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Fitbit is and was a great company. Exceptionally hard to do what they did, at the scale they did, as cash efficiently as they did.
Consumer hardware is the one area where I agree it’s truly hard to take on the tech giants as a startup.

The cash requirements are tremendous. Best outcome is usually to sell, like Oculus, Nest, Ring, or Fitbit.

But without that M&A there wouldn’t be VC funding for innovation.
That said, those are multibillion dollar exits. And there is Xiaomi, SpaceX, Tesla, as well as all the hardware unicorns (see HAX’s list from 2017).

Still, hardware is hard. Easier to do pure software, especially if it’s your first time. venturebeat.com/2017/08/26/har…
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Balaji S. Srinivasan
@balajis
Maybe the v2 answer is just encouraging employees to play Fortnite together.
To be clear, I think all of those ideas are good ideas and clearly Gitlab has done well as a company.

But maybe informal socialization for remote teams means video games and social networks?
Just like you usually don’t want to code your own SaaS, perhaps you don’t want to build your own tools for fun remote socialization.

At-scale tools for cross border socialization already exist in the form of social networks and multiplayer video games. Maybe that’s the answer?
Read 4 tweets
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Balaji S. Srinivasan
@balajis
Catholicism was centralized and led by the pope and Church.

Protestantism was decentralized and preached disintermediation (via “a personal relationship with god”).
Over time, Protestantism built up its own institutions, but it’s easier for a new pastor to found a new denomination than to fork the Catholic Church.

That’s part of why Protestantism was initially attractive: it offered a path to power outside the Church hierarchy.
The theological arguments that justified the disintermediation of the Catholic Church in favor of a “personal relationship with god” led to the Counter-Reformation, the 30 years war, and a huge power struggle.
Read 4 tweets
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Balaji S. Srinivasan
@balajis
If you ran a script over your media diet, you could figure out what concepts you are reinforcing through repetition. augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html
That script could print out nutritional facts on your media diet, much like you get on food.

Just a list of the top 1000 keywords on your screen would show you what you were loading into your brain.

It might not necessarily be the concepts you want to learn.
See also the concept of effective frequency. Maybe you can retarget yourself to improve learning?
Read 3 tweets

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Mitchelle Adagala
@ac_mitchelle
Hard Pills To Swallow :

• You can gain weight from “eating clean.”

• Flexible dieting doesn’t mean you can eat everything you want to eat.

• Bulking doesn’t mean over eating everything.

• Fasted cardio doesn’t burn more fat.

• You cannot spot reduce body fat.
1. You can “eat clean” but still eat at a caloric surplus (more calories than you need) at the end of the day.

So in as much as you’re practicing mindful eating, you need to keep track of your calories to either maintain your current weight, gain weight or lose weight.
Another thing about bulking (gaining weight while lifting) is that you just don’t eat anything and everything all the time for the sake of eating to gain weight. 😅

Bulks are normally VERY controlled, maybe by 200+ calories to help you build lean muscle while you cut afterwards.
Read 6 tweets
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Tren Griffin
@trengriffin
Fitbit is an example of a company struggling to get the "software in a box" business right. Software is eating the world and without a connected relationship with customers it's almost impossible to avoid becoming a commodity. Having telemetry is essential.reuters.com/article/us-fit…
My blog post on "software in a box" is here: 25iq.com/2018/03/10/pel… Steve Jobs said in 2004:

“The more we look at it, for more and more consumer devices the core technology in them is going to be software. More and more they look like software in a box."
The data “exhaust” produced by direct customer relationships (telemetry) is increasingly what makes products and services more valuable and moats sustainable since it is the fuel for machine learning and modern data science. Hardware is hard. google.com/amp/s/25iq.com…
Read 3 tweets
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Tyler Tringas
@tylertringas
Agree. There's *always* an infinite to-do list. Prioritizing is the #1 focus of an entrepreneur.

Any founders care to share exercises they find useful for setting priorities? I'll share one 👇
An exercise that seems to be helpful for early stage founders is to check your metrics (or their subjective equiv) from the end of the customer life cycle to beginning.

1/ Churn will kill you early on. If customers are churning you need to crank on product/market-fit
If churn actually looks pretty good for now, maybe don't stress about bug fixes or shipping the nth feature. Your current customers are reasonably happy.

2/ Next check ARPU. Are you generating enough value for your customers to create a sustainable business?
Read 8 tweets
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Fonda Lee
@FondaJLee
One of the critical aspects of the craft of writing that I've rarely seen formally taught, possibly because it is extremely subjective and dependent on genre, category, and tone, is PACING. I have some thoughts on the subject.
What IS pacing? IMO, it's the speed, rhythm, and level of tension in the narrative --FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE READER. Which makes it super hard to put a finger on b/c readers' perceptions on this are ALL OVER THE MAP.
I've had "So boring, DNF" and "Gripping; literally could not put this book down" as reviews for the same book. For EVERY SINGLE BOOK I've written. Most authors are in the same boat. What's too slow for one reader is unputdownable for another.
Read 13 tweets
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Oby Ezekwesili
@obyezeks
One of my most favorite Chapters of the Bible is Second Chronicles. We are in the season that it is most applicable. Life is imitating Art now.
I shall tweet it for those who desire to learn a great Lesson from it.
May the revelation it gives to the wise not elude you. 🌹🙏🏾
It came to pass after this also, that the children of Moab, and the children of Ammon, and with them other beside the Ammonites, came against Jehoshaphat to battle.
2 Chronicles 20:1

#TheWordOfTheSeason
Then there came some that told Jehoshaphat, saying, There cometh a great multitude against thee from beyond the sea on this side Syria; and, behold, they be in Hazazon–tamar, which is En–gedi.
2 Chronicles 20:2

#TheWordOfTheSeason
Read 31 tweets
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Tanmoy Goswami
@toymango
Every day next few days I'll share one #depression/#anxiety insight from my own experience. If it helps anyone a wee bit, it'll be worth it.
1. "#Happiness" can scare #anxiety patients. In our heads, things are always going wrong. Fear of a "happy" moment undone is doubly painful.
Sorry, this won't be a daily affair as I had earlier imagined. But here's insight #2 based on my brush with #depression/#anxiety.
Read 96 tweets

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#antidepressants #ODD #SkinInTheGame #ho4 #FUBAR #QTNA #SMEAR #Protest #GAF #project #IStandWithVig #opportunity #UNBEKNOWNST #confidentialityagreements #stalking #important #MAJORLEAD #AccidentsWillHappen #brainstimconf #PissedOffness #Pasco #tech #hacks #HaveYouAllNoShame #CHEERS
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