Bitfinex files discovery in "Yo bro, where did our $800 million go?" action and it is every bit as interesting as you'd expect it to

If an employer is willing to be abusive to you prior to hiring you, when you have maximum leverage and they are maximally incentivized to play nice, I think that gives you *extremely actionable* signal as to how they'll treat you when you're working there and dependent on them.

For candidates: evaluate prospective employers accordingly.

For startups employing e.g. engineers: given that your candidates should evaluate you accordingly, be *extra special* careful to operate like professionals with regards to e.g. interviewing, offers, and negotiation.

"Can you be more explicit about 'abusive' here?"

Not without violating a confidence, but as someone who has been on hiring side of table and is a capitalist, there are *clearly* things you could do which would be "sharp operating, but we're all sharp operators" in some contexts.

Hiring employees is often not one of those contexts. The nature of the relationship, the asymmetry in power, and the social contract strongly counsel you to be a lot better there than you are minimally required by law / contract.

A thing which aesthetically frustrates me is that a lot of the things I've heard companies do here serve *no legitimate business purpose.* In some cases it's getting tens of dollars of advantage. TENS! On an engineering candidate!

My friends @robwalling and @einarvollset just launched TinySeed, an accelerator for software companies where a successful outcome is a healthy, sustainable business rather than attempting to ride the rocketship trajectory. https://t.co/LSHqZNcVid

I have some thoughts:

As somebody who bootstrapped ~4 companies, I feel like I had to make some clearly suboptimal decisions early in them for lack of what is, in hindsight, not all that much money. But there's a huge gap in the product space for investment options.

It's weird: you can get $25k from Amex trivially, and angels are very willing to write a check for that much, but you have to make representations about your goals/ambitions/market/etc which don't really apply to everyone.

And so you see the traditional angel/VC ecosystem fund companies where honestly the returns are probably not there, and this is knowable pretty early, but the chase of them will wreck what could have been a perfectly happy business.

(To make the math work for traditional VCs the company has to at least have a market-appropriate shot of $100 million a year. There are a lot more $10 million a year companies than $100 million a year companies. That is *not* a bad terminal outcome for founders/employees.)

FAQ: “How do I get better at writing?”
Me: Write a million words.
Follow up: “Hah but seriously.”
Me: Start with 20,000 words. Everyone gets to that 50 times in their first million.
Follow up: “No seriously.”
Me: Nobody expects 10 Quick Tips To Play Violin At Carnegie Hall.

The Internet is so much better at teaching writing than the traditional educational system principally because it removes an artificial and limiting constraint on output imposed by ability of gatekeepers’ limited time to evaluate output.

(Interestingly in fields where we actually care about performance we’re good at encouraging students to practice when no one is watching but for writing we basically assume all the value is created by the teacher-minute of attention. Teacher-minutes are scarce and rationed.)

If you ever want to be deeply, deeply disillusioned about the state of the world, compare what we do where we care about output quality and what we do where we don’t, and which domains sort into which column by revealed preference.

Most software founders, particularly in B2B, need to get radically better at sales. @Steli , who is the best person for explaining the scrappy stages in the beginning and then building out a team with scripts and processes, wrote a guide to:

For technical founders it is irrationally, obscenely hard to reverse years of programming (ba dum bum) that sales is a value-destroying activity. Sales is CLEARLY a value-creating activity, contingent on you have a value-creating product.

The world will not drop what they are doing to adopt your work. This is particularly true in B2B, where simply building a better mousetrap won't overcome the activation energy required to get people with additional non-mice problems to prioritize changing mousetraps today.

This is very non-obvious for founders because founders are not often people who *want* to be sold to. We often come from a background where trying out tools is a bit of a fun hobby. We like looking at all the options, making charts, and ripping out partially complete tests.

"This week I unsuccessfully trialed four software options for automating that thing that has been killing us. Our actual production process remains the same as last week. Don't worry; this was a great use of time." is not a thing you want to write in a progress report to manager.

While my time investing in crypto and previously playing poker has gotten me used to experiencing large daily personal net worth volatility, it's never a pleasant experience

Short thread (by my standards...) with some ramblings that help me get through it 👇

1/10 Imo, some DeFi projects represent 10-1000x upside opportunities

Obviously, like all of crypto, it is extremely risky and can go to 0. That said, given the magnitude of potential outcomes, it just doesn't have to succeed that often to make it a massively +EV bet

2/10 As with all early stage tech, realising these outcomes will require 4-8 year holds

Unlike early stage tech, crypto investors will have liquidity, i.e. the possibility, and thus the temptation, to sell

This is both a blessing and a curse

3/10 A look at any of the best performing public stocks will show you that you cannot have 10-1000x upside potential without volatiliy and occasional large drawdowns

Crypto, as early stage tech, is much riskier than established public companies and thus even higher vol too

4/10 Obviously, one should take advantage of this liquidity as it allows for rebalancing. Most importantly, it also makes outcomes less binary and thus less volatile than traditional VC

However, one should not let the liquidity take advantage of us

1/ Fear and Bitcoin.

Whenever Bitcoin has a bull run, naysayers try to cope with missing the boat by rationalizing why it will fail through “Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt” or what we Bitcoiners have nicknamed “FUD.”

I am going to be using #bitcoin & borrowing from myself to buy my first rental property.

Want to know how?

Time for a thread...👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻

At the beginning of 2020 I set a goal for myself to accumulate as much #bitcoin as possible.

Now this thread isn’t really about whether or not you believe in bitcoin, but more about how to use leverage and other peoples money (OPM) to buy yourself more assets.

Let me explain...

Step 1 - I took all of 2020 to accumulate #btc and put it on an exchange (Blockfi) that pays me interest on my bitcoin.

Not only have I acquired multiple coins this year, but I’ve created a $100+ gain per month in interest as well (another source of cashflow).

I can now utilize this platform to take loans out against my position (which is in the mid 5 figures.)

Double winning:

I can take a $ amount loan out against my bitcoin and use that to pay the 15% down required on a rental property and allow the bank to pay other 85%.

How I am winning #1:

I am borrowing from myself and a bank to acquire another asset.

That real estate 🏡 will be paid for by someone else and produces more cash flow for me.

I will use that cashflow to immediately pay off the loan I took against my bitcoin.

Scathing comments on Crypto from Mr Rabi Shankar - Deputy Governor, RBI.

1) On crypto being treated as a currency:
"Currency always has an issuer, usually a trusted entity like the sovereign. Even when gold is used as a currency, the gold coins had to be issued by a sovereign.

Secondly, historically, a currency has always been either a commodity with intrinsic value or a debt instrument. Cryptocurrencies do not conform
to this understanding as they do not have an issuer, they are not an instrument of debt/commodities nor do have any intrinsic value.

Currency needs trust, not everything that can be trusted is a currency. So even if technology (as
in a blockchain) provides the trust for cryptocurrencies, they can at best perform the role of a currency within the private and closed environment of that cryptocurrency.

They do not, and should not, automatically become a currency for the larger society "

2) On crypto being treated as a financial asset : "This is also problematic because all financial assets have underlying cash flows and need to be some person’s liability.