20: Startup

@nathanbarry Sent you DMs.

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) June 20, 2022

No it's not lol, go back to 2021.

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) June 16, 2022

i guess no courier services in stockholm

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) June 20, 2022

Starting to think there should be some sort of detox/reflection/reset program for people coming out of intense startup jobs.

— Ashley Mayer (@ashleymayer) June 20, 2022

incredible that the job of a founder is to be right 1/1 times while the job of a vc is to be right 1/100 times.

lesson?

only an idiot becomes a founder.

— david phelps (🐮,🐮)(🃏,🃏) (@divine_economy) June 19, 2022

Hiding on the bathroom floor in Loft was not how I thought I’d be spending my Saturday afternoon. But it was while I was at the mall yesterday after hearing multiple gunshots near the store

No one was hurt and I’m ok! feeling better than yesterday, but still processing.

— Gabby Cazeau (@gabbycazeau) June 19, 2022

Your job as CEO is to hire people way smarter than you at your startup then give them clear direction, autonomy, goals, appreciation, and dark mode.

— Andrew Gazdecki (@agazdecki) June 20, 2022

@Alicebentinck Sita: A Novel About Women Spanning Five Generations And Two Geographies #crowdfundhttps://t.co/Ibusw7YuC4
Pitch in, please!

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) June 20, 2022

Sita: A Novel About Women Spanning Five Generations And Two Geographies #crowdfundhttps://t.co/Ibusw7YuC4
Pitch in, please!

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) June 20, 2022

David and I had a great conversation last winter about DiDi's efforts in enhancing safety, combining global tech with local innovation, and empowering women. Now more relevant than ever. https://t.co/0FlRj5sgaE

— Jean Liu (@JeanLiuQing) May 6, 2020

Sita: A Novel About Women Spanning Five Generations And Two Geographies #crowdfundhttps://t.co/Ibusw7YuC4
Pitch in, please!

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) June 20, 2022

Hello @ATTBusiness ----- Do you need help with corporate culture? Holler! https://t.co/vzlmMz6YgP

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) June 20, 2022

Struggling to connect on your remote team?

We've built a 67 person remote team that loves to work together while driving $29 million in annual revenue.

Here are 8 ideas we use for building a great culture in a distributed team:

💻🌐

— Nathan Barry 🇺🇦 (@nathanbarry) September 21, 2021

Are you looking for local or global?

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) June 19, 2022

My son (SJM) wanted to know why we couldn’t have 20,000 cats. Perhaps this will make him reconsider.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 18, 2022

Hard to unplug from a startup you love building but to go far it's absolutely necessary to rest. Enjoy your weekend.

— Andrew Gazdecki (@agazdecki) June 18, 2022

It may as be a documentary, since it’s coming true

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 18, 2022

Being close to nature is being close to god .... pic.twitter.com/mOjewOZtN9

— Prabhakar Bagchand (@PBagchand) June 18, 2022

अमेरिकासंग किन यतिधेरै आत्तिन्छाैं हामी-छक्क पर्छु।सानाे,शक्तिहीन र गरिब भएकाे कुन्ठा र हिनताभाषलाई राष्ट्रवादकाे लेपनमा आत्मरति गर्नु बाहेक म त अरु कुनै कारण देख्दिन।चीन रिसाउला भन्नेसम्मकाे तर्क ठीकै हाे,अरु त्यस्ताे के थियाे र एसपीपी मै पनि ? एक से एक डरपाेक र हिपाेक्रेटहरु!

— dambar khatiwoda (@dambarkhatiwoda) June 18, 2022

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says he's pushing airlines to hire more customer-service agents and take other steps to avoid travel woes this summer. Buttigieg wants the airlines to stress-test their schedules amid a spate of flight cancellations. https://t.co/F7Nqu30DRn

— The Associated Press (@AP) June 19, 2022

“my flight got cancelled so I won’t be making it to NYC NFT.”
come on man, no one believes that

— Rachel (@tolstoybb) June 18, 2022

The reason why it’s important to look at web3 flaws in a down market is because the flaws don’t seem as believable in an up market. In an upmarket if you buy a token and tell a friend to join a network, everyone’s happy. In a down market, it’s very hard for the network to spread.

— Aaron Levie (@levie) June 18, 2022

#Bitcoin is dying pic.twitter.com/G5ZbnIgA5r

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) June 18, 2022

This thing has more utility than 99% of NFT projects pic.twitter.com/5rOvYaqeCw

— Alan Carroll (@alancarroII) June 18, 2022

Just bought so much #BTC at $18,900 and #ETH at $980

— Ash WSB (@ashwsbreal) June 18, 2022

If there was only one thing I could stress to my 25 year old self about running startups,

in order to grow (by far) the fastest, save years of time, headache, etc.

it would be this:

Learn how to operate on a quarterly goal framework, and absolutely master it.

— NickFriend.eth (@theNickFriend) June 18, 2022

Bitcoin will be fine. Smart contracts will be fine. DEX will be fine. NFTs will be fine. DAOs will be fine.

Lenders, shitty funds, charlatans, scammers, they’re all going to die.

Then we can get back to work and start the next cycle off a higher low.

— Ryan Selkis 📖 🖊🔑 (@twobitidiot) June 18, 2022

💥31 million metric tons of gold was recently discovered in Uganda.

#Bitcoin• 21 million • Forever!

— Bitcoin Archive 🗄🚀🌔 (@BTC_Archive) June 18, 2022

This is a flat out lie. Literally just made up. Zero about my job has changed since I got to WaPo. Check my bio: I’m a tech columnist writing features on internet culture. I have the *exact* same job as when I joined. Nothing about this story is true. https://t.co/xOSJZ2L2b4

— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) June 18, 2022

When $BTC was trading in the 60s, I was salivating at the idea of buying the 17-19k levels.

The $BTC and crypto ecosystem is 100x more powerful than when BTC was first trading here in 2017.

As scary as it is, I am deploying 20% of my cash into spot $BTC here, no leverage. pic.twitter.com/gOEwkRxVlx

— Murad (@MustStopMurad) June 18, 2022

crypto meetups at NFT NYC pic.twitter.com/8SHWrtmFaG

— gaut (@0xgaut) June 18, 2022

Prior blowups were more existential to crypto overall.

MtGox was processing 70+% of BTC trading, and lost around 7% of all BTC in 2014

The DAO had almost 15% of ETH supply in custody when it was hacked in 2016

The difference now:
> $ amounts ++
> crypto on a much larger stage

— Matt Huang (@matthuang) June 18, 2022

The Habsburgs by Martyn Roady. "The only thing new in the world is the history you haven't read." Harry Truman

— scottintagliata (@scottintagliata) June 18, 2022

Fun fact:

48 days ago @yugalabs raised 16,780,495 $ape from the otherside land sale. At around $20/$ape at the time of sale, the raise was $335m. Tax owed on the sale is upwards of $124m.

The $ape is locked for one year, and is now worth $53m, a net loss of 71m.

— quit (@0xQuit) June 18, 2022

Nathan Barry: Remote Work And Corporate Culture

Struggling to connect on your remote team?

We've built a 67 person remote team that loves to work together while driving $29 million in annual revenue.

Here are 8 ideas we use for building a great culture in a distributed team:

💻🌐

— Nathan Barry 🇺🇦 (@nathanbarry) September 21, 2021

1. Create a private team stories podcast.

Everyone has the same get to know you conversations starting from zero. Instead interview them about their life story for a private internal podcast.

The whole team can listen and get a head start on building relationships. pic.twitter.com/xvssySyEwK

— Nathan Barry 🇺🇦 (@nathanbarry) September 21, 2021

2. Build a culture of written, asynchronous communication

This will save so many meetings, avoid people feeling left out if they weren't in the meeting, and protect focused work.

Your team will also be forced to clearly articulate and refine their ideas.

— Nathan Barry 🇺🇦 (@nathanbarry) September 21, 2021

3. Shared “no meeting” days.

Everyone has the same day for focused work each week. Team members can have days that they don’t need to get camera ready (e.g. hair, make-up, etc) if they don’t want to.

At @ConvertKit we do Tuesdays and Fridays, which are wildly productive. pic.twitter.com/Dc9VDFIK6U

— Nathan Barry 🇺🇦 (@nathanbarry) September 21, 2021

4. Ask "What did you get into this weekend?"

Every Monday morning we have a bot that posts to Slack asking people to share a photo (or a few) from the weekend. It's a great way to get to know co-workers on a personal level and see their families, interests, and lives. pic.twitter.com/y1iV8ivlYw

— Nathan Barry 🇺🇦 (@nathanbarry) September 21, 2021

5. Create an automated email sequence for new team members

Explain how you work, where to find important things (like the joke slack channels), fun facts about team members, explain inside jokes, & more.

It's all automated so you can curate their first 30+ days at the company. pic.twitter.com/d5fqDI2FvA

— Nathan Barry 🇺🇦 (@nathanbarry) September 21, 2021

6. Host "unsolicited feedback" sessions

This is where a small team (usually 4-8 people) gathers to talk about someone in the hot seat as if they aren't there for 10 min. When it's your turn all you can do is sit & take notes, then you get 5 min to respond.

Here are the prompts: pic.twitter.com/CpssgLYiHo

— Nathan Barry 🇺🇦 (@nathanbarry) September 21, 2021

a) What does this person do that you find remarkable? What do you brag about them to other people?

b) If they were up for the promotion of their career in 6 mo, what would you tell them now to give them the best chance of getting it?

— Nathan Barry 🇺🇦 (@nathanbarry) September 21, 2021

c) Assume you're working with this person for the next 10 years. What behavior isn't a big deal now, but will get really annoying or frustrating over that time?

This results in the best compliments, the most constructive feedback, and a culture of direct, candid conversations.

— Nathan Barry 🇺🇦 (@nathanbarry) September 21, 2021

7. Mandatory fun days

With teams feeling burnt out force everyone to take the same day off. That means you don't have to come back to a mountain of slack messages and emails.

Come back & share a photo.

We're doing a 3 day weekend each month through the end of the year.

— Nathan Barry 🇺🇦 (@nathanbarry) September 21, 2021

8. Schedule S'Ups

We use a bot to pick 3 people at random each week for a 30 min catch up / get to know you call.

A triad means you always get a dynamic group from a cross section of the team. This builds relationships and breaks silos across product, eng, ops, growth, etc pic.twitter.com/2UE5rw8kK6

— Nathan Barry 🇺🇦 (@nathanbarry) September 21, 2021

Don't let anyone tell you company culture is defined by free lunches and ping pong tables.

It's a culture of trust, clear feedback, focused work, meaningful connection, and a shared mission. pic.twitter.com/eT9HLF7I22

— Nathan Barry 🇺🇦 (@nathanbarry) September 21, 2021

If you think you'll use some of these tips, share the first tweet to help more companies build intentional cultures:https://t.co/T8ZxxVQmoe

— Nathan Barry 🇺🇦 (@nathanbarry) September 21, 2021

Also, we're hiring at @ConvertKit. If you want to join a remote-first company (rather than remote-forced) we'd love to have you consider a role with us:https://t.co/B3jtphUTbA

— Nathan Barry 🇺🇦 (@nathanbarry) September 21, 2021

9. Donate money together

At a team retreat we divided our team into groups of 4 with one goal: give away $10,000 in $100 at a time.

With 50 people on the team that meant each group had to find about 12 charities to support. Then we regrouped to share who we donated to & why.

— Nathan Barry 🇺🇦 (@nathanbarry) November 5, 2021

What followed were the best stories that made for connection points:

Someone donated to education grants because they were first in their family to go to college.

Cancer research because they'd lost a loved one.

Pet rescue because that's where they'd found a best friend.

— Nathan Barry 🇺🇦 (@nathanbarry) November 5, 2021

...and so many more.

$100 isn't that much, so it would be fair to argue the money would be better donated to a single charity, but our main goal was life stories and points of connection.

Give it a try with your team. You'll all get a peek into what your coworkers value & why.

— Nathan Barry 🇺🇦 (@nathanbarry) November 5, 2021

Yes!

— Nathan Barry 🇺🇦 (@nathanbarry) September 21, 2021

They’re hiring, don’t be bashful.

— Ryan Delk (@delk) September 22, 2021

I don’t know the average. But our range is from mid 20s to mid 50s. I’m 31.

— Nathan Barry 🇺🇦 (@nathanbarry) September 22, 2021

Remote work is here to stay

I'm a firm believer in it

and seeing this Tweet about employee management in remote work made my day

I decided that it had to go in my Saturday roundup of tweetshttps://t.co/Na8C5ebz4P

— jagadeash (@Its_Me_Jaga_Duh) October 23, 2021

As an introvert, I can tell you every point would be a nightmare

It would put me off from applying to any company that forced so much sharing of my life on a weekly basis

— Saira (@sairaforsure) September 22, 2021

This thread is the best thing I have read on corporate culture in the entire pandemic. It is really good. After each tweet I kept thinking, I wish I could be part of this, and then you insert the We Are Hiring tweet in the middle.

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) June 20, 2022

Bring me in as a consultant who will help you. An open ended position. You are successful. But that success has brought its own comfort zone. You are not doing enough to scale. You owe it to them to reach out to more people, touch more lives.

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) June 20, 2022