More on Technology
CyberPunkMetalHead
3 years ago
I made ChatGPT copy itself.
OpenAI's ChatGPT is an amazing AI-powered chatbot. It can write poetry, stories, and marketing campaigns, and it's also adept at coding. ChatGPT's coding is so amazing that it replicated itself. What happened:
Me: Hi
Hello! Can I help? I'll answer any inquiries you have.
Me: Build a python and flask AI chatbot that responds to user messages on the frontend.
CGPT:
from flask import Flask, request, jsonify
import openai
openai.api_key = "YOUR_API_KEY"
@app.route('/chatbot', methods=['POST'])
def chatbot():
user_message = request.get_json()['message']
response = chatbot_response(user_message)
return jsonify({'response': response})
def chatbot_response(user_message):
response = openai.Completion.create(
engine="text-davinci-002",
prompt=user_message,
max_tokens=1024,
n = 1,
temperature=0.5
)
return response['choices'][0]['text']
if __name__ == '__main__':
app.run()To integrate a chatbot with a frontend, use Flask to serve an HTML page with a form for user messages and the chatbot's answer. AJAX can submit the form to the /chatbot route, and JavaScript can show the chatbot's response.
I imported code snippets at the top of the file.
Let's add a frontend interface, I said.
CGPT:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>AI Chatbot</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>AI Chatbot</h1>
<form id="chatbot-form">
<label for="message">Message:</label><br>
<input type="text" id="message" name="message"><br>
<input type="submit" value="Submit">
</form>
<div id="chatbot-response"></div>
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.5.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script>
$(document).ready(function() {
$("#chatbot-form").submit(function(e) {
e.preventDefault();
var userMessage = $("#message").val();
$.ajax({
type: "POST",
url: "/chatbot",
data: JSON.stringify({message: userMessage}),
contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
dataType: "json",
success: function(response) {
$("#chatbot-response").text(response.response);
}
});
});
});
</script>
</body>
</html>To serve this HTML page using Flask, build a new route that returns the page as a GET response.
So far, so good.
Looked quite basic so I got chatGPT to add some tailwind to the project.
Me: Tailwind the chatbot.html page, please. Give it a futuristic style with purple and neon
After a few more prompts, Talk GPT aligned the form to the center, changed some colors, and added padding.
CGPT:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>AI Chatbot</title>
<link href="https://unpkg.com/tailwindcss@^1.0/dist/tailwind.min.css" rel="stylesheet">
</head>
<body class="bg-black flex flex-col justify-center items-center">
<h1 class="sm:text-center text-purple-500">AI Chatbot</h1>
<form id="chatbot-form" class="border-purple-500 bg-purple-800 rounded">
<label for="message">Message:</label><br>
<input type="text" id="message" name="message" class="min-w-30 rounded"><br>
<input type="submit" value="Submit" class="bg-purple-500 border-red-500 transform hover:scale-110 rounded">
</form>
<div class="flex justify-center">
<div id="chatbot-response" class="text-white rounded"></div>
</div>
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.5.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script>
var colors = ['red', 'orange', 'yellow', 'green', 'blue', 'indigo', 'violet'];
var colorIndex = 0;
$(document).ready(function() {
setInterval(function() {
$("#chatbot-form").css('border-color', colors[colorIndex]);
colorIndex = (colorIndex + 1) % colors.length;
}, 1000);
$("#chatbot-form").submit(function(e) {
e.preventDefault();
var userMessage = $("#message").val();
$.ajax({
type: "POST",
url: "/chatbot",
data: JSON.stringify({message: userMessage}),
contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
dataType: "json",
success: function(response) {
$("#chatbot-response").text(response.response);
}
});
});
});
</script>
</body>
</html>Improved:
A few more prompts like “Add more vertical and horizontal padding to the submit button and vertical margin, and vertically align this file's body.”
The result:
Is it effective? Now, I'll chat with ChatGPT's AI Chatbot. I intervened minimally throughout construction. Chat GPT created numerous files, connected and interacted with its own API, and presented the user request response on the front end by itself.
Me to AI Chatbot: Hey, can you give me 6 name suggestions for a black horse?
Me to AI Chatbot: Write a poem in the style of Jim Morrison. Make sure to mention cacti and black holes
ChatGPTs Chatbot:
In the desert night, I am confronted by cacti,
Their arms reaching out, As if to grab me and take me away.
The stars in the sky, Beckon me to come,
To a world of black holes, Where I can be free.
I am in a trance, My body and mind,
In a state of limbo, As I wander the night.
I hear a voice, Calling me to the unknown,
I cannot resist, The lure of the black hole.
The cacti watch, As I take my leave,
To a place of mystery, Where I can find peace.
Of course, the next question I gave it was to build a chatbot!
Me: Build a python and flask AI chatbot that responds to user messages on the frontend.
ChatbotGPTs:
import os from flask
import Flask, request, jsonify
from chatterbot
import ChatBot
from chatterbot.trainers
import ListTrainer
# Create a new chatbot
bot = ChatBot(
"My Bot",
storage_adapter="chatterbot.storage.SQLStorageAdapter",
logic_adapters=[
"chatterbot.logic.BestMatch",
{ "import_path": "chatterbot.logic.BestMatch",
"statement_comparison_function": "chatterbot.comparisons.levenshtein_distance",
"response_selection_method": "chatterbot.response_selection.get_first_response" }
],
database_uri="sqlite:///database.sqlite3" )
# Train the chatbot with a few sample conversations
conversation = [ "Hello", "Hi there!", "How are you doing?", "I'm doing great.", "That is good to hear", "Thank you.", "You're welcome." ]
trainer = ListTrainer(bot) trainer.train(conversation)
# Create a Flask app
app = Flask(__name__)
# Define a route for the default URL
@app.route("/") def index(): return "<h1>Chatbot</h1>"
# Define a route for the /get_response URL
@app.route("/get_response", methods=["POST"])
def get_response():
# Get the user's message
user_message = request.form["user_message"]
# Get the bot's response
bot_response = bot.get_response(user_message)
# Return the bot's response
return str(bot_response)
# Run the Flask
app if __name__ == "__main__": app.run()No matter how many times I tried, the second generation always used chatterbot instead of the ChatGPT API. Even when I told it to use the ChatGPT API, it didn't.
ChatGTP's ability to reproduce or construct other machine learning algorithms is interesting and possibly terrifying. Nothing prevents ChatGPT from replicating itself ad infinitum throughout the Internet other than a lack of desire. This may be the first time a machine repeats itself, so I've preserved the project as a reference. Adding a requirements.txt file and python env for easier deployment is the only change to the code.
I hope you enjoyed this.
James Brockbank
3 years ago
Canonical URLs for Beginners
Canonicalization and canonical URLs are essential for SEO, and improper implementation can negatively impact your site's performance.
Canonical tags were introduced in 2009 to help webmasters with duplicate or similar content on multiple URLs.
To use canonical tags properly, you must understand their purpose, operation, and implementation.
Canonical URLs and Tags
Canonical tags tell search engines that a certain URL is a page's master copy. They specify a page's canonical URL. Webmasters can avoid duplicate content by linking to the "canonical" or "preferred" version of a page.
How are canonical tags and URLs different? Can these be specified differently?
Tags
Canonical tags are found in an HTML page's head></head> section.
<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.website.com/page/" />These can be self-referencing or reference another page's URL to consolidate signals.
Canonical tags and URLs are often used interchangeably, which is incorrect.
The rel="canonical" tag is the most common way to set canonical URLs, but it's not the only way.
Canonical URLs
What's a canonical link? Canonical link is the'master' URL for duplicate pages.
In Google's own words:
A canonical URL is the page Google thinks is most representative of duplicate pages on your site.
— Google Search Console Help
You can indicate your preferred canonical URL. For various reasons, Google may choose a different page than you.
When set correctly, the canonical URL is usually your specified URL.
Canonical URLs determine which page will be shown in search results (unless a duplicate is explicitly better for a user, like a mobile version).
Canonical URLs can be on different domains.
Other ways to specify canonical URLs
Canonical tags are the most common way to specify a canonical URL.
You can also set canonicals by:
Setting the HTTP header rel=canonical.
All pages listed in a sitemap are suggested as canonicals, but Google decides which pages are duplicates.
Redirects 301.
Google recommends these methods, but they aren't all appropriate for every situation, as we'll see below. Each has its own recommended uses.
Setting canonical URLs isn't required; if you don't, Google will use other signals to determine the best page version.
To control how your site appears in search engines and to avoid duplicate content issues, you should use canonicalization effectively.
Why Duplicate Content Exists
Before we discuss why you should use canonical URLs and how to specify them in popular CMSs, we must first explain why duplicate content exists. Nobody intentionally duplicates website content.
Content management systems create multiple URLs when you launch a page, have indexable versions of your site, or use dynamic URLs.
Assume the following URLs display the same content to a user:
A search engine sees eight duplicate pages, not one.
URLs #1 and #2: the CMS saves product URLs with and without the category name.
#3, #4, and #5 result from the site being accessible via HTTP, HTTPS, www, and non-www.
#6 is a subdomain mobile-friendly URL.
URL #7 lacks URL #2's trailing slash.
URL #8 uses a capital "A" instead of a lowercase one.
Duplicate content may also exist in URLs like:
https://www.website.com
https://www.website.com/index.php
Duplicate content is easy to create.
Canonical URLs help search engines identify different page variations as a single URL on many sites.
SEO Canonical URLs
Canonical URLs help you manage duplicate content that could affect site performance.
Canonical URLs are a technical SEO focus area for many reasons.
Specify URL for search results
When you set a canonical URL, you tell Google which page version to display.
Which would you click?
https://www.domain.com/page-1/
https://www.domain.com/index.php?id=2
First, probably.
Canonicals tell search engines which URL to rank.
Consolidate link signals on similar pages
When you have duplicate or nearly identical pages on your site, the URLs may get external links.
Canonical URLs consolidate multiple pages' link signals into a single URL.
This helps your site rank because signals from multiple URLs are consolidated into one.
Syndication management
Content is often syndicated to reach new audiences.
Canonical URLs consolidate ranking signals to prevent duplicate pages from ranking and ensure the original content ranks.
Avoid Googlebot duplicate page crawling
Canonical URLs ensure that Googlebot crawls your new pages rather than duplicated versions of the same one across mobile and desktop versions, for example.
Crawl budgets aren't an issue for most sites unless they have 100,000+ pages.
How to Correctly Implement the rel=canonical Tag
Using the header tag rel="canonical" is the most common way to specify canonical URLs.
Adding tags and HTML code may seem daunting if you're not a developer, but most CMS platforms allow canonicals out-of-the-box.
These URLs each have one product.
How to Correctly Implement a rel="canonical" HTTP Header
A rel="canonical" HTTP header can replace canonical tags.
This is how to implement a canonical URL for PDFs or non-HTML documents.
You can specify a canonical URL in your site's.htaccess file using the code below.
<Files "file-to-canonicalize.pdf"> Header add Link "< http://www.website.com/canonical-page/>; rel=\"canonical\"" </Files>301 redirects for canonical URLs
Google says 301 redirects can specify canonical URLs.
Only the canonical URL will exist if you use 301 redirects. This will redirect duplicates.
This is the best way to fix duplicate content across:
HTTPS and HTTP
Non-WWW and WWW
Trailing-Slash and Non-Trailing Slash URLs
On a single page, you should use canonical tags unless you can confidently delete and redirect the page.
Sitemaps' canonical URLs
Google assumes sitemap URLs are canonical, so don't include non-canonical URLs.
This does not guarantee canonical URLs, but is a best practice for sitemaps.
Best-practice Canonical Tag
Once you understand a few simple best practices for canonical tags, spotting and cleaning up duplicate content becomes much easier.
Always include:
One canonical URL per page
If you specify multiple canonical URLs per page, they will likely be ignored.
Correct Domain Protocol
If your site uses HTTPS, use this as the canonical URL. It's easy to reference the wrong protocol, so check for it to catch it early.
Trailing slash or non-trailing slash URLs
Be sure to include trailing slashes in your canonical URL if your site uses them.
Specify URLs other than WWW
Search engines see non-WWW and WWW URLs as duplicate pages, so use the correct one.
Absolute URLs
To ensure proper interpretation, canonical tags should use absolute URLs.
So use:
<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.website.com/page-a/" />And not:
<link rel="canonical" href="/page-a/" />If not canonicalizing, use self-referential canonical URLs.
When a page isn't canonicalizing to another URL, use self-referencing canonical URLs.
Canonical tags refer to themselves here.
Common Canonical Tags Mistakes
Here are some common canonical tag mistakes.
301 Canonicalization
Set the canonical URL as the redirect target, not a redirected URL.
Incorrect Domain Canonicalization
If your site uses HTTPS, don't set canonical URLs to HTTP.
Irrelevant Canonicalization
Canonicalize URLs to duplicate or near-identical content only.
SEOs sometimes try to pass link signals via canonical tags from unrelated content to increase rank. This isn't how canonicalization should be used and should be avoided.
Multiple Canonical URLs
Only use one canonical tag or URL per page; otherwise, they may all be ignored.
When overriding defaults in some CMSs, you may accidentally include two canonical tags in your page's <head>.
Pagination vs. Canonicalization
Incorrect pagination can cause duplicate content. Canonicalizing URLs to the first page isn't always the best solution.
Canonicalize to a 'view all' page.
How to Audit Canonical Tags (and Fix Issues)
Audit your site's canonical tags to find canonicalization issues.
SEMrush Site Audit can help. You'll find canonical tag checks in your website's site audit report.
Let's examine these issues and their solutions.
No Canonical Tag on AMP
Site Audit will flag AMP pages without canonical tags.
Canonicalization between AMP and non-AMP pages is important.
Add a rel="canonical" tag to each AMP page's head>.
No HTTPS redirect or canonical from HTTP homepage
Duplicate content issues will be flagged in the Site Audit if your site is accessible via HTTPS and HTTP.
You can fix this by 301 redirecting or adding a canonical tag to HTTP pages that references HTTPS.
Broken canonical links
Broken canonical links won't be considered canonical URLs.
This error could mean your canonical links point to non-existent pages, complicating crawling and indexing.
Update broken canonical links to the correct URLs.
Multiple canonical URLs
This error occurs when a page has multiple canonical URLs.
Remove duplicate tags and leave one.
Canonicalization is a key SEO concept, and using it incorrectly can hurt your site's performance.
Once you understand how it works, what it does, and how to find and fix issues, you can use it effectively to remove duplicate content from your site.
Canonicalization SEO Myths
Sukhad Anand
3 years ago
How Do Discord's Trillions Of Messages Get Indexed?
They depend heavily on open source..
Discord users send billions of messages daily. Users wish to search these messages. How do we index these to search by message keywords?
Let’s find out.
Discord utilizes Elasticsearch. Elasticsearch is a free, open search engine for textual, numerical, geographical, structured, and unstructured data. Apache Lucene powers Elasticsearch.
How does elastic search store data? It stores it as numerous key-value pairs in JSON documents.
How does elastic search index? Elastic search's index is inverted. An inverted index lists every unique word in every page and where it appears.
4. Elasticsearch indexes documents and generates an inverted index to make data searchable in near real-time. The index API adds or updates JSON documents in a given index.
Let's examine how discord uses Elastic Search. Elasticsearch prefers bulk indexing. Discord couldn't index real-time messages. You can't search posted messages. You want outdated messages.
6. Let's check what bulk indexing requires.
1. A temporary queue for incoming communications.
2. Indexer workers that index messages into elastic search.
Discord's queue is Celery. The queue is open-source. Elastic search won't run on a single server. It's clustered. Where should a message go? Where?
8. A shard allocator decides where to put the message. Nevertheless. Shattered? A shard combines elastic search and index on. So, these two form a shard which is used as a unit by discord. The elastic search itself has some shards. But this is different, so don’t get confused.
Now, the final part is service discovery — to discover the elastic search clusters and the hosts within that cluster. This, they do with the help of etcd another open source tool.
A great thing to notice here is that discord relies heavily on open source systems and their base implementations which is very different from a lot of other products.
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Tim Denning
3 years ago
Elon Musk’s Rich Life Is a Nightmare
I'm sure you haven't read about Elon's other side.
Elon divorced badly.
Nobody's surprised.
Imagine you're a parent. Someone isn't home year-round. What's next?
That’s what happened to YOLO Elon.
He can do anything. He can intervene in wars, shoot his mouth off, bang anyone he wants, avoid tax, make cool tech, buy anything his ego desires, and live anywhere exotic.
Few know his billionaire backstory. I'll tell you so you don't worship his lifestyle. It’s a cult.
Only his career succeeds. His life is a nightmare otherwise.
Psychopaths' schedule
Elon has said he works 120-hour weeks.
As he told the reporter about his job, he choked up, which was unusual for him.
His crazy workload and lack of sleep forced him to scold innocent Wall Street analysts. Later, he apologized.
In the same interview, he admits he hadn't taken more than a week off since 2001, when he was bedridden with malaria. Elon stays home after a near-death experience.
He's rarely outside.
Elon says he sometimes works 3 or 4 days straight.
He admits his crazy work schedule has cost him time with his kids and friends.
Elon's a slave
Elon's birthday description made him emotional.
Elon worked his entire birthday.
"No friends, nothing," he said, stuttering.
His brother's wedding in Catalonia was 48 hours after his birthday. That meant flying there from Tesla's factory prison.
He arrived two hours before the big moment, barely enough time to eat and change, let alone see his brother.
Elon had to leave after the bouquet was tossed to a crowd of billionaire lovers. He missed his brother's first dance with his wife.
Shocking.
He went straight to Tesla's prison.
The looming health crisis
Elon was asked if overworking affected his health.
Not great. Friends are worried.
Now you know why Elon tweets dumb things. Working so hard has probably caused him mental health issues.
Mental illness removed my reality filter. You do stupid things because you're tired.
Astronauts pelted Elon
Elon's overwork isn't the first time his life has made him emotional.
When asked about Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan criticizing his SpaceX missions, he got emotional. Elon's heroes.
They're why he started the company, and they mocked his work. In another interview, we see how Elon’s business obsession has knifed him in the heart.
Once you have a company, you must feed, nurse, and care for it, even if it destroys you.
"Yep," Elon says, tearing up.
In the same interview, he's asked how Tesla survived the 2008 recession. Elon stopped the interview because he was crying. When Tesla and SpaceX filed for bankruptcy in 2008, he nearly had a nervous breakdown. He called them his "children."
All the time, he's risking everything.
Jack Raines explains best:
Too much money makes you a slave to your net worth.
Elon's emotions are admirable. It's one of the few times he seems human, not like an alien Cyborg.
Stop idealizing Elon's lifestyle
Building a side business that becomes a billion-dollar unicorn startup is a nightmare.
"Billionaire" means financially wealthy but otherwise broke. A rich life includes more than business and money.
This post is a summary. Read full article here
Caspar Mahoney
2 years ago
Changing Your Mindset From a Project to a Product
Product game mindsets? How do these vary from Project mindset?
1950s spawned the Iron Triangle. Project people everywhere know and live by it. In stakeholder meetings, it is used to stretch the timeframe, request additional money, or reduce scope.
Quality was added to this triangle as things matured.
Quality was intended to be transformative, but none of these principles addressed why we conduct projects.
Value and benefits are key.
Product value is quantified by ROI, revenue, profit, savings, or other metrics. For me, every project or product delivery is about value.
Most project managers, especially those schooled 5-10 years or more ago (thousands working in huge corporations worldwide), understand the world in terms of the iron triangle. What does that imply? They worry about:
a) enough time to get the thing done.
b) have enough resources (budget) to get the thing done.
c) have enough scope to fit within (a) and (b) >> note, they never have too little scope, not that I have ever seen! although, theoretically, this could happen.
Boom—iron triangle.
To make the triangle function, project managers will utilize formal governance (Steering) to move those things. Increase money, scope, or both if time is short. Lacking funds? Increase time, scope, or both.
In current product development, shifting each item considerably may not yield value/benefit.
Even terrible. This approach will fail because it deprioritizes Value/Benefit by focusing the major stakeholders (Steering participants) and delivery team(s) on Time, Scope, and Budget restrictions.
Pre-agile, this problem was terrible. IT projects failed wildly. History is here.
Value, or benefit, is central to the product method. Product managers spend most of their time planning value-delivery paths.
Product people consider risk, schedules, scope, and budget, but value comes first. Let me illustrate.
Imagine managing internal products in an enterprise. Your core customer team needs a rapid text record of a chat to fix a problem. The consumer wants a feature/features added to a product you're producing because they think it's the greatest spot.
Project-minded, I may say;
Ok, I have budget as this is an existing project, due to run for a year. This is a new requirement to add to the features we’re already building. I think I can keep the deadline, and include this scope, as it sounds related to the feature set we’re building to give the desired result”.
This attitude repeats Scope, Time, and Budget.
Since it meets those standards, a project manager will likely approve it. If they have a backlog, they may add it and start specking it out assuming it will be built.
Instead, think like a product;
What problem does this feature idea solve? Is that problem relevant to the product I am building? Can that problem be solved quicker/better via another route ? Is it the most valuable problem to solve now? Is the problem space aligned to our current or future strategy? or do I need to alter/update the strategy?
A product mindset allows you to focus on timing, resource/cost, feasibility, feature detail, and so on after answering the aforementioned questions.
The above oversimplifies because
Leadership in discovery
Project managers are facilitators of ideas. This is as far as they normally go in the ‘idea’ space.
Business Requirements collection in classic project delivery requires extensive upfront documentation.
Agile project delivery analyzes requirements iteratively.
However, the project manager is a facilitator/planner first and foremost, therefore topic knowledge is not expected.
I mean business domain, not technical domain (to confuse matters, it is true that in some instances, it can be both technical and business domains that are important for a single individual to master).
Product managers are domain experts. They will become one if they are training/new.
They lead discovery.
Product Manager-led discovery is much more than requirements gathering.
Requirements gathering involves a Business Analyst interviewing people and documenting their requests.
The project manager calculates what fits and what doesn't using their Iron Triangle (presumably in their head) and reports back to Steering.
If this requirements-gathering exercise failed to identify requirements, what would a project manager do? or bewildered by project requirements and scope?
They would tell Steering they need a Business SME or Business Lead assigning or more of their time.
Product discovery requires the Product Manager's subject knowledge and a new mindset.
How should a Product Manager handle confusing requirements?
Product Managers handle these challenges with their talents and tools. They use their own knowledge to fill in ambiguity, but they have the discipline to validate those assumptions.
To define the problem, they may perform qualitative or quantitative primary research.
They might discuss with UX and Engineering on a whiteboard and test assumptions or hypotheses.
Do Product Managers escalate confusing requirements to Steering/Senior leaders? They would fix that themselves.
Product managers raise unclear strategy and outcomes to senior stakeholders. Open talks, soft skills, and data help them do this. They rarely raise requirements since they have their own means of handling them without top stakeholder participation.
Discovery is greenfield, exploratory, research-based, and needs higher-order stakeholder management, user research, and UX expertise.
Product Managers also aid discovery. They lead discovery. They will not leave customer/user engagement to a Business Analyst. Administratively, a business analyst could aid. In fact, many product organizations discourage business analysts (rely on PM, UX, and engineer involvement with end-users instead).
The Product Manager must drive user interaction, research, ideation, and problem analysis, therefore a Product professional must be skilled and confident.
Creating vs. receiving and having an entrepreneurial attitude
Product novices and project managers focus on details rather than the big picture. Project managers prefer spreadsheets to strategy whiteboards and vision statements.
These folks ask their manager or senior stakeholders, "What should we do?"
They then elaborate (in Jira, in XLS, in Confluence or whatever).
They want that plan populated fast because it reduces uncertainty about what's going on and who's supposed to do what.
Skilled Product Managers don't only ask folks Should we?
They're suggesting this, or worse, Senior stakeholders, here are some options. After asking and researching, they determine what value this product adds, what problems it solves, and what behavior it changes.
Therefore, to move into Product, you need to broaden your view and have courage in your ability to discover ideas, find insightful pieces of information, and collate them to form a valuable plan of action. You are constantly defining RoI and building Business Cases, so much so that you no longer create documents called Business Cases, it is simply ingrained in your work through metrics, intelligence, and insights.
Product Management is not a free lunch.
Plateless.
Plates and food must be prepared.
In conclusion, Product Managers must make at least three mentality shifts:
You put value first in all things. Time, money, and scope are not as important as knowing what is valuable.
You have faith in the field and have the ability to direct the search. YYou facilitate, but you don’t just facilitate. You wouldn't want to limit your domain expertise in that manner.
You develop concepts, strategies, and vision. You are not a waiter or an inbox where other people can post suggestions; you don't merely ask folks for opinion and record it. However, you excel at giving things that aren't clearly spoken or written down physical form.
Hunter Walk
2 years ago
Is it bad of me to want our portfolio companies to generate greater returns for outside investors than they did for us as venture capitalists?
Wishing for Lasting Companies, Not Penny Stocks or Goodwill Write-Downs
Get me a NASCAR-style company-logoed cremation urn (notice to the executor of my will, theres gonna be a lot of weird requests). I believe in working on projects that would be on your tombstone. As the Homebrew logo is tattooed on my shoulder, expanding the portfolio to my posthumous commemoration is easy. But this isn't an IRR victory lap; it's a hope that the firms we worked for would last beyond my lifetime.
![a little boy planting a dollar bill in the ground and pouring a watering can out on it, digital art [DALL-E]](https://storage.googleapis.com/int3grity/posts/V62hkReDx56S/images/vMwzqrYeXaYnUIMXAdTY9)
Venture investors too often take credit or distance themselves from startups based on circumstances. Successful companies tell stories of crucial introductions, strategy conversations, and other value. Defeats Even whether our term involves Board service or systematic ethical violations, I'm just a little investment, so there's not much I can do. Since I'm guilty, I'm tossing stones from within the glass home (although we try to own our decisions through the lifecycle).
Post-exit company trajectories are usually unconfounded. Off the cap table, no longer a shareholder (or a diminishing one as you sell off/distribute), eventually leaving the Board. You can cheer for the squad or forget about it, but you've freed the corporation and it's back to portfolio work.
As I look at the downward track of most SPACs and other tarnished IPOs from the last few years, I wonder how I would feel if those were my legacy. Is my job done? Yes. When investing in a business, the odds are against it surviving, let alone thriving and being able to find sunlight. SPAC sponsors, institutional buyers, retail investments. Free trade in an open market is their right. Risking and losing capital is the system working! But
We were lead or co-lead investors in our first three funds, but as additional VCs joined the company, we were pushed down the cap table. Voting your shares rarely matters; supporting the firm when they need it does. Being valuable, consistent, and helping the company improve builds trust with the founders.
I hope every startup we sponsor becomes a successful public company before, during, and after we benefit. My perspective of American capitalism. Well, a stock ticker has a lot of garbage, and I support all types of regulation simplification (in addition to being a person investor in the Long-Term Stock Exchange). Yet being owned by a large group of investors and making actual gains for them is great. Likewise does seeing someone you met when they were just starting out become a public company CEO without losing their voice, leadership, or beliefs.
I'm just thinking about what we can do from the start to realize value from our investments and build companies with bright futures. Maybe seed venture financing shouldn't impact those outcomes, but I'm not comfortable giving up that obligation.