No one is going to do it for you

A thread...

As a founder, if you won't show up every single day, despite how you are feeling, or how the startup is doing or what the press is writing about you, or your cofounders not working out, or your product failing or your customers shouting

No one is going to do it for you

As a student, if you won't do things that scare you, that make you feel nervous, that challenge you, that intimidate you, that you have always wanted to do but never gathered the courage to

No one is going to do it for you

In your first job, if you are not going to make an effort to know how things have happened before and why, to meet new people, to seek help, to ask for feedback, to be patient with results, to not seek "impact" in the first month itself

No one is going to do it for you

If as a son/daughter you are not going to realize what your parents went through while growing up, that they want the same things from your life that you want for your self, that their path is different but there are reasons why

No one is going to do it for you

THREAD:

Employees vs Employers

“We who toil for other people have all in some way been captured by pirates and sold into slavery.” –Law 24

It should be said plainly; employment is nothing more than the next step in the evolution of slavery.

The corporation you are employed by has a psychopathic level of indifference as to whether you live or die.

This is not Leftwing political rhetoric; it is a machiavellian reality you will have to contend with.

Your employer is not your ally; they are your adversary.

It is in your best interest for wages to be as high as possible, while it is in your employer’s best interest for wages to be as low as possible.

1. A thread on Downtown #Vancouver's office construction boom. When it's all said and done there will be roughly 10 million SQ FT of space will be added to just the core.

Here's a brief rundown on what is already approved and under construction...

2. We'll start with what is dubbed as Amazon's unofficial HQ2, or at the very least it's Canadian HQ. At 1.1 million SQ FT this is the largest office development in the city and will help shift DT east as it will house 7500 jobs once occupied.


3. The Amazon building is also significant because it will animate that stretch of West Georgia, Homer, Hamilton and Dunsmuir. It will no longer be a black hole for pedestrian activity. There will be approx. 185,000 square feet of retail and food hall space.

4. Next up is the Stack Tower to be anchored by EY. It's at the western edge of the Central Business District (CBD) and will become #Vancouver's tallest office building when complete. It clocks in at roughly 540,000 SQ FT and 530 feet in height.

5. Recently approved Steam Plant tower has a unique design and large floor plates. With nearly 600,000 SQ FT of office space, this is the second largest office tower that we could see. My bet is that this tower will start to take shape in a year or

If you're new to real estate twitter this is a must-read.

A thread on how most real estate folks structure deals with outside investors.

Most GPs utilize the "preferred equity" structure when they raise money from outside investors. They "syndicate" deals.

Here's the basics:

The person (or team of people) putting the deal together is the "sponsor". Also called general parter. Referred to on twitter as the GP.

They find the property, do all the work, hire the management company and take fees. They often co-sign debt and always secure the financing.

The investor is generally passive, doing no work and putting in cash. This is the "limited partner". Referred to on twitter as the LP.

They don't co-sign debt. They simply read reports and ask the sponsors questions and cash checks every month (if the deal is going well).

There are two equity classes.

"Preferred equity" belongs to the LPs. Cash talks, so this is a higher class of shares. They are first in the "capital stack" behind the debt (bank loan).

"Common equity" belongs to the sponsor. They are generally last in the capital stack.

Sponsors generally co-invest. That means they hold both equity classes. A 10% co-invest is standard.

That means the GP has skin in the game. His 10% co-invest makes him both an LP and a GP.

1) Let's talk about how Alibaba has achieved the holy grail of big data - a holistic view of the consumer - through a plethora of product offerings and investment.

This is their overarching moat. And Amazon's got nothing on them.

2) To the outsider, Alibaba's product range is confusing af. It's all over the place and there seems to be no core competency they are focusing on.

A few divisions - Taobao (B2C marketplace), Tmall (High-end B2C marketplace), Alibaba (B2B marketplace, Cainiu(logistics)..

3) ...Elema (Food delivery), Autonavi (maps), Youku (streaming) and Feizhu(travel booking)

Also the promotional strategy is weird, In the lead-up to singles day, half the time they were promoting some cat rearing in-app mini game.

Wtf?

4) When we view Alibaba's strategy as working to create a full view of a consumer's life, including their preferences, social network and spending capacity (and ability). Then everything starts to make sense.

4) Whether a consumer buys on Tmall or Taobao tells Ali about their preferences and budget, delivery address for packages and food lets Ali know where they live and where they work (also cross-referenced with property data to infer wealth level + occupation).

I spoke to 1,000+ companies over the last 6 months about their plans for remote work going forward

Here are a few things I've learned

[ a thread ] 💻🏠🌍

🏢 HQ's are finished: companies will cut their commercial office space by 40-70%

The will allow every worker to work from home 2-4 days a week, and come into the office 1-2 days a

🎡 home-office setup: Companies who cut their office spend will use that money to provide world-class setups for their teams at home

Companies who don't will lose people to companies who do

🌍 Fully distributed: ~30% of the companies we talk to are getting rid of the office entirely and going remote-first

Companies doing this have seen their workers decentralize rapidly, leaving expensive cities to be closer to family

⭐️ Access talent: The first reason they are going remote-first is simple – it lets them hire more talented people

Rather than hiring the best person in a 30-mile radius of the office, they can hire the best person in the world for every role

Customer friction is a huge part of running a biz.

How hard is it to engage a company to work with you?

Data-driven companies obsess over reducing this friction.

Mom-and-pop operators SUCK at this and it’s costing them millions.

Here’s what I’ve learned 👇👇👇

1985 companies have a lot of friction.

Call them. Leave message. Wait. Guy may or may not call you back. Quote by phone or email. Scan signed contract.

A self storage facility we purchased recently had a lot of this.

Drive across town M-F 9-5. Spend 20 mins. Sign paper lease.

Get a physical key and lock. Drive back. Get your unit. Mail a check each month or stop by office with cash.

Owner charged $52 a month for a 10x10. Completely full.

We instantly setup software for online rental.

No phone call necessary. Rent a unit in 4 mins from your browser.

Sign lease online. Pay online. Upload photo of DL on phone.

Go straight to your unit 24/7. Type in gate key that was sent to you by text. Lock and key waiting in unit.

We can now charge $77 a mo for the same unit. $25 more. And we rent MORE units faster.

How significant is this?

That $25 increase per unit across the board turns out to be a 35% increase in revenue.

That takes revenue from $14k a month when I buy it to $18.9k a few months later.

An extra $58k to the bottom line over the course of 12 months.

The biggest story in tech no one’s talking about is Uber discovering they’d been defrauded out of $100M - or 2/3 of their ad spend.

And all bc Sleeping Giants kept bugging them to block their ads on Breitbart.

I was so surprised when Kevin Frisch, Uber’s ex-Head of Acquisition reached out to me one day on LinkedIn to tell me he found this epic fraud bc they actually DID block their Breitbart ads but somehow the ads were still slipping thru. 🧐

Uber was in deep shit in 2017 because Sleeping Giants was on their case for their Breitbart ads, followed by #DeleteUber.

Kevin said in an interview last year that we were a pain in their ass and he wished we’d get hit by a bus

Uber DID actually quietly block their Breitbart ads early on, but our followers kept seeing them and so we kept tweeting @ CEO Travis.

Travis was seeing our tweets and would ping Kevin saying “WTF. Have you not handled this yet?”

So Kevin - who is embarrassed bc he had instructed all vendors to block Breitbart (!!) - figures out which ones are letting the ads slip thru & pauses them. It’s ~10% of their total budget, $150M.

A significant % when they’ve already lost so many riders due to #DeleteUber.

I spoke to 1,700+ people about remote work in 2020

A few predictions of what will happen in 2021

[ a thread ] 💻🏠🌍

🎟 Remote competition: @FrancisSuarez is the first person to wield the power of Twitter to attract remote talent

Almost every region that has something which would attract people to move there will do the same thing

Incentives for remote talent to move will grow quickly

⏰ Async-first: People now see offices are instantaneous gratification adult kids clubs where sync work makes it impossible to get stuff done

Tools that enable async work are the most important thing globally remote teams need. A lot of startups will try to tackle this

🏢 HQ Slashed: Companies of every size cut their commercial office space by 50-70%

People will work remotely 2-4 days a week, and come into the office 1-2 days a week

Companies will provide a great setup at home for their workers

🤕 Injury explosion: Companies that don't provide the right tools & equipment begin to get Sued for Millions of Dollars

This rapidly becomes a key point of differentiation between companies they use to attract & retain talent

DEATH BY GREED

How patriotic am I? In my perfect world Steve Jobs would have died in prison and every politician, CEO & board member who helped offshore American jobs to enrich themselves would be put on trial for treason. Hear me. Capitalism is the greatest enemy of patriotism.

America created generations of oligarchs thru free & cheap labor, tax loopholes & our politicians today still allow it. In fact, they're in on it. Under the banner of globalization, we allow American companies 2 exploit both natural resources & human resources of other nations.

General Electric made billions during the Obama years & didn't pay one dime in taxes b/c the Obama administration & Democrats refused to close the tax loopholes that allowed big companies like GE & people like Donald Trump to escape paying their fair share like other Americans.

Shit, America created Donald Trump & a litany of other ridiculously wealthy mostly white oligarchs who don't give a fuck about anybody at the bottom of society. Senator Elizabeth Warren was right as hell when she said, "it's all rigged." Hell, she was apart of the rigging with-

Here are all the businesses I’ve tried:

(Half of them failed)

👇

Training Spectrum

A website showcasing local sports talent, health and fitness articles and interviews with personal trainers.

Started at 17. Lasted 4-5 months.

Food & Drink

A local website listing restaurants in each city (before Zomato was a thing).

Started at 18. Lasted 6-7 months.

Ambitionaire

An online magazine interviewing entrepreneurs for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Started at 18. Lasted 3 months.

10 Question Poll

A website asking 10 random funny questions and you share your results with friends.

Started at 22. Lasted 3 months.

A thread of Popular brand names you've been mispronouncing all this time

This is an insightful article about what's wrong with Google as compared to Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook.

Which actually reminds me of the difference between organic and engineered designs:

Organic or biological designs are reusable designs from the ground up. They accommodate the needs of the environment because of the generality of the architecture. They don't pretend to solve just a narrow problem.

Architectures like biology that lead to general intelligence (i.e. like you) are from the ground up built from reusable components that encourage combinatorial mixing opportunities. One can never correctly guess the needs of the environment (i.e. market).

The opposite of generalization is pre-mature optimization. A company that has is genesis as a one-product company has a bias toward optimizing the entire stack. As a consequence, it compromises reusability and thus shuts of future opportunities of evolution.

the product manager is responsible for the product's success...

simple. But....wait....

1/n There are many $ successful products that are terrible for humans (both inside/outside a company). Is that success?

2/n Conversely, what about "great products" that end up being "not successful" ?

Did the product manager do their job? Where does their role begin and end?

3/n Success over the lifespan of the product? next quarter? until they leave? while company exists?

There are many ways that short term success can come at the expense of mid/long term impact

4/n Success can mean very different things depending on the stage of the company, and the maturity of the product.

In an early startup, company/product are inexorably linked. In a more established company "the product" may be one of a dozen bets, most which will fail.

5/n What if a company has very low product aspirations?

What if it doesn't believe that their products can be a source of differentiated, sustainable mid/long term growth?

Is the role responsible for success *insofar as success is defined*? Something else? Who decides/defines?

Google workers have announced their intention to form a union, under the auspices of @CWAUnion Local 1440. The union is called @AlphabetWorkers (Google maintains the legal and accounting fiction that it is a division of a holding company called "Alphabet").

1/

Speaking of legal fictions, the union is opening membership to "TVCs" - temps, vendors and contractors - employees who have deliberately misclassified so as to avoid paying them benefits or extending normal workplace protections to them.

2/

It's a bold move, a countermeasure to thwart the other commercial advantage from worker misclassification: by creating multiple categories of workers, bosses can pit employees against one another, by dangling privileges in front of one group but not the other.

3/

But it comes at a high price: to gain official legal recognition, more than 50% of eligible workers must join the union. By including more workers, the union is setting a higher bar for official status.

But the union has momentum: a series of high-profile googler uprisings - driven by official tolerance for sexual misconduct, complicity in US military drone programs, secret collaboration with Chinese surveillance and censorship, and more - show how radicalized googlers are.

5/

1/ I want to share an experience I just had a few days ago at .@Costco.

I am posting this thread to raise awareness that people & companies should be more mindful of who they are dealing with no matter if we happen to be in a pandemic, or not, or anywhere in between.

2/ The short version: I will be canceling my membership of nearly 10 years & filing formal complaints to Costco Corporate as well as the proper govt regulatory departments for #Covid19 guidelines & ADA violations.

The long version:

A premise:

3/ Anyone who follows me, knows I am a-political in my professional life & on social media accounts/platforms. I try to remain politically neutral.

4/ I am also a law abiding citizen & during these trying times of #COVID19 govt mandates & guidelines (which have hurt our country immensely), I have done my best to abide by them.

5/ As such I've been wearing masks, to the point where I have developed a condition that no longer permits me to wear one for medical reasons.

Tarik Bateh, a senior director with JLL Capital Markets, is giving a presentation about his thoughts on Lot J. He said there are 4 major and fundamental red flags about the project, but they can all be fixed with "basic and standard" business and governance practices.

First red flag: Due diligence. He said the developers need to provide more information about the project.
"You could not get a mortgage on your house with the information that has been provided about Lot J," he said.

2. He said the developers need to invest their money into the project before the city does, as this is standard practice in the real estate industry.
"This ensures skin in the game," he said.

Bateh said the developers are fully capable of getting a construction loan from a bank, not the city.

Bateh's third point is that no city money should go towards the project until it's completed. City should instead provide a lump sum payment at the completion of the project that the developers do not need to pay.