A Great Employee Engagement Opportunity For Your NYC Team
A Great Employee Engagement Opportunity For Your NYC Team
Michael Dempsey has a great framing for the secret sauce in the founder/VC relationship. He calls it "vibe alignment" in this excellent and far-reaching post about where we are in the startup/VC world right now.
It is certainly possible and probably quite common to build a successful company with an investor syndicate you don't relate to and don't like. But it is not fun.
The rare thing is to build a successful company with an investor syndicate you love working with. I've had the pleasure of doing this many times in my career. It is what I seek out. It is the primary thing I like about VC and startups. It is what keeps me engaged after all these years.
When vibe alignment happens between a founding team and their investor group, it is magic. It makes it easier to correctly make those five to ten hard decisions that determine the trajectory of a company.
As Michael points out in his terrific and timely post, the institutional revolving door nature of VC right now makes finding vibe alignment harder and many founders just opt for the best financial deal. That's entirely rational behavior.
But it takes all of the fun out of it, unfortunately.
Michael Dempsey has a great framing for the secret sauce in the founder/VC relationship. He calls it "vibe alignment" in this excellent and far-reaching post about where we are in the startup/VC world right now.
It is certainly possible and probably quite common to build a successful company with an investor syndicate you don't relate to and don't like. But it is not fun.
The rare thing is to build a successful company with an investor syndicate you love working with. I've had the pleasure of doing this many times in my career. It is what I seek out. It is the primary thing I like about VC and startups. It is what keeps me engaged after all these years.
When vibe alignment happens between a founding team and their investor group, it is magic. It makes it easier to correctly make those five to ten hard decisions that determine the trajectory of a company.
As Michael points out in his terrific and timely post, the institutional revolving door nature of VC right now makes finding vibe alignment harder and many founders just opt for the best financial deal. That's entirely rational behavior.
But it takes all of the fun out of it, unfortunately.
I remember back in 2006 or 2007 when I switched from Outlook email to Gmail.
During my Outlook years, I would folder most of my emails and delete the rest so that if I wanted to find an email, I could go look in the folder for it.
I remember back in 2006 or 2007 when I switched from Outlook email to Gmail.
During my Outlook years, I would folder most of my emails and delete the rest so that if I wanted to find an email, I could go look in the folder for it.
I started programming when I was in high school and helped pay my way through MIT by writing Fortran code in a research lab. I got a job writing software for a naval architecture firm right out of college, and then helped pay my way through grad school by doing some freelance coding gigs. When I got into VC in the mid 80s, I stopped writing code. Other than some UI/UX tweaking here and there, I have not written much code in almost forty years.
I started programming when I was in high school and helped pay my way through MIT by writing Fortran code in a research lab. I got a job writing software for a naval architecture firm right out of college, and then helped pay my way through grad school by doing some freelance coding gigs. When I got into VC in the mid 80s, I stopped writing code. Other than some UI/UX tweaking here and there, I have not written much code in almost forty years.
When I started using Gmail, I set up the same folders, but quickly realized that wasn't necessary because Gmail search was so good I could just search all of my email and find whatever I needed.
But the truth is Gmail search wasn't that good and like all you I have spent/wasted countless hours trying to find emails that I know exist somewhere in my archives but for the life of me I can't find them.
The arrival of the Gemini logo in the upper right of my browser has changed all of that for the better.
Here are two prompts I did today regarding a multi-family residential property we have owned in Brooklyn for the last ten years:
In this one, I was looking for a proposal we got back in early 2018 for a solar/battery system for the building.
In this one, I was looking for the land survey for the building:
When I started using Gmail, I set up the same folders, but quickly realized that wasn't necessary because Gmail search was so good I could just search all of my email and find whatever I needed.
But the truth is Gmail search wasn't that good and like all you I have spent/wasted countless hours trying to find emails that I know exist somewhere in my archives but for the life of me I can't find them.
The arrival of the Gemini logo in the upper right of my browser has changed all of that for the better.
Here are two prompts I did today regarding a multi-family residential property we have owned in Brooklyn for the last ten years:
In this one, I was looking for a proposal we got back in early 2018 for a solar/battery system for the building.
In this one, I was looking for the land survey for the building:
In both cases, these Gemini prompts got me to the exact document I was looking for in less than thirty seconds on the first try.
Before Gemini, I could have spent five or ten minutes looking through many emails trying to find the attached document and maybe would have given up.
If you use Gmail and are not using Gemini to search your emails, you need to start immediately. It's a game-changer.
It's fun.
Over the weekend, I made two apps, both of which leverage my interest in music.
I used Claude Code, working in the Terminal app on my Mac, to build this web app that pulls all the music I have recently liked on SoundCloud and makes it available to listen on the web.
In both cases, these Gemini prompts got me to the exact document I was looking for in less than thirty seconds on the first try.
Before Gemini, I could have spent five or ten minutes looking through many emails trying to find the attached document and maybe would have given up.
If you use Gmail and are not using Gemini to search your emails, you need to start immediately. It's a game-changer.
It's fun.
Over the weekend, I made two apps, both of which leverage my interest in music.
I used Claude Code, working in the Terminal app on my Mac, to build this web app that pulls all the music I have recently liked on SoundCloud and makes it available to listen on the web.
I also used our portfolio company Neynar's Studio app to build and deploy a mini-app in the Farcaster and Base mobile apps. My mini app is called Music Casts, and it pulls all of the music links from the people I follow on Farcaster and Base and puts them into a mini app that allows you to listen to them. It looks like this in Farcaster:
I also used our portfolio company Neynar's Studio app to build and deploy a mini-app in the Farcaster and Base mobile apps. My mini app is called Music Casts, and it pulls all of the music links from the people I follow on Farcaster and Base and puts them into a mini app that allows you to listen to them. It looks like this in Farcaster:
It is nice to make miniapps in Neynar Studio because Farcaster and Base offer the deployment surface and user base to give feedback. When I casted about Music Casts, I got a ton of suggestions, and I have added some of them already.
Coding in Claude Code in the Terminal app is more powerful, particularly when paired with a deployment tool. I used a deployment tool called Railway to get my web app live.
If you've always wanted to build software applications but have been held back by a lack of programming skills and/or time to learn, your time has come!
If you want to get started on Claude Code in the Terminal app,here are the instructions to get going.
If you want to build in Neynar Studio, go here.
It is nice to make miniapps in Neynar Studio because Farcaster and Base offer the deployment surface and user base to give feedback. When I casted about Music Casts, I got a ton of suggestions, and I have added some of them already.
Coding in Claude Code in the Terminal app is more powerful, particularly when paired with a deployment tool. I used a deployment tool called Railway to get my web app live.
If you've always wanted to build software applications but have been held back by a lack of programming skills and/or time to learn, your time has come!
If you want to get started on Claude Code in the Terminal app,here are the instructions to get going.
If you want to build in Neynar Studio, go here.
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