Curious learner. Maker. Fascinated by markets, philosophy, spirituality & history! Exploring new ways to fund startups with @superscoutco
Joined November 2006
- Tweets17.5K
- Following1.5K
- Followers14.6K
- Likes17.2K
David Haddad retweeted
Another gain from AI. Grok is so much smarter in interpreting results than scientists & MDs who make decisions from their interpretation of medical papers.
David Haddad retweeted
Palantir CEO Karp: While studying in Germany I spent a lot of time with ex-Nazis. Only in the countryside were they honest about their past.
Antisemitism was a motivation, but a lot of the motivation was Hitler's charisma and the abuse of patriotism. 1/
David Haddad retweeted
claim your business on ChatGPT and engage with customers in new ways:
Now in beta: Businesses in ChatGPT.
Claim your business, manage your information, and get insights on how people engage with you.
Eligible businesses can also build a Business Agent to answer customers’ questions and help them explore what you offer.
openai.com/index/introducing…
David Haddad retweeted
Had a little time on my hands this morning to do some writing… send along to someone you know who may benefit
---
“Practical principles to counter a modern-day coup/psyop/struggle session”
1) Own what you did but fiercely resist accommodating the mob, resist owning half-truths or actions/behaviors you didn’t do.
2) The op is not about your past actions, it’s about your enemies and this event as their opportunity
3) No matter how bad it gets, nothing is as bad as it seems.
4) Find the enemies at the very root of the op and find every creative problem-solving tool at your disposal to neutralize them.
5) People will throw their grandmother under the bus if they believe doing so will protect their reputation. They can become highly useful idiots in the op. Their power and access must be fiercely and quickly cut off.
6) Do not hesitate in cutting off anyone you suspect of disloyalty.
7) Build a team of close and loyal patriots and have one of them run a dedicated, well-resourced war room to put the rebellion to rest.
8) Use your patriots and regular meditation to buoy your psychological resistance to the op.
9) Your enemies aren’t as smart or hard working as you. Outsmart and outwork them as a way of life until the op is over.
10) Think about the op as if it were in the past. What are the difficult things you procrastinated on or avoided that would have stopped the op? Do them.
11) Never be ashamed of the op. Business as usual. Continue on with optimism and joy in your everyday work and its mission.
12) Download telegram and use it as your messaging application for all sensitive communications.
David Haddad retweeted
Lee Kuan Yew on Prostitution:
“We were candid about the problems we could not solve. Vices like prostitution, gambling, drug addiction and alcoholism could only be controlled, not eradicated. Singapore’s history as a seaport meant prostitution had to be managed and confined to certain areas of the city where the women were given regular health checks. Gambling was impossible to suppress. It was an addiction Chinese migrants had carried with them wherever they settled. But we had eliminated the triads or secret societies and broken up organized crime.”
David Haddad retweeted
My favorite thing to say during an argument with my wife..
"I've been wrong before too, so I know how you're feeling right now"
David Haddad retweeted
Another city that didn't think of second order consequences
This quoted post is unavailable.
David Haddad retweeted
A friend who left the music industry once told me a Drake theory that stuck with me.
Drake's sound is so distinctive that when a producer makes a beat that sounds remotely like him, their instinct is to get it to Drake. The industry effectively conspires to send him the most Drake-like beats, and he gets his pick of the litter.
I think something similar happens in venture.
Take Thiel. He's known for backing contrarian ideas, so when people come across a really unconventional company, they think to send it his way. I've even caught myself doing this with deals.
In venture, your reputation for the types of deals you do shapes which types of deals you see.
we have a winner for the most absurd AI startup ever
this Peter Thiel backed company uses AI robots to stab fish in the brain so they taste better and last up to 3x longer
it's called Shinkei and it modernizes a centuries-old Japanese technique
dozens of Michelin-star restaurants are already lining up to buy the fish
here's how it works:
> the problem is when a fish gets caught, it usually just suffocates on the boat
> that stress floods the meat with hormones and lactic acid, which hurts the flavor and texture
> the old Japanese fix for this was spiking the fish through the brain right after the catch, which stops all that
> but doing it by hand is impractical for most American fishing crews
> so Shinkei built a fridge-sized robot that sits right on the boat's deck
> the crew feeds in a fish and AI identifies the exact species, so it knows exactly where the brain and gills are
> the robot then drives the spike through the brain and cuts near the gills in about 7 seconds
> the fish goes into an ice slurry so the blood drains out
> so the fish doesn't sit there stressing out, and that tasty flavor and texture is preserved
example number 5,392,417 of how AI can be applied to literally anything
ALT A gloved fisherman on a boat feeds a live salmon head-first into the steel intake of a white Shinkei Systems robot, with the ocean behind.
David Haddad retweeted
Chamath Palihapitiya admits his blind spot on America's broken two-tier economy
PALIHAPITIYA: "I got it totally totally totally wrong. I got it totally wong."
"I'll go through all the ways in which I got it wrong, but I just want to first acknowledge what my blind spot is. Like most people's blind spots, but I can just speak for myself, it is through the lens of my own lived experience and very narrowly what is in my best interests. And I think what we had was a move away from the culture wars that was very much in my best interest, but I think it was in everybody else's best interests as well. I don't think that was on the ballot. But what I don't think I understood clearly enough, and I think that this election has made extremely clear, is that since COVID, we have moved past political ideology. And I want to say this again: I do not think Democrats or Republicans matter. That is my real takeaway after this election. There is a central block of people that vote the prescient issues of our time."
"It was a gargantuan win for Biden, then it was a gargantuan win for Trump, and then it was a gargantuan win for the Democrats in these midterms. What are these people voting for? I think what they are shouting now—they were trying to signal and now they are shouting—is a broad-based belief that the economy has completely decoupled from reality and is broken. The economic reality in America is broken."
"There is a small percentage of people, the four of us on this pod and all of our friends, who are the asset owners of America. And we have benefited in every weather condition. When rates were zero, we benefited because we were able to build our businesses with very cheap capital. When rates were high, we benefited because we had pricing power. And in every condition in between, whether there were tariffs, whether there were not tariffs, whether there were subsidies, whether there were not subsidies, we've all managed to continue to accumulate and grow assets, but we are few and far between."
"And then there's everybody else who are wage earners, and the structural capacity of the American economy to support and grow wage earners is broken. It's clear. Why do I say that? I do not think, and I disagree with Freeberg, I don't think this has anything to do with socialism. I don't think the far left won particularly more than they were expected. I don't think the far right won particularly more than was expected. This is a complete and total repudiation about the state of the economy. The economy is broken. I have a few charts to support my point of view. Number one, if this was ideological and if ideology mattered, money in politics would have had a more direct impact on the election."
David Haddad retweeted
The real way MAGA works. Lobbying firms pay “influencers” to push talking points. Susie would have staffers print out tweets going viral (via bots) by “his biggest supporters” to show Trump that an issue mattered to the base. This is why you got fucked and they got richer.
David Haddad retweeted
Let me be blunt. Those who are afraid of AI feel deep down that they are impostors & have no edge. If you have a 1) clear mind, 2) a deep, not just cosmetic, undertanding of your specialty, 3) and/or are original enough to reinvent yourself when needed, AI will be your friend.
David Haddad retweeted
People outside of frontier AI companies need to read this quote, to understand how people inside frontier AI companies treat you and your concerns.
I encourage those at frontier AI companies to read this quote, from Ellsberg to Kissinger back in 1968:
“Henry, there’s something I would like to tell you, for what it’s worth, something I wish I had been told years ago. You’ve been a consultant for a long time, and you’ve dealt a great deal with top secret information. But you’re about to receive a whole slew of special clearances, maybe fifteen or twenty of them, that are higher than top secret."
“I’ve had a number of these myself, and I’ve known other people who have just acquired them, and I have a pretty good sense of what the effects of receiving these clearances are on a person who didn’t previously know they even existed. And the effects of reading the information that they will make available to you."
“First, you’ll be exhilarated by some of this new information, and by having it all — so much! incredible! — suddenly available to you. But second, almost as fast, you will feel like a fool for having studied, written, talked about these subjects, criticized and analyzed decisions made by presidents for years without having known of the existence of all this information, which presidents and others had and you didn’t, and which must have influenced their decisions in ways you couldn’t even guess. In particular, you’ll feel foolish for having literally rubbed shoulders for over a decade with some officials and consultants who did have access to all this information you didn’t know about and didn’t know they had, and you’ll be stunned that they kept that secret from you so well."
“You will feel like a fool, and that will last for about two weeks. Then, after you’ve started reading all this daily intelligence input and become used to using what amounts to whole libraries of hidden information, which is much more closely held than mere top secret data, you will forget there ever was a time when you didn’t have it, and you’ll be aware only of the fact that you have it now and most others don’t….and that all those other people are fools."
“Over a longer period of time — not too long, but a matter of two or three years — you’ll eventually become aware of the limitations of this information. There is a great deal that it doesn’t tell you, it’s often inaccurate, and it can lead you astray just as much as the New York Times can. But that takes a while to learn."
“In the meantime it will have become very hard for you to learn from anybody who doesn’t have these clearances. Because you’ll be thinking as you listen to them: ‘What would this man be telling me if he knew what I know? Would he be giving me the same advice, or would it totally change his predictions and recommendations?’ And that mental exercise is so torturous that after a while you give it up and just stop listening. I’ve seen this with my superiors, my colleagues….and with myself."
“You will deal with a person who doesn’t have those clearances only from the point of view of what you want him to believe and what impression you want him to go away with, since you’ll have to lie carefully to him about what you know. In effect, you will have to manipulate him. You’ll give up trying to assess what he has to say. The danger is, you’ll become something like a moron. You’ll become incapable of learning from most people in the world, no matter how much experience they may have in their particular areas that may be much greater than yours.”
"….Kissinger hadn’t interrupted this long warning. As I’ve said, he could be a good listener, and he listened soberly. He seemed to understand that it was heartfelt, and he didn’t take it as patronizing, as I’d feared. But I knew it was too soon for him to appreciate fully what I was saying. He didn’t have the clearances yet."
David Haddad retweeted
1 million views in 4 hours is a record for me. Thank you all for sharing and commenting. I had a blast making this one, felt giddy and enjoyed every minute of it. Remember this is still scripted by me not ai, each video edit is still intentionally made by a human, the world was carefully constructed, researched and designed by me with ai tools but it’s not pressing a button. We see tons of AI automated slop “video” every day on these platforms so I appreciate people recognizing the human touch.
David Haddad retweeted
Losing gambler energy, can't walk away from the table. Boss is prepping the next war phase while America teeters on an Israel-First cliff. Skip the TED talk. Why not say this to your boss?
One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was "composition"—whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was merely OK, in other states it was downright amazing, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was a genuine sense of optimism on our team: our people were showing up.
So, I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we're going to shock the world? "No," he told me. "We might do better than the polls suggest. But the data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us."
Well, that looks prophetic now. Our voters did show up. In Florida, for example, the electorate was 9 points more Republican than Democrat, just a couple points worse than 2024. Undoubtedly there were places we could have done better on turnout. But the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026.
There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is. One of the pollsters I really respect told me that our economic messaging wasn’t sharp enough down the stretch. I’m sure that’s true.
But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone.
Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were:
1) End the war
2) Focus on cost of living/inflation
3) Put America First
4) Change our relationship to Israel
Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. This is according to a pollster who nailed the results. While many spent Monday attacking Rachel Campos Duffy for calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, it turns out her political advice was sound. (She’s also a great person.)
In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I'm open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you.
The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.
If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest.
But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.
I remain hopeful about our country. To the people who are pissed off and want to say, “I told you so”: you’re right, you did tell us so. Take that energy into electing Republicans who share your worldview. To the people who are just pissed at the results, you should be. Let’s take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.
David Haddad retweeted
ai makes 1 to n dramatically easier, but it doesn't make 0 to 1 proportionally easier. the latter requires all of the things that were required pre ai whereas with the former, you can ship ideas extremely quickly, sometimes within hours. this is not to say ai can't help you achieve pmf, obviously it does. i am just saying that it is not proportional.
what's also a new challenge with zero to one now is that whatever you do may also be simply copied very quickly with ai either by incumbents & competitors.
this is why there are now holding companies acquiring existing businesses at scale & transforming them to remove the countervailing force of org bureaucracy &/or lack of structural capability to leverage ai to transform the business.