Justin Kifer

@IAmBpala @aerthlings_off You got a five star platinum Glo-Bro! Was that your first pull?

I think I found a new addiction… 😅 Checked out the @aerthlings_off and now I’m sucked in 👀

@paulg @whstancil 100% this. SpaceX is driving space exploration and mission costs down and Starlink is an incredible service for so many that don’t have traditional broadband. Assuming Kamala wins (fingers crossed), at least we will know the richest man in the world can’t buy an election.

@whstancil No. That would be Trump-level unprincipled, to penalize federal suppliers based on who they supported in the election. That's what we're trying to avoid here. Plus it would be stupid pragmatically. SpaceX and Starlink are both very good.

If Harris wins, Musk will have lost a foolish, existential gamble, and the natural consequence of that should be the end of his chapter of history

@final Who was the last Final?

The last Final has left the building!

@codysimms Congrats!

It's a big day for us at MCJ! 💥

@amytongwu @balajis It makes sense that Threads feels like an alternate universe of IG as they aggressively recruited users from IG to move over to Threads.

@balajis’s recent comment on the political split of Twitter seems real, although maybe more symptomatic of Threads leaning heavily into brands + influencers + female making the app feels like an alternate universe of IG

Like many, I had left Threads for dead when their downloads dropped off last summer, but recently checking its traction, I was surprised to see their MAUs have grown to ~160M, half that of @X and monthly downloads ~double, which means Threads is on a trajectory to surpass X

@ilyamiskov Boundary Supply Errant Pro is hands down the best backpack I’ve owned. Love it so much we bought 4 (one each for my wife and I + our kiddos). boundarysupply.com/products/erran…

Can you guys recommend a high quality everyday backpack that is comfy, has water bottle pockets, can fit a 16" laptop, and doesn't look like ass?

@andrewchen What makes it even better is a custom widget that gives you one touch access to it vs having to fumble through settings to turn on/off.

The best feature.

As excited as I am about the products OpenAI is building, it would be a mistake to ignore the fact @janleike and @ilyasut both left within days of each other. The tension within OpenAI around safety is clearly an issue.

@hnshah Superhuman

Ever use a product and feel like you will never be able to use another product in the category again?

@karrisaarinen @mprado @linear Invite received. Now that is what I call service. :) thanks @karrisaarinen!

We use same gating it for the Linear iOS using TestFlight. So yes I'd do it. We're making a lot fixes as they come in from the users. Depends a bit what you're building and stage. If you are building something simple it already work well, you probably don't need to. In our case the challenge is that people expect quite lot of breath and depth before the solution is useful and something they can adopt in their company. To gating

When we were rolling out @linear back in private beta days, every week I would pick the most motivated (based on their answers) & fitting people (used the stack we supported, small companies) from the waitlist manually and sent them this email I had saved as Superhuman template. Inviting all 10,000 people on the waitlist seemed wasteful for me. The product wouldn't work for majority of the folks at that point, I would just burn our reputation and seemed we would just get lot of the same feedback if everyone joins at the same time. Spreading the invites over a year we could get feedback this weeks cohort and then fix the issues. Next week we would get feedback on different issues from new a cohort. Slack used a similar approach in the early days. Never understood why startups try to do big launches for unpolished or early products. My best guess is that people are cargoculting what large companies do, and don't really understand how creating new products work or how much work happens behind the scenes making sure those big company launches are more or less succesful.

@karrisaarinen @mprado @linear Would love access to the Linear TestFlight. :)

@amytongwu @thatdamiguy This inherently seems like a problem. :)

@thatdamiguy Indeed

Lots of renewed interest in gamefi tokens this cycle but it turns out how well the tokens are doing is more linked to community speculative interest than how good the game is. Have not yet seen a sustainable game web3 economy design that doesn’t reduce the token to something that resembles a stablecoin but then speculators aren’t interested. And the pull of mooning tokens is strong.

@alexiskold @scottycoin any recs for a fellow VC visiting SLC in May?

What are your favorite day trips / nature seeing around Salt Lake City in May ?

@lizgiorgi @Techstars Well said.

So I'm a: @techstars Boulder alumni, a Techstars LP, and I've "given first" to Techstars by doing 17 free speaking engagements for the programs since graduating in 2019. I have a few things to say about the announcement. Buckle in. 1. Any leader undergoing the experience of Change Management 101 understands that you don't ask the people impacted by the change to do the communication and be the main point of contact for that change. The fact that senior leadership didn't communicate with alumni, but sent an army of MD's to go out and communicate this massive change is just a literal abdication of leadership. 2. If you are leaving the city that built you - you do that with care. And you take it seriously. If Ford was exiting Detroit, they wouldn't send the factory manager to do the announcement. 3. I've exited a market before (sorry, Seattle) and I know that it's not easy to make those calls. But the thing you don't do is call it "bittersweet." It's just bitter for those that are most closely impacted in the community. 4. If you are closing locations, be explicit what is closing and be explicit what is staying open. 5. Great leaders own their decisions with ALL stakeholders. Not just investors. It's shocking to me that alumni haven't heard from leadership directly, but investors did. (I got both comms.) 6. There is literally nothing dorkier on earth than calling something "2.0" in 2024. The fact that this was the best they could do and then they expect to compete in the largest markets in the world is fucking ridiculous. Am I disappointed, sure. But am I mostly surprised by how poorly this was handled? That's the one.

@Jackovin @brennen_eth I definitely still have the bird. I’m in open protest. :)

@justinkifer @brennen_eth No way you still have the bird!

Do you remember when you joined X? I do! #MyXAnniversary

@flexmandeville This probably won’t help if you want to be talked out of it, but moving to LA is one of the best decisions we ever made. It’s been nearly 14 years (10 of those in Playa Vista and 4 in Irvine). Can’t imagine living anywhere else. :)

@amytongwu Crap. Now I need to go check if I said HNY in my email to you earlier this week. :)

When is it not ok to say HNY anymore in work emails 😬

@hughhowey That’s powerful. If you think about the history of sports, radio came before TV. You can’t see radio, thus we got announcers. Early TV may have needed the announcers as well. Quality of the video, number of cameras, etc weren’t what they are today. But today, maybe not necessary.

@amytongwu I like to read books on flights, but sometimes I sneak an airplane movie. :) Next time I will definitely check for Bluetooth! Great tip.

@justinkifer Yah I’d never noticed this before!

Paired my pods to my seat screen for the first time on my United flight. Never using plane earbuds again.