David Peto

In 2002, Gwynne Shotwell was a 38-year-old single mom with a stable aerospace job when she walked into a dingy El Segundo office to drop off a colleague. Elon Musk cornered her for ten minutes, grilled her on the rocket business, and created a VP of Sales role on the spot. She agonized for weeks (private space was a graveyard of failed startups) but one day on the LA freeway she grabbed her phone and called him: “I’ve been a fucking idiot. I’m taking the job.” She became roughly employee #7. Three Falcon 1 launches exploded in 2006–2007. SpaceX was days from bankruptcy. While engineers scrambled, Gwynne kept selling anyway. She flew to Iridium, closed a make-or-break deal tilted heavily in the customer’s favor because she believed so fiercely it would work. Then, on September 28, 2008, the fourth Falcon 1 finally reached orbit. Hours later she and Elon walked into NASA and sealed a $1.6 billion contract to resupply the space station— pulling the company back from the brink. That single mom who bet everything became president and COO, the reason SpaceX didn’t die and the reason it now flies more rockets than the rest of the world combined. Legend. 🚀

OpenAI shutting down Sora is the most predictable outcome of misunderstanding consumer behavior. Everyone grossly overestimates how creative people want to be. 99% of humans simply want to scroll and zone out instead of spending energy conceptualizing, editing, and creating videos. No matter how much the barrier to creation is lowered by a single prompt. It still takes effort and a fair amount of creative thinking. Even Instagram has 2 billion users. But hardly ~10 million (or 0.5%) would be serious creators. So any AI consumer app betting on "with [new_app], everyone becomes a creator!" is being delusional and will go down the same way. After all the word "consumer" exists for a reason. They consume. They don't produce (or even want to lol)

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Tom Perkins was the GOAT. Great to see his legacy continuing. 🚀

@sniffpetrol Measles

Test mule Tuesday. What do you think this was used to develop in 1999?

This is the best use of AI videos = education that's fun You can teach anything about the history like this, can't wait for the future

The emperor of electrical sockets laughs at your inferiority

Super Chuck Norris looks too easy.

The fact that AIs tend to answer you in bulleted lists tells us something important, though somewhat depressing: people can't read. They don't do this by accident. What you're seeing is an implicit portrait of the median user.

This open consultation document released from HMRC and HM Treasury only exists on their website and hasn't actually been sent to any business owners. This document is asking for opinions on their proposal to introduce new requirements for small companies, which means that they will have to provide the amount, the date, the name, the address and the National Insurance number for *every single transaction* that goes through a director's loan account, shareholder transactions and personal spending, so that HMRC can cross reference that data against a director’s personal tax return. The justification for this is that there is too much tax being lost in small companies - including startups- especially where company money and owner money get mixed together. We are seeing this proposal despite small business owners / startups carrying the admin, the risk, the financial burden, the compliance burden, rising tax rates, lowering tax thresholds, confusing tax rules and actually running our businesses. HMRC now wants to add another layer of admin. It’s fair that business owners should pay the correct amount of tax, but perhaps there is a better use of HMRC resources, such as focusing on people who are *avoiding tax altogether* rather than making it *harder for the people who are doing it properly* which fundamentally will result in more time being spent on admin, not generating growth for the economy, or actually encouraging people to avoid filing these returns altogether or going out of business. You can send in your feedback via the link in this thread.

I once finished fourth at the Commonwealth Games. I was fucking proud of what I did but the reaction of friends has always been either pity or mocking for missing out on a medal. What's your greatest life achievement Dave? Middle management at B&Q?

The Japanese GP was at threat of cancellation following reports of earthquakes. However, it has since been established these are merely the effects of vibrations from Honda’s upgraded ‘Suzuka Special’ engine.

This is why we produced Colin Mcrae, Richard Burns, Jim Clark, etc etc. You’re basically Rally Driving from the moment you put L plates on.

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new forbes 30 under 30 model where you pay to stay off the list

👏 great move

This happens ALL the time. Opsec frequently sucks.

This is absolutely brilliant. By @Keith Teare "For founders, that means there is no single fundraising market anymore. There is a hierarchy. If you can access the top firms, the value of that access is rising. If you cannot, you need to be realistic about which market you are in and what kind of syndicate can actually help you. For LPs, the implication is even sharper. If the market keeps concentrating into a handful of firms, manager selection matters more than ever. But if the same firms winning that concentration battle are doing so in a business whose economics are deteriorating with scale, then the obvious allocation path may not be the right one. For emerging managers, the message is brutal. There is less and less room for the generic venture fund. You need either genuine structural differentiation or the ability to drive outcomes through access, ownership, and involvement. Probably all three." buff.ly/BPch2dF

Shut up and take my money.