gm. Ok Wednesday’s poll was super-duper close.
Vibes won by a hair. There were some really solid answers that left me thinking.
“If the people who are making the thing aren't stoked, how can anyone expect customers to be stoked?” Ok this is facts.
On the flip side one reader said, “Data will build the vibes.” Also facts. And the kicker, “Vibes is the pre-screen; data is the due diligence.”
Alright here’s my thoughts. I think the vibes come first (early Facebook) and then add the data (Facebook ads boom). But don’t let data trump the vibes (why Facebook is looked down upon now). Use data to align the vibes further, not just monetize the vibes until there’s barely any good vibes left.
Ok, now that my surf bro rant is done. Time for today’s poll.
Do you like pineapple pizza?
FRESH POWDER
Looking at three startups that just raised. Congrats!
If you want to get your company in front of 19,500+ founders, investors, and operators, let us know! Contact [email protected] with any questions.
Everything I Did While Twitter Was Down Wednesday Night
On Wednesday, Twitter broke. The service stopped allowing people to tweet, DM, or follow new people for several hours.
Countless people were angry and making jokes about it. I, for one, was very grateful. I finally got to do some important things in my life.
Call my Mom. I hadn’t spoken to her since I downloaded Twitter at age 14 in 2011. We finally got on the phone and had a conversation.
Do my taxes. I always thought they were optional. When Twitter went down on Wednesday, I finally read my 17 pieces of mail from the IRS. Turns out taxes are so not optional!
Meditate. I’m officially better than you. 1 minute and 17 seconds better.
Trained my dog. With Twitter down, I finally had the attention span to teach my dog a few tricks. He can now use his paw to doomscroll on Twitter for me! Still working on typing out tweets.
Planned my retirement. With Twitter down, that meant my career was basically in the toilet too. So I started looking at beach homes on the Italian riviera in the Sandbox metaverse.
Found the lost city of Atlantis. It only took me like 12 minutes of searching on Google Earth. We’ve all been distracted by social media for so long we forgot about what’s important.
Went to sleep. I hadn’t slept since the Luna collapse. I just couldn’t bring myself to get off Twitter for long enough. Well, I finally did it. I fell asleep on the train and ended up in the greatest state in the country: New Jersey!
And when I got back from New Jersey, I jumped right back on Twitter again.
TECH
A Mystery Startup
Two of the biggest names in tech are teaming up.
Bret Taylor, former co-CEO of Salesforce, and Clay Bavor, former VP of AR/VR at Google, are cooking up something spicy.
History Of Success
Taylor and Bavor have had no shortage of success in the tech world since their joint entry at Google in 2003.
Taylor spent 4 years at Google, then founded the early social network FriendFeed in 2007. After that was acquired by Facebook in 2009, he founded the enterprise document company Quip, which would eventually be acquired by Salesforce for $750 million.
Bavor, meanwhile, never left Google. Instead, he started and built Google’s AR/VR division, and then pivoted to lead Google’s forward-looking bets division, Leads.
Needless to say, these dudes are no slouches.
The Mystery
It’s natural to get excited anytime two people as talented as Taylor and Bavor team up. The possibilities seem endless.
Well, in this case, the possibilities literally are endless, because nobody knows what exactly they are building.
The only hint they gave is that it will be in AI, but that’s a lot like telling someone you’re cooking chicken for dinner. It can mean so many different things, you might as well not even say it.
TLDR: We have no idea what they’re cooking. But we’re excited to find out.
QUICK HITS
Seed Round
Stat: $100 billion: The amount of money Alphabet’s market cap lost after Bard dun goofed in its public demo.
Story we're watching: President Biden didn’t exactly give Big Tech praise in his annual State Of The Union Address. Instead, he called for stronger privacy protections and beefier antitrust laws. Will it happen? We don’t know. But we do know that the Tech Lobby won’t go down without a fight.
Rabbit hole: Chesterton’s Fence: A Lesson In Second Order Thinking (fs)
WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON
Twitter Blue users can now tweet up to 4,000 characters. I'm about to drive my followers crazy.
Apple hired its first-ever Chief People Officer.
Elon is unveiling the third part of Tesla’s master plan on March 1st.
The Stable Diffusion team now has a generative AI app for video.
GUESSTIMATE
LeBron James just broke the record for the most points scored in NBA history. What was the previous record?
FUNDRAISING FRIDAY
Ok this isn’t advice, but it’s very funny lol
LAYOFFS TRACKER
Notable layoffs this week:
EquityBee: 24 people (25%)
Gusto: 126 people (5%)
Godaddy: 530 people (8%)
FOUNDERS CORNER
The best resources we came across this week that will help you become a better founder, builder, or investor.
😂 Want dank memes magically delivered to your inbox every morning? Sign up for Meme-mail.
🌎 Balaji is so back! Check out The Network State Podcast Episode 1 with Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.
🦄 Want breakdowns of 3 pre-unicorn startups every week? Check out Founders Pack by Akira Murakami.
GUESSTIMATE ANSWER
38,387.