TLDR Jake

Replies so good even companies like it! @Arm thanks for the like and wishing you much success with the Lumex chip! #TLDRJake #Lumex

@WSJ Is the American pizza party over? 🍕 The pizza industry is "disrupted" as sales lag behind coffee and Mexican food. High prices and delivery apps have cooled our love for the pie, leading to bankruptcies and major chain sell-offs. 📉 Price Wars: $20 pies vs. $5 value meals.

The restaurant industry is trying to figure out whether America has hit peak pizza. 🍕 on.wsj.com/4pFl1Pe

@WSJ Economy class doesn't have to be a "sufferfest." ✈️ Upgrade your flight with these pro hacks: Seat: Pick the aisle for freedom to stretch. Gear: Use a "foot hammock" or Trtl pillow for sleep. Pro Tip: Bring a $60 AirFly to use AirPods on seat screens. 🎧 #TravelHacks #FlightTips

Long-haul flights in economy class take a toll. To make your next flight less of a sufferfest, we tapped some frequent economy-class fliers for tips on making the back of the plane more tolerable—or even luxurious. 🔗: on.wsj.com/4sIAxwE

@WSJ Stressing over the price of guacamole or extra legroom? 🥑Try the 0.01% Rule by Nick Maggiulli: If a purchase is less than 0.01% of your net worth, buy it guilt-free. It’s a "sanity check" to stop overthinking small wins and enjoy your wealth. 💸#PersonalFinance #MoneyTips

Want guac in your burrito bowl or extra legroom on your flight? The 0.01% rule: a low-stress way to think about how you spend your money. 🔗: on.wsj.com/4bBHXeX

@CNET I think you meant 12 hours not 12% @CNET

Review: With its two-day battery life and satellite-powered safety features, Apple's rugged new smartwatch is built for sensible thrill seekers who still want convenience. cnet.com/tech/mobile/i-…

@verge Google just dropped Mixboard, an AI moodboard builder in Labs. Think #Pinterest + generative AI: type a prompt, get a design board Google’s latest play to enter creative tools (vs Pinterest, FigJam, Adobe) 👉 Follow @TLDRJake → the news without the noise

Google’s Mixboard is an AI moodboard builder theverge.com/news/783991/go…

@andrewchen Founders botch elevator pitches by being boring, vague, or messy. Open w/ a bold “why now,” brag harder about your team, always show some traction, make demos visceral, keep story simple. Clear pitch = clear strategy Follow @tldrjake for more insights

WHAT NEW FOUNDERS GET WRONG IN THEIR ELEVATOR PITCH so hey - am writing this in the FINAL week before applications close for a16z speedrun 6. The deadline Sep 28, this upcoming sunday. Speedrun is a16z's new program to invest up to $1M in brand new startups, with a 12-week program. Apply here: speedrun006.a16z.com/x back to the topic -- so after reviewing a zillion pitches over my time in startup world, you quickly realize that if you can't give a short pitch well (~2min or less) then you probably won't give a 30+ min pitch well. Learning to do this effectively makes it easier to sell, recruit, and yes, to raise money. Here's some high level things that are easy to get wrong in the first version of your new pitch: - the idea itself is boring. The magic is in the "why?" - brag way way more about your team than you think - there's many flavors to traction, learn how to talk about your early traction - good product demos, and bad product demos - your story should be simple/elegant, which is a reflection of your strategy, but with enough details to bring it alive Expanding some additional thoughts here: The idea itself is boring. The magic is in the "why?" Yes, we get it, everyone is building "Cursor for X" or "Agents for Y" right now. And when you're in tech and you hear dozens and hundreds of variations of this, it just gets stale and boring. What's the surprising, provocative, assertive statement you can make at the very beginning of the pitch to grab your audience's attention? What is the new tech breakthrough you're utilizing that makes this possible today but not in prior years. You need to answer this, otherwise you'll get lost in the noise. Compare yourself to big trends, big revolutions. Surprise people. This is particularly true if you have discovered an "earned secret" from your time in another role, or in building out in the market, that is counterintuitive but compelling. The problem with these standard "X for Y" descriptions is that they are easy to understand, but lack the drama to hook your audience on the "why now?" The thing that kills your pitch isn't that they hate your idea. It's if they aren't listening at all, because they're too bored or distracted to listen. Brag way way more about your team than you think Many of you are long-winded and vague when you talk about yourselves. You can do better. When you have your team slide, I suggest keeping it terse and to the point (we don't need to know you are childhood friends). Make sure you really brag about yourself. In particular, many of you are missing the ability to add specific facts and figures. If you say that you started a successful company previously, then tell me that you went from zero to X million in revenue. If you worked at a known product, tell me what you did there, and how many millions of users did you serve? Adding little bits of data helps make your resume even more impressive. I have a longer read on this topic here which discusses why you need to talk about your background in a way that is different than in "real life" — Be "the dinner party jerk." andrewchen.com/the-dinner-par… An excerpt: To figure out if you are properly pitching yourself in your team, run the thought experiment of describing yourselves at a dinner party. If you are pitching yourself hard, then if you are a kind human, you will turn red and blush with wild embarrassment. The reason is that a proper pitch includes many of your credentials, your achievements, the ways in which you and your team are highly unique, and we simply don’t talk like this at dinner parties. And yet this is exactly what you should do when you talk to investors, partners, customers, and potential employees. There's many flavors to traction, learn how to talk about your early traction You have to make the best use of your traction. Many of you are at different levels but there's always some kind of story to tell, and being able to talk about traction at some level really punches up people's perception of how far along you are. So if you have revenue, talk about revenue. If you only have users then talk users. If not, add quotes. Or talk about the traction of similar products and what you've learned. If you need more months of R&D, I suggest bulding a landing page waitlist for your product and at least start collecting emails, titles, company names (for B2B) so that you can talk about your waitlist metrics and what logos are signed up. There's always a traction story, even if it's early, and it helps people imagine what you might be able to do. You might argue that a brand new startup doesn't need traction. You might have seen me post a framework in the past that looks like this: Pre-seed- Bet on the team ‍ Seed- Bet on the product Series A- Bet on the traction Series B- Bet on the revenue Series C- Bet on the unit economics This is all true. However, any glimmer of traction can be a major unlock for peoples' view of what you've built. Especially if you can sneak in a name drop or metric drop that gets people to imagine what's special about what you're building. There are good product demos, and bad product demos If you get someone in front of your screen or mobile app, you can do a quick demo. But remember that if you share tiny screenshots of your product, no one will understand what's going on. Share something zoomed in, or make it conceptual. Or if your product is visual, do an animated GIF. Imagine your slides showing to 1000+ people and they can barely read anything under 40pt font. Can they understand what's happening with your product at a high level? There's something magical about showing a visual difference or transformation as part of your product experience. This is why all the various gen AI tools are so amazing -- you can share a before/after in one go. Or when a new iOS feature unlocks a bit of UX, use it. Or show the product, but show an impressive example of how a real user has worked with it. The best demos deliver quick "ahas" in seconds, not minutes, and are visceral/emotional. It shouldn't require a lot of thinking. And if tied in with your opening hook, it should provide a big wow moment. Simplicity is a good thing I wrote about this before, but repeating here since it's well grouped with these other topics: The clarity of a startup's story means clarity in their strategy. The story is the strategy. On the other hand, a confusing, rambling story means that your approach is likely complex, incoherent, and unattractive. If you've ever had someone pitch you a product idea and then needed to ask question after question to understand what they're doing, you know what I mean. This is a skill. It takes tremendous time and effort to pare back your startup's core ideas into a short series of truths, with strong local connections in between. The process of paring down the idea requires hardcore prioritization -- knowing what parts of the idea are core and must be done right away, and what parts are irrelevant, or can be done in the future. A clear narrative forces clarity in strategic tradeoffs. It takes no skill to have massive complexity -- we can all brainstorm a ton of ideas, throw all the exciting trendy technologies into our idea, and make a go for it. But these messy stories reflect strategic indecision and avoidance. And the resulting unclear strategy will repel potential customers, investors, employees, and partners. They don't know who you are, or what you're really doing, because you don't either. the best stories are a form of lossy compression, where they leave out 90% of the operational detail, but still hit the emotional and strategic truth. They ring true as soon as the words leave your mouth. And not because they are obvious statements -- after all, we get tired of hearing the same things -- but rather because they make observations on the reality of the world new way that cuts through the noise. They contain a "secret" that's surprising and compelling. The best narratives tap into feelings, not just logic. the good news is that you can often figure this all out as you go. Founders and product builders are often are guided by the intuition of what they want to see in the world. Intuition might guide you towards a solid product, even if the initial story is a bit messy. And as you understand your customers' real world use cases, plus how your own customers describe your product, it can get easier to compress down all your ideas/observations/mistakes into a simpler expression of the idea.

@WSJ Apple jumps from iOS 18 → 26. New “Liquid Glass” look = translucent menus/icons—polarizing but tweakable. Bigger wins: call screening, Hold Assist, spam filters, polls in Messages, smarter screenshots follow @tldrjake to get smarter faster

Liquid Glass is here and your iPhone will never be the same. In this guide to the biggest iPhone software change in years, here is what’s new, what you can undo, and what you’ll need to live with. on.wsj.com/3IwxB3Y

Boeing taps Palantir to bring AI using Foundry to unify data across factories making jets, satellites & missiles. Also plugged into classified missions. Signal: defense primes racing to standardize AI, Palantir cementing itself as DoD’s AI OS Follow @tldrjake to get smarter faster

Boeing said it was joining forces with Palantir to integrate artificial intelligence into its defense, space and security business on.wsj.com/3IFxXFr

Mercedes contract mfg. Valmet Automotive cut ~30% of staff at its Finland plant. Another signal of Europe’s auto slump: weak EV demand, Chinese competition, excess capacity. Even Porsche & VW cut forecasts; Stellantis halts plants. Pressure is industry-wide. 👉 Follow @TLDRJake → the news without the noise

Finland’s Valmet Automotive Oyj, which produces several models for Mercedes-Benz, plans to shed almost a third of its employees in the latest sign of pervasive weakness among European carmakers bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

@business US crop prices ticked higher after China’s envoy met US Midwest leaders. Wheat +1.6%, corn +0.6%, soybeans +0.1% (snapping losing streak). China is still leaning on Brazil & Argentina beans 👉 Follow @TLDRJake → the news without the noise

Most US crop markets traded higher following an announcement from China that a trade envoy from the nation met with a delegation of US political and business leaders from the Midwest bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

@business Sweden and Poland just launched “Gotland Sentry,” a joint drill on the Baltic island seen as key to controlling the sea. Goal: deter Russia, show unity, harden defenses. The Baltic is fast becoming NATO’s front porch. 👉 Follow @TLDRJake → the news without the noise

Sweden and Poland launched a military exercise named Gotland Sentry to boost defenses of the strategic island in the Baltic Sea as concerns over an increasingly assertive Russia are rising in the region bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

@business @niamalikah @opinion Kamala Harris drops her memoir 107 Days, a blunt recount of the 2024 campaign and Bidenworld dysfunction She rejects being the scapegoat, admits missteps, but pins losses on the democratic party who didn't back her. 👉 Follow @TLDRJake → the news without the noise

Kamala Harris, often a scapegoat for Democrats after 2024, strikes back at an ossified party with her bridge-burning new book, writes @niamalikah (via @opinion) bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

@business Powell speaks 12:35pm ET (Greater Providence) — first remarks since last week’s 25bp cut to 4.00–4.25% Watch: path of more ’25 cuts (dots imply 2), labor cooling vs sticky inflation, QT pace, r* hints, political noise 👉 Follow @TLDRJake → the news without the noise

Powell Speech Today: Live News on Fed Economic Outlook, Rates bloomberg.com/news/live-blog…

@business Arabica coffee prices just dropped ~3% as rains in Brazil boost hopes for a bumper crop Good weather could finally refill depleted global inventories after weak harvests. 👉 Follow @TLDRJake → the news without the noise

Arabica coffee futures retreated in New York as rains in the world’s top producer Brazil boost expectations of a bumper crop bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

@verge YouTube wants its next big act to be live. When YT shifts strategy, creators follow: ads made videos longer, podcasts became video… now livestreaming is the push Big Q: will AI tools make streams better or unwatchable? 👉 Follow @TLDRJake → the news without the noise

YouTube wants you to go live theverge.com/podcast/783282…

Ex-Spotify execs launched Oboe—an AI learning app that spits out “courses” from prompts. Cool idea. But no citations = no trust. Right now it risks being AI slop dressed up as education. In AI, credibility > creativity. 👉 Follow @TLDRJake → the news without the noise

@verge Ex-Spotify execs launched Oboe an AI learning app that spits out “courses” from prompts Cool idea. But no citations = no trust. Right now it risks being AI slop dressed up as education. In AI, credibility > creativity. 👉 Follow @TLDRJake → the news without the noise

Former Spotify execs launch AI-powered ‘learning platform’ for the ‘curiously minded’ theverge.com/ai-artificial-…

@verge Secret Service just dismantled a NY network of 300+ SIM servers + 100k SIMs capable of shutting down cell towers, disrupting 911, and masking assassination threats. P roof that cyber + physical security are colliding fast Follow @tldrjake to get the news w/o the blah blah blah

Secret Service dismantles network capable of shutting down cell service in New York theverge.com/news/783706/se…

@RayDalio Ray Dalio: The hardest skill isn’t grinding harder. It’s firing yourself from roles you’re bad at—then hiring better replacements. Objectivity > ego. That’s how you compound success. Follow @TLDRJake to get smarter, faster.

They can take in the perspectives of others instead of being trapped in their own heads with their own biases. They are able to look objectively at what they are like--their strengths and weaknesses--and what others are like to put the right people in the right roles to achieve their goals. Once you understand how to do this you'll see that there's virtually nothing you can't accomplish. You will just have to learn how to face your realities and use the full range of resources at your disposal. For example, if you as the designer/manager discover that you as the worker can't do something well, you need to fire yourself as the worker and get a good replacement, while staying in the role of designer/ manager of your own life. You shouldn't be upset if you find out that you're bad at something--you should be happy that you found out, because knowing that and dealing with it will improve your chances of getting what you want. #principleoftheday

@WSJ The ultra-rich are building their own BlackRocks. Hired ex-Walton exec Valeria Alberola as CEO in Miami; hunting a CIO. Part of a boom in family offices (8k+ worldwide, +31% since ’19) Follow @TLDRJake to get smarter, faster.

Jeff Bezos’ father is undertaking a “major expansion” of his small family office to support more family members and manage a fortune estimated to be worth more than $40 billion, a move occurring amid a boom in these private firms on.wsj.com/4nhqoUz