Ken Tokusei

The newest issue of The Pragmatic Engineer found a surprise uptick in eng hiring in the typically slow summer season - I'm curious to see how the macro environment impacts this uptick as we head into the fall, but I remain hopeful. I asked Gemini to give me the tldr of the article to share with my team (sorry, Gergely Orosz) and found it missed one of the most interesting pieces of the article. Gemini's highlights - Unexpected surge: Tech recruitment has seen an unusual spike in June and July, contrary to typical trends. Increased demand: Startups, especially AI-focused ones, are driving the hiring uptick. Global phenomenon: This trend isn't just limited to the US; Europe is also experiencing increased recruitment activity. Reasons for hiring: Companies are backfilling positions, investing in growth due to improved financials, and responding to increased VC funding. Challenges remain: While the job market is improving, finding qualified candidates and offering competitive compensation remains difficult for many companies. What I found most interesting - The nature of the backfills: the article finds that a lot of new headcount are actually backfills of folks that were "over-slashed" during rounds of layoffs. Not entirely surprising with the "trim the fat" and "rebuild lean" mentality, but interesting nonetheless. Either way, the uptick is encouraging (and don't always rely on Gemini's tldrs). #hiring #startups #VCbacked #softwareengineering

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Our story began with a simple idea: to help developers grow. Over the years, this idea evolved into something bigger. We believe location shouldn't be a barrier. Back in 2014, we built Codementor to give developers 1:1 mentorship. We moved from Taiwan to Seattle to join Techstars and bring our vision to life. This was just the beginning. Here's what happened next: → 2017: Codementor grew into a marketplace for freelance developers. → 2019: We created Arc to help developers land full-time remote jobs. → 2023: We introduced HireAI to make hiring developers easier. → 2024: We added designers and marketers to Arc by popular demand. Helping people build careers from anywhere drives us. From a small mentorship platform for developers to a big marketplace now supporting other tech roles, our journey shows what can happen when you care deeply about something. Changing people's lives. We're excited to keep going and see what's next.

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I recently chatted with CJ Sun from Finding Signal about CoffeeSpace, our platform designed to help people exploring ideas and looking for a cofounder to get their ideas off the ground. In the interview, I shared the story behind our inception, the challenges we faced, and valuable lessons I’ve learned along the way—from startup essentials to career growth insights. We also covered key topics like: - Persevering through curveballs - Tips for finding the right co-founder - Emerging trends in entrepreneurship Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur or simply looking to grow in your career, there’s something here for everyone! Check out the full interview for more insights. 👇 #CoffeeSpace #FindingSignal #startups #cofounder #careergrowth

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Workplace retrospective by ChatGPT 4o (image by DALL-E) **Why Workplace by Meta Didn't Need to Die and Could Have Succeeded** Workplace by Meta, previously known as Facebook Workplace, was an innovative enterprise communication tool that aimed to transform the way organizations collaborate. While its journey ended prematurely, several factors suggest that Workplace had the potential to thrive and become a staple in corporate environments. Here’s why Workplace by Meta didn’t need to die and how it could have succeeded: ### 1. **Strong Foundation and Brand Recognition** Workplace leveraged Facebook's familiar interface, making it easy for users to adopt. The user-friendly design reduced the learning curve, encouraging quick integration into daily workflows. Meta’s brand recognition and vast resources provided a solid foundation for Workplace to build upon. ### 2. **Comprehensive Feature Set** Workplace offered a rich suite of features tailored for business communication, including groups, chat, video calls, and news feeds. These features facilitated seamless collaboration, knowledge sharing, and team engagement, addressing the diverse needs of modern workplaces. ### 3. **Integration Capabilities** Workplace integrated well with other essential business tools and services, such as Office 365, Google Workspace, and various project management platforms. This interoperability could have driven widespread adoption, allowing companies to maintain their existing workflows while enhancing communication through Workplace. ### 4. **Remote Work Relevance** The COVID-19 pandemic underscored the importance of effective remote communication tools. Workplace was well-positioned to capitalize on the shift to remote and hybrid work models, offering features that supported virtual collaboration and kept employees connected regardless of their physical location. ### 5. **Focus on Community Building** Workplace fostered a sense of community within organizations, promoting culture and engagement through features like Groups and Live Video. These tools enabled employees to share updates, celebrate milestones, and engage in informal conversations, crucial for maintaining morale and team cohesion in distributed teams. ### 6. **Security and Compliance** Workplace by Meta prioritized security and compliance, essential for enterprise-grade communication platforms. Its robust security measures and adherence to industry standards made it a trustworthy option for businesses concerned about data privacy and protection. ### 7. **Potential for AI and Innovation** Meta’s expertise in artificial intelligence could have been leveraged to enhance Workplace’s functionality. AI-driven features like smart scheduling, predictive analytics, and automated workflows could have differentiated Workplace from competitors, offering cutting-edge solutions to common business challenges. (Continued in comment)

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What's going to happen to NVIDIA now that they've reached 3tn market cap? For the current employees and long timers... I've read stories of mid-level engineers who reportedly earned more than $60M via stock appreciation. Imagine the numbers for the more senior folks. How will NVIDIA keep folks around who are post-economic? And for all the new folks... The value proposition is complex. The company is the most valuable (by market cap) in the world. If they are heavily compensated via RSUs, the assumption is that there is significant remaining upside to be gained. It's incredibly difficult to continue orders of magnitude stock appreciation after reaching the absolute zenith... NVIDIA is an obvious tech darling - it looks and feels like a version of Google in the mid to late 2000's - but I'm really interested to see if the immense financial success of the stock will end up driving out the core talent group (eg, the long timers who are now mega rich) while also limiting access to new upstart talent who don't see a path to outsize financial success. Curious what others think!!

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Great time speaking about my journey at WisePass with Robert Huynh from Reforged Labs (YC W22) Thanks Diep T. for inviting me to share my journey with Shirley Pham from HEX A few questions I recall to think about was What's the big recent trend that may have an impact on the world I remember that Robert answered AI. I had to respond after him so I replied that demography will have a profound impact in the 21st century. It's hilarious that we were talking about overpopulation in the 90's and here we are looking at several countries looking at their population shrinking instead these days. I have no idea how the world will look like 20 years from now but this trend will definitely change the world. Diversity and Inclusion My answer on that one was from experience. It's important to ensure enough diversity like gender or nationality. I took a controversial take on that as I stated that these studies were mostly from the Western world years ago. It's necessary first to not apply blindly some research done from overseas thinking it would just yield better results automatically. My take last week was focused on answering how it's necessary that diversity shouldn't supersede traditional factors like competence, attitude and emotional intelligence. You don't want to promote diversity and neglect the fundamental reasons why a manager is promoted to such a position. They're promoted because they're good and diversity can become a second factor. The ethics of using AI when you hire people A question was asked about how AI is now being used to filter out CVs. The question was about how fair it would be for candidates to be judged by an AI. My answer was to simply question back how we're doing things today and can it be more fair to use an AI that will be more neutral and can look at numbers extensively from the selection, onboarding, integration, and offboarding? Final word for the young founders The key message was mostly to really ask each founder what makes them feel alive. Reflecting on that aspect is key as it will be the core driving all the decisions as a founder eventually. Everyone will be driven by different things, that's why knowing yourself is critical. Entrepreneurship is a rough journey and having a strong core will enable you to overcome these challenges.

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The Stoke Space team in Seattle has built a rocket company faster than many people can build software. Morgan Beller breaks down how this is helping them capture a huge opportunity: https://lnkd.in/gc5jv2-c 

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Everyone's talking about “founder mode,” but as it gains traction, founders will start using it as an excuse for poor management. Founder mode isn’t a license to run a company at 5,000 the same way you ran it at 5. Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, exemplifies what I like to call “scaled founder mode”. Scaled founder mode is being highly involved in the most important things, that only you can do to drive the company forward. Nvidia is one of the most successful tech companies in the world, with a $3 trillion market cap. And Huang, with a 31+ year tenure, is the longest-serving CEO in the industry. He’s a highly effective manager. And he’s still very much in founder mode. When interviewed by Stripe's Patrick Collison, Huang said “CEOs are pinch hitters. We should be working on the things that nobody else can or nobody else is.” Nvidia’s leadership team of 60 reports directly to Huang. But he doesn’t do 1:1s. This way, the team of 60 is relatively flat, with no silos and no privileged access to information. Not saying that killing 1:1s is the answer to speedy execution. But Nvidia found that this way, everyone contributes to solving problems with equal access to important info. And because Huang sees his primary role as being a custodian of the culture, he eats in the cafeteria with employees every single day. At almost 30k employees, you can’t get much more “in the details” than that.

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Last week Asian founders did... 🚀 Ka Ling Wu launched Upsolve AI (YC W24), a platform to build and deliver analytics to your end-users via embeddable dashboards. 🚀 Sahitya S. launched Endeavor, an OS for manufacturers to automate key workflows across sales, inventory, and supply chain. 🚀 Kevin Yang launched Serif.ai, an AI email assistant that writes context-informed emails in your personal voice. 🚀 Vishnu Sridhar launched Matter Intelligence, developing advanced sensors to capture extreme-resolution images of natural and artificial materials from space to surface. 💸 David Shim raised a $50M Series B for Read AI, an AI copilot for wherever you work, making your meetings, emails, and messages more productive with summaries, content discovery, and recommendations. 💸 Kevin H. raised an $800k Pre-seed round for EQ Exchange (EQX), a crypto exchange practicing radical transparency by publicly disclosing all financials in real-time, both on-chain and off-chain. 💸 Pranav Ravella raised an $8.7M Seed round for Sapien, a platform to create autonomous coworkers for finance professionals. 💸 Alex Yeh raised an $82M Series A for GMI Cloud, an AI infrastructure company providing GPUs and a platform to optimize inference and fine-tuning.🎙️ Arvind Jain, co-founder of Glean, talks about Glean's enterprise search product and the future direction of the company with Sequoia Capital 🎙️ Akhil Ramaswamy, wrote a substack article about approaches to defensibility for AI agents Links for the last two in the comments ⬇️

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Occasionally, our investors ask for my perspective on potential investments, and recently, I had the opportunity to meet two early-stage AI Commerce-focused companies. I always enjoy meeting fellow entrepreneurs; it's great to swap ideas and collaborate on new products. Both companies I met are focused on pioneering AI to enhance personalized shopping experiences. Imagine advanced AI-driven search, tailored recommendations, and AI-customized product detail pages. This technology isn't just cool; it's transformative. AI is set to revolutionize how we craft customer experiences and drive sales. Though we're just scratching the surface, the potential to reshape the industry is undeniable. In discussions with Umer Sadiq, we discussed what it would take for these technologies to drive impact at scale. Umer highlighted the significant, cascading effects AI-powered experiences will have on underlying platforms. Delivering a nearly unlimited combination of personalized product and shopping combinations, alongside targeted pricing and promotions with ATP inventory, requires a modern, cloud-scale platform. Lucky for us, that is what we built at fabric! We had the opportunity to build a state-of-the-art, enterprise-class platform that unifies all the core commerce capabilities (product, price, promo, inventory, orders).  This approach reduces complexity, enhances business agility, and leverages cutting-edge cloud technologies for efficient scaling. Particularly in terms of AI, our platform provides a unified set of services and data coupled with lightning-fast performance. This allows AI to orchestrate and deliver on the promise of highly personalized and nearly unlimited combinations of product+price+promotion to drive results. At fabric, AI is our top R&D priority, and we have a deep pipeline of projects in collaboration with our design partners. This is an exciting time to be in the space; in parallel, we want to see a vibrant ecosystem of commerce AI solutions emerge that push our industry forward and flex platforms like fabric to deliver the next level of business results. These solutions will benefit consumers and brands and usher in the next wave of Commerce.  Welcome to CommerceLand. It will be powered by AI and fabric (of course.)

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Google and Samsung held an event in Manhattan today. I'm going to mostly let the event speak for itself through press coverage. I'm under NDA with both Google and Samsung Korea. So I'll simply say this: This is Google's opportunity to win or lose. Google has the opportunity now. Microsoft had it and lost it, due to AI distractions. Microsoft will probably regret giving up the XR device market. Apple's walled garden is closed. It is Apple after all. The opportunity for an open XR ecosystem to contrast with Apple, is either Google (Android) or Microsoft (Windows). It appears to be Google. Samsung, HTC, Sony, LG, are all too focused on hardware to run a broad mainstream XR platform. Sony PlayStation is focused on Console Games. Valve Steam is focused on PC Games. Magic Leap has become work for hire, and come back to its early investor, Google. Oculus became Facebook became Meta. Meta focuses on VR Games, but has created an ecosystem that is almost only Games. Meta runs massive price subsidization (hardware at a loss). This ensures that no other hardware manufacturer can sell within the Meta ecosystem, except as a supplier to Meta. Meta eats the hardware price subsidy and refuses to run hardware as a profitable business. This blocks anyone else from doing so in their ecosystem. Witness LG walking away from Meta. It is left to Google to provide the Android equivalent for XR with... Android XR. As Google gathers Sony, Lynx and XReal to Android XR, how long till HTC, LG, and others join? This was the opportunity that Windows had when Microsoft gathered Intel, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus, Acer, Samsung, Fujitsu, & 3Glasses to Windows MR. And then Microsoft killed the VR portion, and later de-emphasized, then killed, HoloLens 2. Is Google now doing the same coalition building, but with better timing? We'll see. ----- Dec 12 2024: The Verge: "I saw Google’s plan to put Android on your face. I demoed Google’s new Android XR platform, Samsung’s Project Moohan, and prototype smart glasses." The Verge: https://lnkd.in/gHDzeSnP Samsung: "Unlock the Infinite Possibilities of XR With Galaxy AI" Samsung: https://lnkd.in/gThtxdAq GoogleBlog: "Introducing the Android XR SDK Developer Preview" Google: https://lnkd.in/gHRwmJXz RoadToVR: "Hands-on: Samsung‘s Android XR Headset is a Curious Combo of Quest & Vision Pro, With One Stand-out Advantage" RoadToVR: https://lnkd.in/gVJpxEHu UploadVR: "Samsung's Android XR Headset Ships In 2025, And We Went Hands-On" UploadVR: https://lnkd.in/gCjrEnJB RoadTovR: "Google Announces Android XR Operating System Alongside Samsung MR Headset" RoadToVr: https://lnkd.in/g58e7MaY UploadVR: "Sony, Lynx, And Xreal Are Building Android XR Devices Too" UploadVR: https://lnkd.in/gUpaXFVy RoadToVR: "Samsung’s Android XR Headset Will Have First-party Motion Controllers & Support PC VR Streaming" RoadToVR: https://lnkd.in/gw2KYY6n #xr #extendedreality #vr #virtualreality #mr #mixedreality #ar #augmentedreality #spatialcomputing

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Wow - I was wrong. Would have expected most revenue coming from their API or Enterprise businesses. Predictions-- I expect this to flip in the next 12 months: 1/ Consumers will get more and more for free and cancel their ChatGPT+ subscriptions. OpenAI themselves just made GPT4o available to their free users, so they're undercutting themselves. 2/ Enterprises will start paying more and more for AI - MSFT and Google are way better positioned for this than oAI. 3/ Shocked API is only 15% - that means Reprompt is > .01% of total OpenAI API usage. That's kind of crazy given we're still quite small. We are still in the first innings.

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After 10+ years working with early-stage startups it’s fair to say I’ve seen I’ve seen some things (& some things I will never unsee), learned some things, earned some stripes, some scars, and some measure of expertise (one hopes) helping more than a dozen startups find product-market fit. While I’ve enjoyed year-long runways at well-funded startups that were eventually acquired, or went public, or very publicly imploded—what really taught me the real meaning of Lean startup was working with self-funded founders who had ten compelling concepts but resources to build one. When you don’t have a year to be wrong; you learn to get it right very fast. If you are a founder facing your own set of high stakes decisions & tradeoffs; we can help. For free. You can book a 1 hour chat with us to talk through all the things racing through your head. We know what’s involved in getting something tested, validated, and built; this is what we do every day all day. We might not have all the answers but there is a good chance we can give you some clarity, some calm, some options. Call us at 1.844.4FLAGRANT or DM me. And if you want to get a sense of what we are like as hoomans- check out our Delightful Reveal series. It’s all the things we have been reading, watching, listening to, & enjoying. https://lnkd.in/gfrz9tQS #startups #entrepreneurship #socialentrepreneurs #innovation

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Some responses to this article have taken the point of view that muffling the angry customer calls is itself harmful. What do you think? Here is my take: Drawing on my background in business operations, where navigating crises is part of the job, I've learned that anger and extreme emotions rarely lead to effective solutions. The truth is, understanding the severity of a problem doesn't require being yelled at. Discovering and resolving issues can be achieved without resorting to verbal abuse or harassment. In fact, such negative behaviors only hinder the problem-solving process. What responsible employer would ever condone a customer mistreating their employee? I've found myself in the role of a frustrated customer on several occasions. Yet, I understand that the service agent is seldom the cause of the issue. Therefore, I refrain from directing any anger towards them. This doesn't make me a saint—it's about basic respect and civility toward another person.

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I enjoyed learning about the Reflection technique from Andrew Ng, where you ask AI to do a task ("Summarize the Acme deal"), then ask it to reflect on its answer ("Check your answer carefully and highlight any potential hidden challenges"). This extra "Reflection" step can dramatically improve the AI answers -- even allowing older models to outperform newer models. I'd be very interested to see someone apply this technique to a  #BuiltWithEinstein example with an Einstein Copilot Action and an extra Reflection Action that improves the original answer. Full talk from Andrew Ng can be watched here ->

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Last week Asian founders did... 🚀 Yan L. Sim launched Operating Crew to help brands optimize their operations at every scale, focusing on packaging, shipping, and warehouse fulfillment. 🚀 Ali Khokhar and John Xing launched Amigo to help service professionals scale their personal expertise using AI-powered digital clones. 🚀 Zheqing (Bill) Zhu launched Pokee AI to develop interactive, personalized and efficient foundation AI agents that excel in real-world applications using reinforcement learning. 🚀 Shiva Suri launched New Lantern to accelerate radiologists with cloud & AI powered medical image analysis. 🚀 Sahil Sud launched Jimini Health to revolutionalize mental healthcare by combining expert human therapists and safe, clinically-integrated AI. 💸 Aniket Shah, Ujjwal Sukheja, Saran S., raised a $2M round for Swish, an Indian food delivery company delivering delicious, fresh food in under 10 minutes. 💸 Dennis Jiang and Andrew Tamura raised a $1.5M Pre-Seed round for Rosie AI, an Excel-integrated AI agent helping analysts transform their raw data into actionable insights. 💸 Hyun Shin Cho raised a $3.7M Seed round for Ubitium, a startup developing a universal RISC-V microprocessor to remove the need for specialized chips. 💸 Ishan Mukherjee and Avanika Narayan raised $50M for Rox, an on-demand AI agent swarm supercharging top sales teams. 💸 Adi Bathla and Rashmi Sinha raised $20M for Revv a platform helping autoshop repair technicians tackle compex ADAS repairs. 💸 Tim Shi raised a $125M Series D for Cresta, a platform helping contact centers leverage their data to drive business results through personalized AI agents and workflows. Read all previous weeks and more at our Substack! https://lnkd.in/gx4kU2ry

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Daniel Wilson and Reza Rassool Thanks for the opportunity to join the conversation, and more importantly to contribute to the critical work of Kwaai Personal AI -- turning AI into a meaningful benefit versus a threat in people's lives. (My comments start about 30 min in, after Reza's introduction to Kwaai))

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🚀Another wonderful session with our mentors at Microsoft! The Raijin.ai team spent a morning at Microsoft's Office (no pun intended) with Bryan Yang and Shobhit Sah to get some coaching in refining our tech stack, go-to-market (GTM) strategy, market positioning, and prompt engineering research. Their insights and expertise have truly elevated our project to new heights. We thought deeply about what our ideal customer profiles (ICPs) were and how best to reach them. We also had deep conversations about LLM and Prompt Engineering Ops, as more and more software will turn their features -> feature prompts which are more complex and comprehensive than the existing software features we see today. Always grateful for the time with all the mentors and for accelerating our learning curve in all areas 🌟 Sidenote: Since everyone is posting about it, we are also looking into how we can implement OpenAI's GPT-4o next into our product. Very excited for the speech capabilities which can rival Whisper. #Teamwork #Innovation #productmanagement #generativeAI #mentor #GTMStrategy #MarketPositioning #PromptEngineering #Collaboration #Success Microsoft for Startups

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