"You earn the right to stand the night watch." - @CameronLMcCord Cameron McCord. Founder and CEO of @Nominal_io. Submarine officer turned founder building the software stack for the physical AI era. New episode of @KnuckleUpHQ is live ↓ 00:00 Who is Cameron McCord? 01:34 What did 484 days underwater teach him about leadership? 10:36 How do you "earn the right to stand the night watch"? 16:28 What was so special about Anduril’s culture? 28:39 What is the "power of ambiguity"? 31:29 How does Cameron think about recruiting? 37:39 Can you recruit “killers” who are also low ego? 46:50 What was the broken old way of testing hardware? 50:50 How do you actually crack selling to the government? 55:12 How did Nominal land four of the five largest defense primes? 1:01:33 What does "physical AI" actually mean? 1:18:14 What is Cameron still working on in his inner game? 1:23:22 Quickfire: military movies, leadership books, and a favorite office? 1:25:07 What advice would Cameron give to his 25-year-old self?

Most seed founders think they have a channel problem. It's almost always a messaging problem. Wrote up my playbook based on time at Ramp and OneSchema: substack.com/@willgenesen/p-…

"We were go-karting and doing quite well. Now we've moved to Formula 1, and we're in the middle of the pack. We have a shot at the podium but we have to rewire for the race we're in." Akshay Kothari (@akothari). Cofounder and COO of @NotionHQ. Three years from now, most pre-AI companies will be gone. Notion will be one of the few standing stronger than before. This episode is a field study in how they're pulling it off. Knuckle Up ↓ 00:00 Intro 01:27 What were Notion's core founding principles? 06:20 Which early cultural principles scaled, and which broke? 08:22 How did Notion hire its first employees, and where did they come from? 11:48 How does hiring work now that the founders can't meet everyone? 14:35 Why does Akshay, as COO, prefer to have zero direct reports? 19:05 How do Ivan, Simon, and Akshay divide the work? 21:07 Does Notion's intentionality ever conflict with speed? 25:25 What should other founders steal from Notion's culture? 28:11 When did AI become a reason to rethink the whole product? 30:44 Why were the early AI years a "swamp of despair"? 36:05 How do you push AI across a huge product without losing the user? 39:25 Does Notion buy its AI DNA or build it? 40:44 Should Notion be afraid of OpenAI, Anthropic, and fast copycats? 46:58 What's hardest about the reinvention, and what does "meet the LLM" mean? 52:42 Is Notion AI-native in every function yet? 54:36 Are Notion's engineers still writing code, and how has engineering changed? 1:01:07 Once building is cheap, what's the new bottleneck? 1:02:39 How is AI reshaping sales, marketing, and support? 1:09:07 How many agents run inside Notion, and who builds them? 1:11:28 How has recruiting changed for the AI era? 1:13:48 What still worries Akshay about Notion's future? 1:15:22 Quickfire: admired founders, books, overrated AI advice, and Akshay’s superpower 1:19:42 What should a $50M pre-AI company do in the next 90 days?

"The pace of building has changed so quickly with AI. You have to give somewhere. And we gave for speed." @AshwinSreenivas. Co-founder & President of @DecagonAI. You'd be hard pressed to find another startup moving as ferociously as this one. Knuckle Up ↓ 00:00 Intro 02:10 How did Jesse and Ashwin decide what to work on at Decagon? 04:19 Why did they reject the top-down market-sizing approach? 13:16 What does Decagon give up to keep moving fast? 17:54 6 days in-office for founders, 5 for everyone else. 23:33 Why didn't Decagon hire a single employee until $1M in ARR? 27:12 How do you hire 450 people in three years without compromising quality? 31:20 Are Decagon engineers even writing code anymore? 35:08 How does the IC engineer role change with Claude Code and Cursor? 36:32 How does EPD leadership change in the AI era? 40:15 Two types of FDE, and which one do most AI companies actually need? 49:21 How will the human role at Decagon evolve over three years? 57:15 Why is Decagon building its own models with Decagon Labs? 1:00:50 What worries Ashwin most about Decagon today? 1:03:52 How does Ashwin manage his psyche while running this fast? 1:08:00 Hiccups in the startup journey. 1:09:50 Quickfire: overrated advice, AI products, books, red flags 1:12:43 What would Ashwin tell his younger self about Decagon's journey?

"A week is 2% of the year. The cadence we operate on is: A week is not the shortest timeline. It's the longest timeline. What can we decide by tomorrow?" - @grinich. Michael Grinich. Founder and CEO of WorkOS. The company powering the enterprise adoption of AI. Knuckle Up ↓ -- 00:00 Introduction 01:33 From design-obsessed founder to enterprise infrastructure 04:20 Michael’s year off and what made the WorkOS bet obvious 06:54 Why a great startup idea has to look bad first 09:46 Minimum awesome product beats MVP 11:09 The org with no CRO, no VP of sales, and one PM 13:29 Hiring for curiosity, not credentials 16:25 The "AI pilled" interview red flag 18:25 A week is 2% of the year 26:00 How WorkOS approaches brand 33:00 The future shape of engineering orgs 43:20 Why senior engineers benefit most from AI 44:45 Micro-leadership over micromanagement 49:10 Tough times in the early days 59:04 The reverse Peter principle 1:04:38 Quickfire: red flags, hires too early, and biggest fears 1:10:30 Michael's advice to his 25-year-old self

Why experts never start companies. Why averages don't apply to individuals. Why he spent 80% of the first year recruiting. Bipul Sinha (@bipulsinha), Founder and CEO of @RubrikInc. Immigrant. VC. Founder. Philosopher. New episode of @KnuckleUpHQ is live ↓ -- 00:00 Intro 01:47 State of intellect vs state of will 03:09 Bipul’s maniacal recruiting philosophy 07:06 Recruiting is like starting a religion 11:44 Will vs skill: you can teach one but not the other 14:28 Adhogāmī: fighting mental downward slopes 16:03 Why Bipul thinks product market fit is dead 19:25 Nobody knows anything (and what that means for you) 23:06 Three questions that launched Rubrik’s AI transformation 32:04 “Either you go AI or you die” 33:42 There is only one moat 35:15 When Rubrik’s growth collapsed overnight 41:28 “Maximal Thinking”: How to succeed amidst uncertainty 45:12 Quickfire round: red flags, worst VC advice, more 47:29 Bipul’s advice to his 25-year-old self

I left Google DeepMind, moved from SF to NYC, all within 2 weeks to join @quadrillion_ai — to build the future of automated research intelligence with the highest slope founder and most talent dense team. I grew up in Silicon Valley — the old Facebook office was my second home. I’d hang out there after school, drawing with my crayons while looking around at the sea of computers with lines of code. Since a young age, I felt empowered to have an array of interests beyond tech: piano, ballet, figure skating, art. The valley embraced diversity of thought, and that’s what inspired me to stay for Stanford and my career thus far. But today, SF is one big hive-mind. So, I moved to NYC, away from family and friends to build a company that doesn’t need to rely on a bubble to survive. I’m meeting customers day after day in all kinds of verticals, connecting with them in different ways and seeing our product bring real value. Here, I’m able to live in diversity of thought. I’m excited to build the future of research in the city of opportunity. Let’s chat if this excites you.

RLS was a mistake and folks exposing that level of complexity to less technical users is asking for trouble. It was a mistake in Firebase. It’s a mistake in Supabase. It will be a mistake in the next product too. I personally - even knowing how to secure it - would never touch it. It’s the worst security footgun you can imagine. One small mistake and your data is available to the world.

Repeat @ycombinator founders hit different. Early success the YC learnings = massively higher odds of building a category-defining company. Eg: 1. Sam Altman • Act I: Loopt (YC S05) — location-based social networking app. Sold to Green Dot for $43.4M • Act II: OpenAI — Valued at $852B 2. Tom Brown • Act I: Grouper (YC W12) — group-dating app. • Act II: Anthropic — Valued at $380B 3. Patrick Collison • Act I: Auctomatic (YC W07) — auction management tool acquired for $5M • Act II: Stripe (YC S09) — Valued at $159B 4. Qasar Younis • Act I: TalkBin (YC W11) — customer feedback platform acquired by Google • Act II: Applied Intuition — Valued at $15B 5. Eric Glyman & Karim Atiyeh • Act I: Paribus (YC S15) — price-tracking app acquired by Capital One • Act II: Ramp — Valued at $32B 6. Parker Conrad • Act I: Zenefits (YC W13) — Rippling 1.0 • Act II: Rippling (YC W17) — Valued at $16.8B 7. Daniel Gross • Act I: Greplin (YC W10) — predictive search engine acquired for ~$40M by Apple. • Act II: Safe Superintelligence — Valued at $32B 8. Howie Liu • Act I: Etacts (YC W10) — crm tool acquired by Salesforce • Act II: Airtable — Valued at $11.7B 9. Tom Blomfield • Act I: GoCardless (YC S11) — b2b payment processor acquired for €1.05B • Act II: Monzo — Valued at $5B 10. Jesse Zhang • Act I: Lowkey (YC S18) — gameplay recording app. Acquired by Niantic. • Act II: Decagon — Valued at $4.5B 11. Immad Akhund • Act I: Clickpass (S07) — acquired by Yola • Act II: Heyzap (YC W09) — mobile ad network acquired for $45M • Act III: Mercury — Valued at $3.5B 12. Rujul Zaparde • Act I: FlightCar (YC W13) — airport car-sharing startup acquired by mercedes-benz • Act II: Zip (YC S20) — Valued at $2.2B 13. Kyle Vogt • Act I: Twitch (YC W07) — acquired by Amazon for $970M • Act II: Cruise (YC W14) — Acquired by General Motors for $1B 14. Emmett Shear & Justin Kan • Act I: Kiko (YC S05) — calendar app famously auctioned off on eBay for $258k • Act II: Twitch (YC W07) — Acquired by Amazon for $970M

“If you’re not sure you’re a driver, you’re probably a passenger.” Frank Slootman: Snowflake, ServiceNow, Data Domain. One of the best operators of our generation. Knuckle Up with Frank is now live. Full conversation ↓ -- 00:49 Introduction 01:21 Why being a CEO is a confrontational job 03:51 Great people are hungry for hard feedback 08:19 Psychographic profiling: how Frank builds compatible teams 09:52 Drivers vs passengers: how to tell the difference 12:39 Why back-channel references beat interviews every time 16:19 "When there's doubt, there's no doubt" 20:42 Inside Frank's Tuesday operating cadence 22:27 The "go direct" rule that breaks org chart politics 26:19 Why bigger goals force better plans 31:27 Standards are the real culture 38:17 The email Frank wrote every Monday for years 41:35 Advice for navigating today's volatility 47:25 Facing demons for breakfast at Data Domain 54:19 Why Frank fired himself as Snowflake CEO 1:05:19 Coming to Silicon Valley "10 years late" 1:07:59 Why AI is an industrial-revolution-scale shift 1:10:01 Frank's advice to his 25-year-old self

“If you’re not sure you’re a driver, you’re probably a passenger.” Frank Slootman: Snowflake, ServiceNow, Data Domain. One of the best operators of our generation. Knuckle Up with Frank is now live. Full conversation ↓ -- 00:49 Introduction 01:21 Why being a CEO is a confrontational job 03:51 Great people are hungry for hard feedback 08:19 Psychographic profiling: how Frank builds compatible teams 09:52 Drivers vs passengers: how to tell the difference 12:39 Why back-channel references beat interviews every time 16:19 "When there's doubt, there's no doubt" 20:42 Inside Frank's Tuesday operating cadence 22:27 The "go direct" rule that breaks org chart politics 26:19 Why bigger goals force better plans 31:27 Standards are the real culture 38:17 The email Frank wrote every Monday for years 41:35 Advice for navigating today's volatility 47:25 Facing demons for breakfast at Data Domain 54:19 Why Frank fired himself as Snowflake CEO 1:05:19 Coming to Silicon Valley "10 years late" 1:07:59 Why AI is an industrial-revolution-scale shift 1:10:01 Frank's advice to his 25-year-old self

Building a company is a confrontational act. Introducing Knuckle Up: conversations with people who’ve operated at the highest level. Recruiting. Culture. Intensity. The inner game of being a CEO. First episode with Frank Slootman drops today. Trailer ↓

Building a company is a confrontational act. Introducing Knuckle Up: conversations with people who’ve operated at the highest level. Recruiting. Culture. Intensity. The inner game of being a CEO. First episode with Frank Slootman drops today. Trailer ↓