garrickvanburen

Sometimes, I imagine starting a fully remote, distributed, company, where every employee - including myself - adopts a gender neutral name.

Initially, I thought only a small number of names would be available, but reports like this suggest the options are vast and ever shifting.

Considering I was podcasting in 2004, I categorize these as very marginal changes refining trends that were already underway for 10 years.

I equate it to partnering with AT&T on the first iPhone. Very inconsistent with Apple’s preference of owning the entire stack, but if your bet is this a short term stop gap until the market is more “unlocked” - less of an issue, and better to get the direct market learnings along the way.

raw spelt is fantastic in beer. Malted spelt is indistinguishable.

10yrs isn't far enough. 2016 wasn't that different from today relative to media.

> Just use the LLM to make a thing that's actually good at what you need it to do.

Yes, this.

Ad revenue is why Twitter removed their RSS and heavily restricted their API forever ago.

1. I'm the product owner, I can demo it for you. 2. I know who the product owner is, and I think it's live. 3. I think it's currently under development...or maybe we're still gathering requirements 4. Budget has been assigned, but work hasn't started 5. It's listed in a slide deck

Early on my corporate career, I quickly realized “have” had 5 distinct definitions.

For a couple years, I officed out of a VC firm. It was terribly helpful in taking off the shine.

This was my mantra when I ran strategy for a corporate venture studio: every existing spreadsheet is a prototype for a potential new product

It’s about quantifying the business value of the software to a specific customer segment.

More on my approach here: Https://forstarters.substack.com

Few b2b buyers prefer it, for the same reason. For example, this is why reserved AWS instances exist.

Yes. I focus on pricing software and I’m a bit baffled why frontier models are pushing tokens.

It’s a race to the bottom, and the bottom is unlimited use for a flat monthly rate.

Granular pricing (tokens, minutes, etc) is pretty anti-customer generates less revenue than customer value-based subscriptions (why SaaS is such a good business model)

I often make the analogy that LLMs are like Amazon same day shipping. You can have later today, but it's unlikely to be the best offering...just the best you can get later today.

There's a lot of stuff that we just don't need to do. Not right now. Not ever. That's OK.

Yes. This is consistent w/ my default position: "if LLMs are good at it, we probably don't need to do it."

I wrote this back in 2023, and I think it holds

“After compiling all these, it still seems neutral to net negative. Maybe a net positive on the customer service side.“

https://garrickvanburen.com/media-tetrad-generative-ai/

“In the end, if I’m successful, I’ll have this one bread recipe adapted/developed, and if written out comprehensively for someone else (even future me), it will likely be >4 pages.”

https://garrickvanburen.com/only-finding-the-non-obvious-mat...

My default position is: if an LLM is good at it, we probably don’t actually need it.

There seems to be an overall, “I’m just now aware of this phenomenon, technology must be to blame” when the phenomenon has stayed constant and the tech has shifted under it.

#moraloutrage

Whether grocery shopping or an endurance running event (5K+) those with any kind of headphones in are simply less aware of the people trying to get around them.

This was my guess on the impetus for the name change as well.

My preference is to pre-commit by blocking off time on my calendar in 30, 60, or 90min increments depending on the task. If in the middle of it, I get distracted, I look at the calendar to remind myself.

fantastic book.

The metaphor that changed my perspective came from the book, "The Power of Full Engagement", paraphrasing "you're behaving as if you're a world-class endurance athlete without an off season - stop it."

I worked a corporate job for 6yrs off an iPad Pro.

I agree, outside of the AI bubble, there's a lot of wait-and-see happening in the B2B world right now, I'd say we're currently 6-8 months into that 14 months.

My worst job interview ever - in-house creative team at telecom company in downtown Chicago.

I walk into a darkened cubicle farm, down to the only lit corner office for a 'lunch interview'.

Interviewer is sitting at their desk eating a hot pocket on a paper plate.

Didn't even offer me any.

First interview I walked out of.

Not the last.

I agree. We don't need a nondeterministic 10quadrillion vector model. We need an deterministic expert on our narrow business. Something small, that can be run on the 2026 version of the spare PC under the CTOs desk.