alexbrower

All calls to LLM service take place on the server. Prompts are more or less predefined by an internal team. Users click useful buttons that alters functions to sanitized JSON. Users cannot free-form requests. This is how we’re starting anyway. B2B SaaS startup.

I do at least 2 of these calls per day. Interacting with end users is the only way to maintain PMF. IMO anyone too big, cool, or fast-growing… sadly mistaken.

Same. API Gateway and Lambda consoles are throwing "service error". Started just around 10am.

As a startup, there are two reasons why you’d ever consider filling out one of these RFPs:

1) you can paste bullet points from your pricing page directly into it and you’re not being dishonest by doing so

2) you have developed a champion internally (in which case, the bullet points from your pricing page should be pasted into it)

If you’re selling into an enterprise and haven’t reached a security or procurement review, but have been asked for a lengthy RFP response, focus team effort elsewhere.

Hope there was still time to amend the college applications with a link to this post.

Understanding fully that this is meant to serve just as a reference, this type of article risks positioning hiring as an end — not as a means to an end.

Better to take external advice on typical team sizes / talent needed to achieve specific milestones specific to your business. Hire to get meaningful work done. Not based on a funding-centric "target" org chart.

Most Reddit readers worth real advertising $ use ad blockers of one kind or another. I’m happy for the Reddit team, and hope they’re able to make a responsible revenue stream out of the fundraise.

Is there a news story here that I'm not seeing as I scroll through the comments?

(Have been using / recommending Hemingway App for a few years. Great product.)

There is an insidious and perhaps even more blatant pay-for-review industry in B2B software: Capterra, G2Crowd, TrustPilot, etc.

They all promise "unbiased reviews" but aggressively offer a company's "confirmed users" a variety of small fiduciary benefits to leave a review (gift card here and there).

Then, they upsell the B2B vendor on the ability to manipulate those reviews; e.g., you pay an extra fee to triage negative reviews by telling customer support "nope, not a confirmed user - please remove."

For whatever reason (probably sheer traffic), these B2B review sites have high domain authority scores. So even where marketing teams agree that paying for reviews is BS — there can arise an incentive to pay for reviews from an SEO perspective.

Realizing that this idea is fraught with challenges for B2B customers and vendors: is there an open source protocol that could anonymously verify that a user is _actually_ a current or former user of a given service?

Chickens and eggs...

Curious, in what context are you all still using VBA?

Forgot to mention: there's nothing inherently wrong with storing data in CSV files. One does have to think about consumption and processing. A Postgres database seems pretty reasonable to track information like this, but I wouldn't blame a CSV format for shortsightedness. We're not talking about actual big data here...

This is clearly a case of someone not knowing the limits of a technology / how to select or use a technology. Yes, more modern versions of Excel support many more rows than 65k. As a "power" excel user in the early 2000s, it's tiring to see this same mistake made. And I might have blamed MSFT in 2008. But the "modern" world has taken an absurdly boorish response to this virus. This unfortunately looks like another example.

Another reminder of the importance of taking the periodic, thoughtful moment to document the type of imprint each of us would like to have left on this world once we're gone.

Can anyone describe the business benefits of an algolia implementation (vs Elasticsearch?) for a company that doesn't heavily rely on content searches? It seems expensive and something that I'd build on my own.

(Disclaimer: long-time operator and fledgling programmer)

Having built many these models, it's now my opinion that if you are at the stage where you're needing a template for a business plan, you better have a product that fits a real need and that delivers a product with margins. Too often in early stage companies, the model is built top-down to meet someone's expectations about a previous company they sat on the board of, helped found, etc. If a template engenders a more thoughtful, fact-based approach to operating the business, that's healthy stuff. Otherwise, set short-term goals. Try to hit them. (And in today's environment, find a path toward gaining customers without having to raise capital). $0.02

True, there are liquidations of physical assets.

But the biggest benefit to the last remaining employees and board members (particularly those who are Directors or Officers) is reduction in liability around the details of shutting down a business. It's not about the thousands of dollars you get for the office furniture. By the point a company does an ABC, payroll obligations are likely the only category of liabilities to impact any employee still involved.

A firm like Sherwood will in fact readily offload that stuff to the most reputable firm who can haul it away, whatever is most efficient.

It's the forgotten obligation that Sherwood helps protects you from (e.g., rent payment, tons of small bills). When that bill shows up after you have had the hard conversations with stakeholders, that's yet another reminder to your investors that things went south. (Sherwood gets the missed bill and pays it out from a carefully planned escrow and based on a wind-down agreement that your investors signed off on). Much preferable to all of your investors notifying _you_ of an outstanding obligation. Firms like Sherwood play an important role in allowing all of us to move on with life.

There are several details here I'm skimming over that someone at Sherwood would correct me on, but hopefully this is helpful.

Sherwood=good guys who help startup people move on. Hopefully you have your business well-organized. Sherwood has the process down to a science.

[EDIT]: 'who pays for this?' There's typically a negotiation between the remaining creditors with voting rights (your board members at time of wind-down), but the cost of a firm like Sherwood is small compared to the risk of you trying to shut down your startup in your spare time. (Don't do that.)

I have a home office in San Francisco. With a remote team including direct reports nine hours ahead of me, it’s important to me that it’s a specific room that’s mostly dedicated for work. When I’ve had guests in town who take the room, I work from the living room but it’s not the same. I can work from anywhere—but day-to-day, I like to have - a decent sized desk - pen and paper handy - screen real estate (e.g., home office, I have two 27” monitors in addition to my MBPR; setup isn’t as polished at corporate office where I have one 21” external display. Still, better than one.)

Prior to being in a position where I pretty much _had_ to work from home certain days, I found it unnatural. I couldn’t imagine not going into the office... Getting the workspace right helped. Leveraging communication tools helped replicate the hallway conversations I missed a lot initially. (Quick video calls > chat > email).

Stating the obvious here - but more official launches to come, too.

"Although I know rationally that the size of the team is not something to celebrate, I feel that I slipped into that harmful mindset quite a bit over the last year. Not everyone is familiar with growth metrics like monthly recurring revenue, but team size is easy to understand. Sometimes it impressed people when I told them how big the company was, and I was proud to share it."

Correct. Headcount is a figure that represents a company's means. If you're tracking it as an end result, you end up having to make hard decisions or someone makes them for you.

The transparency is commendable. A couple other observations:

- Affected employees had an average salary of $58.5k (assuming your metrics is net of benefits and payroll tax). If this is annualized, it appears you let go of non-engineers. Set goals and performance expectations for those who remain, especially those who build your product.

- Stop publicly promising salary increases altogether. Promote people based on their ability, not an artificial loyalty policy. Some people deserve 10%+ raises, some you'll find are overpaid. Use a basic job ladder and put the burden on managers to justify comp changes.

- If the policy of granting vacation bonuses was for recruiting purposes, you've successfully attracted people who want to be paid not to work. Again, implement a corporate bonus program and set goals for staff.

Best of luck.