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cajunboi34213on Ask HN: Any advice for someone getting back in the game after 13yrs at startups?

Congrats on your success as an entrepreneur. 13 years means you did well at it. Speaking from experience, I won't sugar coat it, you're not hireable. 13 years as a startup CTO/CEO says you're not used to having a boss. Corp jobs are all about stfu and doing what you're told. Most hiring managers will pass on you for someone that's spent X years in a corp most similar to theirs.

That said, it's possible. It's usually someone you know really well that trusts you that will get you back in the game. Or companies known to hire founders, rippling comes to mind.

cajunboi34213on Ex-Googler says company's AI panic is like Google+ fiasco all over again

I question how useful "jarvis" would be for most people (including me).

I was in the fortunate position to have a supremely talented admin/chief of staff a couple years ago when I was in charge of a 100+ people org. They were amazing. Spoke 5 languages, took detailed notes for me, created decks and ran status update meetings on my behalf, scheduled my time based on my priorities. Ultimately, it was nice to have, because when they left, I never ended up replacing them.

The only thing I really missed was scheduling meetings. But now a calendly link works just as well.

cajunboi34213on Apple Needs to Evolve to Compete in the Artificial Intelligence Era

I'm both an apple and openai fanboy. I love apple because great design, software and privacy. I think openai's rate of innovation is unbelievable. But a partnership makes me nervous.

I just don't trust openai with the data on my phone. The board ousted their CEO. Their top scientists left. They clearly broke copyright laws to train their models.

I'm ok using their apps, but I worry that as they move fast and break things, they will do something with data that gives us all pause. I'd prefer that's not baked into my phone.

cajunboi34213on Why Bad CEOs Fear Remote Work (2021)

We tried the office hours. It was my most dreaded meeting of the week. Others on the team shared the sentiment. The biggest issue is, it was at an inconvenient time for everyone. No one wants to "hang out" at 8 AM or 11 PM or 4 PM. If too many people showed up we all just sat there awkwardly. If not enough people showed up, we sat there awkwardly. We tried music, or doing some activity together. It always felt forced. I cringe just recalling it.

cajunboi34213on VCs aren’t your friends

Here are two hard earned lessons from my experience fundraising. 1. If an investor isn't interested, cut bait. It's usually clear in the first 15 minutes. No follow-up with argument/data will convince them. Why they aren't may or may not teach you anything. Just move on and continue pitching. 2. Once one investor is interested, getting meetings with others is MUCH easier. If they can't lead, they will intro you to someone they've worked with that can. Getting in front of the A-list investors is hard as they see every deal and can pick and choose. If you can't get a B/C-list investor to term sheet, you or your biz isn't fundable (sorry). If you easily get B/C investors to term sheet you can probably get a brand name firm to steal the deal with better terms. In my experience A-listers aren't discerning on price if they believe in you and/or the biz. This seems to happen to the B/C investors all the time, that's why when they find you, like you/biz, they will drive you to close quickly. 2 months as referenced in OP is an eternity.

cajunboi34213on Why Bad CEOs Fear Remote Work (2021)

No doubt there is a learning/awk hump like any tool. At first it was like why do I have to listen to this 4 minute voicemail. Yikes. But now it's like ok, listening to this 4 min monologue at 1.5X is better than a phone call that I may get stuck on for 20 minutes or worse a 30 minute meeting scheduled in 2 days that's free on my cal right now, but will totally kill my flow state on that day...

cajunboi34213on Why Bad CEOs Fear Remote Work (2021)

Two things differentiate it from regular chat for us. One is it's mobile. They have a web product, but we don't use it, we just use the mobile, so we talk into it as opposed to type. I personally get up and walk around to talk into it. The second is the audio. Listening is just different than reading. Re-listening is awesome.

cajunboi34213on Why Bad CEOs Fear Remote Work (2021)

Yeah. There is a lot of that. My faves were someone coming by with a random thought that they needed to think through with someone. Almost nothing ever came of it, but the rabbit hole of exploration was fun

cajunboi34213on VCs aren’t your friends

Community of users applies to b2b as well. It could just be followers on linkedin where you get engagement from your ideal customer profile buyer. VCs looks for signal that you/team will execute. Best signal is undeniable evidence that you are executing and they are just getting on at the right time.

cajunboi34213on Why Bad CEOs Fear Remote Work (2021)

Sure. So if you say can I call you about X/Y/Z, you're asking them to stop what they are doing and listen to your monologue in real time. With the walkie talkie, you hit talk and send them your monologue. They can listen in real time (one-way) if they are available or can listen to your audio + read the transcription (later). This puts them in control of when and how they consume and respond. The added benefit is they can relisten or re-read before responding. I find it puts me in control of context switching

cajunboi34213on Why Bad CEOs Fear Remote Work (2021)

https://www.airwave.us/

Their website is now focused on technicians with a copilot for manuals, but they started as a pure voice/text push to talk / walkie talkie app

cajunboi34213on Why Bad CEOs Fear Remote Work (2021)

we use jam for quick video recording. loom for explanations of how to do things.

cajunboi34213on Why Bad CEOs Fear Remote Work (2021)

in my experience, nothing beats in-person for creative discussions.

cajunboi34213on Why Bad CEOs Fear Remote Work (2021)

The interrupt is where walkie talkie really shines. Instead of asking to bother someone, where they now may feel obliged to engage, you just walkie talkie them with what you want to discuss. They can listen in real time or they can ignore and then listen ore read when they're available. Perhaps it's because our team is global that this works as timezones are hard. The expectation is you manage your notifications, so the sender never has to worry that the message they're sending is bugging you at 1 AM.

cajunboi34213on VCs aren’t your friends

first time founders that have large followings in the community they are building for are the most fundable. Reason being, your first product or iteration will fail, but if you have a captive audience willing to try and give you feedback you're in the best position to achieve product market fit.

cajunboi34213on Why Bad CEOs Fear Remote Work (2021)

The hard part about remote is collaboration outside of meetings is hard. Chat is soul-less and leads to a lot of misunderstandings with tone. Video is too formal. Phone is interrupt. For the past 6 months we've been using a walkie-talkie app that transcribes and it's pretty magical. It feels like it's solved some of the issues with unstructured collaboration. Plus the bonus is you can add anyone to a discussion and they can catch up by listening to previous messages at 1.5X

cajunboi34213on VCs aren’t your friends

In my experience founders that have raised vc regard them as bankers. Founders who haven't successfully raised (for whatever reason) and people that dream about being founders postulate on these things.

Funding is simple. Seed or before you/team are fundable, based on some signal of you've done it or can do it. Post seed, it's not you, it's the business. If in 2 months you haven't gotten interest or intros, you're business is not VC fundable, or you suck at fundraising which means you're probably not the right venture backable CEO.

cajunboi34213on Meta Is Shuttering Workplace, Its Enterprise Version of Facebook

I'm sure the churn rate is pretty high. But slack supposedly had ~5M users and ~$300M in revenue when it was bought by Salesforce for $27B

cajunboi34213on Meta Is Shuttering Workplace, Its Enterprise Version of Facebook

7M users * $4 / user / month * 12 Months / Year = $338M ARR. Not interesting for Facebook.

cajunboi34213on Ask HN: How are you using your Vision Pro? Pro tips from HN users?

Its been 58 days since launch. Other than the initial first time/week mostly wow reviews, I haven't seen continued chatter about usage.

cajunboi34213on Stay or Leave: Manager Admitted I am on PIP because quota

Not sarcastic but you're probably right in terms of no real legal course. But here's the thing, you're getting fired anyway. Depending on company size, they may give you something nominal just so you sign a non-disclosure and don't create bad PR for them.

cajunboi34213on Social media is too much for most of us to handle

I believe the responsibility falls on you to moderate yourself (not some organization like govt to set rules for everyone). But I know it's hard. Time limits on iPhone were not enough for me. But https://one-sec.app/ really helped... Forcing me to pause for 10 seconds every time was pretty much all it took...

cajunboi34213on Stay or Leave: Manager Admitted I am on PIP because quota

Get some documentation that proves this. Hire a lawyer. Go to HR. Get a settlement...

cajunboi34213on Voice Notes or Text Messages?

I imagine the future will blend the two so you don't have to choose. Voice dictation is already pretty good. Whatsapp already is doing transcriptions on it's audio messages. IOS17 has visual voicemail and I think transcriptions in audio messages as well. There is also http://www.airwave.us which is a push to talk app that immediately transcribes in different languages.