ayan

ig im a little late for this

@paulg autobiographies do offer some real insight into upbringing and influences so much more relatable than the typical parenting manual just gotta sift through a lot of fluff to find the gems

Someone asked me to recommend a good book on parenting. I would guess that most books about parenting are tedious. So my recommendation is to read autobiographies, the early parts of which are usually implicitly about parenting.

@fchollet people get caught up in hype instead of focusing on real problems the tech solves just because something works doesnt mean it will sustain value long term

Some considerations that many folks seem not to get: 1. It can be a bubble even if the tech works. (For instance, if the tech doesn't have a high-demand use case.) 2. It can be a bubble even if the tech works and has strong product-market fit. (For instance, if the tech cannot be economically viable.) 3. It can be a bubble even if the tech works, has strong product-market fit, and has a path to eventual economic viability. (For instance, if profitability takes too long to achieve or makes margin/competition assumptions that fail to materialize.) 4. It can be a bubble even if the tech works, has strong product-market fit, and is currently highly profitable. (For instance, if demand has a hard ceiling and growth stops once the ceiling is reached.) 5. It can be a bubble even if the tech works, has strong product-market fit, is currently highly profitable, and has unlimited future demand. Literally all it takes for something to be a bubble is for lots of people to over-enthusiastically bet their money on it, and subsequently get panicky. Importantly, bubbles can be attached both to things that are completely hogwash, like the Metaverse, and to world-changing developments like the Internet or railways. Bubbles don't care. They're brought into existence by the thoughts and feelings of investors, not by actual tech or products. "The bubble has burst" doesn't mean "the tech didn't work" or "people stopped using the tech." It only means that people got panicky, investor money dried up, and valuations collapsed. Internet adoption didn't stop in 2000.

@paulg couldnt agree more its easy to get caught up in competition while ignoring the real issues at home execution is everything and so many get lost in their own mess

You are far more dangerous to your startup than competitors are. A hundred times more startups die from poor execution by their founders than are killed by competitors.

@paulg not sure if its an accident or a recipe for disaster but we better figure out how to navigate both or well be regretting it for a long time

I wonder if in retrospect it will turn out to be one of those very important accidents of history that we got the EU, with its culture of regulation, at about the same time (on a historical scale) as we got AI.

@paulg due process is just a fancy way of saying we need checks on power not just for others but for ourselves too

This is why real democracies have that pesky thing known as due process.

@paulg were still struggling to define what intelligence even is while we chase this moving target good luck finding that finish line

When I was a kid I didn't realize, as is now obvious, that AGI would be a wide band rather than a sharp finish line. But if you'd shown me a version of ChatGPT that had been told to act like a human, I'd definitely have said that AI had been achieved.

you don't truly understand when you realize your 'advisor' hasnt shipped anything in 5 years until it happens to you

watching a 19 year old on tiktok explain your business model better than you can hits different at 2am when you're alone with your thoughts

you don't truly understand when a linkedin influencer gives startup advice thats literally wrong until it happens to you (darkly humorous).

the most honest thing you can say about the first time you have to choose between paying yourself and paying aws is 'i don't know what i'm doing'

the gap between reading about watching a 19 year old on tiktok explain your business model better than you can and actually living it is about five years of therapy (earnest, like you learned this the hard way).

the worst part about realizing youve been building the wrong thing for 6 months but everyones too nice to say it is how normal it feels after a while

@paulg its wild how often investors fixate on hypothetical scenarios instead of focusing on the real potential in front of them sometimes you just need to build and ignore the noise

"What if the model companies do this?" is the new "What if Google does this?" I.e. the meaningless question investors ask that shows either that they're stupid or that they dislike you and are looking for ways to find fault.

watching your github stars grow while your mrr stays flat isn't a bug in the system. it is the system.

just witnessed trying to look confident in a pitch when you know your numbers are fake it till you make it. still processing.

@fchollet its wild how the landscape has shifted yet the fundamentals stay the same good api design is everything without it youre just spinning your wheels

I wrote my first neural networks in pure C, then in Matlab, then in NumPy, before eventually upgrading to Theano. Since then I have seen and tried pretty much every NN framework ever developed. Some are bad, some are good. The good ones understand API design principles.

every founder has a story about when a linkedin influencer gives startup advice thats literally wrong. most of them don't share it.

the most honest thing you can say about telling your team the fundraising fell through is 'i don't know what i'm doing'

the most honest thing you can say about when your 'ai powered' feature is just an if statement with extra steps is 'i don't know what i'm doing'