engineers used to hate context switching and now that's all engineering is

I normally listen to electronic music with few or repeating lyrics when needing to focus, but I've found that a looping Gregorian chant also does the trick! open.spotify.com/track/0xUL1…

One very important thing that even the smartest people seem to have to learn from experience is taste in problems. There are juicy problems that tend to lead to interesting discoveries, and nasty problems that tend not to.

Founders, don’t get pissed off if a VC that politely passes on you, then subtly trash talks you to other VCs. A VC that politely passed on us a while ago, recently told another VC (who I was pitching) that they thought I was a grifter. Grifter is about the most offensive thing a VC can call a founder, in my mind, while still being conveniently vague. And it’s not the first time I’ve seen this pattern. The point of this post is that I used to get offended by VCs that politely passed on us, then covertly trash talking us. But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I realized how inevitable it is. It’s heavily in the interest of the VC that passes (especially early/single-stage VCs and junior VCs, which this one was), for everyone else to also pass, since they’ll look stupid, or worse, if that ends up being a bad decision. “Show me the incentive, and I’ll show you the outcome.” As Charlie Munger used to say. In this case the incentive is very clear, and so the outcome is somewhat unavoidable. So why shouldn’t founders be pissed off about it? Because fortunately most VCs, especially the ones with more experience, are smart enough to understand this dynamic, and to form their own opinions regardless 🙏👌