Week 1158 -- Last Week at Retool

This was my last week at Retool.

It was bittersweet. I’m excited to work with Justin but also sad that I won’t be able to see my friends at Retool on such a frequent basis anymore.

I spent the entire week doing 1x1’s with folks at the company. There are a lot of people that I wish I got to know better during my time here. Retool is filled with amazingly talented people who are also thoughtful and generous human beings. I feel lucky to have met and become friends with many fellow Retools, but my biggest regret is that I didn’t reach out to more.

Some interesting tidbits from my 1x1’s:

• Consider going international when me and Justin are in build mode. It’ll be cheaper than living in SF. We can focus on our product and avoid the tech-adjacent distractions in the Bay. It’ll also be a cool life experience for both of us.
• PMF is everything. If you pivot through 5 different ideas without reaching PMF, you haven’t learned anything about building a startup aside from building prototypes.
• Just have fun. You’ll burn out quickly if you are working on something you don’t enjoy.
• Build something people want. But at the same time, don’t pigeonhole yourself to a mediocre market just because your product has some traction.
• Be kind to everyone.

--------

Content:

• Midjourney Magazine Issue 7

  • It’s mind-blowing how so much of our world can be encapsulated by a series of matrix multiplications.

• Introducing GPTs by OpenAI

  • Anecdotally, it seems like Chat-GPT plugins hasn’t been super successful, so I’m curious to see how the GPT Store plays out.

• Github Universe 2023 Opening Keynote

  • Github introduced new LLM form factors inside of VS Code. They also previewed an upcoming feature where LLMs can create a PR from an issue or ticket. It’s clear that the next phase of software engineering will be a world where engineers do less implementation work and more code review. I wonder if there will be a future where software engineers become completely obsolete and how far that future is.

• The Archer by Paulo Coelho

  • A novella about a famous archer teaching his student about the value of hard work and consistency. I appreciate how it conveys its message in such a short story but I didn’t find it particularly memorable.