Anyone in sales: “I used to do sales.”, which is probably not a lie to a salesperson given the expansive set of jobs which require a little bit of selling and cultural tolerance for a bit of truth stretching during the dance.
A bank: a) Do it only on paper. b) Address to any of Office of the President, Chief Compliance Pfficer, General Counsel, or Investor Relations.
A bank, but I don’t want to go to war I just want to skip the line: Get whatever their cheapest premium product is, call the phone number for *that*, and ask for an internal transfer to any group you need.
Any bureaucracy: Present as if you are collecting a paper trail. Prominent indicia of this include notebooks, organized files, and repeatedly asking for specific names, dates, and citations for authority “for my notes.”
An internal recruiter: Find the hiring manager, make sure you have a relationship with them, too. Use the recruiter for scheduling and logistic support.
Any large company mailroom: Certified mail, return receipt requested.
Healthcare: I’m unwilling to lie (including specifically about having practiced a regulated profession) but suffice it to say I dial Dangerous Professional up to 11 and if people come to the impression that I practice but in another specialty well they’re welcome to their guesses
(This is partly about demeanor, above all not looking confused about the process, and partly judicious use of shibboleths. I’m occasionally surprised how few are required; it isn’t a state secret that “500mg of acetaminophen” and “a Tylenol” are the same thing.)
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A word to the wise. Don't invent a fictitious entity and attempt to open a bank account for it. The laws for bank fraud are drafted *broadly.*
But if you must, then don't do it while arguing for an expansion of the Bank Secrecy Act regime, because the existing BSA regime already orders your bank to inform on you.
But if you must, then don't do it while engaging in organized pressure campaign against firms with strong recordkeeping culture and an institutional desire to please government.
Term life is a commodity product. Premium never changes after you lock in the term. Many people reading this will pay tens or low hundreds of dollars per million in coverage.
Next up at MicroConf: @robwalling on How to use AI in SaaS.
This has been something of an undercurrent in a lot of conversations here. Lots of unease and anxiety about it, and IMHO a bit overblown w/r/t impact on SaaS specifically.
With that, Rob:
Rob did informal survey of a few hundred TinySeed companies (he runs a VC/accelerator which invests in many bootstrapped-adjacent software companies) to see how its actually getting deployed in production.
Taxonomy: six-ish ways that companies actually metabolizing it.
AI as product: Difficult for bootstrappers to keep up with the labs on LLM/etc development. Very, very tractable to make something downstream of the labs.
A common model I have is that, like many people, I have some finite amount of consequential decisions I can make a day. This is sometimes a frustration for my wife, who wants me to spend a decision on e.g. “What color should we make…”
There are some classes of non-domestic decisions which still seem to take a slot, and where there are theoretically wrong answers, but where any plausible answer is fine.
I love having LLMs available for this.
Example from earlier: “Should we use X medication for symptom management of a minor recurring condition, or should we escalate to a medial professional for a recommendation?”
I probably could have Googled to kick off a research process, but that’s -1 for the day.
Also helps in the intermediate stages when you're dealing with accountant questions which might be, how do I say this nicely, "I thought I was hiring you to give me answers in this domain." Much higher bandwidth than multiple messages in an email thread at tax time.
"Why is he asking this?"
"Presumably he is attempting to qualify whether you have specified foreign financial assets."
"What does he really need to know?"
"Is the Tokyo condo held directly or in an LLC/etc"
"Held directly."
"OK so no you don't have those assets."
"Find authority"
Often people in our social class are worried about sounding elitist, and I understand that, but there's some perversity in being an elite and not being able to confess to that fact. The PMC is an elite class in the US political system.
Class membership is defined by being able to pass brutal intelligence and diligence filters. It is not simply "tests well", but you basically have to eat the PSAT for breakfast.
We all had classmates who did not eat the PSAT for breakfast.