Joe Flaherty @josephflaherty Twitter profile

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Joe Flaherty

4 years

If you're able to tuck in a healthy, peacefully sleeping child into a warm bed in a safe home, you've won the lottery of life.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

2 years

Twitter is an amazing medium. Three years of advanced warning.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

9 months

My daughter has a severe form of epilepsy. She'll likely never be able to get a driver's license. Self-driving cars would fundamentally change the way she can live her life, but a consortium of luddites are working hard to keep people like her limited.

(((BrokeAssStuart)))

@BrokeAssStuart

9 months

Someone seen destroying a RoboTaxi in San Francisco this weekend. What do you think, hero or villain? 🎥: @caterywta on IG

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

2 years

If you want to build a startup, the real test isn't raising venture capital, it's convincing 3-4 of the most talented folks in your network to join you.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

A $65M exit with 80% ownership is a better financial outcome than a $1B exit with 5% ownership. Every round of funding increases a startup's risk of failure, dilutes founders, and only in outlier cases does it provide more financial return for entrepreneurs.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

4 years

Every pitch deck needs a “team” slide. At the early stage of a startup when the product concept is fuzzy and revenue is non-existent, VCs are essentially backing the team above all else. But almost all team slides are sub-optimal. Here are two ways they could be better: /1

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

4 years

Unbelievable. Google mobilizes in record time to try and address an unprecedented global health crisis that could claim millions of lives. NYT Tech: "wHaT aBoUt PrIvAcY."

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

The biggest competitor for every SaaS app is a spreadsheet. The biggest competitor for every community-focused startup is a Facebook Group.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

6 months

3D printing has fallen completely out of the tech zeitgeist, but quality keeps rising and prices steadily drop. E.g., These were printed on a <$1,000 machine and you could likely get similar results on a sub-$500 printer. What a fascinating modern age we live in.

The Lazy forger

@thelazyforger

7 months

Fresh out of the printer, the Commuter, the *big* transport vehicle for the Union faction of #fullspectrumdominance . There's a lot going on on the back, and I'm sure some virtuoso painter will spend sleepless nights getting all the details right. I certainly won't. 🤣

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

@antoniogm @clairlemon As Larry Summers said, the USD has to decline in favor of something, and Europe is a museum, Japan is a nursing home, China is a jail, and Bitcoin is an experiment.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

4 years

Medtronic: $107B MktCap GM: $30B MktCap Ford: $20B MktCap Dear Reporters — Please ask, aside from WWII nostalgia, what is the logic in conscripting the makers of the Pontiac Aztec into med devices, rather than just paying Medtronic's CapEx for building another production line?

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

4 years

"Raising $185M isn't cool, do you know what is? Making $10M in initial funding stretch for the first six years of your startup's existence so you can dial in product market fit in a non-dilutive manner while maintaining future optionality!"

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

4 years

The least told founder story in startup-land: 📅 Eight years in 🌟 Product being lapped by new entrants 🪙 Good not great revenue, moderate growth ⚖️ Teetering on edge of profitability 🐜 Team is antsy, harder to retain/recruit 🔒 Overvalued in prior fundraise, limited exit ops

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

This is overdue for an update, but it's very possible to build a $1B+ business, and certainly a $1M+ business, with no venture capital.

50 Big Companies that Started with Little or No Money

VC is a common denominator of the most successful tech startups, but it isn’t a prerequisite, especially at the early stage.

foundercollective.medium.com

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

2 years

Recently in touch with two founders. Both had run startups for 5+ years. Both raised $10M+ of VC. Both totally failed – No soft landing. Both started new companies. Both applied hard lessons learned. Both had explosive growth from the early days. Keep building.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

2 years

Co-founder of a startup that built a nine-figure revenue business in <5 years just introduced themselves as "I'm [name], I work *for* [startup name]." Zero braggadocio. Admirable humility.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

"Founders underestimate distribution, incumbents overestimate distribution." – @balajis

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

One of the underrated parts of having a child is the way they're like ancestral chimeras. The light catches them so and you get a glimpse of a long lost grandparent, or a vocal mannerism evokes memories of a sibling as a child. Marry and reproduce.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

5 years

One of the biggest missed opportunities I see in pitches is the "Market Size" slide. Typically, the entrepreneur throws out a multi-billion dollar number designed to convince the VC there's a $100M+ revenue opportunity for their startup. 1/9

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

1 year

3D printing is back to being dramatically underrated. These characters were all printed on a ~$300 machine.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

2 years

If a VC meets with you, they're already broadly aware of and interested in your market/product category. Spend less time selling the market and more on what makes your startup uniquely suited to capture a lot of it. Stop selling "sports cars." Make a case for the Porsche.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

We overly fetishize the importance of "creative cities" and outré personalities as drivers of innovation. This group basically set the 21st century tech agenda and did so largely from the suburbs wearing clothes from JC Penny.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

4 years

🧑‍🏭 There are ~400K welders in the US 📸 This welding Insta has 730K+ followers #⃣ 2.9M people follow the #welding hashtag Be as cynical as you want about tech—the fact that it can deliver tradespeople an audience bigger than HBO is still pretty amazing.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

Some historical context on @fredwilson 's latest. Between 1/1/2010 - 12/31/2019, 166 tech startups went public. Here's where their valuations sit now: 2 = $1T+ (TSLA/FB) 4 = $100B+ (SHOP/NOW/TEAM/SQ) 48 = $10B+ 35 = <$1B Median = $4.4B Deploy wisely!

Seed Rounds At $100mm Post Money

We have been seeing quite a few seed rounds getting done in and around $100mm post-money and that concerns me for a few reasons: Seed stage is when a company has a good team, a good idea, but has not...

avc.com

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

2 years

"Work at a venture-backed startup for a 2-3 years" is massively underrated advice for people who eventually want to start companies. It's the most obvious advice in the world, but the "apprenticeship" stage is often skipped over. Blog posts and newsletters are a poor substitute.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

5 years

Not enough talk about how $1B fortunes can conjured into existence without capital. Wayfair's founders bootstrapped their way to $1B+ net worths (and only have ~6% of the US furniture market.) MailChimp. ShutterStock. Atlasssian. None hold monopolies, all were bootstrapped.

Robert Reich

@RBReich

5 years

There are basically 5 ways to accumulate a billion dollars in America: 1) Profiting from a monopoly 2) Insider-trading 3) Political payoffs 4) Fraud 5) Inheritance None of these has anything to do with being successful in the supposed free market.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

5 years

With Honey's $4B exit, LA has now created more startup exit value than any geography in the US other than SF — and the world outside of China. (2010-Present) [Boston still holds the lead in number of $1B+ exits]

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

5 years

Lots of examples where the startup with less $ won. MailChimp > Constant Contact CarGurus > TrueCar Wayfair > Quidsi/Zappos The Trade Desk > AppNexus ShutterStock > iStock/Getty SimpliSafe > Ring Ipsy > Birchbox And these are just examples with clear proxies.

Larry Gadea

@lg

5 years

on the no-VC thing, the entire proposal is a bit silly. the moment your competitor raises $100M to do the same thing youre doing bootstrapped and "without VC pressure", your chances of survival will diminish enormously. goal of survival is also way boring from goal to win.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

How many $100M+ startups are just waiting to be founded? Cameo, the celebrity selfie service, just announced a monster $100M+ GMV for 2020. It’s an impressive number, but it makes you wonder why now? Why not 2015? Or even in 1995? How early could Cameo have been started? /🧵

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

5 years

The Bay Area has produced the most/biggest startup exits. However, over the last ten years, there's been over a hundred $1B+ tech exits outside of the Valley. @dafrankel and I dug into the "startup geography" data and came away with some surprises:

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

Upwards of 90% of VCs are mediocre. But if you get one of the excellent 10%, they can move mountains and maybe even save your startup at a key moment. Diligence your investors.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

4 years

Everyone should angel invest.* *After you've set aside an emergency fund of six-months of living expenses, socked away a downpayment for a home, and are saving ~15% of your salary in diversified, tax-advantaged index funds for retirement.

Sahil Lavingia

@shl

4 years

Everyone should angel invest.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

6 years

This twitter account does a better job contextualizing fine art than most of the history classes I took at RISD.

TabloidArtHistory

@TabloidArtHist

7 years

Kim Kardashian, North, & Kanye in their 2014 Vogue spread // Detail of Velasquez painting the daughter of Philip IV for 'Las Meninas', 1656

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

@Molson_Hart Have you found the market clearing price? Does $20/hour do it? Might not make sense economically, just curious about where the bounds are?

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

1 year

You can make more selling a startup for $20M than $200M. Exit value is a vanity metric.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

2 months

There are a lot of great $100M startups waiting to be built. The risk is funding them like they are going to be $1B or $50B companies.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

4 years

🔒 Shraddha scaled the security team at Stripe from 2 to 220 🎨 Dan designed the new Apple podcast icon 📢 Mei led print marketing at Airbnb & launched their magazine 🤝 Bijan closed the three most lucrative BD deals at Plaid Simple statements can add so much resolution. /6

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

7 years

It's hard to believe these photos are from Planet Earth.

@rob-sheridan.com on BSky

@rob_sheridan

7 years

50,000 year old microbes discovered in this incredible crystal cave that looks straight out of a Star Trek set:

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

Expensify only raised $38M to build a business worth $2.6B. One side benefit of capital efficiency is that you can be outrageously generous to your team. Well done.

Melia Russell

@meliarobin

3 years

SCOOP: @expensify 's IPO could make nearly all 140 employees paper millionaires, after the company surprised them with a 10% stock grant on listing day. "I think I'll just hold on to it," one employee told me.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

5 years

Good reminder that it's easy to over-index on the "startup-industrial complex" and ignore the radical transformation software enables in old-line industries like, say, meat-packing equipment manufacturing.

Massimo

@Rainmaker1973

5 years

This laser scanning portioner allows precise, invisible cuts

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

Many tech fortunes have been made by mildly charismatic founders who: + Identified a rich market opportunity + Developed a product + Recruited solid performers + Created ambitious, but workable plans + Found a profitable path to market It doesn't have to be a vision quest.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

5 months

The fact that almost *no* plastic gets recycled causes a lot of otherwise well-educated and informed people to glitch out. "That can't be true...Why would we have all these laws...Why would we go through the effort..." Why indeed!

Joe Gebbia

@jgebbia

5 months

He inadvertently created an icon of one of the biggest deceptions in our lifetime. I wish it weren’t true. Recycling was invented by the plastic industry as a way to transfer responsibility for waste to the individual. There are little to no economics in recycling. Of the

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

6 years

The first successful airplane, a bicycle with wings, took flight in 1903. 115 years later we're seeing video captured from a robot that landed on the surface of a comet flying at 1,700 mph.

landru79

@landru79

6 years

#ROSETTA 😍 OSIRIS #67P /CHURYUMOV-GERASIMENKO new albums 😍--ROSETTA EXTENSION 2 MTP030-- Miércoles 1 Junio 2016 all filters stacked

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

Eccentric rich folks: raising global living standards by "pointlessly" tinkering with emerging technologies under withering criticism from higher-status peers since 1799.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

2 years

I can't believe I've gone four decades without seeing this view of the Earth.

Simon Kuestenmacher

@simongerman600

2 years

Just a really fascinating angle of our beautiful globe!

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

@micsolana @simonsarris ADA compliance would be the Federal issue. The challenge on the state/local levels would be density and safety planning (e.g. road isn't wide enough for fire trucks to traverse). I think Simon's larger point is the default aesthetic poverty we've internalized as citizens.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

How do you build a $100B in two years? First, spend almost a hundred years burrowing yourself into children's psyches by creating owned content that takes on a near religious significance in the minds of your audience.

Trung Phan

@TrungTPhan

3 years

In less than 2 years, Disney+ notched 104m subscribers and is prob worth $100B+ as a standalone entity. How did Disney build a Netflix competitor so fast? By acquiring a tech firm spun out from MLB (yes, Major League Baseball) for $2.6B. Here's the story 🧵

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

4 years

🤯 Short-form video is widely/mostly used for entertainment, but you have to wonder how much it's also helping to accelerate learning? This is a trivial example, but I can imagine quite a lot of science, math, and arts instruction happening in this kind of format.

Lionel Page

@page_eco

4 years

So cool: the geometry of billiards shots, explained simply.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

One of my favorite things about the tech industry is how there are these 3-6 month boomlets where an idea takes hold, 150 startups are formed, VCs launch thematic SPVs/accelerators, every big co. feels compelled to develop a strategy around it, then *poof* it just disappears.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

6 years

To put this in perspective, Hubspot had $375M in 2017 revenue. @Mailchimp bootstrapped a company that is 50% larger than one of the hottest SaaS startups of the last decade. In Atlanta. With a founder who studied Industrial Design and taught himself web design. Extraordinary.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

This is how I explain it to my 8-year-old: We give money to people who want to make things. If their idea works, we make money. If their idea doesn't work, we don't make money. Then I use an example like a lemonade stand to illustrate the basic mechanics.

Maxim Leyzerovich

@round

3 years

imagine trying to explain venture capitalism to a child

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

5 months

@kendrictonn The inability to appreciate that the speed with which AI can replicate the output of a humanities all-nighter, among the many other issues you point out, suggests that the humanities may not be doing their job of teaching "critical thinking" as well as they purport.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

The next ten years of sculpture and 3-D design are going to be amazing. High-resolution 3-D printers that can be had for $300, paired with the steady improvement/accessibility of modeling tools, is a "Florence in the 1490s" kind of confluence.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

The real fun is when you raise $10M from a VC and they block a $40M sale, but won't invest more. Then your metrics stall and you're acquired a few years later for ~$10M with the potential for a $2M earn out after three more years!

Andrew Gazdecki

@agazdecki

3 years

If you bootstrap a startup and exit for $2m, congrats you’re a millionaire! If you raise VC and exit for $2m, congrats you might get a job at the company that acquired you!

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

Sequoia's rule of thumb for 60 minute pitches is a good heuristic: The first five minutes of attention are a chance to earn the next 15 which in turn earn the final 40. Doesn't apply to "hot deals," but it's a reasonable mental model if you're fighting for funding.

Ryan Denehy

@DenehyXXL

3 years

Most founders *vastly* overestimate the attention span of investors

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

So in NH/MA, Mr. Beast Burger orders are being fulfilled by "Bertucci's" a 58-restaurant pizza franchise, which is a step above Sbarro and a notch below CPK, quality-wise. "Cloud Kitchen" sounds so much cooler than "Bankrupt restaurant desperate for revenue."

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

9 months

I predict we'll be seeing a lot of posts like this over the next couple of years.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

4 years

For every startup you read about that is employing some oddball management fad, there are at least ten growing faster using traditional org charts, vanilla job descriptions, typical meeting formats, etc. In 99% of cases the secret isn't the recipe. It's the cooks.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

Firing a person because you discover some undisclosed and objectionable writing is a "them problem." Firing someone because you didn't bother to read said person's *best-selling book,* nor the the reviews of it in the *NYT, WSJ, and Wired* is a "you problem."

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

9 months

The self-driving car community is arguably one of the most responsible sub-cultures in tech. They've turned a sci-fi concept into an increasingly banal reality with very little loss of life or property damage. It's a modern marvel that should be celebrated.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

They are. Y Combinator and the Thiel Fellowship are both successful attempts that combine cohort-based learning, curriculum, and credentials. The small size, distributed nature, and lack of "College 2.0" branding just makes it easy to leave them out of this discussion.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

4 years

A bit of job interview advice: When asked "Why are you interested in this job?," you'll stand out more if you say something along the lines of... "I've previously had success doing X and think I can do even more in this new role." Instead of... "I want to learn."

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

@TurnerNovak Saw one founder pitch a TAM that was so high that I had to Google the GDP of the Earth as a comparison.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

20s/30s: "Wow, that person has a lot of money/status!" 30s/40s: "Wow, that person has raised wonderful children and maintains a great relationship with them!"

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

7-year-old daughter: Daddy, what’s your job? Me: I write stories about money on the computer. Daughter, the next day: I made you a LEGO kit for your job! Marry and reproduce, it’s great!

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

1 year

We send these stickers to our portfolio companies after we invest. A founder closing a *MASSIVE* growth round just asked if we could send a bundle that they could share with the employees to keep them grounded. I predict good things for this startup.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

2 years

One benefit of taking venture capital is that your investors often introduce you to influential people. Famous founders, eminent executives, interesting influencers, and so on. These intros are cheat codes that can supercharge your startup if you use them properly. /🧵

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

2 years

A lot of startups run for 5+ years, go through $10M+ dollars of venture capital, and provide zero dollars in return for founders or investors. These case studies are rarely discussed but are all too common. Burn carefully.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

4 years

Many founders seem to think VCs are purely rational beings who can be convinced to invest if the right logical arguments are made and the correct fact sets are assembled. The reality is that most VCs are more Epicurean than Aristotelian – especially at the early stage. /🧵

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

If you're on the fence about having children, just do it. Everyone always says it changes your life. You may think they're overselling it. I did. I was so, so wrong. If anything, the conventional wisdom is understated.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

2 years

Impressive facts from the @Initialized new fund announcement: 🥳 Fund I = Return of ~60X committed capital net of fees 🦄 Portfolio includes 22 $1B+ startups 🏦 Initialized now manages $3.2B in assets Well done, @garrytan !

Garry Tan

@garrytan

2 years

gm

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

6 years

"The first wealth is health."—Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

4 years

There’s a tendency for startups to reuse a lot of their seed pitch deck when raising a Series A. This is logical. The market, product, and team probably aren’t *that* different. However, this strategy fails to showcase the startup’s most valuable asset: ⏩⏩⏩ Momentum! /1

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

5 years

I think the most underrated aspect of being in a major startup ecosystem for founders is not access to VC, but facetime with entrepreneurs who are a stage or further along. So much value comes through simple osmosis.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

10 months

Software engineers have been the MVPs of tech startups for the last 20 years. Assuming software is hitting the "saturation" portion of the S-curve, what will be the critical skillset going forward? Mechanical/materials engineering? Manufacturing acumen? Regulatory affairs?

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

4 years

Fair point, for instance: 🎮 YouTube for games = Twitch 🧪 Salesforce for life science = Veeva 🚲 Apple + NordicTrac = Peloton 🛒 Amazon-as-a-Service = Shopify 💳 Fitbit for money = Square 💬 Hipchat, but fun = Slack That's $100B+ of value created with "derivative" ideas.

Micah Rosenbloom

@micahjay1

4 years

I find myself often saying that I'd like to see more business that aren't derivative but the more I think about it start-ups are almost always derivative and maybe that's just the nature of innovation

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

2 years

The first computer was designed on paper. The second computer was designed on a computer. And so an incredible flywheel began spinning...

Massimo

@Rainmaker1973

2 years

1980's Bellmac 32 was the first microprocessor that could move 32 bits in one clock cycle. To design it, engineers placed a 20-foot-by-20-foot engineering drawing of the chip layout on the floor of a large room [read more: ] [gif: ]

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

2 years

Venture Capital: Startups craft a ten-slide deck to raise a few million dollars from investors. Venture Cthulhu: @forgottenrunes summons half a dozen monsters to raise the same amount from their community.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

5 years

When pitching your startup, it's always helpful to start with an explanation of what you do, from your *end-user's perspective.* Not what you're disrupting, no grand strategies, just a brass tacks explanation of what you make, for who, why it's cool, and how you sell it. 1/6

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

2 years

@marceloclaure This is four years old now, but it’s a good start.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

2 years

The firm I work for, @fcollective , is pretty good at venture capital. 💰 6X appearances on the Midas List. 🦄 25+ startups with $1B+ valuations in the portfolio. We recently looked at our last 2 years of exits – in a go-go macro moment – and the median exit value was $44M.

Austen Allred

@Austen

2 years

If a YC company raises at a $20 million post-money: If it become worth $10B it’s a 500x return (pre dilution). If it becomes worth $1B it’s a 50x return (pre dilution). IMO still a great bet for smart investors. Founders: Just know this by far the easiest money you’ll raise.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

4 years

Quick startup PSA: Your “competition” slide doesn’t have to take the form of a 2X2 grid with your logo in the upper right quadrant. Explaining how your startup fits in the broader market is incredibly important, but there are better ways! A few ideas: /1

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

2 years

@NGruen1 Curious what the conversational impasse was? "Hey, my appliance is leaking, can you take a look?" "Is there anything I can do to prevent this in the future?" "What's the best brand of appliance to buy?" "The pollen is crazy today, huh?"

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

My two favorite crypto projects, @ensdomains and @forgottenrunes together at last...

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 months

@SpiritofPines There are very few public schools in the US, we just bundle the tuition with granite countertops.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

VC in 2021: "The round is going to close this week. There is no deck yet."

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

Plastics are... 1) A more recent development than most people think 2) Have saved more lives than any innovation other than vaccines and antibiotics over the last half century. From bike helmets to Epipens to sterile bandages to modern oncology, plastic is a life saver.

Jason Crawford

@jasoncrawford

3 years

1945, when plastics were new and exciting:

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

5 years

Dear startups (and VCs). This is why it's important to have some images in your press kit.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

4 years

Five years ago tonight, my wife and I were sitting with our 2.5-year-old daughter in a tiny exam room at Boston Children's Hospital, waiting for a bed to open up on the cancer floor so we could start what would be a ten-week stay and two-years of chemo to treat leukemia.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

4 years

"What is a major problem in our society that tech has solved in our lifetimes? There's probably an answer to that question, but the fact that I can't immediately come up with it is a problem." A 47-year-old NYT opinion writer recently made that statement—What's the best answer?

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

1 year

Someone with @macfound ties, please nominate @andreitr for his ArtBots project. It is a true treasure of the internet and a model of how the humanities can translate onto social media.

Albert Bierstadt

@ArtistBierstadt

1 year

Storm in the Mountains, 1870 #realism #bierstadt

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

The old profile pic had a good, near-decade-long run, but overdue for a change.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

2 years

@NGruen1 Is that a "class" thing or a "social anxiety" thing? Being a "good conversationalist" used to be recognized as a life skill but it's atrophied across the board.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

5 years

The best founders make you feel like they have the ability to see "The Matrix" and can run their businesses accordingly. Often, this is just the side effect of being diligent students of their markets. It's a superpower open to any entrepreneur. Use it! 9/9

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

One founder profile we're losing in the current funding mania: 🪙 Raises $500K 💰 Sells for $5M in ~2-3 years 😇 Angel invests in some startups, a few take off 🤔 Kicks tires on new ideas for 1-2 years 💍 Commits to new startup with resources/network/experience/ambition

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

3 years

If you were born after ~1985 it can be difficult to appreciate how much smaller a role plastic played in the built environment.

foone🏳️‍⚧️

@Foone

3 years

HOLY FUCKING SHIT THIS IS A ONCE IN A LIFETIME AUCTION Do you see this TV? do you realize why it's special?

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

4 years

Partial list of unicorns that have launched since @kevin2kelly wrote "You are not late" in 2014: 📺 TikTok 📈 RobinHood 🍋Lemonade 🖨️ Desktop Metal ♂️ Ro/Hims 📹 Verkada ⚔️ Anduril 🛌 Knotel 🧳 Away 👟 Allbirds 🚭 Juul 🍀 Clover 🧭 Niantic

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

11 years

"Chineasy" flashcards teach kids Chinese characters the way Lego teaches construction—smart design. http://t.co/3bC6yJMwMR @Wired_Design

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

2 years

A lot of folks think that the key is raising money at which point you can hire people. We have hundreds of portfolio companies, all venture-backed, and hiring is almost always their biggest challenge. Capital won't convince people. Only founders can.

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Joe Flaherty

@josephflaherty

2 months

The strongest frame for a VC pitch is, "this train is leaving with or without you, would you like to buy a ticket?" Certain facts make that story easier to tell, but whether it's pre-seed or a recap, creating a sense of momentum is critical.

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