helping founders go global with @deel | a handful of opinions about life | hosting startup events across the USA
New York, NY
Joined March 2009
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When I tell people @deel is well beyond a payroll provider…
- We’re a full people ops platform that thinks deeply about what the workforce of tomorrow will look like.
- This means that you can build with Deel and be sure to handle every eventuality for your team, no matter how your workforce evolves🔥🔥
Remote work changed how the world hires. Synthetic identities are entering your network. Fraud evolved, and static background checks can't keep up!
Today we’re launching @deel Security to detect modern workforce fraud, from deepfakes to interview proxies to stolen identities, so you can ensure everyone you hire is real 🔒
We’ve already run it for companies from small teams to large enterprises, and the findings have been striking.
This is probably already happening to you. You just don’t know it yet 🥶
Founders have so many competing priorities, and events are never at the top of the list. When we plan events for founders our #1 priority is creating something that is delivering real value to the founders in the room.
what stands out:
- a well-curated room where the connections you make can drive real value
- a pitch session with plenty of time for Q&A & feedbank
- a genuinely fun and well-prepared experience
Golden Rule: treat other people's time like the world's most precious resource, bc it is.
We put founders in a boxing ring in Hollywood and let three VCs tell them, live, why they'd pass. 🥊
60 seconds to pitch. Then the questions.
The full fight from @Techweek_ LA Tech Week is below 👇
In one corner: Sarah Romanko (@geek_ventures), Martin Cox (Voice Capital), La Keisha Landrum Pierre (@vc_emmeline) and @MandelAngel (EmergingVC).
In the other: founders who wanted the truth, not "keep us posted".
Third city, third ring: New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles 🥊
What the week told us:
→ 86% of the founders we surveyed are raising now or within six months.
→ The investor's biggest time sink is the inbox. They read the clear no's for fear of missing the one yes.
→ Slow decisions lose good deals.
→ Claims need checking, not just reading. That includes "we're closing fast".
The best question of the day came from a founder to the panel:
"Do you know whether you're going to invest within the first two minutes?"
Watch the answer 📽️
Thank you @Citizens_PB and @deel for sponsoring, and Office of Tomorrow for co-hosting
Next round: Helsinki, 18 November 🇫🇮
@alanpun_ , @the_futt
Join us: gopresent.ai/events
The best take I’ve seen in a long time on AI in the workforce.
- firing huge numbers of people because you can’t calculate how productive they are in the same way as you can calculate token spend will lead to structural, cultural and knowledge gaps that AI can’t replace
- building tools and systems that bring people along, not putting the onus 100% on workers to train themselves on AI & automation, will enable you to keep the valuable people in your workforce and really support those who want to adapt
- focus on solutions that enable employees to apply their knowledge, not those that push them out.
You need to build tools and harness around them and slowly replacing existing workflows. You need to make it so simple that all they need is apply their knowledge without them needing to be retrained.
The problem you will run into is that if you have over hired already this, it won’t end well. This is unless the business can expand into more opportunities.
The ultimatum is not for them to adopt, but for them to participate and provide value in such way that they are irreplaceable by AI while we continue to automate away their work that can be automated. In the end, knowledge and expertise still matter. At least for now.
The thing I always tell my team is for them to make sure I can never automate their job away.
How community buidling in tech complements traditional marketing:
- Marketing = big branded moments, builds customer trust by demonstrating that you're a real player, trusted by the market as a whole
- Community = smaller intimate moments, builds customer trust by creating human connections to the people building the products
In NYC, walking isn’t an activity. It’s transportation.
Most visitors come from places where walking isn’t how they get around. For them, when they walk it’s leisure. Grabbing a coffee, strolling around the block, enjoying the scenery.
Walking means they have the time to not drive.
In NY, it’s how we get to a meeting, to the doctor, do our groceries.
People speed on the highway when they need to be somewhere, and they’d lose it if someone drove 15 in a 25 or stopped in the middle of the road to admire the trees.
Next time you’re here. Treat the sidewalk like you would a highway and you’ll do just fine.
Hosting a get together for women building companies in SF 💜
- Tue 10/27
- Dinner, community, and good company. Oh and a concert 🔥
DM me for details.
SF is my childhood home & where I started my career
I left SF in 2018 because I was craving the “real world” and have been in NYC for the past 3 years.
SF makes you feel like tech & software is all that matters in the world.
Being in a city where tech can coexist with other industries keeps things in perspective, and for me has helped me continue to explore a much deeper, creative and diverse range of interests.
SF is diverse and creative in its own way. But leaving the Bay Area enabled me to learn so much more about the world and the systems that run it than I ever would have by staying in the tech bubble.
Conversations at dinner last night highlighted two distinct areas of AI work at the earliest stages of development: one focused on pushing the boundaries of agent creativity further through design, and another on reimagining how agents and humans can interact more seamlessly in the physical world.
For the operators and founders in NYC balancing the event calendar, travel, and actual work: what’s your current system for keeping contacts warm without it taking over your nights?
Last night’s dinner with @loganbrown799 of @SoxtonAI, @nathansnonsense, @slow, and @rhobusiness. Soxton’s menu-signing habit is a simple way of keeping a record of who was in the room. Huge shoutout to Nico Savore (nicooks.com) for the homemade Italian.
Between the travel and the NYC tech calendar, the thing that actually compounds is showing up for the people in the ecosystem, not just the meetings on the calendar.
What’s one small thing you’ve done this week that had nothing to do with pipeline but made the community stronger?
Madeleine Futterman retweeted
this is a great opportunity to help shape and market a newly-branded fund within @a16z 🫶
I am hiring a social media lead for a16z Frontier!! “We’re lucky enough to be living through one of the most consequential curves in human history today” — THIS is the time, come work with us now! ⚡️🔑🔭💥🗺️
a16z.com/about/jobs/?gh_jid=…
