⁠App Economy Insights
Here’s a sneak peek at our November 2024 report! 👀 https://t.co/sgOoMMvfkb
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⁠Stock Analysis Compilation
Hardman Johnson on Meta $META US

Thesis: Meta's pivot to AI and improved governance sets the stage for sustained growth and enhanced profitability

(Extract from their Q3 letter) https://t.co/4sp50eSVKn
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⁠iinvested
3Q'24 Baron FinTech Fund on $TWFG, $PRI

More fund letters here:
https://t.co/ccjFhSPQ2v https://t.co/bYLJ9dJ6yn
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⁠Startup Archive
Keith Rabois: “The velocity of your company improves by adding barrels”

Keith shares his “Barrels and Ammunition” framework for building effective teams:

“Most companies—once they get into hiring mode—just hire a lot of people. And you expect that as you add people your throughput and velocity of shipping things is going to increase. But it turns out it doesn’t work that way. Usually when you hire more engineers, you actually don’t get that much more done. You sometimes get less done.”

Keith argues that the reason for this is that most people in a company—even great people—are “ammunition.” But to improve velocity, you need “barrels”. He defines barrels as extremely talented people who can take ideas from inception all the way through to fully shipped product. Most companies start with one barrel (the founder). And when they add another, they can get twice as many things done per week, quarter, etc.

But true barrels are incredibly difficult to find:

“When you have them, give them lots of equity, promote them, take them to dinner every week because they’re virtually irreplaceable. They’re also very culturally specific. A barrel at one company may not be a barrel at another company.”

Video source: @ycombinator (2014)
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⁠Stock Analysis Compilation
Artisan on Hubbell $HUBB US

Thesis: Hubbell powers grid modernization with essential components, benefiting from green energy growth and infrastructure investments

(Extract from their Q3 letter) https://t.co/UbkTzfepjA
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⁠Startup Archive
RT @chrishlad: Focus and speed is all a startup has.

Narrowing The Focus by Frank Slootman https://t.co/kdvHfNujew - The Founders' Tribune
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⁠Startup Archive
RT @aeyakovenko: Fire driven development -> 1 person per fire

Keith Rabois: “The velocity of your company improves by adding barrels”

Keith shares his “Barrels and Ammunition” framework for building effective teams:

“Most companies—once they get into hiring mode—just hire a lot of people. And you expect that as you add people your throughput and velocity of shipping things is going to increase. But it turns out it doesn’t work that way. Usually when you hire more engineers, you actually don’t get that much more done. You sometimes get less done.”

Keith argues that the reason for this is that most people in a company—even great people—are “ammunition.” But to improve velocity, you need “barrels”. He defines barrels as extremely talented people who can take ideas from inception all the way through to fully shipped product. Most companies start with one barrel (the founder). And when they add another, they can get twice as many things done per week, quarter, etc.

But true barrels are incredibly difficult to find:

“When you have them, give them lots of equity, promote them, take them to dinner every week because they’re virtually irreplaceable. They’re also very culturally specific. A barrel at one company may not be a barrel at another company.”

Video source: @ycombinator (2014) - Startup Archive
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⁠Startup Archive
RT @gilbitron: Such a good description of what building a startup is actually like.

Marc Andreessen on how the best founders navigate the “idea maze”

“Entrepreneurship, creativity, innovation is what economists call decision making under uncertainty. Both parts of that are important. Decision making: you’re going to make a ton of decisions… And then uncertainty: the world’s a complicated place. In mathematical terms, the world is a complex adaptive system with feedback loops.”

Military commanders call this the fog of war: “You’re just dealing with a situation where the number of variables is just off the charts.”

And, as Marc explains, the best innovators deal with this in two steps.

First, they “try to pre-plan as much as they possibly can.” Marc and his partners at a16z call this “navigating the idea maze.” In their head, the best founders try to have as complete of a map of possible futures as anybody possibly could.

Then on Day 1, they’re in the fog of war, and a lot of the assumptions of that idea maze turn out to be wrong. So the founder must reconstruct it on the fly day-by-day as they learn and discover new things.

“The great ones course-correct every single day. They take stock of what they’ve learned. They modify the plan.”

The great ones also tend to think in terms of hypotheses. They tend to think:

“OK, I’m going to go into the world and announce that I’m doing this for sure… And then I’m going to try it. And even though I sound like I have complete certainty, I know that I need to test to find out whether it’s going to work. And if it’s doesn’t, then I have to go back to all of those people and say we’re actually not going left, we’re going right.”

And then they have to run this loop thousands of times.

“You course-correct, you adjust, you evolve. Often, the businesses that end up working really well tend to be different than the original plan. But that’s part of the process of a really smart founder basically working their way through reality.”

Video source: @hubermanlab (2023) - Startup Archive
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⁠Stock Analysis Compilation
Artemis on Vertiv $VRT US

Thesis: Vertiv addresses critical AI-driven data center cooling needs, benefiting from robust demand and capitalizing on its industrial expertise at an attractive valuation

(Extract from their Q3 letter) https://t.co/VdRBjwSbAM
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