practical idealist. honestymaxxing @chompdotfyi

Joined October 2014
532 Photos and videos
Pinned Tweet
23 Apr 2024
I grew up by the ocean. Growing up, I loved to watch a wave approach, and jump over it when it’s near. Sometimes the attempt fails, and the wave hits me in the face. But the waves are never as daunting as when they’re at a distance, and when they hit me it never hurts as much as I imagine. And at that moment, I realize that most of the fear is in my head. So I wipe the salty water off of my face, look into the horizon for the next wave, and I jump again.
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Kiko retweeted
How long should you date til it's appropriate to say "I love you" to your partner?
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Kiko retweeted
We're living through a period where the performance of identity has largely replaced the expression of it. For 15 years, your Instagram grid told a chronological story: - growth - experimentation - old phases - the messy middle Chronology, for all its awkwardness, had something honest in it: it was human. We used to inherit our digital identities over time. Now we can edit them retroactively.
you can move posts around on your Instagram grid starting this week. tap, drag and drop your posts wherever you want 🪄
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There is such a thing as too much email marketing
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To be clear, I used AI to blur out the company and person who’s been emailing me, the original screenshots were not AI
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half the time we don't really say what we think. the other half we give a half truth. isn't that a little lonely?
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I'll always remember watching early seasons of American Idol, and seeing rejected contestants wiping away their tears saying "but my mom told me I can sing!" Now everyone has a mom like that, her name is AI.
parents: "move out" girlfriend: “quit being such a loser” boss: "work harder" claude: "uber for dogs (the dogs are the drivers) is a great idea, you should absolutely pursue it"
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Kiko retweeted
parents: "move out" girlfriend: “quit being such a loser” boss: "work harder" claude: "uber for dogs (the dogs are the drivers) is a great idea, you should absolutely pursue it"
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lessons here: always keep your receipts, they’re not just for the IRS
Uhhh… your memory is failing, my friend. And this was sent after the dinner, not before. Have the receipts. I don’t begrudge you in any way, but let’s be truthful.
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Kiko retweeted
Two of our worst VC stories: 1. A Sequoia partner passed on Cloudflare because he didn’t think a woman could lead a security infrastructure company. Seriously. 🙄 2. I got introduced to @pmarca. Meeting got scheduled for a Monday, which should have been a clue. I thought it was just a casual meeting. He thought it was a pitch and brought the whole @a16z partnership team. Hilarity ensued. 🤪 At one point one of them said: “You don’t seem very prepared.” Which was true because I wasn’t. I framed the rejection letter they sent.
I was once pitching in a board room at a top 3 VC firm for a $15M Series A. 12 people in the meeting. One of the GPs fully fell asleep. Out cold for 30 minutes. Nobody acknowledged it. Everyone just kept going. I kept presenting my Series A slides to an unconscious man in a Herman Miller chair and somehow that was considered normal. That's venture capital. You might fly across the country to perform for people who may or may not be conscious. It's a dance. And sometimes you lead and sometimes you follow and sometimes your partner is unconscious. If you're raising right now, just know: every founder has a story like this. The process is weird. The power dynamic is weird. You're not crazy for thinking it's weird. No one talks about it because they want to continue raising. But I'm happy to stick my neck out there. It is weird.
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The harder a user has to think, the smaller the TAM is for your product
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Kiko retweeted
Jun 5
Co-founder is marriage without the sex.
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Thank you for the beautiful memory. I always look at my Chompy Plushie and smile. How time flies! @chompdotfyi
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coming out of hiding
There are so many new apps being built on Solana! This week's X Spaces features a lineup that covers the social layer and liquidty side of DeFi. @Chompdotfyi @Stakit_live @YieldbayFi @Voicehavefun 🎙️ Find the link below and pull up ↓↓ /1
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Kiko retweeted
love island usa really said "what's your favourite position" and made everyone physically walk to their answer now imagine doing that anonymously with thousands of people and guessing where they'll stand before they do that's CHOMP 😉
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but also Dave I guess
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Kiko retweeted
Your CEO should be strong. Your CTO should be wise. Your COO should be wicked, cunning, of mysterious origins, fluent in the dark arts, blurry in pictures,
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the closest I’ve gotten to Ray Dalio (yet)
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Kiko retweeted
based on our data, 61% of people are actually okay with going through their partner's phone secretly 🤯🤯🤯 get it i guess
let's try something different today 👀 honestymaxxing hour: is it ever okay to go through your partner's phone?
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people are going to hate this, but i wonder whether looksmaxxing going mainstream is the 'lipstick effect' for young men in a world where AGI starts eating work there's data showing that women spend more on beauty during recessions because attractiveness remains a form of leverage when economic mobility becomes harder to access perhaps looksmaxxing is the male version of this. in a labor market where productivity becomes a harder path to status, competition will move to whatever still has visible variance. beauty/fitness still carry heritable effort-based variance, so perhaps that's what men and women will compete on once economic insecurity and automation flatten the standard masculine status routes
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Kiko retweeted
Jun 1
You can work 5 days a week and succeed as a startup. Mercury has done that from day 0 and we are valued @ $5.2bn 7 years after launch. I have been an entrepreneur for 20 years and raised 3 kids while doing it. The point of success is to have a great life not just a startup 😊
"If you are not working 7 days per week, you are going to lose". Corgi Insurance is the most intense workplace culture in startups. - The company works 7 days per week. - Founder (@nico_laqua) lives and sleeps in the office. - He built a cafe in the office because there was no local cafe that was open 24/7. - 2/3 of the first 30 team members have the Corgi logo as a tattoo. Today I went behind the scenes with Nico, who has used this culture to scale the company to a $2.6BN valuation in just two years. My condensed notes below: 1. If You Are Not Working 7 Days Per Week, You Are Going to Lose: Whatever you can get done in 5 days, you'll get more done in 6 and 7. If you are trying to solve the world’s hardest problems, a standard 5-day workweek will not cut it. 2. Work Trials Repel the Mediocre: Corgi forces candidates into mock work trials over the weekend. If seeing a full office on a Saturday scares them, they don't belong. True intensity acts as a natural filter to attract killers and repel clock-watchers. 3. Lead from the Front Lines You can’t demand 7-day weeks while sitting on a yacht. Nico sleeps 3–4 hours a night on a mattress inside the office. If you want your troops to bleed, you have to be in the trenches with them. 4. Culture Only Means One Thing: Winning Forget superficial jargon like "hackers" or "ex-founders." Strip away the corporate fluff. A great startup culture is aggressively optimized around one single word: Winning. 5. Lifespan vs. Victories Building something world-historic requires radical sacrifice. When asked if he'd rather build a trillion-dollar company and die at 50, or fail and live to 80, the answer was easy. "I would rather measure my lifespan in victories." 6. Reject the Comfort of "Quiet Quitting." If you are operating in a hyper-growth environment and your days off happen to be Saturday and Sunday every single week, you are quiet quitting. To win, you must deliberately bypass the off-ramps of personal comfort and low volatility. Corgi isn't for everyone—and that’s exactly the point.
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