Just got a tip that Citadel reloaded their shorts before they told Robinhood to stop trading $GME.

If this is true, Ken Griffin and the Robinhood founders should be in jail.

This is class warfare.

1/ Throughout my startup career, I’ve seen many founders have an aversion to sales. This is a mistake that can kill your startup.

2/ Sales is often viewed as either a saving grace or proof that the product isn’t good enough (because it should sell itself). Neither are ever true. Some common mistakes that result in...

3/ Mistake 1: Hire a sales rep before reaching product/market fit to get your initial batch of customers. This is a mistake because founders need to work through their MVP with early adopters to truly understand what it is they’re selling.

4/ Mistake 2: Reach product/market fit, need to scale, and rely entirely on self-serve. For enterprise products that require big commitments and internal shifts, almost no product is self-explanatory enough to sell itself.

5/ Mistake 3: Make a first sales hire who isn’t scrappy enough to help mold the sales process from scratch. Some salespeople are amazing at their jobs, but not cut out to establish the processes that others end up following. This skillset is what @rdedatta calls a “sales ninja”.

1/ Silicon Valley has changed a lot over the past 13 years since I started my first company (an AJAX calendar called Kiko that was funded in the first batch of YC).

2/ Tech has gone from an industry no one cared about, to every random person I knew in college rushing to be part of it, to the evil industry destroying the fabric of society

3/ Starting a startup is easier than ever. Lots of resources: YC, more financing at the seed stage, much more information online. Starting a company is no longer a risky path.

4/ New businesses in every industry are now being built with methodologies that used to be just for tech startups (fast iteration, access to venture capital). Applies to D2C companies like Allbirds, full stack companies like Atrium, etc.

5/ Personally, I’ve felt recently that the overall risk appetite of the people working in tech has changed. People used to want to join frontier companies building something fun / cool; now everyone seems to be optimizing for salary / career stability.

With @ycombinator #demoday kicking off, @atrium gathered advice from past YC founders.

.@jaltma from @latticeHQ says “Don’t confuse investor interest with product-market fit. You’re about to be on the receiving end of a lot of hype and FOMO - use it to your advantage by taking the money and then keep your burn and ego low.”

.@typesfast from @flexport says “I like to remind myself that even Bruce Springsteen still gets nervous before his concerts. Remember that, and then try to focus on what investors want: First, not to be bored. Second, to get rich(er).”

.@collinmathilde from @frontapp says “Leverage your data to tell a story about what the business has achieved and where it is going. Metrics are necessary, but they are too often shared without a narrative arc.”

.@drusenko from @weebly says “Make it relevant. Investors can live in their own world, so try to find an angle that they can relate to.”

10 months ago we shut down Atrium after raising $75m in venture capital. Anyone hearing that knows I made tons of mistakes along the way. Someone asked me today what my biggest lessons learned were. Here they are:

Start with the mission
.

It is very hard to write the mission after the fact. You should start with a clear reason to exist and filter early hires for believers.

Start remote. SFBA is over for startups: the cost of housing and rent gives you much worse operating leverage. Many talented people choose jobs they want to be flexible re: location. Remote is better at this time in the market.

I wrote that before COVID, now it's extra true.

There is no skipping of the R&D phase of a company - if you try to skip this you miss the part where you are forced to develop something differentiated. Very hard to solve this with money.

Don’t build a services company. It’s more work to manage everyone and the reward isn’t there at the end of the day.

For fun I made a Robinhood account. It took me 5 minutes to sign up, get approved and transfer funds for trading...

Here's some details... Read on.

...it took me another 5 minutes to get qualified for options.

If I share a sign up I get "free shares" and I can share as much as I want up to 500$ worth.

The main UI has a prepopulated "list" of stocks/crypto to watch and links to news.

Clicking a stock opens a "trade" button that looks like this.

Notice options is first, buy second.

Options took me to an approval process (which took about a minute) and now away I go trading Baba options.

Buying stock looks like this. It emphasizes fractional shares.

While watching the GameStop stuff has been mildly hilarious (I mean who doesn't like watching the financial elite squirm?) it's pretty clear that a whole bunch of folk have convinced themselves this is ACTUALLY some kind of revolutionary activity. It isn't. 1/

Sure, it's highlighted yet another way in which the bastards profiteer but that's about it, stick it on the pile with the fifty other pro tips to keep the poor, well poor... It's todays banter and tho a few folks might have egg on their faces, literally nothing will happen. 2/

GameStop's three largest shareholders have earned £1.5bn+ during this. They sit at the top of some 200 institutions which are rolling. Meanwhile the ersatz rebels are now watching the bubble, realising there is profit to be made and having a wibble. 3/

No doubt some TRULY believe they are taking part in some kind of revolution but frankly it's utterly absurd and the vast majority are in it for the lulz and to cash in quick.

I'm sorry to tell you this, but you don't own GameStop.

4/

The reality is, the scale of the economic disparity and corruption is simply vast. Billionaires loosing a few millions means nothing. They buy one less yacht and you continue to live meal to meal.

The "Free Market" changes a few systems and the abuse continues. 5/

#NIFTY

Bearish engulfing on monthly or bullish harami on Weekly , which one will play out?

Outlook for the week Jan 2 - 6, 2022.

THREAD: Deconstructing NIFTY on 5 different TF's.

#NIFTY

1. Monthly TF:

• Although the structure in monthly TF is of HH-HL, December monthly candle is a more of a bearish engulfing.

• However it is exactly at the support

• 17800-18000 looks like a strong support.

#NIFTY

2. Weekly TF:

• 17800- 1800 used to be a resistance in April & August 2022.

• However post BO of those levels, they might act as an immediate support.

• Current weekly candle is closer to the support (erstwhile resistance)

#NIFTY

3. Daily TF:

• After a sharp vertical fall, we expected a buying momentum

• Also Nifty filled the Gap.

• Strong support at 17800

#NIFTY

4. Hourly TF:

Moving within the rising channel, albiet the channel is quite steep.

10 truths I wish I knew when I started trading:

Trading always was, is, and will always be a game against yourself. Nobody can make it happen for you, and there’s nobody to beat.

Your only chance of winning is to practice being a better version of yourself today than you were yesterday.

/1

Traders waste so much energy lamenting on "I missed this" - if all that energy was spent on fixing a problem they just identified — many of them would be better off than they are today.

Be a good problem solver, not a complainer. That negative energy is no bueno.

/2

Performance is a byproduct of position sizing.

Position Sizing stems from conviction.

Conviction is built by doing deep dives and studying specific setups in the markets, especially ones that tap into its structural tendencies consistently.

/3

Have a few setups you know really really well.

I have hundreds of examples on each, done deep dives & can trade them when I see them instinctively.

You have to know exactly what ur looking for…so u can repeatedly execute those setups & make them sources of income.

/4