chaos and grandeur
"I do not accept these actions"
*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•by your best friend erin griffith•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•
Friends, Founder Mode means never having to say you’re sorry. It’s never having to take accountability. It’s never admitting that pivoting to the metaverse and changing your entire ass company’s name to it was a lame idea. That’s the beauty of Founder Mode, baby!
I have been so heartened to report that the Business Hero™ Founders have taken all the right lessons from the Founder Mode discourse.
Take OpenWeb. Last week the board of the billion-dollar start-up fired the CEO. But rather than step down gracefully, he kicked into the highest available gear of Founder Mode and simply refused. He took it public, posting “I do not accept these actions” on LinkedIn. Incredible! Some real George Constanza-Sam Altman-I’m-not-fired-you’re-fired energy. From there it descended into a battle of all-company emails. A week later he is still trying to fight his way back in via social media.
Another version: TuSimple, which recently pivoted its struggling self-driving truck business to focus on … AI animation? Shareholders did not love this seemingly random twist! But the company’s CEO had a terse and simple explanation: “The words are ‘commercializing the technology,’ and we’re trying to commercialize technology.” As you wish!
In other news
There is an ancient and sacred code among the illuminati that states the obvious: “kings don’t tear kings down.” So it naturally came as a shock when Business Hero™ Marc Benioff attacked his rival Microsoft this week. “They’re selling you science projects,” he declared his annual conference, the theme of which is “dreams.”
Important Business Matters
Startup everyone’s into: SocialAI, an app that asks, what if Twitter was all bots?
Also: Foldable phones and Snap’s absurdly large AR glasses.
Startup everyone’s over: Being on the board of 23andMe.
Reason to go on living: 🍿Magazine on magazine trash-talking.🍿
Reason to take up residence under your weighted blanket: The chatbots are messaging us first?!
Latest crush: Corporate Natalie.
Latest heartbreak: Lego is discontinuing its extremely cool business cards for employees which are 👨personalized Lego figurines👨.
Bonus heartbreak: Each 100-word email generated by ChatGPT requires a bottle of water to produce.
One more: The tech jobs are going away forever.
Latest tech billionaire epiphany: Space is not as comfortable as Earth. Sometimes it takes a trip to the "hard, very threatening environment" of the moon, which, it turns out, is not very “peaceful” at all, to help you appreciate what you have right here.
Latest thing the kids are into: Palantir is a meme stock.
Latest thing the olds are into: Larry Ellison’s AI-powered surveillance dystopia. The great news is, it’s already here!
Latest thing the antitrust lawyers can’t figure out: What exactly is a grocery store anyway?
Latest thing the Tesla owners are into: This bumper sticker.
It was a different time
I’m trying out a new section for throwback tales of Business Heroism™ I come across. This one, from 2007, is about Silicon Valley millionaires who don’t feel rich. Woe is the working-class millionaire, who delivers choice quotes such as “You’re nobody here at $10 million,” and “I’d be rich in Kansas City, … but here I’m a dime a dozen” and “Poor Tony, he’ll never be able to retire.” Enjoy:
💰In Silicon Valley, Millionaires Who Don’t Feel Rich 💰
a dall-e summary of this newsletter:
“the chaos and grandeur of startup culture, with exaggerated elements of tech absurdity and corporate antics!”
*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•the end•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•
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