The All In podcast (@theallinpod) succeeds at being both hilarious & educational. That combination is the new bar. Also, more podcasts should copy the "best friends have frank conversation while also roasting each other" format.
Go-to-market questions every SaaS founder should ask. By @mikemarg_ @craft_ventures. earlygtm.substack.com
Repealing Section 230 will not get us freer speech. “If Internet platforms are required to remove any potentially problematic content, corporate risk-aversion will lead them to over-restrict speech to avoid any potential liability.” link.medium.com/Fsalz08RGab
SF was always the Accidental Billionaire. Because of proximity to Silicon Valley, it benefitted from tech wealth its policies did nothing to create. Its collapse will redistribute opportunity to rest of country. So SF politicians will “spread the wealth” just not how they thought
Summary of my Twitter activity today: Tweet bashing SF - 1,156 likes Tweet defending capitalism - 385 likes Tweet divulging priceless trade secret of Craft to identify SaaS winners before everyone else - 36 likes Figures. 🤷♂️
In chess, there’s a principle that “the threat is greater than the execution.” In actual execution, repealing Section 230 or breaking up Big Tech would be a disaster. But threatening to do so limits their censorship and anti-competitive behavior. Hence our current politics.
Spoke with @DavidSacks of Team @craft_ventures not too long ago on movement-led start-ups! We went deep and it was quite a fun conversation! Check it out on Spotify and YouTube! open.spotify.com/episode/1I80yD…
1/ This was a very interesting case study so it deserves its own little tweetstorm. Q: What is the proper way to analyze a SaaS company that has revenue from both Individual and Team plans? Founders: I'm about to reveal a trade secret of Craft. Other VCs: pease stop reading. twitter.com/nbt/status/133…
So you wanna be a founder? Silicon Valley legend @DavidSacks’s advice: Don’t start a company unless you have a great idea; until then, join others’ great ideas at early stages to gain experience and a meaningful equity stake. #LunchclubFireside (ft. a cameo by @Phil_Hellmuth) pic.twitter.com/dIeU9BqS23
If Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter were acting in concert to raise prices, everyone would be up in arms. But acting in concert to repress speech, no big deal. Aren’t civil liberties supposed to be more important than money?
Free speech has never meant “anything goes”. Supreme Court has defined 9 major exceptions including incitement, fighting words, defamation, and fraud. Big Tech could have operated within that framework. Instead they’ve usurped the power to define allowed speech. Real issue.
A right is something that can’t be taken away from you. In the modern world, speech occurs online. If FB/Twitter/Apple/Google/Amazon all cancel you, to what court and under what legal theory can you appeal? There is none. Now explain how you still have a right to free speech.
The argument that “Big Tech companies should be able to do business with whomever they want” is a stunning change in position for a political left that was fighting hard against gig workers just two months ago.
The internet digitized speech along with many other things. If you can’t speak online, or that ability is fully at the whim of a tech cartel with no due process or ability to appeal, you have no speech right. Hatred of Trump is blinding people to that fact.
Offline: our speech rights are defined and protected by the Bill of Rights, a precious birthright. Online: our speech rights are defined by a Terms of Service, written, interpreted, and modified at will by tech oligarchs, with no right to appeal. Makes sense.
Speech can be regulated under the First Amendment in ways that would have taken down the most incendiary tweets of Trump and the other rabble-rousers. The actions of Big Tech go well beyond that. Abridging speech should always be narrowly tailored.
Apparently you are a “free speech maximalist” if you notice that speech has been digitized, centralized and privatized in a way that no one voted for.
According to Newsweek, Paul’s offense was to post a blog on tech censorship. So Facebook censored Paul for criticizing Facebook’s censorship. Anyone see where this is going? pic.twitter.com/fwLZZXMWFc twitter.com/RonPaul/status…
I just subscribed to Common Sense with @bariweiss. Honored to get a shout-out in the inaugural edition. “you have to be sort of strange to stand apart and refuse to join Team Red or Team Blue” If you feel that way too, subscribe! bariweiss.substack.com/?utm_medium=we…
As someone who primarily used Business Twitter and only recently wandered over into Political Twitter, the level of vitriol and hate that I’m seeing used to denounce the other side’s vitriol and hate is quite breathtaking.
The first question of law is jurisdiction: who decides? Instead of thinking about which views you want to censor, think about who has the power to censor. Even if you like the result now, do you really have confidence in their judgment and process for all future cases?
It’s an old canard that anyone who defends the principle of freedom of speech must believe in the worst things being said. That’s not an argument, it’s an intimidation tactic.
De-platforming is an extraordinarily consequential punishment that can be meted out with no rights and no due process by monopolies that no one trusts, yet people are going along with it because they like this week’s decision.
The word literal is a semantic tell that whatever comes next is likely an exaggeration.
An individual’s right to free speech is not unlimited. But neither is a monopolistic consortium’s right to deny service. pic.twitter.com/EG8B9yRCqM
“It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.” — Blackstone’s Ratio, age-old legal principle. Parler had 15 million users whose speech rights were materially diminished because Amazon didn’t like 100 posts. That’s quite a ratio.
Excellent summary of threats facing the new administration. twitter.com/nfergus/status…
Why tech investor David Sacks says he’s supporting Chamath Palihapitya for CA Governor. Gov. Newsom is “totally beholden to special interests” trib.al/3gDPbmF pic.twitter.com/gDPl8Lwx3C
Silicon Valley “Dystopia” — why tech investor David Sacks believes the power and “icy indifference” of big tech needs to be checked trib.al/p97Nsbw pic.twitter.com/Cqc7zrxiBd
2020 was the year of the fake expert. 2021 will be the year of the scrappy upstart. twitter.com/micsolana/stat…