Swordmaster

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Swordmaster

Swordmaster

@swordmaster18

Am Yisrael Chai

USA Katılım Temmuz 2013
602 Takip Edilen311 Takipçiler
Swordmaster
Swordmaster@swordmaster18·
@damianplayer Wow. That makes it so much easier to see what they are doing. The Snerican is flourishing way too much. That French guy just went straight to the lunge while he was busy wiping windows…
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Damian Player
Damian Player@damianplayer·
5 years ago in Tokyo at the Olympics, Japan tested a system that tracked fencing sword tips in real time. they called it fencing visualized. built by Rhizomatiks and Dentsu lab Tokyo. next saturday it goes live at the shrine in LA. every flick and lunge as a visible trajectory on the broadcast. sports tech is so fucking cool.
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Swordmaster
Swordmaster@swordmaster18·
@aribk24 Slash doesn’t randomly close accounts, has great customer support, is constantly shipping new features, and is really easy and painless to use. It’s my favorite bank right now. It’s built for online business.
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Arib 🇺🇸🇵🇰
thinking about moving to slash over mercury whats the main benfits
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Swordmaster
Swordmaster@swordmaster18·
@ecommilan This is why I visited both of my suppliers in person. One was fine, the other was a very professional operation with everything computer controlled with multiple QC checks. @ZendropOfficial is the real deal.
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Milan van essen
Milan van essen@ecommilan·
I visited 14 warehouses in Shenzhen and Guangzhou over 3 trips. Here's what I learned about the fulfillment industry that nobody will tell you: Most "fulfillment centers" are apartments. Not all. But at least 5 of the 14 I visited were converted apartments or small office spaces with products stacked on the floor. No shelving system. No WMS. Just people and boxes. "Quality control" is almost always a lie. Only 2 out of 14 had a dedicated QC station. Your products sit next to 500 other clients' products. There's no priority system. When it's busy, whoever screams loudest gets shipped first. Your 10 orders/day aren't screaming. The "shipping time" they quote is production-to-handoff. Not door-to-door. They hand it to the carrier and the clock stops for them. What happens after that is "not their problem." Price transparency doesn't exist. Not a single warehouse I visited could give me a clean cost breakdown on the first ask. It took 3-4 rounds of questions to get real numbers. Every time. This is why I spent 3 years building something different. Not because the industry is evil. Because nobody is incentivized to fix these problems when most customers never visit. DM me WAREHOUSE and I'll tell you have to check if your supplier is the real deal.
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elaineshan
elaineshan@elaineshan8·
All of our logistics partners emphasized the cargo safety to us today. Rumors say that last night, the police found illegal substances in a shipment from a dropshipping supplier, and over 40 people were arrested overnight. This is by far the most shocking news I've heard in my 10+ years in this industry. Not only will this company go out of business, but the owner and employees involved will face serious legal consequences. Every seller who’s ever shipped from this company, or is currently doing so, will also be investigated. This means many innocent people’s businesses will be affected. Right now, there’s no clear report on whether these illegal items came from the manufacturer, the logistics company, or the supplier itself. To protect our clients' orders and ourselves, we’re doing thorough checks on all our warehouses to avoid anything like this happening to us. I also strongly advise sellers to avoid choosing suppliers just because they offer low prices, as it could end up causing unnecessary damage to your business.
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Swordmaster
Swordmaster@swordmaster18·
@punishedfounder I’ve had insane luck with Lumira. Very fast. I’ve been waiting since March 7 for a shipped order from Ultrapept. Clearer customs March 20 and has been sitting in the U.S. not moving. I think it really depends on the vendor and their shipping method. Lumira is great though.
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c@punishedfounder·
this is why I tell people their order taking a month to arrive is not indicative of the status quo there IS a lot of variability and factors that impact delivery times, but countless people receive their orders extremely fast
SOURCEHEALTH@S0URCEHEALTH

shoutout @anabology @punishedfounder @0xexpt received my order in 8 days extremely fast shipping - i went with pepturion this time but will be placing a larger order with retalux next week 🔥🔥☄️☄️

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Rob Freund
Rob Freund@RobertFreundLaw·
More telehealth troubles in the news. LOL at "DSO Fine Shrimp LLC, d/b/a CoreAgeRX"
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Swordmaster
Swordmaster@swordmaster18·
@Daggerwhips The bastards at Bustem have tried to hit me twice with fraudulent claims. Using unrelated products European registration from a completely different company, not their clients. It’s blatant fraud. Can’t wait to sue them.
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Dagger
Dagger@Daggerecom·
Competitor tried to false spam DMCA me using bustem today, he doesn’t know I know this trick. lol.
Dagger tweet mediaDagger tweet media
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jordy
jordy@jordymaui·
@swordmaster18 i'm not! using the API - but i'm saying it's costing me the same/less ;)
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jordy
jordy@jordymaui·
most people run one OpenClaw agent and think that's the setup. it's not. the move is multiple agents with different models - opus for the brain, sonnet for the workers. i'm running 5 right now. total cost is less than one claude max subscription - for now...
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Swordmaster
Swordmaster@swordmaster18·
@jordymaui How are you running openclaw on a Mac subscription? I thought it was nerfed.
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Umar
Umar@umzrs·
I’m sure you’ve all heard of MEDVi by now They grew from 0 to $1.8B in 2 years with 2 employees Me and my team did a write up on them including: - Their business model - Their affiliate funnel - Their numbers So you can learn from them Comment ‘send’ and I’ll DM it to you for FREE (must be following)
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Swordmaster
Swordmaster@swordmaster18·
@BowTiedPhys 36% plaque reduction is still really impressive! This is on my daily stack precisely because it is such an effective compound.
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BowTiedPhys
BowTiedPhys@BowTiedPhys·
> "revealed" → study was completed 3.5 years ago > "removing up to 95% of arterial plaque" → plaque decreased by 36% (95% = those w/ improved total cholesterol) > "costs almost nothing" → ~$1.50/10,800 FU > still following the resveratrol guy's advice → güd luck
BowTiedPhys tweet mediaBowTiedPhys tweet mediaBowTiedPhys tweet media
John Cumbers@johncumbers

David Sinclair just revealed one of the biggest studies on nattokinase. A comprehensive Chinese study of 1,067 people found that nattokinase reversed cardiovascular disease by removing up to 95% of arterial plaque in one year. This supplement is an enzyme from fermented soybeans and costs almost nothing. Sinclair has been taking it daily for a couple of years. He measures his carotid artery with ultrasound and says there's no plaque buildup at all. Peter Diamandis takes it too. He believes you need at least 6,000 fibrinolytic units per day to reap the benefits. For context: • Statins cost hundreds per month and come with side effects. • Surgical interventions can cost thousands of dollars Nattokinase costs a fraction of both. Sinclair's caveat: "Do this with the knowledge of your physician." But the data exists. A study of over 1,000 people and up to 95% plaque removal in just 12 months. And the man whose lab is reversing aging takes it every day. — David Sinclair (@davidasinclair) on Peter Diamandis' (@PeterDiamandis) Moonshots podcast PS. David Sinclair is speaking at SynBioBeta on May 6th this year, discussing the science of slowing and reversing aging. If longevity is the world you're in, the investors, partners, and scientists shaping this space will be in the room. Grab your ticket in the comments below.

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Sebastian Betancur
Sebastian Betancur@iamsebetancur·
Doesn’t post for 2 months Complains about not getting results If this is how you’re going to be as a client, never expect your life to change. Selling info to the general public is giving me grey hairs at 24.
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c
c@punishedfounder·
🚨 new peptaura feature! RFQ + group buys did you know you can make bank with it without scalping your friends? organizers get a significant cut of the platform margin $50k order? you get $5k+ what are you waiting for? to get stuck… in the permanent underclass?
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Swordmaster retweetledi
Israel War Room
Israel War Room@IsraelWarRoom·
🚨Sirens continue to sound in southern Israel.
Israel War Room tweet media
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Rob Freund
Rob Freund@RobertFreundLaw·
Medvi was sued in a class action last month for violating California's anti-spam law. "MEDVi’s affiliate marketers send spam use falsified header information, spoofed domains and nonsensical sending addresses to evade spam filters. They also use false and deceptive subject lines – everything that people rightfully hate about spam."
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Corey Walker 🇺🇸
Corey Walker 🇺🇸@CoreyWriting·
Got 3 paragraphs in before I quit. Who on Earth has the mental stamina to read all this?
Bill Ackman@BillAckman

I am reaching out to the @X community for advice with the likely risk of sharing TMI. I have been sufficiently upset about the whole matter that I have lost sleep thinking about it and I am hoping that this post will enable me to get this matter off my chest. By way of background, I started a family office called TABLE about 15 years ago and hired a friend who had previously managed a family office, and years earlier, had been my personal accountant. She is someone that I trusted implicitly and consider to be a good person. The office started small, but over the last decade, the number of personnel and the cost of the office grew massively. The growth was entirely on the operational side as the investment team has remained tiny. While my investment portfolio grew substantially, the investments I had made were almost entirely passive and TABLE simply needed to account for them and meet capital calls as they came in. While TABLE purchased additional software and other systems that were supposed to improve productivity, the team kept increasing in size at a rapid rate, and the expenses continued to grow even faster. While I would periodically question the growing expenses and high staff turnover, I stayed uninvolved with the office other than a once-a-year meeting when I briefly reviewed the operations and the financials and determined bonus compensation for the President and the CFO. I spent no time with any of the other employees or the operations. The whole idea behind TABLE was that it would handle everything other than my day job so that I would have more time for my job and my family. Over the last six years, expenses ballooned even further, employee turnover accelerated, and I became concerned that all was not well at TABLE. It was time for me to take a look at what was going on. Nearly four years ago, I recruited my nephew who had recently graduated from Harvard and put him to work at Bremont, a British watchmaker, one of my only active personal investments to figure out the issues at the company and ultimately assist in executing a turnaround. He did a superb job. When he returned from the UK late last year after a few years at Bremont, I asked him to help me figure out what was going on with TABLE. When I explained to TABLE’s president what he would be doing, she became incredibly defensive, which naturally made me more concerned. My nephew went to work by first meeting with each employee to understand their roles at the company and to learn from them what ideas they had on how things could be improved. He got an earful. Our first step in helping to turn around TABLE was a reduction in force including the president and about a third of the team, retaining excellent talent that had been desperate for new leadership. Now here is where I need your advice. All but one of the employees who were terminated acted professionally and were gracious on the way out (excluding the president who had a notice period in her contract, is currently still being paid, and with whom I have not yet had a discussion). The highest compensated terminated employee other than the president, an in-house lawyer (let’s call her Ronda), told us that three months of severance was not enough and demanded two years’ severance despite having worked at the company for only two and one half years. When I learned of Ronda's request for severance, I offered to speak with her to understand what she was thinking, but she refused to do so. A few days ago, we received a threatening letter from a Silicon Valley law firm. In the letter, Ronda’s counsel suggests that her termination is part of longstanding issues of ‘harassment and gender discrimination’ – an interesting claim in light of the fact that Ronda was in charge of workplace compliance – and that her termination was due to: “unlawful, retaliatory, and harmful conduct directed towards her. Both [Ronda] and I [Ronda’s lawyer] have spoken with you about [Ronda’s] view of what a reasonable resolution would include given the circumstances. Thus far, TABLE has refused to provide any substantive response. This letter provides the last opportunity to reach a satisfactory agreement. If we cannot do so, [Ronda] will seek all appropriate relief in a court of competent jurisdiction.” The letter goes on to explain the basis for the “unsafe work environment” claim at TABLE: “In early 2026, Pershing Square’s founder Bill Ackman installed his nephew in an unidentified role at TABLE, Ackman’s family office. [His nephew]—whose only work experience had been for TABLE where he was seconded abroad for the last four years to a UK watch company held by Ackman—began appearing at TABLE’s offices and conducting interviews of employees without a clear explanation of his role or the purposes of these interviews. During this period, he made a series of inappropriate and genderbased [sic] comments to multiple employees that created an unsafe work environment. Among other things, [his nephew] made remarks about female employees’ ages (“Tell me you are nowhere near 40”), physical appearance (“Your body does not look like you have kids”), as well as intrusive questions about family planning and sexual orientation (“Who carried your son? Who will carry your next child?”). These incidents were reported to senior leadership at TABLE and Pershing Square. Rather than being addressed appropriately, the response from senior management reflected, at best, willful blindness to the inappropriateness of [his nephew]’s remarks and, at worst, tacit endorsement.” The above allegations about my nephew had previously been brought to my attention by TABLE’s president when they occurred. When I learned of them, I told the president that I would speak to him directly and encouraged her to arrange for him to get workplace sensitivity training. The president assured me that she would do so. When I spoke to my nephew, he explained what he actually had said and how his actual remarks had been received, not at all as alleged in the legal letter from Ronda’s counsel. I have also spoken to others at the lunch table who confirmed his description of the facts. In any case, he meant no harm, was simply trying to build rapport with other employees, and no one, as far as I understand, was offended. Ironically, Ronda claims in her legal letter that TABLE didn’t take HR compliance seriously, yet Ronda was in charge of HR compliance at TABLE and the person who gave my nephew his workplace sensitivity training after the alleged incidents. In any case, Ronda, as head of compliance, should have kept a record or raised an alarm if indeed there was pervasive harassment or other such problems at the company, and there is no evidence whatsoever that this is true. So why does Ronda believe she can get me to pay her nearly $2 million, i.e., two years of severance, nearly one year of severance for each of her years at the company? Well, here is where some more background would be helpful. Over the last two months, I have been consumed with a major family medical issue – one of my older daughters had a massive brain hemorrhage on February 5th and has since been making progress on her recovery – and I am in the midst of a major transaction for my company which I am executing from a hospital room office next to her . While the latter business matter is publicly known, the details of my daughter’s situation are only known to Ronda because of her role at our family office. Now, let’s get back to the subject at hand. Unfortunately, while New York and many other states have employment-at-will, there has emerged an industry of lawyers who make a living from bringing fake gender, race, LGBTQ and other discrimination employment claims in order to extract larger severance payments for terminated employees, and it needs to stop. The fake claim system succeeds because it costs little to have a lawyer send a threatening letter and nearly all of the lawyers in this field work on contingency so there is no or minimal cash cost to bring a claim. And inevitably, nearly 100% of these claims are settled because the public relations and legal costs of defending them exceed the dollar cost of the settlement. The claims are nearly always settled with a confidentiality agreement where the employee who asserts the fake claims remains anonymous and as a result, there is no reputational cost to bringing false claims. The consequences of this sleazy system (let’s call it ‘the System’) are the increased costs of doing business which is a tax on the economy and society. There are other more serious problems due to the System. Unfortunately, the existence of an industry of plaintiff firms and terminated employees willing to make these claims makes it riskier for companies to hire employees from a protected class, i.e., LGBTQ, seniors, women, people of color etc. because it is that much more reputationally damaging and expensive to be accused of racism, sexism, and/or intolerance for sexual diversity than for firing a white male as juries generally have less sympathy for white males. The System therefore increases the risk of discrimination rather than reducing it, and the people bringing these fake claims are thereby causing enormous harm to the other members of these protected classes. So what happened here? Ronda was vastly overpaid and overqualified for the job that she did at TABLE. She was paid $1.05 million plus benefits last year for her work which was largely comprised of filling out subscription agreements and overseeing an outside law firm on closing passive investments in funds and in private and venture stage companies, some compliance work, and managing the office move from one office to another. She had a very good gig as she was highly paid, only had to go into the office three days a week, and could work from anywhere during the summer. Once my nephew showed up and started to investigate what was going on, she likely concluded that there was a reasonable possibility she would be terminated, as her job was in the too-easy-and-to-good-to-be-true category. The problem was that she was not in a protected class due to her race, age or sexual identity so she had to construct the basis for a claim. While she is female and could in theory bring a gender-based discrimination claim, she reported to the president who is female and to whom she is very close, which makes it difficult for her to bring a harassment claim against her former boss. When my nephew complimented a TABLE employee at lunch about how young she looked – in response to saying she was going to her 40-year-old sister’s birthday party, he said ‘she must be your older sister’ – Ronda immediately reported it to our external HR lawyer. She thereby began building her case. The other problem for Ronda bringing a claim is that she was terminated alongside 30% of other TABLE employees as part of a restructuring so it is very difficult for her to say that she was targeted in her termination or was retaliated against. TABLE is now hiring an external fractional general counsel as that is all the company needs to process the relatively limited amount of legal work we do internally. In short, Ronda was eminently qualified and capable and did her job. She was just too much horsepower for what is largely an administrative legal role so she had to come up with something else to bring a claim. Now Ronda knew I was a good target and it was a good time to bring a claim against me. She also knew that I was under a lot of pressure because on March 4th when Ronda was terminated, my daughter had not yet emerged from consciousness, she was not yet breathing on her own, and my daughter and we were fighting for her life. I was and remain deeply engaged in her recovery while at the same time I was working on finishing the closing for the private placement round for my upcoming IPO. Ronda also knew that publicity about supposed gender discrimination and a “hostile and unsafe work environment” are not things that a CEO of a company about to go public wants to have released into the media. And she may have thought that the nearly $2 million she was asking for would be considered small in the context of the reputational damage a lawsuit could cause, regardless of the fact that two years of severance was an absurd amount for an employee who had only worked at TABLE for 30 months. She also likely considered that I wouldn’t want to embarrass my nephew by dragging him into the klieg lights when her claims emerged publicly. So, in summary, game theory would say that I would certainly settle this case, for why would I risk negative publicity at a time when I was preparing our company to go public and also risk embarrassing my nephew. Notably, she hired a Silicon Valley law firm, rather than a typical NY employment firm. This struck me as interesting as her husband works for one of the most prominent Silicon Valley venture firms whose CEO, I am sure, has no tolerance for these kinds of fake claims that sadly many venture-backed companies also have to deal with. I mention this as I suspect her husband likely has been working with her on the strategy for squeezing me as, in addition to being a computer scientist, he is a game theorist. My only advice for him is to understand more about your opponent before you launch your first move. All of the above said, gender, race, LGBTQ and other such discrimination is a real thing. Many people have been harmed and deserve compensation for this discrimination, and these companies and individuals should be punished for engaging in such behavior. Which brings me to the advice I am seeking from the X community. I am not planning to follow the typical path and settle this ‘claim.’ Rather, I am going to fight this nonsense to the end of the earth in the hope that it inspires other CEOs to do the same so we shut down this despicable behavior that is a large tax on society, employment, and the economy and contributes to workplace discrimination rather than reducing it. Do you agree or disagree that this is the right approach?

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Swordmaster
Swordmaster@swordmaster18·
@BillAckman @X I fully support what you are doing. I wish more CEOs had the balls to stand up to these types of litigation. Bravo. Refuah Shlema for your daughter. Wishing her a speedy and total recovery.
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Bill Ackman
Bill Ackman@BillAckman·
I am reaching out to the @X community for advice with the likely risk of sharing TMI. I have been sufficiently upset about the whole matter that I have lost sleep thinking about it and I am hoping that this post will enable me to get this matter off my chest. By way of background, I started a family office called TABLE about 15 years ago and hired a friend who had previously managed a family office, and years earlier, had been my personal accountant. She is someone that I trusted implicitly and consider to be a good person. The office started small, but over the last decade, the number of personnel and the cost of the office grew massively. The growth was entirely on the operational side as the investment team has remained tiny. While my investment portfolio grew substantially, the investments I had made were almost entirely passive and TABLE simply needed to account for them and meet capital calls as they came in. While TABLE purchased additional software and other systems that were supposed to improve productivity, the team kept increasing in size at a rapid rate, and the expenses continued to grow even faster. While I would periodically question the growing expenses and high staff turnover, I stayed uninvolved with the office other than a once-a-year meeting when I briefly reviewed the operations and the financials and determined bonus compensation for the President and the CFO. I spent no time with any of the other employees or the operations. The whole idea behind TABLE was that it would handle everything other than my day job so that I would have more time for my job and my family. Over the last six years, expenses ballooned even further, employee turnover accelerated, and I became concerned that all was not well at TABLE. It was time for me to take a look at what was going on. Nearly four years ago, I recruited my nephew who had recently graduated from Harvard and put him to work at Bremont, a British watchmaker, one of my only active personal investments to figure out the issues at the company and ultimately assist in executing a turnaround. He did a superb job. When he returned from the UK late last year after a few years at Bremont, I asked him to help me figure out what was going on with TABLE. When I explained to TABLE’s president what he would be doing, she became incredibly defensive, which naturally made me more concerned. My nephew went to work by first meeting with each employee to understand their roles at the company and to learn from them what ideas they had on how things could be improved. He got an earful. Our first step in helping to turn around TABLE was a reduction in force including the president and about a third of the team, retaining excellent talent that had been desperate for new leadership. Now here is where I need your advice. All but one of the employees who were terminated acted professionally and were gracious on the way out (excluding the president who had a notice period in her contract, is currently still being paid, and with whom I have not yet had a discussion). The highest compensated terminated employee other than the president, an in-house lawyer (let’s call her Ronda), told us that three months of severance was not enough and demanded two years’ severance despite having worked at the company for only two and one half years. When I learned of Ronda's request for severance, I offered to speak with her to understand what she was thinking, but she refused to do so. A few days ago, we received a threatening letter from a Silicon Valley law firm. In the letter, Ronda’s counsel suggests that her termination is part of longstanding issues of ‘harassment and gender discrimination’ – an interesting claim in light of the fact that Ronda was in charge of workplace compliance – and that her termination was due to: “unlawful, retaliatory, and harmful conduct directed towards her. Both [Ronda] and I [Ronda’s lawyer] have spoken with you about [Ronda’s] view of what a reasonable resolution would include given the circumstances. Thus far, TABLE has refused to provide any substantive response. This letter provides the last opportunity to reach a satisfactory agreement. If we cannot do so, [Ronda] will seek all appropriate relief in a court of competent jurisdiction.” The letter goes on to explain the basis for the “unsafe work environment” claim at TABLE: “In early 2026, Pershing Square’s founder Bill Ackman installed his nephew in an unidentified role at TABLE, Ackman’s family office. [His nephew]—whose only work experience had been for TABLE where he was seconded abroad for the last four years to a UK watch company held by Ackman—began appearing at TABLE’s offices and conducting interviews of employees without a clear explanation of his role or the purposes of these interviews. During this period, he made a series of inappropriate and genderbased [sic] comments to multiple employees that created an unsafe work environment. Among other things, [his nephew] made remarks about female employees’ ages (“Tell me you are nowhere near 40”), physical appearance (“Your body does not look like you have kids”), as well as intrusive questions about family planning and sexual orientation (“Who carried your son? Who will carry your next child?”). These incidents were reported to senior leadership at TABLE and Pershing Square. Rather than being addressed appropriately, the response from senior management reflected, at best, willful blindness to the inappropriateness of [his nephew]’s remarks and, at worst, tacit endorsement.” The above allegations about my nephew had previously been brought to my attention by TABLE’s president when they occurred. When I learned of them, I told the president that I would speak to him directly and encouraged her to arrange for him to get workplace sensitivity training. The president assured me that she would do so. When I spoke to my nephew, he explained what he actually had said and how his actual remarks had been received, not at all as alleged in the legal letter from Ronda’s counsel. I have also spoken to others at the lunch table who confirmed his description of the facts. In any case, he meant no harm, was simply trying to build rapport with other employees, and no one, as far as I understand, was offended. Ironically, Ronda claims in her legal letter that TABLE didn’t take HR compliance seriously, yet Ronda was in charge of HR compliance at TABLE and the person who gave my nephew his workplace sensitivity training after the alleged incidents. In any case, Ronda, as head of compliance, should have kept a record or raised an alarm if indeed there was pervasive harassment or other such problems at the company, and there is no evidence whatsoever that this is true. So why does Ronda believe she can get me to pay her nearly $2 million, i.e., two years of severance, nearly one year of severance for each of her years at the company? Well, here is where some more background would be helpful. Over the last two months, I have been consumed with a major family medical issue – one of my older daughters had a massive brain hemorrhage on February 5th and has since been making progress on her recovery – and I am in the midst of a major transaction for my company which I am executing from a hospital room office next to her . While the latter business matter is publicly known, the details of my daughter’s situation are only known to Ronda because of her role at our family office. Now, let’s get back to the subject at hand. Unfortunately, while New York and many other states have employment-at-will, there has emerged an industry of lawyers who make a living from bringing fake gender, race, LGBTQ and other discrimination employment claims in order to extract larger severance payments for terminated employees, and it needs to stop. The fake claim system succeeds because it costs little to have a lawyer send a threatening letter and nearly all of the lawyers in this field work on contingency so there is no or minimal cash cost to bring a claim. And inevitably, nearly 100% of these claims are settled because the public relations and legal costs of defending them exceed the dollar cost of the settlement. The claims are nearly always settled with a confidentiality agreement where the employee who asserts the fake claims remains anonymous and as a result, there is no reputational cost to bringing false claims. The consequences of this sleazy system (let’s call it ‘the System’) are the increased costs of doing business which is a tax on the economy and society. There are other more serious problems due to the System. Unfortunately, the existence of an industry of plaintiff firms and terminated employees willing to make these claims makes it riskier for companies to hire employees from a protected class, i.e., LGBTQ, seniors, women, people of color etc. because it is that much more reputationally damaging and expensive to be accused of racism, sexism, and/or intolerance for sexual diversity than for firing a white male as juries generally have less sympathy for white males. The System therefore increases the risk of discrimination rather than reducing it, and the people bringing these fake claims are thereby causing enormous harm to the other members of these protected classes. So what happened here? Ronda was vastly overpaid and overqualified for the job that she did at TABLE. She was paid $1.05 million plus benefits last year for her work which was largely comprised of filling out subscription agreements and overseeing an outside law firm on closing passive investments in funds and in private and venture stage companies, some compliance work, and managing the office move from one office to another. She had a very good gig as she was highly paid, only had to go into the office three days a week, and could work from anywhere during the summer. Once my nephew showed up and started to investigate what was going on, she likely concluded that there was a reasonable possibility she would be terminated, as her job was in the too-easy-and-to-good-to-be-true category. The problem was that she was not in a protected class due to her race, age or sexual identity so she had to construct the basis for a claim. While she is female and could in theory bring a gender-based discrimination claim, she reported to the president who is female and to whom she is very close, which makes it difficult for her to bring a harassment claim against her former boss. When my nephew complimented a TABLE employee at lunch about how young she looked – in response to saying she was going to her 40-year-old sister’s birthday party, he said ‘she must be your older sister’ – Ronda immediately reported it to our external HR lawyer. She thereby began building her case. The other problem for Ronda bringing a claim is that she was terminated alongside 30% of other TABLE employees as part of a restructuring so it is very difficult for her to say that she was targeted in her termination or was retaliated against. TABLE is now hiring an external fractional general counsel as that is all the company needs to process the relatively limited amount of legal work we do internally. In short, Ronda was eminently qualified and capable and did her job. She was just too much horsepower for what is largely an administrative legal role so she had to come up with something else to bring a claim. Now Ronda knew I was a good target and it was a good time to bring a claim against me. She also knew that I was under a lot of pressure because on March 4th when Ronda was terminated, my daughter had not yet emerged from consciousness, she was not yet breathing on her own, and my daughter and we were fighting for her life. I was and remain deeply engaged in her recovery while at the same time I was working on finishing the closing for the private placement round for my upcoming IPO. Ronda also knew that publicity about supposed gender discrimination and a “hostile and unsafe work environment” are not things that a CEO of a company about to go public wants to have released into the media. And she may have thought that the nearly $2 million she was asking for would be considered small in the context of the reputational damage a lawsuit could cause, regardless of the fact that two years of severance was an absurd amount for an employee who had only worked at TABLE for 30 months. She also likely considered that I wouldn’t want to embarrass my nephew by dragging him into the klieg lights when her claims emerged publicly. So, in summary, game theory would say that I would certainly settle this case, for why would I risk negative publicity at a time when I was preparing our company to go public and also risk embarrassing my nephew. Notably, she hired a Silicon Valley law firm, rather than a typical NY employment firm. This struck me as interesting as her husband works for one of the most prominent Silicon Valley venture firms whose CEO, I am sure, has no tolerance for these kinds of fake claims that sadly many venture-backed companies also have to deal with. I mention this as I suspect her husband likely has been working with her on the strategy for squeezing me as, in addition to being a computer scientist, he is a game theorist. My only advice for him is to understand more about your opponent before you launch your first move. All of the above said, gender, race, LGBTQ and other such discrimination is a real thing. Many people have been harmed and deserve compensation for this discrimination, and these companies and individuals should be punished for engaging in such behavior. Which brings me to the advice I am seeking from the X community. I am not planning to follow the typical path and settle this ‘claim.’ Rather, I am going to fight this nonsense to the end of the earth in the hope that it inspires other CEOs to do the same so we shut down this despicable behavior that is a large tax on society, employment, and the economy and contributes to workplace discrimination rather than reducing it. Do you agree or disagree that this is the right approach?
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Swordmaster
Swordmaster@swordmaster18·
@galligator I appreciate you doing this so publicly. Very inspiring!
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Matthew Gallagher
Matthew Gallagher@galligator·
A lot of people are asking me for a course or playbook on how to build quickly. I’ll just post here and if you have questions I’ll reply. When I was first building (see my X history) vibe coding was not what it is today and there were no agents. I pieced different tech stacks together in PHP and cobbled together a Frankenstein v1. I used cron jobs to automate tasks. Today, there are several agentic coding tools that would allow you to loosely describe what you want to build and have it done in moments. You can upload unsupported API docs and teach your agent how to plug functionality into your website. Ideas used to be a dime a dozen, but now anyone can build. The value of a good idea has multiplied. In one day, you can build a niche version of many large companies. Your new superpowers are: speed, taste, resourcefulness and drive. Also, don’t be a dick. People like working with people they’d hang out with.
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