of safety, criminals will continue to exploit vulnerabilities.

When it comes to pandemic era unemployment fraud, California was indeed one of the first states to act to stop a tidal wave of fraud through their partnership with @IDme. I also admire @CAgovernor’s transparency in highlighting the magnitude of the loss.