1/ You hired the wrong designer. I know because I’ve lived every angle of this: early Uber, Stripe, Shopify, founding my own startup, managing big design teams. Most bad hires aren’t bad designers. They’re just the wrong fit for the stage. Here’s the framework I use to get it

In 2007, I designed tools that let anyone draw on top of Google Maps. People could drop pins, draw lines and shapes, and layer their own meaning onto the world with "My Maps." But nearly 20 years later, one tiny design debate has stayed with me: how should people draw a shape?

Delighted to announce @0xren_cf has been promoted to General Partner at @ElectricCapital! Ren started as an engineer at Electric & has grown into a phenomenal investor and unique thinker. Founders are lucky to work with him. We are lucky to have him at Electric. Link below 👇

> be Adobe, 40-year-old PDF jockey > 2025, stock doing a perfect -33% swan dive > “We’ll pivot to AI” says exec on 7-figure retention bonus > can’t ship a model because legal says every pixel needs a 12-page EULA > Midjourney drops v7, makes our Firefly look like MS Paint with a

10/ The wrong designer wastes time and runway. The right one, aligned on STAR, multiplies your product’s speed, clarity, and delight. I broke down 12 archetypes (with signals) in a Substack essay here: https://t.co/UDca8BLOuk Curious: Which archetype have you mis-hired before? 👇

9/ Relationships Fit → Hire for how they’ll work with your team. Remote? Messy? AI-native? Collaborative? Be upfront. Skills can stretch, but culture misfits burn time. Lone Wolves, AI Skeptics, and “Founder Shadows” thrive in some orgs, but they’ll stall in the wrong one.

8/ Ability Fit → Hire for the work that matters. Need dashboards? Don’t hire a billboard designer. Need fast iteration? Don’t hire a pixel-perfect visualist. In interviews: ask them to show unfinished work and explain trade-offs.

7/ Type Fit → Hire for outcomes, not titles. Don’t confuse “Head of Design” with someone who will build prototypes. Write the role around what needs shipping - e.g. “3 prototypes tested weekly with users.”

6/ Stage Fit → Hire for where you are, not where you want to be. • Pre-PMF? You need scrappy builders who ship and learn fast. • Scaling? Designers who can systematize. • Mature org? Leaders who align across layers.

5/ Almost every design mis-hire comes down to a mismatch on STAR: • Stage → maturity of your company • Type → role definition (manager vs builder) • Ability → skills for the work you need now • Relationships → fit with your culture Get these four right, and you’ll avoid

4/ Contrast that with the common mis-hires: • The Pixel Genius → dazzling visuals, but prioritizes craft over outcomes. • The Lone Wolf → builds in the corner, misaligning with the team. • The AI Skeptic → resists the tools that power AI-native orgs. Each thrives somewhere

3/ What does that look like? Portfolio shows shipped work across surfaces (dashboards, flows, onboarding). Stories about trade-offs, not just polish. Comfortable doing a bit of everything: ie. prototypes, UI, talking to users. References say: “They figured it out with little

2/ Hiring managers often swing to extremes: Too senior → polished, but out of touch with shipping. Too junior → cheap, but needs heavy hand-holding. What most teams actually need early is the mid-career builder: 3–7 yrs, hands-on, adaptable, comfortable in chaos.

Tokemak is now Auto Finance (new handle: @autopools) Tokemak is evolving into Auto Finance to reflect our mission: automating onchain finance. Staying true to its vision as core liquidity infrastructure, this brand consolidation unifies all products under one cohesive identity.

Excited to finally launch what I've been working on the past 3 months! Introducing Peval, a competition to see who can write the best prompts, and which models are the best at different evals come beat me: https://t.co/gloxw7Nrfk

Orange is the most epic looking iPhone ever. I'd love a MBP this color too.

People are seriously underestimating this AirPods update. It’s a bigger shift than most realize. AirPods are quietly turning into a fitness platform. Apple has sold 2x as many AirPods as Watches. That means a far bigger audience is about to gain access to health + activity data.

AirPods Pro 3’s auto translate is going to absolutely obliterate Americans on Euro trips now that they can hear how much French and Italian people make fun of them

Taking #1 on Terminal Bench against teams like Anthropic, Block, and Warp is impressive. Congrats to the OpenBlock team!

You cannot ask a designer to design and have many meetings during the week. We need time to deep think, process and explore. Especially with product design. A simple 30 minute meeting is actually an extra 1-2 hours of wasted potential design time. Why? Because we’re so lost