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Startup growth: oil and water

When you join a startup that is growing rapidly, there are usually two groups of people. The first is the tenured employees who were there super early to get the company off the ground with the founders. The second are people who’ve been at other companies that have scaled to where the company desires.

The two groups integrate at first like oil and water. Instead of picking, “this is how we’ve done it” vs. “we did this at company y” the goal is to blend the cultures together.

The first three episodes of Andor

Spoiler warning if you have not watched episode 1-3 and Star Wars: Rogue One

I spent the weekend binge-watching TV shows—most of it on Disney+. In addition to watching the brilliant documentary Light & Magic, Andor is a series I started watching. The television series is a prequel to a prequel, telling the story about Cassian Andor (played by Diego Luna), one of the main characters in Star Wars: Rogue One. The Star Wars film often typo’ed as the word for red in French (go, Rouge One!) is a prequel for the opening of Star Wars: A New Hope.

Cassian Andor is not a very likable character. You’re introduced to him in Rogue One in a scene of him shooting a wounded ally in the back, in fear that the wounded colleague would give information away to the Empire. However, I’m hoping Andor becomes a world building sequel the same way Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater did for the acclaimed Hideo Kojima game series. Disney released the first three episodes of Andor all at once. It was a brilliant move as releasing the first episode may not have got people hooked. This show has a much different pacing than what people might expect since it’s 12 episodes and planned to be at least two seasons.

So far, Star Wars television shows have not quite done it for me. The Book of Boba Fett was a mess and Obi-Wan Kenobi was underwhelming. I like the Mandalorian, but the same way I like watching a friend play side quests of an open world video game. All the shows have great visuals, moments, and fan service, but lack world building and storytelling. Andor seems to have the potential to open the world beyond space wizards, laser swords, and one Skywalker family that constantly gets woven in. My hope for Andor is that it doesn’t do fan service for the sake of fan service, but in order to move the narrative forward. Tony Gilroy, the producer of Andor and who directed Rogue One has said there won’t be any fan service.

The point of having a vast universe is to explore it—take risks and tell new stories. The cartoons and comics have done this, but not really in the TV show. The biggest touch on this is the aforementioned fan service, letting people know by showing an easter egg to let people know, “hey, this exist” in the universe.

I read that we likely won’t get Season 2 until 2024 due to the production time. As much of a bummer it is, much of the scenes are shot on sight with practical effects. Though there are scenes shot with The Volume, I’m glad Tony Gilroy’s team isn’t leaning entirely on it.

The cast is also great. Diego Luna all the things! Stellan Skarsgård joins the Star Wars universe as Luthen Rael and Adria Arjona as Bix, who I bet will have a performance here that will make you (and her) forget she was in Morbius.

There are 9 more episodes to go so I can’t give you full opinion yet, but so far I like Andor much more than any Star Wars television show, including the Mandalorian. As much as I love Mando, they need to kill off Baby Yoda and let the world breathe a bit more—too much fan service. If Andor was in The Mandalorian, you know he’ll shoot Baby Yoda if he needs to. Hopefully Luke Skywalker doesn’t randomly show up in Andor to ruin the ambition, but this is the Star Wars story I’ve been hoping to see for a long time.

Analog reads with Printernet

I get migraine headaches from blue light and try to keep screen time at a minimum. As a result of this, my favorite mode of reading is physical paper (e-ink is great though). Printernet is an awesome experimental project that curates reads you may enjoy. It’s like an RSS feed on physical paper. They are so thoughtful about the curation and include a page on why the essay was selected for you.

I’m certainly going to print more issues and encourage you to give it a try!

Tech is going through a factory reset moment

Originally posted on Proof of Concept

Factory reset: A software restore of an electronic device to its original system state by erasing all of the data, settings, and applications that were previously stored on the device.

Whether we like it or not, tech is having a factory reset moment. This isn’t the first time. It happened in the 90s with the dot-com bubble. Companies that were once the darlings of Wall Street, such as Pets.com, Webvan, and eToys, quickly saw their stock prices plummet as investors lost faith in their ability to turn a profit. For the younger folks, Webvan was basically Instacart before Instacart.

There is never a single reason for this occurrence and multiple factors force tension like tectonic plates on the planet. Let’s look at the three reasons I see as forces of nature: continued mass layoffs, the rise of AI, and recovery from the recession.

The first is all the massive layoffs happening at tech companies at various levels. According to layoffs.fyi, 629 tech companies have laid off 185,136 employees in 2023, and we’re not even halfway through the year. Companies are getting absolutely gutted so the market is saturated with talent (for better or worse). Every role I’ve seen posted has thousands of applicants.

The rise of AI is the second force of nature. It seems everyone changed their web3 .yxz domains to .ai overnight. Time will tell how AI plays out in the industry, but right now, it looks like it’s here to stay. Unlike web3, AI has more understandable value props of application: generative content creation, GPTs, and LLMs. Chat GPT looks to be the first threat to search engines. In addition to continued layoffs, companies will continue looking at ways to reduce workforce size through AI.

Finally, we are still recovering from the recession that started in 2020. As I reflect from the gut (I am not an expert), it seems like we are not quite out of it yet.

What have we learned from all this? Though it’s sad about people losing their job through a layoff, I do believe tech has become way too bloated. What started with lean teams, raising just enough money for the runway, we over-indexed on company size, growth, and valuations. The recession has been a humbling experience and that can disappear. 2020 and 2021 are what I like to call the Clubhouse Valuation phase in tech. We over-indexed on companies that showed high value in a pandemic without considering what would happen on the road to recovery—a reminder that long-term thinking is crucial. Clubhouse, Peloton, and other companies that optimized for staying at home then dropped in 2022.

Looking at the new bloom

At our Palm Springs house, we are lucky to have part of the San Janito Mountains be our next-door neighbor. Like many places in California, we saw much rain in February and March. We got a bit of snow light flooding too! I noticed on our walk how many flowers are on the side of the mountains in a landscape that’s usually just rocks.

Going through storms are difficult, but it is also the substance that allows new life to bloom. I truly believe we’ll see good coming from these challenges moving forward. In a world where you can get laid off from what you thought was a stable job, there is no difference in the risk of being a full-time employee or starting your own thing. It’s a great time to be a contractor and startup founder.

AI is often in the discussion of replacing humans completely and their job. Though it’ll require learning new skills, I am optimistic it can empower people to do more of what they want. For example, I strongly believe that brand designers and people in creative will do what product designers do today. As a result, product designers might do what engineers do, and engineers may work on complex tasks. Identify the cause and effect of how these changes affect the ecosystem vs. attempting to find a direct correlation.

The factory reset has already been hit, and it’s booting. It’s not about good or bad, but figuring out how to move forward. The future path is unwritten, and I can’t tell you what the path forward for you is. Perhaps it’s time to get out of tech and work on the retirement farm. It might be leaning in on how things are shifting and finding the role and scope you’re excited about.

Whenever I have to do a factory reset on my device, it’s usually because something is broken or running slow. Despite not wanting to do it, I look forward to starting from scratch and figuring out what the next cycle looks like.