awillen

55 ms·

571.
by awillen 6y ago
This is one of those times when you shouldn't attribute malice (or greed, I guess) to something that ought to be attributed to incompetence. I've been a PM for long enough to have dealt with lots of situations like this, and never
572.
by awillen 6y ago
Truth.
573.
by awillen 6y ago
What does this even mean? Who cares that if they had been AIs they would have been banned? They aren't AIs. AIs have literally nothing to do with any of this. What are you even talking about?
574.
by awillen 6y ago
Even the ones who have pledged to give away 99% of their wealth upon their deaths? Buffett has said, roughly, that his best skill is using his money to make more money, so the optimal thing to do in terms of helping the world is to continue
575.
by awillen 6y ago
Yeah, no. You do not know every billionaire (you probably don't even know one billionaire). Warren Buffett seems like a pretty good guy who has dealt honestly in his life and is giving away a tremendous amount of his money. Of course,
576.
by awillen 6y ago
It sounds like you're implying that in this dictatorship people have been killed and their property distributed among people who haven't been killed. If so, no it is very clearly not the same because Bill Gates is not a dictator n
577.
by awillen 6y ago
I used to think of salespeople as slimeballs who would lie, cheat and steal to push something over on you. Any time anyone would try to sell me anything, I'd immediately become defensive and just get out of the conversation as quickly
578.
by awillen 6y ago
Remember when this was the biggest symbol of corruption in the US? I miss those times...
579.
by awillen 6y ago
I think finance and product-market fit go hand in hand, and it's a question of the founder's perception of which is more important. If you don't have a good product, you won't make any money, so for those startups it rea
580.
by awillen 6y ago
Good read with some really interesting information, but I don't know that I agree with the way it implies that there's a single, defining reason for failure. All of these things are intertwined - you can't get raise money if
581.
by awillen 6y ago
We've been injecting money into the economy in a broad-based way through PPP. It didn't turn out especially well, a lot of it went to large companies that didn't need it, and small businesses (largely restaurants) are going b
582.
by awillen 6y ago
Sure, there were absolutely problems (though bear in mind you're addressing one program - there was also the TVA, CCC, and a bunch of others I could've told you off the top of my head when I was in US history in high school), but
583.
by awillen 6y ago
I won't even pretend to know enough about construction/infrastructure to know what's required to work on it, but there have got to be jobs that can be created that don't require technical skills. I've been reading t
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by awillen 6y ago
If only there were some precedent we could look to where huge numbers of people were out of work and the government killed two birds with one stone by employing a lot of them on major infrastructure projects. And what if those infrastructur
585.
by awillen 6y ago
The lesson here is that the power lies with those who who have relationships with consumers. That distribution channel is quite possibly the single most valuable asset one can possess today. Kylie Jenner is ridiculously rich not because she
586.
by awillen 6y ago
You're obviously coming in with an anti-PE bent here, so if you're that interested you can pull up some statistics on PE outcomes and leave them here. My point was that OP's labeling of PE firms is overgeneralized - if you wa
587.
by awillen 6y ago
I mean that's a lot of most industries in a capitalist system (at least the extraction of value from labor).
588.
by awillen 6y ago
He could definitely pull several million people onto a new service immediately, but it would just be his most hardcore followers I would think.
589.
by awillen 6y ago
The problem is he needs Twitter as much as Twitter needs him. Lots of people have talked about getting his base over to some other app that will allow him to say whatever, but it just hasn't worked.
590.
by awillen 6y ago
This grossly (and incorrectly) oversimplifies an enormous industry with a number of different approaches. Some PE firms absolutely strip the assets out of businesses and maximize their short term profits, while others buy and hold for the l
591.
by awillen 6y ago
There are a lot of leaps of logic here - somehow he jumps from the fact that wristbands that count our heartbeats and footsteps are trying to improve health to the idea that our humanity is reducible to a bunch of data points. Then somehow
592.
by awillen 6y ago
His third answer is the right one, but he's way too dismissive of it. Founders don't listen to people because everyone said quitting your job to start a startup was dumb. Of course when those people come back and try to offer sugg
593.
by awillen 6y ago
You literally just pointed out the causation that is the lack of ability to build generational wealth stemming from historical racism.
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by awillen 6y ago
He literally used the example of groups that are diverse by race and gender by everyone is rich and went to Ivy League schools. Thus the request for an example along those lines.
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by awillen 6y ago
Please show me some organizations that are a bunch of rich white people who all attended Ivy League schools but are otherwise highly diverse (race, gender, etc.). That's the problem - you're talking in theory (obviously there are
596.
by awillen 6y ago
Most of them will be white - basic statistics bear that out. Since my point was that it's incredibly detrimental to diversity, it's obviously relevant to it. If you want to make an argument for something, go nuts, but don't c
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by awillen 6y ago
Yeah, it's commonly known as sweat equity. You do the work, and other people provide the money, then you split up the equity accordingly to the relative value of the two different types of contributions (I mean that's oversimplyin
598.
by awillen 6y ago
Great point. People think a willingness to take extreme financial risks is somehow a useful personality trait when it comes to entrepreneurship because of selection bias. People who take that risk and make it tell that story. People who tak
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by awillen 6y ago
The idea that check sizes should be small so people should be forced into dire financial situations is a terrible one, and one that would absolutely hurt diversity. You're going to end up with a bunch of rich white dudes as founders (b
600.
by awillen 6y ago
It feels like this time is different because of the ongoing lack of demand. International flights from the US are looking to basically be nonexistent until there's a vaccine. After that, it's very plausible the business travel eco

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