Aleem Mawani
@aloo
Founder of @Streak, previously @Google, @ycombinator
2 of the most productive people I know do everything on a 13" laptop screen
i have never seen someone productive with this setup
When I was growing up my dad just did whatever he felt like. Often this sucked because what he wanted to do was cheat on my mom and be a terrible father. But other times what he wanted do was learn to sail, fly airplanes, live off-grid in national forest, or install a 125 gallon…
i actually believe i can do whatever i want to do and that’s a superpower and also and endorsement of the united states of america
nothing more infuriating than these AI chat prmpt landing pages that swallow your well written prompt after asking you to sign in
The most impressive part is the soundtrack
I built a reverse Loom. You send someone a link. They record their screen (no install). You watch. Maybe I can use it for bug reports
The seed strapper death spiral: focus on profitability → your competitors focus on growth → they raise → they suck out all the air from the market → you grow slower → you can't raise even if you wanted to → competitors "own" the market → they get the best (most…
This is great until someone gives your product away for free as a loss leader Or your worst competitor turns it into a capital game and raises from big investors Unless your moats are unassailable or your market is too small to matter, beware this strategy
Amazing team and unique culture. @superamit writes so clearly about the *feeling* of working at @sudowrite
I’m hiring a product designer for Sudowrite. This is a dream job for a designer who loves to write. The beginning of the listing is… a mini therapy sesh for me. You’d think it’d be chill after that. But no, it goes on to talk about our company cult… sudowrite.com/jobs/designer
Looks like every single star Meta identified as top AI talent from OpenAI and ultimately poached was at some point a F-1 student from China. Still believe we should ban them @marcorubio?
Wow
Most “build a SaaS” gurus have never built a successful SaaS. Instead, they’re just good at audience building, personal branding, and selling a dream. You can actually learn a lot from them. You just gotta watch what they do, not what they sell.
These are my top subtle signs of underperformance. Any one is almost always a sign of an underperformance. More than one and it’s certain. Bad memory/can’t remember things Almost always slow to respond on Slack/IM If you ask them to send you regular updates they can’t do more…
Gmail’s AI email assistant writes like a committee of lawyers designed it. Pete Koomen’s recent post Horseless Carriages explains why: developers control the AI prompts instead of users. In his post he argues that software developers should expose the prompts and the user should…
Doing an AMA on Reddit!
🚨 We’re live on Reddit! Streak founder @aloo is doing an AMA in r/startups right now. 12+ years building a profitable, product-led business run by a small team. Ask him anything👇 reddit.com/r/startups/com…
The greatest wisdom that a startup teaches you is that getting kicked in the dick every 3 hours for 10 years is unpleasant but not actually fatal.
We can live like this on Mars. Photo from GOT, animation from MidJourney.