And I have a different definition of “venture capitalist” than the world has recently adopted. To me, it’s someone whose personal involvement and efforts can materially impact your chance of success. The work not the $$. Others are investors. There are few true VCs in the world.
Has there been a bank run in the US over the last 50 years where depositors actually lost money?
Fed can't let it happen. Would trigger more runs.
Bank equity to 0? Sure.
Funds tied up for a few days? Maybe.
Lost money? Can't find an example.
1/ Company proposes ambitious, seemingly unrealistic, plan. Board member makes “if you do that, I'll eat my hat” type comment which leads to a silly bet. Company obliterates plan. CEO shaves board member's head. I'm the board member.
@Confluentinc
the company.
If SVB depositors aren’t made whole, then corporate boards will have to insist their companies use two or more of the BIG four banks exclusively.
Which will crush smaller banks.
AND make the too big to fail problem way worse.
(SVB equity holders are wiped. That’s fine.)
Announcing STOCKHISTORY, the newest member of the
@msexcel
function family. Easily pull historical stock prices into your workbook to analyze your portfolio! Get started:
Most of our tech industry doesn’t get it either. Intel’s stumble means we depend 100% on chips from a tiny island not far off the coast of China. Yes, Nvidia’a chips too. Increasingly AMDs. Everybody’s.
Today, I find myself simultaneously agreeing with
@MittRomney
@RoKhanna
@LHSummers
@DavidSacks
and…
@profgalloway
(?!) which is all extremely unusual and very disorienting :-)
Meanwhile ppl on the far right and far left bizarrely want to test containment, which seems… risky.
Kudos to
@RoKhanna
. Every word of this is true. Decisive action is needed to protect the regional banking system. The run on other banks has already started.
While our regulators chase Amazon and meaningless tiny acquisitions by Facebook, the greatest monopolist today - Apple - has taken a Trump-ian tact, pushing a privacy narrative while stifling competition, and favoring their own ads business.
As only
@benthompson
can...
Using your stock to buy strategic products that expand your reach should be on the agenda if you happen to have a stratospheric stock price right now.
Use your inflated currency and dollar-cost average R&D by buying stuff.
So far, the best example is
@twilio
and
@jeffiel
As SaaS multiples fully embrace the “can’t stop, won’t stop” stage, it was fun to look back 20+ years at the evolution of SaaS from Applications Service Providers (ASPs) of the late 90s to API companies of today. Thank you
@patrick_oshag
for having me on!
My conversation with
@ericvishria
on all things software.
- why public software valuations are so high
- the "competitive frontier"
- the three generations of SaaS
- APIs as products
- zones of opportunity
Eric is among the best out there. Enjoy!
As we work through our 2nd 48+ hour power outage of ‘23, I’m reminded of an under discussed reason the gas stove ban is so dumb: having our lighting, heating AND cooking dependent on an already unreliable electric grid.
Increasing single points of failure is not a good idea.
For decades Bezos masterfully played "your margin is my opportunity," and now the table is 180 degrees turned - Amazon's margin is GCP/Azure's opportunity. They are happy to buy cloud business, funded by the best business model of all time. Under discussed irony, thx
@chetanp
"Your margin is my opportunity": really interesting symmetry in Microsoft and Google leveraging their high margin core businesses to compete against the very high margin Amazon AWS business.
Every once in a while, entrepreneurs propose an idea so provocative it completely changes how you think about an entire domain. 3.5 years ago the founders
@CerebrasSystems
did that to us
@benchmark
.
Inspired by
@andrewdfeldman
sharing his Thanksgiving story, here’s mine.
As a child of Indian immigrants, our household was vegetarian. I didn’t understand the big deal about Thanksgiving, or turkey but was curious, as every elementary school activity in Nov is centered around…
Carlos Alcaraz says he wasn’t mature enough to handle the match tonight against Daniil Medvedev:
“These kind of matches can happen. Even if I feel I’m a more mature, different player. He played really really great. A great game. I couldn’t find solutions. I thought right now I’m…
While the co-pilot approach is all the rage, I think we’re going to see a bunch of areas where AI just does - like completely does - tedious work humans historically have done. No AI-assist, just AI-and-done.
@quilterai
is taking this approach for PCB layout, which if you’ve…
Quilter is building generative AI for electronics that fully automates the process of designing circuit boards.
Our objective is to build a “compiler” for electronics design that makes it fast and easy to generate high quality, physics-validated, fully optimized PCBs with AI.
@hunterwalk
@bencasnocha
@tylermyracle
@semil
Benchmark has been investing at formation for 25 years. NextDoor, NewRelic, Docker, Discord, Confluent, Cerebras, and tons of others. We aren’t making small check option “bets.” They are full commitment, board seat, and decade+ commitment to help build.
"What would you say is the biggest sacrifice that you’ve had to make in running Nvidia?
The same sacrifices other entrepreneurs make. You work really, really hard. And for a long time, nobody thinks you’re going to succeed. You’re alone in believing that you’re going to make it.…
WOW!
@TimescaleDB
v Amzn Timestream,
@elastic
Cloud v Amzn Elastic,
@confluentinc
Cloud v Mgd Kafka,
@MongoDB
Atlas v DocumentDB - the AWS rip off is slower, more expensive & less innovative.
The originals are just better.
AWS services are the Rocket Internet of open source.
I just spent one week benchmarking
@TimescaleDB
vs. Amazon Timestream. My results surprised even me:
✍️ 6,000x higher inserts
📈 5-175x faster queries
💰 150x-220x cheaper
...all in favor of TimescaleDB
Full results:
TL;DR w/ 💯pretty graphs 👇 1/
1/ Company proposes ambitious, seemingly unrealistic, plan. Board member makes “if you do that, I'll eat my hat” type comment which leads to a silly bet. Company obliterates plan. CEO shaves board member's head. I'm the board member.
@Confluentinc
the company.
Recently a very successful person pointed out that kids learn competition through sports (& elections). Those are zero sum, where one wins and another loses.
But that’s an awful (& wrong) mentality for most of life.
What are systemic ways to teach kids a win-win mentality?
“Every new CEO is good for at least one big, dumb acquisition.” – probably the best M&A banker of all time
Astonishing number of companies for sale right now.
Will be interesting which new CEOs will get New Owner's Syndrome!
Excited to be working with
@benchmark
's first company in Italy, ever:
@commercelayer
Especially right now, just inspiring to see entrepreneurs doing what they do.
Woody Allen said “80% of success is showing up.” To which
@howes28
added, “and the other 20% is refusing to leave.”
I think about that a lot when companies run into tough times. So much of long term company success is built on the team simply persisting.
Reading the responses, many people don't think about how their paycheck comes to them.
Paychecks come through a bank acct - doesn't matter if you work for a hospital, school, or company.
& that acct likely has more than $250k in it. Not a risky investment acct, a *bank* acct.
The Treasury Department and FDIC must communicate loudly and clearly that depositors will be protected. The investors and executives of SBV should bear risk and lose. But this should not mean that workers go without paychecks on Monday or small businesses collapse.
My 10 yo son wrote a letter to Santa.
- the handwriting and spelling are 6 yo quality (and he actually typed it first so no excuses)
+ really clever and excellent use of QR codes
+ intuitive management technique
+ big hearted kid :-)
Yep!
As an investor, there is another important lens. With co-pilot approaches, you better have a damn good theory of how your startup is going to overcome the MASSIVE distribution advantage incumbents have. 50% better co-pilots will get smoked by the crappier-but-good-enough…
@ericvishria
My taxonomy is:
AI-based Copilots serve as a supportive assistant, enhancing a user's decision-making and efficiency, without autonomously taking control of a task(s).
AI Agent exercises some level of autonomy. They can be special purpose or general, but general = harder.
I hated this.
Not because I didn't like the content, I loved it. Not because I don't like
@GuptaRK22
, I love him too.
But b/c he articulated concepts - painful focus, inevitability as investment criteria, the grind required of founders - way better than I can.
Great listen.
My conversation with
@GuptaRK22
Our whole conversation is about focus and the value of keeping the main thing the main thing
This is a business discussion, but also a life discussion, with someone that’s thought a lot about both
Enjoy!
Parenting is mostly some exhausting shit but staging Santa’s visit in anticipation of their morning elation is one of the most joyous experiences of my life.
.
@adidas
,
@boltthreads
,
@benchling
, and mushrooms.
This morning
@adidas
announced a super cool new Stan Smith, made with Mylo - a biologically derived material.
Mylo was developed in conjunction with innovative materials company
@boltthreads
.
Introducing Stan Smith Mylo. The upper is partially created from Mylo material. Crafted from lab-grown mycelium, the root-like structure of mushrooms. Harnessing natural technologies, billions of years in the making.
#MadeWithNature
#EndPlasticWaste
#Mylo
///
It is goosebump-inducing to join *1000s* at a company’s user conference, when less than 4 years ago they were little more than ambitious founders pitching
@benchmark
an exciting vision.
@Amplitude_HQ
’s Amplify this week &
@confluentinc
’s Kafka Summit next. So cool.
@jrichlive
@theryanking
Loudcloud did this. It did not work for many employees. Also with today’s rules the loans have to be paid back BEFORE the S-1 is effective, which makes it even worse.
@arjunsethi
I'm no expert in banking, so YMMV but my pragmatic advice is have 6 months of operating cash in another, non-regional bank, and beyond that, don't contribute to the run.
I love that he published this in the Kansas City Star. Everyone in tech knows stories like this. We need to do a better job telling them where they aren’t as familiar.
I am completely floored. Someone run a thought of mine through GPT-3 to expand it into an explanation of what I had in mind, and it's like 95% meaningful and 90% correct. I don't think that I have seen a human explanation of my more complicated tweets approaching this accuracy :)
We're excited to welcome Jonathan Chadwick to our board of directors as we scale and build a new category of data infrastructure around event streams. Read more here:
Many of the highest quality companies I know use the “homework assignment” in their interview process. My partners at
@benchmark
had me do one. And the team at
@Amplitude_HQ
regularly uses it. Shazam and Tatari founder
@Inghelbrecht
describes it well here.
15/ I believe this shift will continue to propel
@Confluentinc
to new heights. Ultimately, an Event Streaming architecture will just be how you build most applications, just like today a dev assumes virtualized compute. Which is why, in the end, it was worth shaving my head :-)
🔉New Podcast Episode! In FYI | EP44, we talk to
@ericvishria
, General Partner at
@Benchmark
, about why he believes
#SaaS
is larger than ever before. That, and much more in
#VC
. Tune in!
🎧:
We tend to think of network effects for consumer or social apps like Snap or Slack, or marketplaces, but there are a handful of enterprise infrastructure network effects that are going to result in monster companies.
5. More importantly though, data streaming is about connectivity, so like the telephone system you want to use the network with the most connectivity. It’s about the ecosystem.
At board meeting this week - co.has 100 engineers, 70 with PhDs, from *29* countries (!) Unfortunately, visas have gotten much harder to come by. When a country of 400M people draws from the WW talent pool 20x the size, the leverage so obviously benefits America AND Americans.
I'm 4 years in on
@tonal
and still a ~3x a week user. It is the best. Variety of exercises/workouts, not having to think about weight settings, different modes... it is excellent.
Astonishing. And against 0 interest rate backdrop, the net present value of those companies’ future cash flows is worth so much more. Which at least partially justifies the massive valuation disparity btw growth and non-growth.
Fun fact: Only 10pct of s&p companies grow 20pct or more. They have 100B of cash. Meanwhile the other 90pct have 1.8T in net debt. All the growth companies have the cash, the old companies the debt. Good luck competing against the innovators!
Incredibly smart acquisition by
@Cisco
. Can’t think of an easier to use, more loved product in security than
@duosec
. (Nor an enterprise business that scaled more efficiently and effectively). Congrats to
@dugsong
and the entire team!
One of the untold stories of the SaaS explosion is as new areas are "quantified," new "systems of record" are created. And those SoR have created the largest enterprise companies. Am loving working with
@Benchling
, a new SoR for life sciences R&D.
@forbes
Another 10+ year “overnight” success story! Early traction, merging with a competitor, changing the business model - through it all awesome leadership and execution. Congrats to the team!
While we pause today to celebrate, tomorrow we’ll be back at work creating a better future of work. Thank you to our hardworking employees, freelancers, clients, and
@nasdaq
for an incredible day. Onward!
At the
@Amplitude_HQ
DL I compared a co. going public to an athlete going pro. Very few get the oppty to compete at the highest level for way bigger stakes.
Even rarer is when it’s obvious the rookie is going to be a 🌟. Just wow.
Congrats again to
@spenserskates
& the team!
It seems like ultimately builders don't want low code, they want "easy code" - prototype quickly and easily, but then open it up, fine tune, tweak and tinker to get it exactly right for real-world use.
Love the
@AirplaneDev
approach.
So true.
Two interesting ones:
Chemistry-based drugs > biology-based - changes all tooling, development process - once in a century shift
People as primary users of sw > Other sw as primary user of sw - drives rise of API-everything, digital automation, importance of real-time
Breakout technology companies are often created by leveraging one (or more) major platform shifts.
Personal Computing > Apple, Microsoft
Home Broadband > Youtube, Netflix
Smartphones > WhatsApp, Instagram
What are the most interesting (non-obvious) recent platform shifts?
Everyday more and more traditional companies realize that getting digital right is existential, not nice-to-have. And their IT stacks will have to turn over for them to be competitive with digital natives. So as much as cloud and SaaS have run, there is probably a ton yet to go.
"Nike's CEO Donahoe said on Thursday it would now aim for digital to account for 50% of its overall business, up from 30% recorded in the reported quarter."
When management knows big change is coming the job is to get ahead of it. Denial is a river in Egypt, not a strategy.
Thinking about the evolution of VC like TV going from 3 networks to cable TV to personalized streaming is very thought provoking.
Some great frameworks from
@loganbartlett
here! Thanks for the shout out!
@HarryStebbings
Incredibly savvy move by
@sweetlew
. Kubernetes completely upends the decades-old host-centric monitoring world. NewRelic has always built products that delight developers & with
@pixie_run
they have an Ace with the exploding Kubernetes community.
We believe observability should be available to everyone. So does Pixie Labs.
Today we’re thrilled to announce our plans to acquire Pixie. ❤️
Together we’ll make instant no-code Kubernetes observability available to the whole community.
@skupor
@UiPath
OR, maybe competition from DLs (and even SPACs) has forced more integrity in the pricing process which is resulting in more favorable terms for the company, employees, and shareholders.
Turns out capitalism and competition work!
In all of professional sports, IMO two teams consistently have 3rd qtrs (and 2nd half’s) like what the Warriors just did - the Warriors and NE Pats. Testament to halftime coaching adjustments. Team is amazing but Kerr is a lesson in leading greats.
4/ I believe the move in data architectures to Event Streaming is as significant a shift.
@Confluentinc
is at the heart of enabling this shift. Which is the major tail wind enabling the company to grow so fast.
Truth!
“To be totally honest with you, for me, ignorance was an advantage,” Vishra said. “I don’t know that, if I’d understood how difficult it was going to be to do what they did, I would have had the guts to invest.”
😂😂
Had fun talking to
@emilychangtv
about the wild stock market gyrations & how they impact new early stage investments
@benchmark
.
tl;dr, they don't - when your horizon is decade+ all that really matters is investing in great teams & great companies!
Ppl will often talk about “01” or “09” resets as if they happened quickly. How long did it actually take?
S&P peaked in mid 00 and hit bottom Sep 02. 2+ yrs.
S&P peaked in mid 07 and hit bottom Feb 09. ~2 yrs.
In both cases took ~4 years from bottom to get back to new highs.
Unfortunately layoffs are going to be commonplace in the next few months. This post by
@davidu
is an excellent guide to help leaders handle a very tough situation.
❤️ Few leaders / CEOs know how to do a layoff, and it's important to do everything possible to do it thoughtfully and compassionately for your impacted employees. To help as many people as possible, I have written a long post on how to not screw it up:
The magnitude of the engineering and manufacturing accomplishment by the
@CerebrasSystems
team is staggering. “the number of AI cores that can crunch linear algebra in parallel is now 850,000, up from 400,000.”
Working with
@spenserskates
and the
@Amplitude_HQ
team over the last 4 years has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career. Their first principles reasoning and sheer ambition has forced me to get more focused and crisper in my thinking.
There is increasing overlap between the SaaS world and marketplace world with many of the best co’s combining elements of both. So if you are a SaaS founder, you’d be insane to miss this master course on marketplaces by
@sarahtavel
"Building a marketplace is a relentless pursuit of exceeding expectations to create happiness"
Great
@sarahtavel
piece arguing that "happiness — not scale — is your moat" in a marketplace.
1/ Before they were elected officials,
@KamalaHarris
@Scott_Wiener
@DavidChiu
and
@PhilTing
were employees of the City and County of San Francisco. Though longer employed by SF, all are entitled to rich subsidies for post-retirement health insurance.
Was SVB’s collapse inevitable given their book? Imp Q now that impacts how you view ppl who fed the run.
I *think* it was. This rate hike or next, pressure was building & failure imminent.
And like most failures, it happened slowly at first then all at once.
Follow up to the retweet below ...
My guess, and this is only a guess, is Silicon Valley Bank knew the tech industries in a bad place and they knew the burn rates were going higher and the tech companies can’t raise capital fast enough to replace dwindling deposits. They were…
Since I was a monitoring PM 20 yrs ago the problems haven't changed- 1) monitoring is a PITA to instrument, 2) <1% of the data is valuable. As an EIR
@benchmark
,
@zainasgar
developed a clever way to use EBPF to automagically instrument & way to isolate the actually valuable data.
🚀 Pixie launched today! Pixie Community is Free Forever and now in Public Beta.
🗣️ Our founders
@zainasgar
@ishanmkh
share our plans to grow with the community:
"Pixie gives developers instant application observability. No code changes."
#pixierun
In many areas Deep Learning will enable features on existing solutions - eg, photo search. I believe in the war on malware, DL will completely upend the core of how existing products work with order of mag. better results. Excited to work w
@bluehexagonai
@bgurley
That is a misleading chart. It is list price. The realized prices are negotiated, and way less. Idk what the actual prices are across the world, but I bet it isn't 10x across developed countries.
I laughed so hard I cried. Partially because the story. And partially because
@loganbartlett
almost certainly bought a stolen monitor online - and did not consider that possibility.
THREAD:
I was delivered a new monitor for WFH. I was very excited to set it up.
Unfortunately, it was shipped with a thin wire lock around it, which I think was meant to keep people from stealing it from a store. Since I didn’t buy it in a store, I don’t know what to do 1/
Inspiring! WSJ on how
@argonne
is using
@CerebrasSystems
DL system to simulate if/how 4 billion (!) known molecules might be effective against coronavirus. We are on the very front edge of discovering these hugely impactful applications of deep learning.