Month: April 2024

1. Question every requirement. Each should come with the name of the person who made it. You should never accept that a requirement came from a department, such as from “the legal department” or “the safety department.” You need to know the name of the real person who made that requirement. Then you should question it, no matter how smart that person is. Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous, because people are less likely to question them. Always do so, even if the requirement came from me. Then make the requirements less dumb. 
2. Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn’t delete enough.
3. Simplify and optimize. This should come after step two. common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist.
4. Accelerate cycle time. Every process can be speeded up. But only do this after you have followed the first three steps. In the Tesla factory, I mistakenly spent a lot of time accelerating processes that I later realized should have been deleted. 
5. Automate. That comes last. The big mistake in Nevada and at Fremont was that I began by trying to automate every step. We should have waited until all the requirements had been questioned, parts and processes deleted, and the bugs were shaken out.

Anywhere can be the starting point. Start from wherever you are.

You have plenty of time. What you lack is conviction, creativity, or courage. Conviction: to choose what’s important Creativity: to see more efficient paths Courage: to reject all distractions

“The cave you fear to enter contains the treasure you seek.”

Joseph Campbell

Fear points to the gate in the wall that prevents your journey.

Sent out email. 3,700-ish. midnight Sunday night.

• One failed sale. (Credit card setup failure).
• One “time zone” — would attend but bad time.

Lessons learned:

• Don’t send a weekend mail. I thought it would be good for action first thing Monday morning. No. White collar inboxes are a shitshow on Monday morning.
• I’m confident that the credit card thing works. (Tested it). But maybe let someone else run the platform instead of using my own Stripe account.
• Send a follow-up email in a few days. Try more.

From a comment on HN:, talking about applying to YC:

YC approval process is pretty much this:

– Do I even understand your idea.

– Have you talked to customers.

– Am I impressed in your use of time.

– Do I believe that your team is capable of delivering.

– Is it a good idea.

Most people can’t get past the first two but obsess over the last two.

What is my idea? Exactly? Not handwavy. (I better go write that on the secret site right now).

I have talked to a few customers.

I am not impressed by my own use of time. Buckle up and hit the throttle.

Can I deliver? Yes at small scale. At large scale I don’t know. (See my comment about time).

Is it a good idea? Yes because it builds human capability which can be applied in uncountable ways.

The comment immediately below it summarizes the YC selection philosophy:

This is the process. They want people with high agency, a bias to action, and who make progress in the face of uncertainty.

Or at least some random person’s effort at mind-reading and inference from observation.

Expecting money, ego stroking, passion, All from one activity.

He asked, having not announced that he has a product for sale.

If I can give out any one career tip, it’s that poor communication skills need to be viewed as a debilitating weakness even at relatively junior levels of the organization. On par with being unable to show up to work on time, or completely lacking required skills.

Said another way, your inability to concisely summarize information in a way that’s appropriate to your audience makes you look like an idiot, and companies don’t like to promote idiots.

That’s from https://twitter.com/staysaasy/status/1777700319515890005

It’s what you DON’T talk about that is the most important part of the conversation.

I don’t talk — even to myself — about aging. I actively reject the topic and the implications.

It is a frantic refusal to look at truth.

Here is a Tweet from 4/8/24:

It’s never what you see. It’s what you’re unwilling to see. It’s what you refuse to see that sees everything.

Paul Portesi

But he has lots of variations on that idea.