I remember loving the "Wishbone" shows on PBS as a kid... this reminds me of that but 100x better (kids are reading along with the movie, not having the movie replace the book). Love it!

Wishbone! I watched that for the first time when someone brought it up in our original YC launch.

This podcast is wonderful – I'd recommend starting with the Paul Graham espisode.

The best part is you can. Not saying it’s easy (and certainly far easier for some people than others), but how you react to events is one of the very few things that’s actually under your control.

Some of the most useful self-work I’ve done, for sure.

Something really useful that I learned was just to delay my responses to surprises. I did this to stop getting angry at things that I misunderstood, by giving myself more time to think about what was being said, but I found it is useful for all sorts of things.

Meditation helps with this. Practicing to notice feelings, accept them and giving them space lets you stay calm and do the same outside of meditation.

Could you expand a bit on what the self-work entailed?

All sorts of things. Therapy. Psilocibin. A girlfriend (now wife) with a wildly different worldview than my own. Retreats. Meditation. ‘Conscious community”. Workshops. Yoga.

Stoicism in a nutshell

For Harvard, that's not true – financial aid covers the cost of room and board.

(There is a student contribution of ~$3,000/year, which is fairly easily met through on campus jobs).

Cripes! That is even better.

Making an app you spend significant time in every day more useful & powerful can be a path to PMF (see Slack vs Hipchat, for example)

I’d argue Superhuman does have PMF - just in a smaller market of email power users.

Your argument is a “unique insight” isn’t enough to provide an enduring competitive advantage (or “moat”). But that’s not what the OP is talking about.

A unique insight (and great timing / market) is often enough to get to early PMF (and - like you mention - to Series A).

unique insights come from your perspective. It is your unique perspective which is a _factory_ for unique insights that allow you to solve a series of problems that hit your startup/company in succession. It is this durable perspective that has built up through long term experience that can't easily be copied/duplicated that makes you win a market.

I’ve seen sim swaps to get desirable instagram handles. I have to believe it’s easier to extract money from a PayPal account takeover than insta.

I have an instagram account that I basically don't use, created probably 10+ years ago. At one point I randomly decided to log in and found that my username was randomized and someone else (not even a brand account) was using my original name. I never got any emails about my account being accessed, my password was random, no login activity, etc. To this day I'm still wondering if the account was compromised without a trace or if instagram just decided to give my name to someone else.

Unless your email was also compromised, your name was taken by an FB employee. They do this all the time for their friends and whoever might bribe them.

This is incorrect. Instagram names are essentially impossible to recover (unless you know an insider) and there’s a liquid market for them.

Same is not true of paypal funds.

FB engineer explained they always rolled features out to New Zealand first - similar user behavior as the US but outside the eye of the tech press & smaller market (so less risk).

They actually split Ireland and AU/NZ more recently.

<nit> The philosophy behind hospice is that you are *not* hooked up to all sorts of medical equipment. Rather, you only receive the minimal treatment needed to make yourself comfortable as you let your illness run its course. </nit>

Fair point. I knew that, but my previous comment was poorly articulated in that regard. I meant something along the lines of: hooked up to an opioid infusion.

It’s not that bad. It’s normal to have your car window broken overnight or to see people shoplifting openly at the pharmacy or grocery store. In certain parts of the city there’s fairly open drug dealing & use. And the homelessness is heartbreaking.

Violent crime / theft happens - but not at a noticeably different rate than other large cities.

Still the most beautiful city in the US (imo) and the natural beauty 30 min outside the city in any direction is insane.

I moved to Boston. Those things you describe I saw daily in SF - broken car windows, theft at retail stores, and rampant homelessness.

I can go months in Boston without seeing a single homeless person, drive around all winter with all my skiing gear in the back of my car, hell even leave my car unlocked with my laptop in it while running into a store, and never once seen a robbery or violent attack.

No, what happens in SF is extremely disproportionate to normal around the rest of the US.

It's so funny how we people will say that it's not that bad, and then their reasoning is that:

- there is homelessness, but also something expensive that I enjoy

- there is crime, but also something expensive that I enjoy

- there is open drug use, but also there is something expensive I enjoy

It seems like a 'let them eat cake' response. "Why doesn't everyone just spend the money I do so I don't have to see all these problems?"

Is your first sentence a rhetorical device to make the point that it's extremely bad ?

Some level of crime happens in most large cities, but if it became 'normal' something is extremely wrong. It does not have to be like this.

I’ll never understand this mentality. “Sure, you’ll likely be violently assaulted and your car will be broken into regularly, but there are a lot of nice restaurants!”

And with outdoor restaurants it's possible to combine the thrill of potentially being randomly assaulted with the pleasure of fine dining!

I was at Quince once ($5,000 meal) and looked out the window to see a homeless man shitting on the window. Ah SF.

That sums of San Francisco nicely. No thanks.

I’ve seen Violent crime happen at a much higher rate. Same goes for car theft. Covid caused a huge surge.

SF will likely have tax rev shortfalls this year, and their reserves were already tapped into. The surrounding communities however are much more fiscally conservative with large reserves still in tact.

> I’ve seen Violent crime happen at a much higher rate.

That's an anecdote I guess but according to SFPD's own stats violent crime hit an all-time low in 2020 and was the same in 2021 and up only slightly in the first 5 months of 2022.

Why report crime if the police don’t do anything and they make it difficult to report.

All my SF network stopped calling the police when crime happened. That includes violent crime such as street fights.

I was walking in SF and saw a guy holding a machete. He looked at me and said “don’t worry I’m not going to hurt you.” He then pointed down the street and said, “This is for him”. I called the SFPD and they never showed up. Later on a death was reported.

That told me all I needed to know about SFPD. you dont rely on them.

A peer once told me if you want the SFPD to show up, state you have a weapon and will use it in a public setting if necessary in defense of your life as the law permits.

“to have your car window broken overnight or to see people shoplifting openly at the pharmacy or grocery store. In certain parts of the city there’s fairly open drug dealing & use. And the homelessness is heartbreaking.”

- Well, no, this is NOT normal. these are the points of a failed city.

That level of casual crime is worse than Cairo.

I couldn't imagine living in a place like that, let alone having kids grow up there.

You shouldn't have to live that way. That is bad and not normal.

That first paragraph is what you call “not that bad”? It sounds dire.

This is why San Francisco is terrible. The people there refuse to admit basic problems, staring them right in the face.