Building The Machine #14: Keep going
Welcome to the 300+ readers now subscribed to Building The Machine. I am obsessed with those people building the machine behind the scenes of a company.
What I am Writing✍️
📈 Revenue = Resources - I first drafted this back in 20xx and posted it in 2019. When looking to drive change, get resources (engineering or otherwise), you can directly acquire them by driving revenue. There are plenty of complaints to go around, but rarely are they met with actions that drive revenue, which can be a solution to lots of problems.
The purpose of revisiting this now is based on the startups that are struggling to raise. They need to hire. They need to partner. They need to grow usage. What is missing from a lot of conversations is the ability to acquire the resources through driving revenue. When you need to control your own destiny and acquire the resources you need, there is nothing like revenue to help get what you need.
What I am Reading📖
🛰️ We Are Legion (We Are Bob) - Taking a break from my usual business book binge, I am now flying through the sci-fi series about the Bobiverse. This series is an amazing story about Von Neumann probe theory (or self replicating spacecraft) - you will get the gist within the first chapter so I am not spoiling much, but these books are a great respite from my typical reading.
📉 2022 Layoffs will result in 2023 wind downs - Hunter Walk delves into the topic of layoffs and the second order effects.
🥳 A little something to brighten your day - totally unexpected
♻️ Fred Wilson posted about VC Recycling back in April 2021 which is a great overview of why and how venture firms use “recycling” of liquidity to wipe out fees.
🦾 ChatGPT passed the Medical Licensing Exam
🌧️ The BNPL bubble is going to burst - a deep dive into why the buy now pay later world is about to get stormy.
✋ Becoming a product coach - This is a great deep dive into the world of coaching and consulting for Product Leaders.
👩💻 Product Engineers really great dive into what I believe is the best kind of engineer to have join a team - kind of like what we offer with GottaGofast.com - Product Engineers.
Tools I use 🛠️
🌧️ Raindrop.io - a free cross platform link collecting service. This is my Delicious replacement (for those of you that remember that amazing service) and I am using it often to track and manage things to come back too. It works nicely with tagging, search, and Zapier. I am even using it to tag and find media for this newsletter above.
On My Mind 🧠
2 things;
The world has now seen that that even Google is having layoffs. This seems to be a bell ringing for some that the end is nigh for a recession. I am not sure why the other thousands of layoffs and cutting burn didn’t tip people off but maybe Google represents a monolithic company that is “untouchable”.
This is the time of year that everyone falls off their resolutions. Gym attendance plummets. People stop doing what they said they would do. I am hyper aware of this fact, and yet its easy to slip. I am using TickTick (wrote about this in another newsletter) to track my habits and maybe for the first time ever…its working
Celebrate your wins🏆
Congratulations to my friend Candice for launching Climatevine for those who want to focus on climate
Have something work celebrating? Reply here and next time I will include it!