Ghalib Suleiman

@bhalligan @larrykim Also, the Boston area is pretty good for raising kids. Those with kids certainly think about taxes.

@bhalligan @larrykim Yes, but both NYC and SF have other benefits. NYC: more fun environment and larger dating pool. SF: Silicon Valley obviously, i.e. historical momentum of being a tech centre. Given this, Boston/MA should probably grasp at every advantage possible and not ignore any.

A pretty rough article came out today re the Massachusetts economy (see in reply). While I agree with a lot of the problems, a lot of the builders in Massachusetts are working very hard to make it not just a great place to start companies, but also a great place to scale companies. Recent progress: 1. YC - There are a lot of folks helping fog the runway for a YC return to Massachusetts. In @agupta we trust. 2. DeltaV - This is MIT's incubator that got a $6million infusion of cash and programming reboot from @abialecki and @edhallen of @klaviyo fame. 3. TechWeek - This is going to be a major event in Massachusetts this year. Big boost happening. 4. Sequoia - Running programming in Massachusetts. Thanks to @abhishekm1636 5. Mass AI Coalition - A major initiative across all of tech in the state led by @willahmed and @durkin 6. Government - The mayor, governor, @epaley and @Barry_Finegold are starting to face reality and are engaging in the problems. Green shoots include a statewide partnership with OpenAI and a citywide initiative to teach AI in all the schools. I'm really hoping to see real "action" from our representatives on building housing and improving transportation. 7. MIT - MIT's president and provost have kicked off their CATE CATE (Committee for Acceleration Translation and Entrepreneurship) initiative that I'm hopeful will have a big impact. I'm sure I'm leaving out a ton more. What am I missing @lindahenry, @alexwg, @patk, @HenryLSchuck, @mikey, @BillAulet?

@edwinhayward @patrickc @DanielleFong Yes, but even there food has massively improved over even 20 years ago.

@patrickc @DanielleFong True, food in the UK has improved a lot over the last 30 years. But then you go to somewhere like Japan, and you unlock a whole new level of food experience. (The fact that it's also dirt cheap because of the weak yen is just a bonus.)

There’s a lot of discussion in these parts about all the things that are degrading (public safety, disorder, architecture, institutions, …), but it is remarkable how much better food has gotten over the course of my lifetime. I was recently traveling in the UK, and even in small towns, the restaurants were consistently great. (I particularly recommend Isla in Durham.) Ireland has similarly improved by leaps and bounds. The US is very good these days. Has there ever been a better time to eat?

@juliarturc What do you propose that would not have blocked Stripe, Facebook, and Dropbox?

When I was at Google, I wasn’t afraid to make mistakes in production. The general consensus was: if a well intentioned engineer manages to bring the system down, then we better fix the damn system. The Delve founders should definitely be held accountable if this is true. But this really is bigger than them. They didn’t even try too hard to be sleazy, they just followed the Silicon Valley playbook. 1. Drop out of school as a status symbol, completely missing that correlation is not causation. Dropping out does not make you a genius. 2. Start a business with 0 mission (no 21yo dreams of compliance) 3. Fake it till you make it (hide human labor behind the grandeur of AI features) 4. Raise an obscene amount of money because you can and because those losers who stayed to finish their degrees will be jelly. This is the playbook. The biggest culprits are the ones who made it and uphold it. If you’re not allowed to drink before 21 but are allowed to raise 30m on a compliance idea with no due diligence from investors, then maybe something is really really wrong with the system.

@vvsmoe @juliarturc The exceptions to this are too large to ignore: it worked for Stripe, Facebook, and Dropbox.

@juliarturc “1. Drop out of school as a status symbol, completely missing that correlation is not causation. Dropping out does not make you a genius.” This is such a strange thing in the US. If you can’t complete a degree, what makes them qualified to run a company up

@Austen @tlbtlbtlb @mikeandallie Simons has publicly said that there isn't one. It's more about the data, infrastructure, and collaborative hypothesis-generation.

@tlbtlbtlb @mikeandallie Does anyone know?

I'm about half way through the book about Jim Simons and Ren Tech and finding it really interesting. If you like math and / or the world of finance, this is a really fascinating read.

@SkaterDadCodes @staysaasy What do you use instead? Microsoft Copilot?

@staysaasy None are allowed (fortune 50)

What does your org use?

@amendandpretend If your product is needed then people will renew at the end of the one year contract. If they were going to churn then they'd do it at the end of the two-year contract too.

@staysaasy Yes indeed. Software engineers too used to look like one of: - Bank teller. - Simpsons comic book guy. - Goth vampire. No more.

I’m happy for these guys, it’s legit exciting that young people are crushing it, I’m a bit befuddled as to how every new tech founder looks like a J Crew model these days. Tech founders used to look like middle school Anthony Junior from the sopranos.

@emmysteuer @MurrayHillGuy1 I am rather partial to Emma's view here...come on MHG, it's just a first date 😅

@MurrayHillGuy1 Why would you want to spend more than 2 hours on a first date? What if you don’t even like her? You’re very picky

Dodged a bullet

@zarazhangrui This is not directly due to AI. Rather, it's because AI founders skew younger, and young people don't know any better when it comes such choices.

Trend I'm seeing in the Valley: the latest AI-native startup teams are all building their own internal tools, 100% customized for their needs, instead of buying SaaS. Do not dismiss these as vibe coded slop. They are built by professional internal developers dedicated to building internal tools, sped up 10x by AI.

Announcing bidirectional ETL support with @motherduck polytomic.com/blog-posts/bid…

@edsuh @arpanpunyani Yes, these abominations are top offenders on the list: 'Operator' = I do work (don't we all?) 'Chief of Staff' = Secretary

@arpanpunyani Me too! 😂

FDE joins a long list of lofty sounding startup titles: - Early eng too junior to be CTO -> Founding Engineer - MBA who thinks sales is beneath them but can't sell -> Business Development - Ex banker who thinks FP&A is beneath them but doesn't know accounting -> Strategic Finance - Ex consultant who thinks operations is beneath them but can't execute -> Biz Ops - Ex VC who thinks every operating role is beneath them but has no tangible skills -> "special projects"

@samlambert A most excellent choice

@ankurnagpal Hey I'm from there!

Here is my ultimate travel guide to Oman I grew up here for the first 17 years of my life, and I go back every single year Skip Dubai and Doha, this country is the real travel gem in the Middle East if you know where you're going:

@staysaasy This one takes me back, lol

@WillManidis This is too dramatic an explanation. The actual one is rather more mundane: regulation. This sort of stuff is now illegal to do.

if you asked me to explain why everyone has gone crazy, i think the loss of collective history is a big piece of it. you exist in an eternal chain of history that is worth studying, preserving, and deeply loving. modernity isn't different, you don't exist outside of time

in 20 years, as a hobby, Rockefeller moved a medieval cloister from France to Manhattan and restored 400 buildings 1:1 at our nations first capitol in Williamsburg, VA. it is impossible to imagine our current elites turning this much ambition towards history today.

@zeeg Surely the more in the weeds they are, the harder it is to name them? As they would not be tweeting etc

The test here for many of us is easy: name three public company CTOs. I might be able to do it but it used to be a lot easier… People who are in the weeds at that scale, that you can respect, they’ve thinned out.

@packyM The situation is way simpler: he's more charismatic. Paul Graham explained this in 2004: paulgraham.com/charisma.html.

Mamdani has achieved “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?” status. Every (legitimate, disqualifying in a sane political environment) criticism leveled against him makes his base like him more. His is an eight grade class president-ass campaign: free vending machines, no homework, Fridays off. None of it is actually feasible. None of it will work. No one cares. Some people just want to watch the world burn.

@staysaasy Claude code?

@ghalib We’ve made a decision

On thing I think AI is really good at is giving people crowdsourced answers without surfacing extremes. Reddit is full of good answers that get clouded by a few crazy comments that are hard to ignore, especially with health stuff. A place I think people are foolishly investing in AI is in trying to automate things in industries that 1) already focused a lot on automation and 2) require accuracy. AI for financial institutions, for example, is getting massive funding and I think is going to prove super underwhelming. I actually just checked reviews of one of the hottest AI-for-finance companies, and people are unanimously underwhelmed.