You wouldn’t believe the kind of incompetent hacks who label themselves as AI experts in the enterprise world: VPs, consultants, even folks at hyperscalers. It’s the new Web 3 + digital transformation labels combined. I wouldn’t dare calling myself an AI expert, but first-hand experience with agents and common sense already puts me in the top 0.1%. It’s shocking.

IT security theater is done; locking everything down on laptops won't hold 10 minutes to Codex and a savvy user. If I can see the data, it can be exfiltrated. If I can edit it, my agent can too. It was never a good strategy to begin with.

Since calisthenics-parks[dot]com is down, I've put together It maps over 25,000 spots worldwide to work out: outdoor gym, pull-up bars, rings, etc. I've used this map in France, Thailand, Japan, Canada, the USA, Vietnam, Australia, and a whole bunch of other countries. Add photos and new spots if you can. It's free.

"Outcome machines". Love that. Building my previous company, many of my competitors were focused on outcomes, like sales targets. On my end, I was obsessed with designing processes for all the mundane stuff we did every single day. If we couldn't get that right, no amount of pressure on the team would help us hit whatever arbitrary target we had set. But if we built a solid foundation, we could nail execution and that would take care of our targets. Pretty sure I was right.

I ran a company in Shanghai with a payroll in the 7 figures and 160 staff. For the past 12 years I've been working out 5+ times a week, no alcohol, strict paleo diet. Coffee helped, but I don't even drink it anymore. This is stressful, but you're not @elonmusk-maxxing. You don't need drugs to pull it off.

Google Workspace is still the least worst options for companies. It's incredibly flexible, reliable, and better designed than Microsoft 365. But the overall experience is still pathetic: poor defaults, UI elements all over the place, friction everywhere in the UX, confusing settings, etc. Part of why I started working on was to offer an alternative to Notion and Google Docs. With the upcoming version, I'll effectively have functionally a poor man's Google Drive. I'm this close to just adding email to not have to deal with this BS anymore. Just don't make me do it. I don't want to run an email service.

If you're going down the "Services: The New Software" rabbit hole, I hope you like systems. And I hope you like writing things down. My last business was a consultancy. It was not fun. I envied SaaS businesses for their ability to scale their revenue. I was constrained by headcount. I could pull some levers to improve my margin, but if I wanted to grow revenue I needed more people. Bootstrapping didn't help either. I had to carefully balance sales with hiring. A bad quarter and you lose your profits for the year. Two? You're in the red. And yet, our profits were 2 to 3 times that of most of our competitors. Three reasons I think we were able to pull that off: 1. We simply had much higher standards. I know... But you'd be surprised how complacent our competition was. 2. We managed our clients very carefully. We didn't simply do what they asked. We figured out what they were trying to achieve, and delivered against that. That often meant saying no, pushing back, or refusing to take money from them. 3. We were autistic about our playbook. We spent a lot of time writing things down. SOPs, templates, handbooks... It is very hard to create, maintain, and curate knowledge. But without it, you're building on quicksand [1]. I'm sure we did other things right, including creating our own accelerator/product, but these three things were the most important ones. And while I had sworn I would never go back to services, a lot of what I hated about it looks different with AI: - You can create repeatable processes even when the input is very fuzzy. - You're not as constrained by your headcount. - Creating and maintaining internal products is way easier. The speed makes it more viable too. Looking at 8090 or Distyl, I'm thinking this might just work... Maybe I'll try again [2]. [1]: There's a lot more to it, enough that I'm writing a book about it: [2]: I kind of already am:

I mostly ignore events now, even when invited by friends. Too much self-promotion, too low quality of talks/speakers. It's usually a waste of time. I don't expect to see 500 A-tier founders in the room, but if you're going to bore me with a thinly veiled ad for your product or an obvious attempt at making yourself or the organizers look cool, then fuck you. I'm guessing others are like me: they went to a few events, wasted their time, and decided they'd rather work on their startup or interact with folks on X. I organized meetups and conferences in China for years. It wasn't that different. It takes time to build a reputation for high quality events that attract the right kind of crowd. I intend to do that. I may fail, but I'll try. PS: No "broski" please.

I mostly ignore events now, even when invited by friends. Too much self-promotion, too low quality of talks/speakers. It's usually a waste of time. I don't expect to see 500 A-tier founders in the room, but if you're going to bore me with a thinly veiled ad for your product or an obvious attempt at making yourself or the organizers look cool, then fuck you. I'm guessing others are like me: they went to a few events, wasted their time, and decided they'd rather work on their startup or interact with folks on X. I organized meetups and conferences in China for years. It wasn't that different. It takes time to build a reputation for high quality events that attract the right kind of crowd. I intend to do that. I may fail, but I'll try. PS: No "broski" please.

It's genuinely hard to find honest, earnest founders in Singapore. I don't see myself as an A-tier entrepreneur, but at least I'm not a bullshit artist. I also have a modicum of humility. You selling your business for a couple million dollars doesn't make you a big shot. You "investing" in some random SPV doesn't make you an Anthropic investor. It's the main reason I'm setting up I hope that I'll get to run into other decent techies, designers, entrepreneurs who are actually doing interesting stuff. If you're not an asshole, please sign up.

In the B.C. years (c. <2022) the correct strategy was to eat ramen and build some weird shit like renting people's bedrooms or delivering food to ur iPod. Startups are no longer that game at all. Not even close. It's a totally different game. The game is now this: Picture the world as an isometric board, like Civ or Factorio. It seems obvious we are past the agrarian stage and before the blast off stage. The board is going to be filled with humanoids, satilites, and other crazy stuff in a few turns. So, pick an obvious Commodity or Category to supply to the world, raise enough money to be relevant in that category, and become one of a few major players in that category. Don't apply too many IQ points. Move fast. Just be a commodity. Fit into the category. Have a good brand. Be operationally excellent. Fundraise well. There's way less PMF "do people want this" risk - what remains is execution risk. Of course, that's one kind of startup. And I think that's where most of the money will be made. Another kind of startup is more like an artisan startup - it's about rebuilding existing categories with taste, like Apple building an awesome PC. But this is most relevant for Human Computer Interaction companies. If you're building a computationally verifiable company, a capital- and engineering-constrained company, not a taste- and marketing-bottlenecked company, it's best to go Elon mode.

I've met several incredibly successful people with hundreds of millions in the bank whom I pity. They're obviously wealthier than I am. They're well known and connected. They have the house, the toys... But they don't want kids. I get that the polite thing to say is that it's up to each and every one to decide what works for them. But what I actually think: you poor bastard. What is the point of all this?

Once again, the EU shows it can't compete. Not on AI, not on business, and not on ideas. The DSA isn't there to protect EU citizens from big bad tech. It's one more tool for them to control speech, force compliance, and extract a "fee" in the process. More rules. More useless jobs. More taxes. More of the same. I don't think the EU is going to stop until there's nothing more to control or steal. I really do. I hope you guys across Europe enjoy communism 2.0, because it's coming.