So much to read but only 504 hours left in the year… gulp
How I Screwed Up Sales Hiring [Pete Warden/MoonshineAI] – Stop me if you heard this one before – the incredible technologist CEO/founder didn’t get sales motion/hiring right first time he tried. It’s a cliche but still very much real. We’re friends of, and small investors in, Pete’s company – I read his post-mortem eagerly because he’s a gem of a human, super smart, and dogged in getting MoonshineAI to where he wants it to be (moonshine is a speechAI model that runs locally).
Poems Can Trick AI Into Helping You Make a Nuclear Weapon [Matthew Gault/Wired] – Oh this is fantastic. Writing in poetic structure can make it easier to jailbreak some LLMs into giving forbidden answers. Adversarial poetry!
Lessons for New Leaders [Molly Graham/Glue Club] – So many good bits here. “Every time I’ve stepped into a new leadership role, I’ve made the same mistake: I’ve gone too slowly.” A bunch of advice and learnings for your first 30-60 days in a new org/role.
Startup Operating Principles [Sam Gerstenzang/Sam’s Newsletter] – Sam currently runs Boulton & Watt, described as the world’s slowest startup incubator!!! He previously did a bunch of stuff at Google, Stripe and another startup he cofounded. This SOP post is a follow-up to one he wrote about Stripe’s Operating Principles.
How to Fix a Typewriter and Your Life [Kurt Streeter/New York Times] – Prepare to cry. This is beautiful. When serendipity and intentionality collide, what do you do? Here our protagonist makes a decision which changes two lives. Please just read it.
Ciao for now!
I’m grooving on Blackbird, this new local restaurant/bar app which is some combination of loyalty program, crypto payments, etc – it’s curious and I’m trying to make sense of it all. You get free somethings for trying it too. Here you go:
Download Blackbird and earn 2,000 $FLY when you check in for the first time. That’s $20.00 toward any meal!
Use my code bb-o9edk2 https:/