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This is the largest reason why software companies, specifically, under invest in it for so long, and is a very useful thing to understand and be able to stage manage if you either run a software company, work in one, or selling marketing-shaped services to them.
Nothing to be ashamed of! New competencies are new competencies; there was a learning curve every time you’ve ever gotten good with something.
The failure mode for software companies is “Hmm, we got these results without marketing (or sales, etc); guess marketing is nonsense and if we were to waste time implementing it that would either not improve or actively damage our results.”

That’s disastrously false.
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Patrick McKenzie
@patio11
If X extends or composes well in a toolchain that people already use, X gets multiplicative impact to the (adopting fraction of users of the) toolchain rather than the impact you directly expect from X.
This sort of misprediction of impact is a bit of a pattern in my experience, so much so that to counteract it I ask questions about toolchains and composability when looking at things.
Comment inspired by an HN thread, which I won't link due to no shaming policy, on how a particular type of look-and-feel for Graphviz illustration is harder than just hand-sketching the same LaF, without appreciating that there exist, today, N things which export Graphviz.
Read 4 tweets
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Patrick McKenzie
@patio11
If you like reading S-1s, one that flew beneath seemingly everyone's radar: Silvergate Bank, the first national bank of crypto.

ir.silvergatebank.com/Cache/40067087…
"Explain that joke to me."

The top five US crypto exchanges all use them. Crypto customers are 80%+ of their deposits.

"What."

You can say that again.
So since all the cryptocurrency exchanges need to do cash management between themselves and ideally faster than ACH their bank (singular) made an API which allows them 24/7 ability to credit one account and debit another.

They spell API "SEN":
Read 4 tweets
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Patrick McKenzie
@patio11
Substantially every large software company will eventually do an “ecosystem” play, and the combination of wide distribution, business users with few internal engineering hours available, and interoperable APIs makes it a fertile ground for adjacent small SaaS companies.
I think you have to be really careful if your plan is “Do something which will certainly be on an internal team’s roadmap” but e.g. figuring out the 10% extra their thing needs to work with a particular workflow or industry is often defensibly non-core and a win-win.
And if you do that and execute well *they will send you leads* (because it’s easier than telling their leads/customers “Sorry we don’t do that best of luck Googling•)
Read 3 tweets

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Webemoving
@betkom
I’ve seen a lot of different reactions to the Andela announcement and it’s obvious a lot of people have misconceptions about what Andela is or not. Hence this thread
Andela was founded on the premise that brilliance/talent is evenly distributed and opportunity is not. To take this in context, this means you can get brilliant and talented people in Africa who are on par with their counterparts in other parts of the world
The work Andela has some over the last 5 years (and hopefully will continue to do) has been geared towards proofing this and have succeeded to an extent
Read 21 tweets
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Michael Bolton
@michaelbolton
1) Ten years ago today, I wrote a blog post distinguishing checking (a prescribed, mechanistic, confirmatory activity) from testing (oriented towards exploration, discovery, investigation, and learning). developsense.com/blog/2009/08/t… It takes time for ideas to develop. /
2) One problem was expressing a distinction as “vs.”, which many took to mean “in opposition to” (Real Madrid vs. Manchester United) rather than “as distinct from” (trees vs. forest; biting vs. eating). Checking is not *opposite to* testing; it’s *inside* testing. /
3) A few years later, @jamesmarcusbach and I got much closer to what we were trying to say. satisfice.com/blog/archives/… Checking is a part of testing that can be done entirely algorithmically, by a machine. But that part needs human risk analysis, design, programming, and evaluation.
Read 16 tweets
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Ben Pile
@clim8resistance
The CCC is the epitome of post-Blair, Brown-Miliband era politics.

It represents the political establishment closing ranks against the public.

It was the moment that the idea that politics should represent and serve ordinary people's interests disappeared.
Instead of serving people's interests, the political parties formed a consensus on how they would cement their own power, privilege and positions: climate change.

Parties dropped from their manifesto ideas about how to abolish poverty, and promised instead to save polar bears.
Whereas all parties had committed to tackling energy or fuel poverty, they committed to policies that increased it.

Rather than finding ways to encourage business and industry, they committed to policies that sent them overseas.
Read 39 tweets
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Ryan Black ⚖🎮
@RyanJBlack
1/11 - FWIW, & unsurprising given her expertise, @carolmliao nails it. I share many of her concerns. Despite looking into it since this conversation restarted, I can't uncover any good reason for "benefit corporations" under BC law. THREAD INCOMING #socent #CSR #ESG #companies
2/#Corporations in BC are already "benefit corporations", as best I can tell, less just the branding and/or (paid) certification. I've been a lawyer for 15 years, roughly the life since the BCE/People's cases, & have always advised directors to look after broader stakeholders.
3/I worry benefit corp or "B. Co" (I'm sure JUST COINCIDENCE it's so similar to @BCorporation brand) will imply that other corporations don't have same duties. Also, in trying to legislate "public benefit" may limit breadth of court (@SCC_eng) interpretation & oppression remedy.
Read 12 tweets
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Josh Wolfe
@wolfejosh
1/ Inviting storm of CONTROVERSY—with a parable of INEQUALITY
(you will know when i am serious or sarcastic)

Talk about structural problems + a system that needs to be totally dismantled—problem goes back over 20 years. You will share my outrage about this kind of inequity....
2/ Most people know this story of a guy, let’s call him “Michael”
—in 1998 ALONE he made more than not just all of his coworkers combined but more than 99.99% of the entire country.
He made $33M while his coworkers made (or should i say basically bilked the PUBLIC) for $61M
3/ That is the ENTIRE budget of public transportation and education in some small cities.

His next closest coworker was a guy named Toni who made $4.5m, Dennis made $4.5M, another guy Scottie made $2.7M and a guy named STEVE K who made $750,000

Minimum wage? $5.75

INSANITY.
Read 17 tweets
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‏بوكيبلينكي
@pookleblinky
In general, you see what you expect to see. Not even consciously, optical illusions take advantage of optimizations baked into the visual processing centers, hardcoded assumptions about the world.
So, on one layer you've got hardcoded expectations in your depth perception, color perception, boundary identification, facial recognition, etc. Each having its own little processing region and expectations about how the world works.
On another layer, you've got expectations of normalcy, that are not built in but instead engrained through time in your culture. You can process speech in your language even with significant noise, or written words despite jumbled spelling, etc.
Read 31 tweets

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