HN user
Just wrote a similar piece like yours which brought up another thought: Do you think disintermediation is solvable when it's a BTB (so all parties are businesses) and you put heavy penalties on disintermediation?
A wall of text intended as smart content marketing to get some awareness for a rather unknown investment firm or incubator--Crunchbase didn't show any raised funds, so I don't call them VC. The long, over-polite text, the fake landing, the ad test weren't required in the first place.
Why:
The immediate answer every experienced VC would give is a simple 'no, this isn't a VC case' without all this fuzz and waste of time.
This market is useless for VCs because it's prone to disintermediation. Once people form a long-term business relationship, it's easy and reasonable to kick-out the middlemen (eg Homejoy). Marketplaces without long-term relationships don't face this problem (eg Airbnb, Uber).
Disintermediation is a hard problem nobody solved. 101 of investing.
Edit: Just saw another user posted the same. What is interesting, PSL didn't answer to that user's thread which could be interpreted as approval. So, PSL's post shows well that most investors are not per se smarter because they invest money. They're just humans like all of us trying to get free reach for a day with 'random' blog posts.
Tbh, this sounds you like are heavily micromanaging your people because you don't have any task yourself. Did you ever got into 360 feedback? How was the outcome?
You think I meant 100 direct reports? Without any structure?
Um. Most people never managed many other people, how should they know what they prefer?
There is, in fact, fun to be found at every level
Yes, but we are not on HN for such generic advice.
Early in my career I thought that leadership is the end goal and just great, nobody told me that it's a bit more complex. My initial comment just says, guys, it's not getting easier, it's getting harder, much harder. Now we can do a philosophical debate what is fun, what is rewarding, that challenges are rewarding (YES they are) but it's about the fact the managing people is not easy and shouldn't be underestimated, the reward structure is very different than coding and much more complex than eg a k8s cluster.
I mean just check Glassdoor and how many people there hate their boss. It's so easy to f*ck up an org if you haven't any experience.
You think so? I just disagreed with the things you wrote because I think some of your statements are wrong and/or mislead and they're altogether also inconsistent.
Managing people != dealing with people
This is the biggest misconception most have you have never led seriously. I like people, I like meeting people for a beer, for pair-programming, to date. Managing people is not about being with people.
Sorry, but what you write could come from any of the millions of self-help leadership books or blog spam from the net. Random, generic advice. This is too simple for my taste and I am not talking about what effective leadership is. Maybe you talk about a first leadership experience or managing two interns and find this rewarding. Yes this is def fun.
Wow, what's your stack?
Hm, how should this work? If I'd ask you, 'How many direct reports do you have', what would you say? You need to use the term 'direct report' again.
If you fuzzed around with 'my team' while I try to understand you team structure, your direct report count, their profile, which and how many reports they again have, you'd drive me nuts with a fake 'my team' humbleness.
Using the term 'report' is absolutely ok, you shouldn't talk all day long of your reports of course or trying to impressive anyone.
And you have time to be on HN?
Nice that you told us the story why you got into coding. I just tried to find an abstraction for the sake of simplicity. Of course we had all our triggers why we got into coding. And of course we had some specific end goal like you had but the actual activity of coding is about short feedback loops. Something which many professions lack. If you didn't like short feedback-loops you wouldn't code for 8 years.
This is getting a bit too deep now. I didn't say that I didn't enjoy it. I like challenges, my initial notion was just to express that words like 'fun' are far away from what leadership is. Btw, you didn't answer the question if you led 100+ people for a longer time. Besides and no offense, military, authoritative leadership styles might not be the right approach in tech environments (like those where engineers work).
Just reports. The ones directly reporting to you are called 'direct reports'. Latter also implies a bigger headcount and that the direct reports are managers themselves. So if you have a small, flat team you call your direct reports just reports.
Yes, all non-top-tier investors and angels have currently a crappy deal flow. They read every email they get and they have a hard time to get into good deals right now.
it's still better than sending cold e-mail
Just not true. This topic is complex and yes sending a cold email to a random investor is worse than getting a warm intro but these are two extremes. There are many ways to raise significant funds without intros.
So, I have to click on a clumsy website around and don't get email addresses? No thanks.
Yes but the context here is coder transforms to manager. And coders got coders because they like short feedback-loops.
Hint: you should never frame your reports in such a way ('leaders under me'), 101 of leadership; but let's move on: I think we are not talking about the same; managing people has no short-term feedback loops like coding, it can be fun yes but many confuse this fun with the status involved; from a rational perspective and with the experience of heading larger headcounts (did you lead 100+ teams for a longer time?) paired with hitting ambitious org goals, I find it hard to call 'managing people' fun.
Yes and no. You can move mountains with good teams, this is great and you will draw satisfaction from. But IDK if you had ever 100+ people in your reporting line for a longer time. Then you knew that it's everything BUT definitely not a lot of fun. It's super hard work and will push you and your mind dangerously to the limit.
PG is a smart mind with a long track record of achievements. Still people shouldn't follow him in a cult-like manner or turn him into a voodoo-kind role model, 'PG tweeted he needs a pink phone, I made him one'.
While the initial email idea is tempting, it's nonsense from a security perspective especially with this use case.
OT: for those who have never been in leader/managerial positions:
- Leading people is 1000x less fun than coding
- Leading people makes your more money than as an avg coder
- Leading people too long makes you lose your technical skills slowly
- At some age and for most, there's no other option than leading, 'go or grow'
- Leading bigger headcounts is comparable to competitive sports 24/7 and shouldn't be underestimated
1st-world problems
Easiest? Do I get a list with emails or do I have to click on contact every time? If it's latter I think it's anything but not easy.
To get a no-BS CSV list, copy'n'paste all in (n)vim, then:
:%s/,/;/g | %s/\t/,/gBefore I started with k8s, I've been checking Nomad many times but eventually went with k8s. Nomad's learning curve didn't seem to be better, docs felt sparse and the much bigger ecosystem with k8s shouldn't be undervalued.
Maybe your analogy is not the best but you made a good point and I'd agree.
I'm into computers for decades. The first time after ages a computer blew my mind again was when I got deep into k8s.
If you haven't yet do it now, check k8s out, get knee-deep into it and not from a devops perspective but as one who admire computers.
I switched to Windows because of WSL and I am also 90% in WSL. Trackpad (Thinkpad) is very close to a Macbook. Keyboard is way better and 5k support is also good through TB3. Hidpi support on Linux is a mixed bag, they get slowly there but it's not as good as on a Mac or Windows => hence Windows with WSL, so I enjoy a real Linux console in a hidpi environment. Besides, the Windows systems feels more responsive than my Mac, typing, moving windows, etc.
Out of curiosity: Which email service is opening links itself? Yes, they scan attachments or check for domains known being malicious but opening links??