No bigger lie

Anthropic's @_sholtodouglas says Dario Amodei's internal communication style is producing a compendium of essays in the company's Slack that will have effectively charted the history of AGI once we get there. "He has a really, really cool communication style. He quite frequently puts out very well-reasoned essays. And throughout Slack, we'll have giant essay-length debates [about them]." "The essays are really nice because you can go back and read all the past ones, and it tells the history of Anthropic." "In many respects, it will be one of the better things, a decade from now, to chart the history of AGI. We'll be reading these compendium of essays." From his appearance on the show last month.

Ben Horowitz on the 1 reason founders fail as CEO The a16z co-founder is asked for the #1 reason founders fail in the CEO role, to which he replies: “I would say the big thing is a lack of decision — hesitation . . . You can be really smart, but if you wait too long before you pull the trigger, you’re not smart anymore. There’s all kinds of excuses people tell themselves to not make a decision.” Ben gives firing an executive as an example of a situation where founders often wait too long to make a decision. Founders will often get stuck on issues like, “If we made such a big deal when we hired him, what is the press going to say?” or “What are the people in the company going to say?” or “I don’t have time to hire a new person to do the job.” He reflects: “There’s all these reasons not to make the decision. And if you think about them for more than five minutes, you go: Well that doesn’t make any sense because this guy is a f’ing up the whole org. Who cares what the press says? Just get rid of him and start rebuilding now.” Ben continues: “It’s the lack of confidence that generally causes a no-decision where there really needs to be a decision is what I would say is the common pattern.” How do founders become more confident? In Ben’s view, that’s personal: “At the end of the day, confidence is personal and you have to feel it yourself to have it . . . And the thing that causes the crisis in confidence is: you invent something, you hire a bunch of people, you make a decision, it’s wrong, and people really suffer from it. You feel horrible because you’re like, ‘Wow I don’t know what I’m doing, and I made a mistake and it had real consequences.’ Most people in life don’t have a situation like that until they become CEO. And so then it’s like, ‘Well how do I recover from that?’” In short, confidence has to be earned: You try. You fail. You get back up. You learn from your mistakes. Do that enough times and you’ll become confident in your ability to handle anything. Video source: @myfirstmilpod (2025)

We just raised $3M to build the world's first AI Chief of Staff, and we want to build with exceptional people. http://bondapp.io

do you agree?

if you want to study greatness check these companies out

Announcing a16z Build: A dinner series and community for founders, technologists, and operators figuring out what they want to build next — and who they want to build with. Apply or nominate today: http://build.a16z.com

the story of nikita bier (@nikitabier)

Head of Design @ryolu_ helped transform Cursor from a feature-layer on top of VS Code into one of the world's leading AI code editors. He joins YC's @aaron_epstein on Design Review to talk about the path that brought him to Cursor, how rapid prototyping reshaped the core product, and how he's on a mission to break down the barriers that once separated designers and coders. 00:00 — Designers Becoming Builders 04:11 — Learning by Building, Not Studying 08:39 — Inside Cursor’s Design Team 13:30 — Designing Systems, Not Features 17:40 — Rebuilding Cursor Around Agents 23:15 — Prototyping With “Baby Cursor” 30:52 — Design as Sculpting 36:10 — The Future of Designers and Engineers

turns out, senior engineers accept more agent output than juniors. this is because: - they write higher-signal prompts with tighter spec and minimal ambiguity - they decompose work into agent-compatible units - they have stronger priors for correctness, making review faster and more accurate - juniors generate plenty but lack the verification heuristics to confidently greenlight output shows that coding agents amplify existing engineering skill, not replace it

Creativity is the antidote to scarcity.

Marc Andreessen: “The person who writes down the thing has tremendous power.” “There are so few people who will just write down the thing.” Source: @pmarca on How I Write with @david_perell

Slack CEO Denise Dresser to join OpenAI as chief revenue officer

I’m hiring an Executive Software Engineer. Think of this like a Chief of Staff, but your job is to create technology that allows me to scale and move faster. You’ll work closely with me, my CoS, and the Valar IT/Security teams to rapidly create software and hardware tools under my direction. I'm looking for a general athlete, not a specialist. The more and weirder systems you've built with your own hands, the better; but you need to be well-versed in all the latest and greatest ways of creating things wicked fast (Vercel, Replit, AI coders, etc). You'll be responsible for everything, from front-end design to backend implementation, auth, hosting, maintenance, testing, planning, product ownership, etc. Most importantly you'll have the driver's seat view of and direct impact upon the most important company of our time, working with the greatest team of nuclear builders assembled since the Manhattan Project. You'll get the opportunity to work alongside elite operators executing at the top of their game and become one of them. If you are: - self directed - curious - addicted to solving hard problems - really really really good at making software tools very quickly Please send a portfolio, narrative, and evidence of exceptional ability to @CWNazarian.

BREAKING: Within the past 72 hours: - Apple's AI Chief steps down - Apple's Head of UI Design leaves to Meta - Apple's Policy Chief steps down - Apple's Head of General Counsel steps down

Big news: I've joined @a16z! My focus is on ecosystem growth—building the connective tissue of the firm's network and creating environments where the most ambitious startup founders, operators, and technologists can thrive. This role is a natural culmination of my work over the past 10 years. As a founder, coach, operator, and investor, I’ve long been obsessed with bringing great people together to accelerate each other’s growth. I’ve learned that life isn’t defined by what you do, but by who you get to do it with—and that every great journey accelerates when you’re surrounded by the right people. At a16z, I’m partnering with @eriktorenberg, @david__booth, and the powerhouse New Media team in SF to bring our boldest ambitions and most impactful communities to life. A few weeks ago, we launched the New Media Fellowship which has already received 1000+ applications and will kick off in January with an incredible 8-week program for storytellers, creators, writers, and marketers. This morning, we launched Build—a new dinner series and community for idea-stage founders & operators figuring out their next big thing. http://build.a16z.com And there's so much more to come. Huge thanks to everyone who has supported me in starting this next chapter of my career—I can’t wait to bring you along for the journey.

BREAKING: Apple’s chip chief Johny Srouji informed CEO Tim Cook he is seriously considering leaving the company and would likely continue his career elsewhere rather than retire. Apple is urgently pushing to keep him. He remains at least for now.

there were signs

Which one do you think matters more? - idea - execution - timing

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE CALLED? A. DEVELOPER B. SOFTWARE DEVELOPER C. PROGRAMMER D. COMPUTER PROGRAMMER E. ENGINEER F. SOFTWARE ENGINEER G. CODER