punitsoni

Is Messi playing?

Here is my story about Vinod Khosla. In May 2017, I was six weeks from running out of cash. I had over extended myself funding a software project inside of Startup Grind that later became Bevy. One night at midnight on the couch I said to my wife, "I'm about to run out of money and we're going to lose everything," She said, "You'll figure it out." I stayed up all night sending emails and praying. I had interviewed Vinod a few times at SG and barely knew him but I emailed him at 1:39am. He emailed me back at 7:34am asking for my number. He ended up calling me later that day in a ride to a meeting. His advice and encouragement helped propel me to raising $1M in 6 weeks and saved the company. I will never forget his willingness to answer an immediate call from a near stranger in my most desperate professional moment.

The vibes in SF feel pretty frenetic right now. The divide in outcomes is the worst I've ever seen. Over the last 5yrs, a group of ~10k people - employees at Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Nvidia, Meta TBD, founders - have hit retirement wealth of well above $20M (back of the envelope AI estimation). Everyone outside that group feels like they can work their well-paying (but <$500k) job for their whole life and never get there. Worse yet, layoffs are in full swing. Many software engineers feel like their life's skill is no longer useful. The day to day role of most jobs has changed overnight with AI. As a result, 1. The corporate ladder looks like the wrong building to climb. Everyone's trying to align with a new set of career "paths": should I be a founder? Is it too late to join Anthropic / OpenAI? should I get into AI? what company stock will 10x next? People are demanding higher salaries and switching jobs more and more. 2. There’s a deep malaise about work (and its future). Why even work at all for “peanuts”? Will my job even exist in a few years? Many feel helpless. You hear the “permanent underclass” conversation a lot, esp from young people. It's hard to focus on doing good work when you think "man, if I joined Anthropic 2yrs ago, I could retire" 3. The mid to late middle managers feel paralyzed. Many have families and don't feel like they have the energy or network to just "start a company". They don't particularly have any AI skills. They see the writing on the wall: middle management is being hollowed out in many companies. 4. The rich aren’t particularly happy either. No one is shedding tears for them (and rightfully so). But those who have "made it" experience a profound lack of purpose too. Some have gone from <$150k to >$50M in a few years with no ramp. It flips your life plans upside down. For some, comparison is the thief of joy. For some, they escape to NYC to "live life". For others still, they start companies "just cuz", often to win status points. They never imagined that by age 30, they'd be set. I once asked a post-economic founder friend why they didn't just sell the co and they said "and do what? right now, everyone wants to talk to me. if i sell, I will only have money." I understand that many reading this scoff at the champagne problems of the valley. Society is warped in this tech bubble. What is often well-off anywhere else in the world is bang average here. Unlike many other places, tenure, intelligence and hard work can be loosely correlated with outcomes in the Bay. Living through a societally transformative gold rush in that environment can be paralyzing. "Am I in the right place? Should I move? Is there time still left? Am I gonna make it?" It psychologically torments many who have moved here in search of "success". Ironically, a frequent side effect of this torment is to spin up the very products making everyone rich in hopes that you too can vibecode your path to economic enlightenment.

Someone can certainly *make* a billion dollars. That’s not the same thing as earning. Growing fast and disrupting markets also often means chasing and wielding market power, political influence, and scale. Take Airbnb. They heavily lobby politicians against passing housing laws to protect working class residents because it’s bad for their business model. Airbnb could not exist at its current scale and size without the housing market destabilizations, displacements, and exploits that are supercharging the evictions of working people everywhere from Puerto Rico to Jackson Hole. Now young people are planning for a future where they will never be able to afford to own a home while others have 20 and live off renting it out to them at extortionate rates with zero protections. Yes, a tiny amount of people can make billions of dollars doing that. And millions of everyday Americans are bearing the cost.

Beating innocent men/women in streets or at Langar in the name of beadbi to humiliating Hindu Tourists in front of their spouse and kids - Sad to see section of radicals have decided to permanently damage this great religion

Running a company: 2020: can you survive a pandemic? 2021: still here? we’re going to give all of your competitors $100m series A rounds. 2022: wow, you made it? okay, all engineers cost $600,000/year now. 2023: nice job! okay, SVB failed and we’re going to take away your bank account. 2024: a survivor I see. but can you pivot from ai to crypto to defense tech back to ai-enabled defense tech in a 12 month period to stay relevant? 2025: unfortunately all of your competitors have raised $2b series B rounds. oh and only 500 engineers are relevant and they cost $100m/yr each. 2026: well, well, well. you’re still in business? let’s deploy the thunderclap of godlike LLMs from the heavens so all of your customers can rebuild your app in 2 hours. can you survive?

You have no experience. You’ve never started a company. You’ve never had a full time job. Nike is going to kill you. You’re a kid. You don’t have technical skills. You shouldn’t build hardware. Apple is going to kill you. You can’t build hardware. You can’t measure heart rate non-invasively. Athletes don’t care about recovery. Under Armour is going to kill you. It won’t be accurate. You don’t listen. You’re an ineffective leader. You can’t recruit great talent. You’re going to have to pay every athlete. You can’t measure sleep non-invasively. It’s too expensive to research. Athletes are a small market. The product costs too much to make. The product costs too much to sell. Your valuation is too high. Consumers aren’t going to want it. Hardware is too hard. You should measure steps. Fitbit is going to kill you. You can’t build a marketing engine. You can’t raise enough money. You need a real CEO. Google is going to kill you. You can’t be a subscription. You can’t build a brand. You can’t do consumer in Boston. Your valuation is too high. You shouldn’t make accessories. You shouldn’t make apparel. Lululemon is going to kill you. You can’t predict Covid. Stay in your niche. You are going to run out of money. You can’t build a health platform. Amazon is going to kill you. You can’t measure blood pressure. You can’t get medical approvals. The market is too small. You don’t understand AI. The market is too competitive. It won’t work internationally. The supply chain is too complicated. You can’t build an AI. You can’t raise enough money. It’s too competitive. Healthcare isn’t going to want it. … Just keep going ✌️

Third angle of today’s shooting of a 37-year-old male by agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, clearly shows one of the agents running away from the scuffle before the shooting carrying the victim's handgun, a Sig P320.

Why are there so many $0 revenue or negative margin startups selling a dollar for 90 cents? Here's the well-known secret. Secondary share sales. If you hit $10-100M+ in ARR by subsidizing AI compute <2yrs of founding, you can get exit at a $500M-$1B valuation. Even for a 1% founding engineer, that's $4-8M post dilution in 2yrs. For founders who sell ~10% of their ~25% stake, it's often $10-30M. This isn't the classic SaaS era VC of "take some off the table to live well and buy your house after 4yrs of grinding". It's a get rich quick scheme.

Five foot seven is specifically a “power height,” and we don’t know why. Alexander the Great. Julius Caesar. Napoleon. Mark Zuckerberg. Jeff Bezos. Sergey Brin. Satya Nadella. The list goes on.

Thank you for your interest in Astronomer.

Humblebrag of the year???