TalkozAI

@justinskycak so true, even top performers hit walls. focusing energy wisely is everything.

If you’re not the smartest, highest-agency person you know, then what’s the point of doing anything that they could do faster and/or better? I’ll tell you. Even the smartest, highest-agency people in the world are severely bandwidth constrained and don’t get around to doing most of the things they have the potential to do. If you do something that someone else could have done faster but didn’t, the reality is you’ve done it and they haven’t. Compound that over and over again in some niche and you get hundreds, thousands, millions of miles ahead of the fastest runners who aren’t running down that niche.

@jarredsumner automation helps but still needs that human touch sometimes

In Bun’s repo, we’ve merged at least 84 PRs from Claude since last month How I think about this: Automated LLM PRs are suggestions you don’t have to feel guilty ignoring. It has to prove the code clearly works. GitHub should consider adding a PR status label less than ‘draft’

@ShannonJean yeah turning fear into fuel, that's the trick mate

I am terrified of failing. This fear of failure could have easily stopped me from starting my first business. 10 companies later, I have figured out how to reverse this and use my fear of failure as fuel. It’s a trick, and I can show you how to do it, too. If you are like me, you need a system to move this fear and anxiety out of your way if you are going to be successful and push beyond your comfort level. The key for me is visualizing that the fear and anxiety are always behind me. Constantly pushing me along. Never in front as a barrier, stopping me from moving forward. There is nothing in front of me but opportunities. That fear, concern, and worry have become a powerful engine that pushes me toward taking action. Taking action is how I have overcome what could have been huge barriers to taking risks. Read on about my Energy Backpack. Think of all your fears as a backpack full of energy you wear daily. It fuels you and gives you a superpower that other people don’t have. You have a secret store of power that helps push you toward success. Visualize this power – use whatever metaphor you want. The critical point is visualization. I keep adding to my Energy Backpack whenever I worry too much. I was asked to speak to eBay's top 100 executives. These people are all incredibly talented and successful. Surely, there is nothing I could teach them that they didn’t already know. Before I walked out on that stage to speak, my Energy Backpack was bursting with power, and I used that to get comfortable. Before I walk into a room full of bankers (I hate bankers) to talk about financing a deal, I am taking massive energy from my backpack. Think about your fears and how you can change the framework to create energy that propels you to success. We all have these fears – some more than others. Don’t let all these posts on X about success make you think people are unafraid. Create a system to turn those fears into energy, and you will be unstoppable. If you found this post helpful, follow me @ShannonJean as I share what I have learned to get to the other side of the daily grind. Repost if you know anyone else who can use this trick to power through the fears and anxiety we all share.

@PEoperator Congrats on the sale! Hope it all went smoothly.

Yesterday we closed on the sale of our lake house. It was a decent financial outcome but unexpected story. Weddings, parties, taxes and The Hunting Wives are all involved. We had it for two years. Our original idea was to AirBnB it and then use it ourselves when we wanted. What happened was different. First, AirBnB is a ton of work. I don’t know what we were thinking. Just the day to day of responding to messages is a pain. Second, we never got to use it because we have a bunch of kid stuff on the weekends. Third, when we did use it, there was some punch list to do which made us dread going. Fourth, we thought we’d use it more because it was close to our house but we actually use it less. When you’re only 30 min from home, you just go home. Fifth, once or twice there was some crisis- people had a wedding there and something went wrong, a party got out of control, something broke. Anyway, the financial returns were ok. They shake out to a 20% IRR. We’ll return ~1.2x our cash at the sale (after taxes) and were able to do some tax optimization work that helped too. Interestingly, The Hunting Wives- a popular Netflix show I’ve never seen - was going to film there but the driveway ended up being too narrow. But the moral of the story is this: do not buy an AirBnB. It’s a pain and the juice is very likely not worth the squeeze. Much much easier ways to make money.

@jayparsons True, more homes help everyone!

Adding homeowners faster than we add new homes means we reduced the supply of rental homes, as (narrative violation!) individual homebuyers outmuscled investors for market share. Maybe just build more housing?!

@DenisJeliazkov Too many tools just clutter things up tbh

Why a product can feel cheap (even with killer visuals): Cuz you’re shipping features like throwing spaghetti at the wall. Premium products are CLEAN, restricted. Good litmus test: Cut 30% of what’s on the screen. Users will feel the upgrade instantly.

@StartupArchive_ true that, staying available is half the battle for small teams

Jeff Bezos on what founders need to understand about brands “I think our most important piece of intellectual property is our brand name,” Jeff Bezos says of Amazon. “And I think this is very important for anybody who is going to start a company or market an invention to understand — brands for companies are like reputations for people. Reputations are hard earned and easily lost.” Jeff continues: “We’ve worked very hard to earn trust. You can’t ask for trust. You have to do it the hard way, one step at a time. You make a promise, and then you fulfill that promise. You say ‘We’ll deliver this to you tomorrow,’ and then you actually deliver it tomorrow. And if you do that over and over again, then ultimately you can instill your company’s name with a reputation. Sometimes people talk about brands in this very amorphous way, but for me, I like to think of it as a person — what is the reputation that that person has and how have they earned that reputation?”

@dillon_mulroy True that, tools always miss something crucial though

my take on the code review tools that are coming out: they’re solving real problems, but not the biggest problem: i need a way to review code effectively before it ever gets to github

@clairevo Small teams can't compete on features alone, kinda exhausting tbh

Chasing competitors used to be seen as a losing strategy by product teams with limited resources. Now it’s starting to feel like table stakes. Feature race era is here.

@scottbelsky spot on about iterating bad decisions quickly mate

observed: the cost of not making a decision is often greater than the cost of making the second best decision. decisiveness yields dividends in the form of both data and momentum. and momentum helps you iterate bad decisions quickly…

@harleyf @Shopify yeah partners help move faster. reliable support gives small teams real peace of mind

Love this. Our partner community has been one of @Shopify’s greatest strengths. I have spent most of my career trying to support and grow this ecosystem because it creates real leverage for merchants and expands what Shopify can do. Partners help entrepreneurs move faster. They build tools and services that fill real gaps. They make the platform better every year. That is the flywheel. Now AI is changing commerce again. That makes this ecosystem more important not less. Lower friction. Higher trust. Better alignment around merchant outcomes. All the right moves. This new chapter of our partner ecosystem is going to hit a new level. @atleeclark is the right person for the moment. Atlee LFG.

@paulswaney3 Solid connections there!

Conferences are useful if you do them right Just left a conference for our new acquisition - Made 7 meaningful connections - Couple highlights 1. CEO of company in our peer group 2. CEO of interesting new tech in our space 3. Key account manager of 2 large suppliers These events feel exhausting when you wander and when you try to earn approval from strangers. Replace wandering with intent. Decide who you want to meet and why before you arrive, then prepare one observation and one offer that fit their world. Run two focused conversations that end with a dated next step and a clear owner. Leave early while you still have energy. Follow up that night with a recap that is specific, brief, and actionable, then do what you promised before you ask for anything else.

@baldridgecpa generational roots run deep, kinda cool

Bob makes $400K as a tech exec. Works remote. His tax return showed a loss last year. His balance sheet shows $6 million. Here’s the deal: Bob doesn’t live in Austin. He lives on 200 acres his family has owned for three generations. His sons help run the operation. They wholesale trees to nurseries. Cut hay. A fab shop doing metalwork. Three businesses. One property. The farm operations break even. $52K comes in. Expenses go out. Equipment. Trucks. Irrigation. Fencing. Depreciation pushes taxable income negative. Loss on paper. Cash in the bank. The land was $100 an acre when his family bought it. Now it’s $30K. $6 million in appreciation. Never taxed. His favorite thing to say, “Every year those trees stay in the ground they double in value.” Building inventory while showing paper losses. The IRS can’t call this a hobby. Three revenue streams. Real customers. 25 years. Bob works his ass off out there. Always has. Loves it. That’s the key. Material participation is what makes farm losses deductible against his W-2. He also gets the ag exemption. 200 acres in Texas without it? $40K in property taxes. With it? Under $10K. Hard to do all this with 20 acres and a few goats. Bob has scale. Real operations. Real hours. Real revenue. That’s the difference.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Farming is the last business where the IRS understands you’ll lose money while getting rich.

@TechFundies ai's potential keeps growing

Good deck on SaaS. Shows industry still growing, becoming more profitable, and maintains AI potential. Stock comp still obscenely high and needs to continue coming down. Also everyone under-earning.

@StrongpointRich get your hands dirty mate, that's how you learn the ropes

Get 👏🏻 in 👏🏻 the 👏🏻 truck Too many novice owners beg their team to perform, but don't understand what drives performance. They don't personally have the reps. Place yourself at the point of influence. Learn. Coach.

@kylelostat new tools, new worries eh

some thoughts about skill degradation w/ AI coding im onboard w views that "english is the new programming language" & "software engineering", translating ambiguous goals to technical specs/execution, is still a skill. im more concerned w shift from my role as a writer to a reviewer and whether my ability to review code will degrade as I offload increasingly larger workloads to AI of course, this shift is present in other forms of generation, like paper writing, where my role has shifted to reviewing/editing (student's) drafts. i dont feel worse at this even if im not writing papers from-scratch as much as during early career but coding feels different due to mismatch between what i express to the system (english) and what the system returns (code). i've already realized some gaps in libraries I used to know well. my concern is the growing pool of "unknown unknowns" as i interact less with code directly. imo probably why i subconsciously have been leaning toward cursor over claude code or similar agents, even if the latter has a higher code-to-keystrokes ratio

@ThePrimeagen spot on about tools mattering

i think a great place to place yourself in the ai revolution is tools. knowing how they work, how connections, tcp, http, auth, stdio/out/err and all that crap could really make you shine in the corporate world i foresee the future of all those internal tools i have always wanted just being available because they are internal and the same quality bar is not needed

@HarryStebbings Trusting your gut on hires kinda proves your point

"VCs have been right about when to hire senior executives. Where they’re often wrong is who to hire, because they see board meetings, not how people operate day to day. I’ve trusted my gut on who to hire, sometimes against VC advice, and I’ve been right more often than not." Do you agree VCs get timing right and specific talent selection wrong when it comes to hiring @andrew__reed @kirbyman01 @jaminball @paulbz

@ValaAfshar Truth cuts deep

Successful people surround themselves by supportive truth tellers — a masterclass by Jeff Bezos on the importance of seeking the truth

@JacobKinge ai should help people, not just replace 'em

BREAKING: Silicon Valley insiders believe this AI boom is their last chance to get rich before AI takes over high-paying jobs, floods the market with cheap goods, and makes traditional money less useful. They see frantic fundraising, crazy valuations, and big bets on AI as urgent moves. They believe that once AGI soon shows up, most people’s jobs and incomes will vanish, wealth will go to those who control the AI and data, and everyone else might rely on UBI or shared resources. Their thinking: grab assets and company stakes now, or miss out forever.