Ben Scharfstein
@benscharfstein
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applying AI. started a few companies. built recommendations @google , applied math @harvard
New York
Joined August 2011
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Pinned Tweet
My biggest learning as an entrepreneur is that you earn the right to have an impact by building something people use.
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1/ Introducing Stelo Explore: the Universal Interface for every smart contract.
We’re in the command line era of interacting with contracts. At
@stelolabs
we think it’s time for an upgrade.
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Five years ago I gave a presentation to the CEO of Google along with two other APMs explaining how crypto transactions work.
Today
@0xaman
and I are excited to launch
@stelolabs
and explain crypto transactions to everyone.
You can read more about it in our launch tweet below.
Today we're excited to share Stelo - a tool that protects you from web3 phishing and scams.
Stelo explains web3 transactions in plain English before they hit your wallet and alerts you if they look malicious.
We built Stelo so you can explore web3 with peace of mind.
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It’s easy to dunk on Huberman but I think we can all agree that he’s right 99% of the time. And since he does one podcast a week that makes him right 5148% of the time in a given year
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Excited to finally announce our funding from
@a16zcrypto
and many other great investors
Exclusive:
@stelolabs
raises $6M in a round led by
@a16zcrypto
to help users protect their crypto wallets
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Was a blast getting to meet all the founders in crypto startup school. Thanks
@a16zcrypto
for hosting
Crypto Startup School Week ✌️
@Tim_Roughgarden
shared his path to crypto research and broke down the significance of digital ownership.
We also had
@benscharfstein
from
@stelolabs
share principles for web3 user experience and product development.
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Bittersweet day
@stelolabs
. We're sunsetting our web3 security products but our journey is far from over.
As energized as ever to build technology that has a positive impact on people's lives.
We’re sunsetting the Stelo extension, Stelo Explore and as we focus on problems outside web3 security.
Stelo Labs is still at it, expect more from us soon.
We wrote more about why we’re sunsetting Stelo and what we learned here.
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It’s been nine months since we hard pivoted our company from crypto security to return to our roots in machine learning. We’re shedding our old name and adopting a new one that captures our new spirit.
Village Computing Company.
Born in Greenwich village and exploring how to
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A bit surreal to be included in the same sentence as these four
We just uploaded 5 new Crypto Startup School talks. 👀
They include sessions from
@jasonrosenthal
,
@sriramk
,
@brian_armstrong
,
@benscharfstein
, &
@dwr
.
Here they are. ↓
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I tried to set up an SVB account in December and they ghosted me after I sent them company info.
It’s very important as a founder not to conflate luck and skill. This, of course, was skill
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Excited to launch Superpipe, a framework to build evaluate, and optimize LLM pipelines for structured outputs.
Using Superpipe, we've been able to build 10x cheaper pipelines, 10x faster.
Learn more on our docs page and read
@amansplaining
thread explaining Superpipe below
Every week a new model comes out that “beats” the previous SOTA on benchmarks.
But benchmarks don’t matter - models need to be evaluated on YOUR data.
Introducing Superpipe, a framework to build, evaluate, and optimize LLM pipelines on your data.
Built w/
@benscharfstein
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Beyond excited to share what we’ve been up to at Stelo for the past few months.
1. Stelo v2- a redesigned experience from the ground up
2. Stelo API - the Stelo Transaction Engine in any wallet
3. - a token approvals site to manage wallet health
Today we're announcing three new products to make web3 safe and easy for everyone. We're also excited to announce that we've raised $6m led by
@a16zcrypto
.
First, we're launching Stelo v2 - the Stelo extension you know and love but simpler, faster & easier to use.
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The thing I admire most about
@dwr
and
@varunsrin
is their focus and conviction. They don’t “play startup”.
Progress speaks for itself
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Had a ton of fun hacking with
@amansplaining
@ryanorban
and
@andrewcyu
at the SPC x OpenAI hackathon.
Introducing Deal Scout. Send it a photo of something you want and Deal Scout will find similar items and message the seller on FB Marketplace.
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To write off AI as a bubble because you pattern match it to web3 is a mistake.
But to write off web3 because it hasn’t reached 1bn users is also a mistake.
LLMs are single player, web3 is multiplayer protocols that require critical mass to reach escape velocity.
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The worst part about summer in New York is I don’t get to wear any of the many many lightweight jackets I’m accumulated living in sf
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Introducing Superpipe Studio - a completely free and open source LLM experimentation and optimization platform.
Studio grew out of solving our own problems building AI pipelines -- we thought it might be useful for others.
⚒️ w/
@amansplaining
1/
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So excited by our new brand and design language
@stelolabs
.
@elan_miller
really helped us figure out our brand strategy and
@robbmcm
+ the
@AirfoilStudio
brought it to life in the product.
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1/ So excited to finally share Blank, a project so crazy it just might work...
1/ Introducing Blank, a collection of 10k Blank NFTs.
These aren’t just blank jpegs…
🧵
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DM me if you want to try Stelo and I’ll hand onboard you.
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at Stelo we're building the user interface for web3.
bUt YoU'rE jUsT a ChRoMe eXtEnSiOn.
just you wait 🤐
we're hiring, btw
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Your voice is more impactful than your vote.
We have coarse control over who we elect, but we have the continuous ability to tell them, our friends and our peers, what we believe.
I believe in peace and human decency.
Find the courage to share your voice. It matters.
🇮🇱
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Web2 is the custodied web. Facebook custodies my friend graph and Fidelity custodies my assets.
In web3 I can custody both but even if I choose not the balance of power has shifted from the app to the consumer.
I think of it as the user-centric web.
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Doing what we can to keep people 🤝
New milestone unlocked 🔓
Thousands of people are trusting us to keep them safe every day.
We're proud to be protecting wallets with assets worth over $200m
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We built SuperOpenAI to solve our own problems. It's local, fast, minimal and most importantly, incredibly useful.
Introducing SuperOpenAI, a lightweight logging & caching python framework for LLM development
✅ all LLM inputs and requests logged locally
✅ includes token usage, cost and latency
✅ responses cached in-memory, never wait when re-running code
built w/
@benscharfstein
🧵👇
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I’m constantly reminded that you earn the right to have an impact by building something people use
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Thank you for hosting,
@GoplusSecurity
. Was nice to be up there with our friends from
@harpieio
and
@wallet_guard
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Benefit of sufficient decentralization
1) Developers can build on top of the protocol without fear of rent extraction
2) The best client wins
3) Minimally on-chain --> actually usable product
Forget about decentralization as a religion, these benefits are why web3 is exciting.
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We’re pumped to launch MemeDaddy[.]ai
It's incredibly simple. You give it a topic, MemeDaddy uses AI to generate funny memes.
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Leaning into what gives me ENERGY in 2024.
- Working with and learning from amazing people
- Diving deep on technology that will solve important problems
- Helping people at the beginning of their entrepreneurial journey
- Taking photographs
- Playing lots of sports
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1/ The killer user facing feature of web3 is owning "things" in your wallet, from eth to apes.
The next "thing" your wallet will hold is your identity.
Excited to launch
@nifkey_xyz
, a bridge between your Twitter profile and web3.
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5 months ago phishing attacks in web3 were very basic, mostly just setApprovalForAll attacks.
Now we’re seeing gasless signature attacks, hacked DNS’s and custom scam NFTs.
Volume may be down but it’s harder and harder to stay safe, even if you’re a sophisticated user
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2/ Today there are two ways to interact with smart contracts - directly via Etherscan or on a specific website built for the contract.
One is clunky and easy to mess up. The other is dangerous and easy to get your wallet drained.
Stelo Explore is both easy to use and safe.
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.
@dwr
is one of the most logical and 1st order thinking founders I’ve met. Glad to see the long game is paying off.
Especially rare in social
Turns out spending 3 years building a social network targeted at builders means people will...build. :)
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Congrats and good luck to all those presenting at CSS Demo Day!
It’s been 3 months since we re-launched Crypto Startup School (CSS23).👾
We’d like to give a huge thanks to all the founders, speakers, & mentors that participated throughout the program.
As for what’s next…
Today is Demo Day!!🙌
Each of the 26 teams will be pitching their
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Gary, are these digital dollars in the room with us right now?
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3/ Search by contract, token or NFT name
First, it allows you to search over more than 100k contracts by name. You can also enter the contract address or use a transaction hash.
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I decided I was sick of waiting so we built
Social events over six people on group video suck because video chat was made for meetings, not socializing.
In a meeting, one person talks and everyone listens.
At a social event there are many concurrent conversations. Video needs to evolve in a time of distant socializing!
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I recently cut out 95% of YouTube/Podcast consumption.
Focused more on reading long form content. Will add back in but only the best (Acquired for example).
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I'm leaving
@rumevideo
to work on new things. Super excited about what
@cenzovit
and
@BA_Wolf
have cooking, excited to cheer them on from the sideline 🥳
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Meet Peanut the dusty. She lives in a cottage made of sandstone and seaweed.
Love the attention to detail
@crypto_coven
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The Stelo flywheel is beginning to kick in.
The very first version of
@stelolabs
used a manually maintained list to identify risky sites.
Now the Stelo risk engine identifies known malicious patterns at the txn level and then flags activity from that site.
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Behind every company twitter account there's an employee accidentally liking things because they thought they were on main
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The best part about Farcaster (aside from the community) is that you'd never know that it's decentralized -- truly the future of web3.
Instead of focusing on maximal decentralization, Dan and Varun are focused on sufficient decentralization.
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Our most requested feature on Stelo Explore after we launched.
Now just input the value you want, not the 18 digit version you always mess up.
Introducing ✨magic inputs✨ on .
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7/ Share transactions with friends
Any transaction on Stelo Explore can be shared with others - so they can execute it from their wallet. You can:
- Request money by calling transfer to yourself on the USDC contract.
- Help friends renew their ENS
- Share a mint
And much more!
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8/ Speaking of mints, we’re also launching our first ever NFT.
𝑆𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑜 𝐸𝑥𝑝𝑙𝑜𝑟𝑒𝑟 𝐶𝑎𝑟𝑑 is an Open Edition NFT for Stelo Explore users.
Try out Stelo Explore for yourself to mint it.
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If it’s truly an alignment issue, you gotta think Sam and Greg will start a NewCo with none of the OpenAI board baggage.
It’ll be the largest seed round ever and they’ll be back on top soon.
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@tunguz
It’s not really a fair comparison. OpenAI has been around for 7 years and GPT has been around for 5. Not saying it won’t be transformational but it has been, and will continue to be, a marathon
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Software that builds software (meta-software) is going to take over and bespoke software is going to become trivial to build.
Watch
@sama
build a custom ChatGPT using private knowledge—and share it publicly in about 3 minutes
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Every crypto transaction feels like a game of mindsweeper where I'm one click away from my wallet exploding
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The best part about launching new stuff is it means you can get back to building
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4/ Smart inputs and validation
Second, it lets you select the function you want to call and easily enter the arguments, including complex tuples and arrays.
Smart input validation makes sure you can never enter invalid data. And it even converts ENS names into addresses.
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🙏
Formidable Founders (FF014)
Ben Scharfstein (
@benscharfstein
), CEO
@stelolabs
Open-source extension & API that makes crypto transactions safe and easy to understand.
Backed by
@firstround
@a16z
@BoxGroup
@pearvc
@homebrew
@gokulr
@louisberyl
@zoink
@dwr
@lennysan
@DustinMoring
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Data matters more than ever but in a different way than it did 5 years ago. Data is less like oil and more like solar - useful even on the edge and in small amounts.
As
@AviSchiffmann
put it, context is the product.
First blog post on the topic 👇
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5/ Construct from recent transactions
It shows you examples of recently created transactions to help you easily create valid transactions. Click an example and the transaction's arguments are automatically loaded.
Or, just enter a transaction hash.
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Nifkey minting now open to all!
Also added new functionality that allows you to add multiple wallets to your Nifkey to showcase all your NFTs in one place.
You are not a wallet, you're a _person_ with *many* wallets - your digital identity shouldn't be limited to just one
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New exploring kicks for Stelo Explore launch day.
And to answer your question, yes, I just started working out of Soho
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Increasingly feeling like ownership is an incomplete model to understand the value add of web3. I can own digital things without a blockchain.
The unlock of web3 is digital possession. The difference is subtle but meaningful.
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There are 5 ways that people lose money in crypto
1/ Lost or stolen seed phrases
2/ Rug pulls (project runs w/ the money)
3/ Price goes down
4/ Smart contract exploits
5/ Malicious transactions
Each of these require a very different solution. Here are some best practices:
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Jokes aside, this was one of the most insane experiences of my life. I heard some rumbling and all of a sudden bricks started falling out from the fireplace 3 feet from me. Thankfully no one was hurt 🙏🏼
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It’s been a wild 18 months in crypto. We hope this report can serve as a reference for anyone looking to understand what has happened.
Next week we’ll follow up with the companies and tools keeping people and protocols safe
Amazing work by
@eli_qian
writing this report.
Over $2.5B worth of crypto has been stolen in the past 18 months.
In this two-part report, we deep dive into the major attacks and tooling built to prevent them.
The State of Web3 Security: Part 1, Attacks
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This x 💯
Focusing on decentralization (which imo is a developer facing means to establishing trust in protocols) is taking away from important conversations.
Building software with trust backdoors ultimately compels companies to be more aligned with users. That’s the goal
IMO Web3 isn't about rebuilding the Web in a fully decentralized way, it's not about replacing Web2 companies or infrastructure.
It's about having a "trust backdoor" so that if any centralized authority violates the trust of users, they can move.
Centralized until you're not.
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So cool to see people you've known for years crushing it. Slowly at first and then all at once
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If you don't think LLMs are a going to lead to a step change in knowledge work productivity you haven't been paying attention.
Copilot was an accelerant, chatGPT is turning non-technical folks into builders. Every day my mind is 🤯
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I don’t think that anyone that wants social media companies to allow users to “bring their own algorithm” has ever built a recommendation system.
Recommendation systems are trained on massive amounts of user data including views, clicks, retention, etc.
Open sourcing the
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@aashaysanghvi_
a lot of my friends in their 20s have said to me (and I agree), “quarantine has really made me appreciate sf”. This is mostly in contrast to New York but I still think cities aren’t going anywhere for young people. Greater Bay Area (east+south Bay) might see an exodus though
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This is also the official launch of our new domain.
Try Stelo Explore on
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Wasn't sure if it was an earthquake or office collapse v2
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Just got tagged in a scam tweet that MetaMask was compromised (it wasn't) and only "people" they tag can reply.
Twitter, it's really easy. All 5,421 accounts that replied are bots
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A retro looking flip phone with iMessage would sell like hotcakes
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Had to go to the bank yesterday to get a cashiers check.
Crypto payments can’t come soon enough.
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LLMs+Zapier is going to be fun. All the APIs, 10 seconds to hook together.
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When I was at Google and then Rume I used to send internal "blog posts" to my colleagues about phrases and frameworks I couldn't get out of my head. It was a really valuable way to establish a shared vocabulary.
Going to start that up again, this time in public. Stay tuned!
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Good signal that something is actually valuable is that you want the price to go down
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We wrote more about Stelo Explore on our blog.
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Building a startup is a daily reminder that there is no substitute for “doing the thing”.
No other way to learn
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6/ Simulate every transaction to stay safe
It tells you exactly what the transaction is doing before you submit it, so you'll never get your wallet drained.
Simulation is powered by the same risk engine used by 8000+ Stelo Extension users.
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@nnnnicholas
Yep, increasingly common. Probably obvious but they’re trying to get you to accidentally copy that address in the future.
This is one of the reasons Stelo will show you owned nfts and prior transfers to recipients, helping you avoid this scam.
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I've always found vitamin vs. painkiller to be a somewhat unintuitive metaphor.
On a recent call with
@hunterwalk
and
@satyap
, they framed it as:
Bum knee vs. broken leg
Made so much more sense to me, I sure as hell am looking for a solution when I break my leg (and that
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If Devin was a surprise to you you haven't been paying attention.
No less impressive, just already "priced in" that some incredible team would put together the pieces.
Congrats on the launch!
Today we're excited to introduce Devin, the first AI software engineer.
Devin is the new state-of-the-art on the SWE-Bench coding benchmark, has successfully passed practical engineering interviews from leading AI companies, and has even completed real jobs on Upwork.
Devin is
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@andrewparker
@Pavel_Asparagus
It's amazing to me that this is true but my (limited) experience working in fintech 100% agrees.
I think part of the explanation is that it's easy to game in the positive direction but those that spend the time gaming are probably likely to actually be good borrowers
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One of the big benefits of private keys is that they enable zero knowledge auth.
I don't need to tell an app my password in order to prove I am who I say I am.
OAuth accomplishes something similar but requires trust in and data delegation to a central entity.
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I guess the cat's out of the bag...
YC S20's
@rumevideo
is a social video platform that lets you have multiple conversations in one space, just like you would at a party. They're launching today on Product Hunt:
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Congrats to all the YC companies that got through demo day!
The post YC crash is real. You're no longer surrounded by ambitious peers giving you energy every week in office hours.
Now the energy comes from customers, the way it should be. Keep making something people want!
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