High-agency people are relentless reality-benders who treat life like a puzzle they will solve.

An article from the 90s explaining how in the 1980s, personal computers changed the dynamic of college vs high school workers. College grads learned how to use PCs and grew wages faster Mind you, this was when interest rates were 15pct, white collar unemployment was the highest it’s been any non covid year, general unemployment was 10pct, there was a recession, 18pct mortgages, and the start of the savings and loan industry collapse. The economy was a mess. Except it was the start of the “digital revolution “ which lead to change. Here we are at the early days of the AI revolution. I think it will be very analogous to what happened back then. If you think learning how to use Clause seems daunting, imagine being 50 yrs old in 1983, not knowing how to type, using a 1.0 key adding machine with a tape roll to do all your work as an analyst and realizing you had to figure out how your brand new IBM PC and lotus 1-2-3 worked. Or having only used a typewriter your entire career , then having to learn the new PC and WordStar. Trust me. WordStar key combinations were far harder to learn than telling Claude what you want done Lots of people couldn’t figure it out. Those who did were more productive Ctrl QA with AI nber.org/digest/sep97/how-ha…

Over the last 12 years, I've worked with 4 Private Equity funds at ZoomInfo. Here’s my 12-step playbook for working with PE Owners. In 2014, I took on my first PE investors (TA Associates and 22C Capital). In 2018, we brought on Carlyle and CPPIB. Private Equity is in the headlines everywhere now - buying businesses like Smartsheet, Zuora, SolarWinds, Avalara… Here are lessons I learned on how to make working with them a LOT easier. 1. Get aligned from Day 1 Ask them what they underwrote the deal to. That’s a fancy way of asking: “What did you tell your investment committee this business would be worth in 4–5 years in the base case?” Then ask about the upside case. If you want real alignment, ask for the memo. If they get squirrely, just say: “I assume there might be some misgivings about me in there - can we talk about those so I’m aware?” There is no faster way to get aligned than seeing exactly how they described the investment. 2. Understand the clock If you want to invest in growth and bring down margins to do it, do it early. As you approach exit, EBITDA becomes a sacred cow. Want to launch a new product? Great. Show what sales is committing to it and when. If you can’t do that, don’t even bother asking. 3. You don’t have to do everything they tell you After my second board meeting I went to D. Randall Winn (my PE board member and CEO of S&P Capital IQ) and said, “Randy, just tell me what you want me to do and I’ll go do it.” He laughed and said: “Whoa whoa, that's not how it works - no one here knows your business as well as you do. We’re going to give you advice and pattern match. Your job is to listen and decide.” That said, you MUST listen to their advice and explain your choice. This doesn't have to happen immediately. Try phrases like this: “I hadn’t thought about that - it’s a good point, I want to take some time to think it through and get back to you.” Then actually follow-up. 4. You NEED a strong CFO and FP&A team Most of your private equity investors’ interactions are with your CFO. A strong CFO and FP&A team build trust. They help you craft strategy around data AND they're endlessly valuable to your PE partners because they can build models and get them the data they need to understand what’s happening in the biz. This makes life easier for you and them. 5. Response time matters PE employees work all hours. One of the associates on our deal told me that she was sleeping in her car outside their office for ~2 hours and then starting to work again cause she didn’t want to waste 30 mins driving home. When they email asking for clarification or making a suggestion, respond fast - even if it’s just to say you’ll follow up. 6. Send them swag This one might sound dumb, but you want them to FEEL like they are on your team. When you get new swag, put it in an envelope and send it with a nice note - you want them to feel the same level of pride you feel in your company. 7. Expect pressure to do M&A I remember being at a PE conference where they flashed a slide showing that portfolio companies that did M&A far outperformed the ones that didn’t. Every firm had the same slide, they all believe it and you should expect pressure here. 8. Be prepared to offshore They believe deeply in offshoring because labor offshore can be equally talented at 1/2 to 1/3 the cost. There is an organizational tax that comes with this, you can’t negotiate it away. You just have to prepare the company to manage it. 9. When a metric goes sideways, don’t show up like a macho man If you show up with a confident solution, you’re begging for a fight. Instead: present the metric, share POTENTIAL hypotheses, explain what you’re testing and ask what they think you might be missing Make them partners in solving, otherwise you’ll quickly turn them into adversaries poking holes. 10. Cutting costs is easier than driving growth This is just objectively true. If your strategy increases costs in the hope of faster growth, you need to answer two questions: - What metrics and checkpoints will tell us this is working - and when do we kill it if it’s not? - Does the additional growth actually change the multiple and valuation of your business? If you go from 15% to 20% growth in an EBITDA-dilutive way, you may have made the business worth less, not more. Your PE partners will care a lot about this. 11. They LOVE pedigree. Hiring someone from Stanford or Salesforce is almost never questioned. But take a risk on a state school or a non A-plus company hire and you’ll be defending that person even in good times - your job is to build the best team you can so the price of doing that is owning those hiring decisions at the board level. 12. Relationships matter There were a handful of times where I knew that I got on the wrong side of one of my PE board members. So I would tell my wife, “hey listen, I’m flying to San Francisco or New York on Sunday and I’m going to have breakfast with them and then fly home.” Then I’d call them and just say “Hey, do you have time for breakfast on Sunday? Maybe a workout before.” They always said yes and it gave me 4 hours of time, some relationship building and then we got right into the reasons we were misaligned and what I could do better. These were super valuable - don’t EVER underestimate the power of getting in person with your partners - same rule applies to your team. The thing I loved about working with Private Equity is that there is no singing kumbaya pretending we are some happy family. It’s a 4-5 year relationship and the expectations are very clear. I really appreciated that.

China awards 1.3 million engineering undergraduate degrees each year vs 130,000 in the US. 5/x

What rewatching ‘The Wire’ taught me about nostalgia for a lost America ft.com/content/0e8676f0-6f16… via @ft

Working Hours, Then and Now The debate around the 9-9-6 work schedule strikes me as oddly shallow. Startups in China have been doing this for years, and I remember back in the mid-2010s it was practically an article of faith among people watching the industry that this was why Chinese startups would beat their American counterparts. But here’s the truth: no one has to force you to work long hours if you really want to. The founders and early employees who push hardest aren’t usually doing it because someone set the office lights to stay on until midnight. They’re doing it because they care. It’s not obedience—it’s compulsion. The Role of Urgency In industries where being first really matters—ridesharing a decade ago, or AI today—the only advantage you can really compound is speed. If you and your competitors are equally talented, and you both see the same opportunity, the one who simply spends more hours in the problem space has the edge. Time becomes the rawest form of capital. This doesn’t mean it’s sustainable forever. It rarely is. But there’s a reason why some companies choose it anyway: because the window for success may only open once. The Shift That Happens With Age When I was younger, I worked longer hours, and not because someone told me to. At 22, few other time-intensive priorities, my work was my best use of time. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that companies aren’t just paying for hours anymore. They’re paying for judgment. For the ability to make good calls quickly. For the ability to know which doors are worth opening. They’re paying for experience, for the network that makes introductions possible, and for the intuition that keeps you from wasting months chasing the wrong idea. So yes, I work fewer hours now. But I don’t feel guilty about it. If anything, the work I do now counts for more than the hours I used to put in. Time as Leverage There’s a progression here that mirrors how startups themselves evolve. In the earliest stage, what you need is sheer effort. Later on, effort compounds into something more valuable: leverage. A founder who is good at hiring can accomplish more in a 50-hour week than they used to in a 90-hour one, because they’ve figured out how to multiply their time. Individuals work the same way. What you do in your early 20s is different from what you do in your 30s or 40s, because what you’re bringing to the table is different. If you still think output is proportional to hours worked, you’re probably underrating the compound returns of experience. And that’s why I don’t worry about not grinding quite as hard as I used to. The form of work has changed, but not the commitment to it.

The problem is that “corporate politics” sounds ick and needs a rebrand. If you called it “getting shit done when different people have different opinions,” suddenly it makes no sense to say this is “beneath you.” Indeed you are playing the game, whether you like it or not.

Apple, $AAPL, is planning a lifelike robot version of Siri, per Bloomberg