Trevor McKendrick - Why John Carmack worked for Steve Jobs

Hi all,

55 people have bet on my Manifold prediction market on whether I’ll be 145 pounds the morning of January 1, 2025. It’s been funny & motivating to see so many people bet NO, driving down the price.

TBH I’d bet NO on most people losing weight.

Trevor

Founder Mode (article)

Required reading for anyone in the startup world, if nothing else so you know WTH everyone else is talking about.

My take: founders shouldn’t be afraid to exercise more control, and make more decisions just because they are the founders. Sometimes you just freaking know.

But: sometimes you will be wrong, and sometimes you will be catastrophically wrong. Giving founders creates a much wider distribution of outcomes, on both the left & right side of the curve.

Feels quite similar to how having a good King can create an amazing country, but a bad king can self-destruct an entire empire.

For countries you do want a narrower distribution of outcomes.

For venture-backed startups, you want a wider distribution of outcomes.

Jason Lemkin on founder mode (Tweet)

Jason’s biggest success as a founder was selling Echosign prematurely to Adobe for $150m (I audited the transaction when I worked for KPMG in SFBA)

Here he says he was the most aloof in his career on that particular company. I don’t yet know what to really think of this. My best take is that

Morgan Housel - A Few Little Ideas and Short Stories(Article)

Morgan House - Useful and Overlooked Skills (Article)

John Carmack(Facebook Post)

The Bands and the Fans were fake(Article)

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