1. Obsessively focus on hiring great talent from day one. The team you build is the company you build.
- Spend significant time (e.g. 40%+ in early days) on recruiting, even in board meetings.
- Do extensive reference checks and work tests to vet hires in a compressed time. But also have conviction to decide quickly when you see a superstar
- Hire A+ players who can stretch into bigger roles as company scales
- Talent compounds over time and creates an unfair advantage

2. To assess leaders, use the "6 months ahead" test - are they consistently thinking multiple steps ahead? If you're constantly redlining their work, that's a red flag.
- Evaluate if leaders anticipate and solve for challenges 2 quarters ahead
- Extensive redlining means they may be stuck in the weeds vs thinking strategically
- Selectively redline to simplify/clarify, but constant redlining reveals a problem

3. Have strong marketing instincts as a CEO to cut through the clutter, frame your value prop compellingly, and reach the right customers.
- Craft sharp messaging that resonates with target buyers, not just generic points
- Find underserved customer segments where your unique value prop is a great fit
- Avoid overly saturated markets unless you have a highly differentiated approach

4. Map out your key business equation - what are the core inputs that drive the outputs and results you want? Relentlessly focus the team on the levers that matter most.
- List core inputs (drivers) and outputs (results) - e.g. purchase volume, interchange rates, funding costs
- Which inputs have disproportionate impact on desired outputs? Double down there
- Orient the whole team around these key levers and metrics, from day one

5. Generate momentum through speed of execution. Do things that don't scale at first to get initial traction. Sustain momentum by tapping into exponential levers.
- Find hacks to get your "flywheel" spinning - PR, friends/family, unscalable acts
- Once spinning, make it real through scalable products and acquisition models
- Identify and pour fuel on the exponential parts of your business model

6. Stay laser-focused on a timeless customer problem. For Ramp it was "how can companies spend less time and money?" Avoid chasing new tech for its own sake.
- Validate there's a burning, recurring pain point for customers
- Focus on solving that deeply vs getting distracted by new tech/trends
- E.g. Ramp realized spend management software was always needed, not just card rewards

7. Transition carefully from product to platform. Make sure broader platform plays create even more customer value than initial focused products.
- Expanding from product to platform increases TAM but can dilute focus
- Vet that the platform better serves customers and creates unique data advantages
- E.g. Ramp unifies all finance workflows to boost efficiency more than any point solution

8. Prioritize ruthlessly as you scale to avoid losing focus on what makes your core products best-in-class. Use the customer voice as your guide.
- It gets tempting to do too many things as you grow - but it dilutes excellence
- Keep orienting around customer needs to maintain quality as you scale
- Cut/deprioritize anything not critical to making core products 10X better than alternatives

9. Set hugely ambitious long-term goals that become possible at scale. For Ramp, it's making every company 5-10%+ more profitable and productive.
- Have a clear north star for transformative impact you can have at scale
- Ramp aims to solve the decades-long productivity slowdown in the US economy
- Use this highly ambitious vision to inspire the team and justify big investments

It's crucial to document atrocities and human rights abuses as objectively and accurately as possible, to establish the facts of what happened. This helps counter misinformation and provides a clear historical record.

Having empathy for the circumstances and motivations on both sides of a conflict is important. Acknowledging one side's suffering does not negate or diminish the other side's experiences. Both can be true.

To change minds, it's essential to move key pieces of information from the realm of conjecture and opinion to established, unambiguous facts. Documenting events thoroughly helps with this.

In an age of conspiracy theories, anonymous social media accounts, AI-generated content, etc., it's becoming harder to determine the ground truth. But we must still strive to find common objective facts that everyone can examine.
Certain basic moral principles should be universal - like condemning the killing of children, sexual assault of women, and other atrocities. As a species, we need to collectively agree that some things should never happen under any circumstances.

It's emotionally and psychologically difficult to grapple with the horrors that humans inflict on each other in conflicts. But we have to face that reality to figure out how to resolve and prevent these devastating situations.

The search for truth is challenging but necessary, as institutions have lost credibility and trust through self-inflicted wounds. Restoring that trust requires a commitment to facts, objectivity and moral clarity.

1. How Ramp is the Fastest Executing Company on the Planet

Time is the most limited asset in early stage startups.

We count our days at Ramp & do a calendar audit.

This forces us to think about what creates the most leverage & prioritise those.

2. Micromanage or Hire and Get out of the Way?

It depends on the task relevant maturity of the person.

I use a 2x2 grid on conviction and consequences:

High Conviction, High Consequences: “Micromanage” closely.
High Conviction, Low Consequences: Guide first, then delegate.
Low Conviction, High Consequences: Delegate to experts.
Low Conviction, Low Consequences: Fully delegate.

3. Lesson From Brian Chesky

Most leaders should be thinking six months ahead.

Not every lever can be tuned in a week or a month.

Thinking six months ahead prepares for those levers.

4. Challenges for Ramp - What Could Go Wrong?

Hiring: Hiring the wrong people for the job.

Risk: Being too conservative & getting it wrong.

Prioritization: Lose focus on making our products best in class.

5. Lesson From Jack Dorsey

CEOs can “write” or “edit” people’s work.

They should always try and do the latter.

If you’re constantly using a lot of red lines, that’s a bad signal.

6. How Many Direct Reports is Too Many?

There is no one size fits all formula.

Andy Grove recommends 5-7, Jensen Huang is doing fine with 60.

It depends on your level of depth as an executive.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/boryu_%EB%AF%B8%EA%B5%AD-ai-%EC%A0%84%ED%88%AC%EA%B8%B0%EC%97%90-%ED%95%9C%EB%B0%9C-%EB%8D%94%EB%AC%B4%EA%B8%B0-%ED%86%B5%EC%A0%9C%EB%8A%94-%EC%97%AC%EC%A0%84%ED%9E%88-%EB%85%BC%EB%9E%80-kbs-20240504-activity-7192388498887249920-d1Jo?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios

어제 저희 회사가 개발한 인공지능 파일럿 Agent가 미국 공군 장관님을 태우고 도그파이트 라는 공중전을 실제로 시연하였습니다. 공군 장관님은 저희 AI가 통제하는 VISTA라는 F16변형기종을, 다른 도그파이트 조종사는 실제 F16를 조종하였는데, 완전히 unnoscripted된 상황에서의 전투를 보여주었습니다. 중력의 5배 (5g) 까지의 가속을 견디어내셨고 소위 high aspect 라는 시나리오 (두 전투기가 가속으로 근접하여 스쳐가는 상황)도, 저희 AI를 백퍼 신뢰하시며 유유히 즐기셨답니다 ㅎㅎ

5년간 밑바닥에서 시작한 개발이 이제 빛을 보기 시작했습니다. 실제 전투기에 탑재될 때까지는 아직 몇 년 더 남았지만 만감이 교차하는 날이었습니다.~~

제 아들 포함하여 지난 5년간 밤낮으로 개발해 준 직원들에게 정말 감사합니다!

"내가 달라야 합니다"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mSTAGRCtXE&t=2s

https://t.co/6eNmrgyq7k

til, Ilya sutskever gave john carmack this reading list of approx 30 research papers and said, ‘If you really learn all of these, you’ll know 90% of what matters today.’