The Daily Index — Wednesday, November 29, 2023

HEADLINES & TRENDS

TLDR Founders

VITALIK BUTERIN’S TECHNO-OPTIMISM

This long read unpacks Vitalik Buterin’s views on the future. Tech offers pathways to a radically improved global standard of living, but equally, presents several existential dangers along the way. He explores AI, healthcare, and the d/acc movement.

vitalik.eth.limo · 72 min

TLDR Founders

NARRATIVE TUG-OF-WAR

Whenever you log on to X, read the news, or browse LinkedIn, you’re met with totally opposing views on emerging topics like AI safety. We’re seeing this debate play out between Effective Altruism and Effective Acceleration. The former is in the more conservative camp against the latter with regards to the benefits of technological progress. This article offers some context towards this ongoing “tug-of-war”.

notboring.co · 9 min

TLDR Founders

HOW DOORDASH USES DATA SCIENCE TO DRIVE REVENUE

Daniel Parris helped scale DoorDash’s DS team from a scrappy startup through to a public company behemoth. This article shares insight into how companies can use data and predictive analytics to increase revenue.

mostlymetrics.com · 10 min

TLDR Founders

OPTIMIZING LLMS FOR REAL-WORLD APPLICATIONS

Lightspeed shares insights from Google and TitanML about the ins and outs of optimizing LLMs whether via prompting or fine-tuning.

lsvp.com · 4 min

TLDR Founders

MY FIRST 16: WELDING YOURSELF TO EARLY CUSTOMERS - MARQETA (32 MINUTE LISTEN)

Part of the My First 16 series of podcasts. This one talks with Jason Gardner of Marqeta fame as he chronicles his early career and the impetus behind building and scaling the company.

a16z.com

TLDR Founders

TOP 15 BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FOUNDERS

Whether you’re bootstrapping or playing the venture game, these book recommendations are excellent for founders looking to master their time, use leverage, and think on a big scale.

thebootstrappedfounder.com · 7 min

TLDR Founders

FEEDSPACE (PRODUCT)

Organic growth booster for your business.

feedspace.io

TLDR Founders

RANKWEEK (PRODUCT)

Automatically rank higher on Google.

rankweek.com

TLDR Founders

BUILDING YOUR PRODUCT FOR ENTERPRISES

This interview with Eileen O’Mara, the Chief Revenue Officer at Stripe, breaks down her thoughts on how to approach crossing the chasm to the enterprise segment and the challenges Stripe has faced when approaching price-sensitive organizations that have bespoke integration needs.

akashbajwa.substack.com · 7 min

TLDR Founders

HOW SALESFORCE RUNS ITS INTERNAL FORECASTING PROCESS

Having a predictable pipeline enables more effective decision-making. VPs at Salesforce share how they approach this process by focusing on three core pillars: People, Process, Data, and tools.

saastr.com · 5 min

TLDR Founders

REFLECTING ON THE OPENAI SAGA

The drama at OpenAI may be over but if you didn’t follow along during the fiasco, this recap not only gives a solid timeline, but also lays out the problems and challenges in the whole affair.

tanay.substack.com · 4 min

TLDR Founders

MARVEL STUDIOS’S ORIGIN STORY

A long read that breaks down the fairly tumultuous journey of Marvel Studios before its acquisition to Disney in 2009. If nothing else, this article provides founders with a healthy dose of optimism, showing how deal-making, perseverance, and being able to sell your vision are core to doing big things.

commoncog.com · 15 min

TLDR Founders

LIVE WITH IT FOR A WHILE

When it comes to building products and deciding on all the details, some things are a matter of taste. Instead of laboring over those small details and wasting valuable energy, leave it as it is and let your subconscious unpack how you feel about it.

world.hey.com · 2 min

TLDR Founders

FAST-FASHION GIANT SHEIN REPORTEDLY FILES FOR 2024 IPO IN THE US

In hopes of a better IPO market, Shein is filing to go public in 2024. It’s still a very quiet IPO market and they appear to be going it alone but hopes remain that things may thaw in the back half of 2024.

news.crunchbase.com · 1 min