Zack Kanter
@zackkanter
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Founder/CEO @Stedi (healthcare clearinghouse) & previously Proforged (acquired by Huron Capital), serverless enthusiast, occasional blogger, all-around nerd.
Joined January 2012
Fortnite is impressive, but it’s absolutely dwarfed by the world’s largest video game, LinkedIn, played exclusively by 40-50 year old white guys who compete by sending random connection requests in a quest to build the furthest-reaching “professional network.”.
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You don’t often hear the sound of a crowd of single issue voters. He was floored.
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Larry Ellison on Bill Gates being an absolute savage. (‘Softwar’)
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all of these people have been waiting for the check since 9pm.
11pm in Europe - streets are bustling, there’s a crafts market still going on, people just starting their meals or grabbing drinks. Wish the US had this sort of night culture that wasn’t just focused on clubbing and drinking in major cities
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If Elon doesn’t meet these demands, there’s a real risk of many employees quitting – some estimates say up to 75% of them.
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One huge drawback of nuclear power is that it doesn’t dismantle systems of oppression - it only produces clean energy. This makes it unsuitable for solving the climate crisis, which isn’t just about the environment.
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If you ever feel like you’re behind, keep in mind that Mark Zuckerberg didn’t start Facebook until he was 19, and it took him until he was 37 for it to be worth a trillion dollars.
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wow, this is a gutsy move. i guess their testing showed <30% churn.
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Amazing to see how far vaccination card technology has come in just 50 years.
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Most people don’t realize that the “shorter life expectancy” problem is not a problem of old people dying, but rather a problem of young people dying.
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I tried to make products in the US when I had my auto parts business. US manufacturers only wanted to do 1-2 pieces of the process – forging but not machining, machining but not heat treat, heat treat but not packaging. Taiwanese manufacturers offered to print my business cards.
We began manufacturing in America in 2022. We will make over a million bottles domestically in our first year. I’ve learned first hand why it is so hard to build things in America. For us, the biggest barrier hasn’t been wages or regulation.
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Find someone who looks at you the way the market looks at a 3.3M jobless claims report.
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This is precisely why ““environmentalists”” are so opposed to nuclear power – it achieves climate goals without achieving social goals.
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Bernie thinks profit is the same as revenue and everything makes sense now.
The video game industry made $43 billion in revenue last year. The workers responsible for that profit deserve to collectively bargain as part of a union. I'm glad to see unions like @IATSE and the broader @GameWorkers movement organizing such workers.
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Am reminded of a quote: 'a sense of timing is the hallmark of genius.' One sign that Marc Benioff is a genius is that his crisis of conscience happened *after* he made $7.8 billion. Imagine if it had happened the other way around!.
Capitalism as we have known it is dead & the obsession that we have with maximizing profits for shareholders alone has led to incredible inequality & a planetary emergency. When we serve all stakeholders, business is the greatest platform for change. ❤️
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CEO: i want a high performance culture, like Netflix. - ok well first you’re going to need to fire half your current staff, and then double the salaries for the ones you keep. CEO: haha ok ok well i can’t do that, what’s the rest of it?. - what do you mean, the rest of it?.
“No Rules Rules” and “The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up”: two books that give a simple roadmap to a dramatically improved quality of life, and 99.9% of readers decide after the first chapter that step 1 is too painful but they keep reading because it’s fun to dream.
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We need a moratorium on journalism until we get to the bottom of what's going on.
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Inexplicable moments you’ll never forget as a founder:. The first time you. - see people having a meeting you didn’t know about.- pass two employees walking somewhere and realize they’re talking about their work.- see a feature live that you didn’t know about. What a job.
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Zoom.
Traffic is horrible. A true scourge. What are the best startups working to make roads and traffic better?.
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I did a double take when reading this NYT piece that called the US “the world’s largest historic emitter of planet-warming pollution,” knowing China surpassed it 2 decades ago – then I noticed the word “historic” (cumulative). I wonder why NYT feels the need to mislead readers.
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one example of why it's so hard to compete w/AWS: we ran into a roadblock implementing new AWS service. already have call scheduled for thurs. to speed things up, engineer emailed on a saturday offering to jump on a call 'any time Monday/Tuesday.'. he's been at Amazon since 1999.
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This is a ridiculous framing. It’s not that you’re getting $1400 and it’s costing you $5757 – it’s that you’re getting $1400 and it’s costing your kids $5757, plus interest.
You’re getting $1400, but a $1.9T relief bill divided by 330M Americans is costing you $5757.
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I'm surprised people are surprised by this. The big problem green parties see with nuclear power is that it doesn’t dismantle systems of oppression - it only produces clean energy. They see the existential risk of nuclear power solving climate change without upending capitalism.
It's over for nuclear in Germany. The SDP-Green coalition has won a vote in the Bundestag backing more coal burning so that the three remaining nuclear plants can be switched off as planned this year. Climate targets may have to be abandoned as a result.
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jfc the prime video team absolutely kneecapped AWS serverless
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The “why does Tokyo (and not the US) have all these awesome tiny businesses” question is largely answered by “they’re illegal in the US” due to: . - minimum lot size requirements.- floor area ratios.- parking requirements.- mixed-use zoning restrictions.
Loving, whenever in Tokyo, the sensation of so many highly crafted experiences - from eight seat restaurants and tiny bars to owl cafes and artisanal cotton candy shops. Why aren’t there 1000x more of these experiences in all societies? And especially in the USA, what prompted.
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Politicians here to save the day!
In America, any business should have a fair shot at succeeding. Today @ChuckGrassley and I are introducing a bill to stop tech companies from squashing competition and raising prices for consumers.
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Wait. CEOs think the reason that people don’t want to go back to the office is because they’re scared of getting COVID?
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Amazing, real, and accurate: the CIA's Simple Sabotage Field Manual (1944) describes how to sabotage organizations.
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Gavin Newsome issuing an Executive Order that ensures that the housing crisis isn’t accidentally alleviated during reconstruction is just too on the nose.
NEW: Just issued an Executive Order that will allow victims of the SoCal fires to not get caught up in bureaucratic red tape and quickly rebuild their homes. We are also extending key price gouging protections to help make rebuilding more affordable.
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It’s only a spreadsheet if it was made in the Excél region of France, otherwise it’s just a sparking table.
I find working in Excel soothing in a way that Google Sheets doesn't give me.
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The biggest news of the year has to be Jack Ma moving to Miami. Wow.
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Am reminded of something I read, but can’t remember the source: ‘no one cheers for the outfielder who correctly judges the fly ball and catches it with ease. But when he misjudges it and runs to make the diving catch, the crowd goes wild.’.
Folks, I’m excited to tell you that the first flight from Operation Fly Formula is loaded up with more than 70,000 pounds of infant formula and about to land in Indiana. Our team is working around the clock to get safe formula to everyone who needs it.
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Dockworkers who prevent automation make an average of $200-306k per year, plus $100k in benefits, and are currently disrupting ports to protest insufficient pay.
Tens of millions in US port subsidies come with strings: they can't go to automation, despite its "huge" potential. But "More automation means fewer jobs, in the minds of union leaders, and they have found an ally in the White House."
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Unrealized gains are the largest source of income in the same way that uneaten calories are the largest source of energy.
BREAKING: Billionaires and centimillionaires held $8.5 TRILLION in untaxed, unrealized capital gains in 2022. Unrealized gains are the largest source of income for the ultra-rich—but they're completely UNTAXED under our tax code. This is why we need a billionaire income tax 🧵
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Hard agree. There’s no semblance of professionalism anymore. Just the other day, I walked up to kick someone I didn’t like in the nuts – and he blocked my foot! No warning.
I have nothing to do with this story and didn’t know we were even doing one. that said, this attempt at a front-run is mindblowing. theyve guaranteed readership for the coming story AND torched any semblance of trust or relationship they had media .
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[in Uber]. Me: so how do you like driving for Uber?. Him: love it. been doing it 3 years. fits my lifestyle. Me: really? reading lots of bad press about it lately. Him: I subscribe to 50 Cent’s philosophy - “if haters gonna hate then let 'em hate and watch the money pile up.”.
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Uber’s innovation was two-part: an app consumers could use to hail rides + an app where people could earn money without a job interview. The fact that politicians don’t see why it’s problematic to replace it with an app that gives instant full-time employment is just hilarious.
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Google Cloud will never be profitable. It is borderline impossible for a company whose core product is high margin to build cost discipline in a low-margin secondary product. AWS’s biggest advantage is being borne from (and run like) a low margin core business.
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Update: only took 4. Good riddance.
Rental car companies like @Hertz really, really hate their customers. Can't imagine they'll be around in 10 years.
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Love it or hate it - get used to it, because they are going to be absolutely everywhere. With automakers starting to catch up, Tesla went somewhere that’s tough for conservative competitors to follow - and they’re going to sell a million of them.
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If we nullify patents on enough of these, the stocks will go to zero and thousands of scientists will finally be able to create amazing new drugs as passion projects on the side for free.
Let’s do insulin next.
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I do wonder how many of the other heads of state have a clear understanding of economics but are unwilling to articulate it because basic economics is a political third rail.
How import tariffs weaken the economy and your wallet. #milei #argentina #economy #tariffs #imports #entrepreneurs #wages #openeconomy #freetrade
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The former President of Estonia pens my all-time favorite tweet.
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Recently traded in Tesla after 3 years for a new gas-powered car. Similar concept but there are charging stations everywhere and a full charge takes under 5 minutes. Noisier but I kinda like it, very visceral. Lots of exciting tech these days, fun to try stuff out.
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Talked to a ~15 year engineer recently who said that they learned 90% of what they know in the past 4 years. If that's not how your work is trending, it's time to change companies.
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Amazon is famous for its “Working Backwards” process, where every initiative starts with writing a press release about a hypothetical launch – less well known is Google’s working backwards process, where every initiative starts with writing the product’s end of life announcement.
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A BRIEF HISTORY OF TESLA:. - no one wants electric cars.- hmm but there's not enough range.- fine but that's only for the rich.- batteries are too expensive to make a car so cheap.- yeah but good luck delivering.- sure but it'll never turn a profit.- that's just pent up demand!.
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I admire the audacity of these bureaucrats spending wildly in ways that can’t possibly have an outcome other than rampant inflation, and then when inflation happens, calling it price gouging and threatening the companies with the DOJ. God mode gaslighting.
Americans are paying record high prices for their Thanksgiving turkey while big poultry companies are paying billions in dividends, giving CEOs raises & earning huge profits. These companies are abusing their market power. I’m asking DOJ to investigate.
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What’s happening is other countries have price controls on drugs and we don’t. ROI on pharma R&D is 1.2%. We subsidize pharma for the rest of the world – if you institute price controls in here, pharma innovation stops. We should be demanding that other countries raise prices.
There is no rational reason, other than greed, for Novo Nordisk to charge Americans nearly $1,000 a month for Ozempic when it costs less than $5 to manufacture it and can be purchased in Germany for just $59. Novo must substantially reduce the price of Ozempic in the US now.
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This is a really interesting point. Has anyone actually been inside a Tesla “factory,” or even seen one drive on a public road (not parked on the street, but actually driving, with your windows down / close enough to hear any giveaway sounds)?
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This isn’t confusing. Politicians largely don’t care about impact and don’t make reasoned, principled decisions; they pick a party and then run polls to determine their stances. What we call a “politician” is a crowdsourced AI algorithm fed by polling data and played by an actor.
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I had heard rumblings that the WHO was compromised but I had no idea it was this bad. Seems like a full-blown arm of the CCP at this point.
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this is wildly unfair – Marc still takes plenty of pitches from founders.
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we ideally want autonomous cars killing ~30k/year in the US to start (25% reduction). people are too dumb to understand this & will explode in hysterics at every death, instead rolling them out when ~perfectly safe, condemning many tens of thousands to death in the meantime.
Swiss Re, one of the world’s largest insurers, looked at autonomous vehicle data over 3M miles and decided they were significantly safer and easier to insure than drivers.
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I just want to be in the room when Elon finds out that the “algorithm” is some forked implementation of jquery on top of a bespoke XML/Esperanto hybrid data lake.
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I love this. Schools are finally looking like the prisons they are. Making it explicit is a huge step in the right direction.
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The best three pages on leadership I’ve ever come across. (book is One From Many / Dee Hock)
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All U.S. combat deaths (1775-2019): 661k. U.S. deaths due to obesity & high blood sugar (2019 only): 833k
You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war. We call on President Biden to de-escalate tensions and work for peace rather than prepare for war. Sending thousands more US troops to Europe in response to Russia’s threats against Ukraine only fans the flame of war.
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The Robinhood incident is a good reminder to founders: when you don’t tell people the real problem because you’re worried about how bad it will look, you almost always are rewarded by coming away looking much, much worse.
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“Only 41% of GPT-4 responses agreed with a consensus of 12 physicians.”. wow, ChatGPT sure sucks compared to a dozen expert MDs combined. i wonder how it stacks up against your shitty doctor who spends 5 minutes with you and hasn’t read a paper written in the last 10 years.
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there is the one key difference of ChatGPT being an actual product that exists
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Critics who think Amazon is killing retail should talk to the millions of businesses/products that were rejected by retail gatekeepers and only exist today because of Amazon’s ‘infinite shelf space.’.
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Contrarian take: he's an insightful guy but this shit has gone way too far
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Mostly solved problems that seemed unsolvable a few months ago:. - flu deaths.- driving deaths.- mass shootings.- school shootings.- police shootings.- climate change.- extreme wokeness.- Vox.
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🎯🎯🎯 What evidence do we have that rich people like Musk, Bezos, or Zuckerberg would be good at running tech companies?.
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It unfortunately seems that 37signals spent the last two and a half years on a Manhattan project to reduce COGS at the expense of thus far completely missing AI (at least I can’t find any mention of features on their websites). The opportunity cost was always huge.
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Wow. Apple chose not to build an Android version of iMessage even though it could – simply because it would cause them to bleed customers and lose lots of money. Big tech companies are out of control. iMessage is a basic human right. iMessage is infrastructure.
“As Cue's comments show, Apple was capable of developing an Android version of iMessage as early as 2013, but chose not to, since it would remove one obstacle that prevents families from giving their children Android phones.” 😦
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If I needed to sell my most prized technical asset but also needed to make sure it didn't continue to accrete value once it left my hands, I'd also sell it to Oracle.
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Startup comp is simple. Either: 1) become among the best in the world at identifying mispriced assets, 2) convince incredible people to work for less, 3) pay top of market, or 4) build a mediocre team. ~everyone thinks they are doing 1/2; nearly everyone is actually doing 3/4.
Everybody wants to hire the best. Nobody wants to pay them the best.
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It’s not a movie trailer. It’s not a natural disaster, either. It’s what happens when we let politicians run an oil company.
It’s not a movie trailer. It’s not a natural disaster, either. It’s what happens when we let corporate greed destroy our planet.
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The founders I’ve met who seem to be having the most fun often have a ‘secret’ but obvious secondary mission - some separate goal unrelated to their product that they are working to achieve using the company as a vessel. I’ve been calling this the ‘revealed mission.’.
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Excellent *financial* analysis of using *commoditized* cloud infrastructure (vanilla servers). It misses: i) the (long-term devastating) cultural cost of recruiting world-class engineers to do undifferentiated heavy lifting; ii) it's unfeasible to recreate noncommodity infra. 1/n.
[NewPost] Sure, Cloud is great. But we show it hurts share price of public companies on the order of hundreds of billions. and they can economically justify almost any level of work (including repatriation) in order to lower costs (w/ @sarahdingwang).
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this is the best thing that’s ever happened to me but I feel really bad for the social media intern
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I think about this Steve Jobs quote every time I eat great salami. Not quite software ratios, but easily 10:1.
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“We don’t think we make money from an Instacart order.”. Something that few people realize: almost no company is well-instrumented enough to calculate margins at this level – the rare ones that are, like Amazon, have a tremendous advantage. See also: Steve Jobs on accounting.
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love the new tagline
Unfettered conversations are taking place on Clubhouse, an invitation-only app that lets people gather in audio chatrooms. The platform has exploded in popularity, despite grappling with concerns over harassment, misinformation and privacy.
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i know a lot of people don’t like Larry Ellison, but have you seen his take on cats
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Wow. Salesforce to forgo profits to reach carbon neutral status by end of 2022. Benioff selling his Salesforce holdings ($7.5 BILLION!) to employees for $1. I have to say that I’m shocked. I did not see this coming.
Capitalism as we have known it is dead & the obsession that we have with maximizing profits for shareholders alone has led to incredible inequality & a planetary emergency. When we serve all stakeholders, business is the greatest platform for change. ❤️
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If only we had a term for when prices go up without benefitting businesses.
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Feeling thankful that it only costs 1/4 as much to save the world as it does to build an imaginary bullet train.
Pfizer has made an estimated $975 million from the vaccine this year, and is expected to earn another $19 billion in 2021. Pfizer’s profit margin on the vaccine is estimated at between 60% and 80%. Moderna is projected to make more than $10 billion from its vaccine next year.
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Man, when you see a big tech giant like Apple pushing around a small company like Basecamp, you just have to be thankful that at least Basecamp employees don’t own any equity at all and the burden mostly falls on the multi, multimillionaire founders.
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Ingredients for a fantastic place to live: climate, coastline, commerce. NYC, Denver, SLC are too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. Austin is too hot in the summer. Denver, Austin, SLC are landlocked. Tech people leaving SF forget that there’s a reason SF became SF.
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Crazy to see so many founders spending hours and hours a day distracted on Clubhouse instead of working on their side funds.
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It’s easy to gloss over these numbers. To get a sense of scale: China is planning to build 150 nuclear reactors – more than the rest of the world has built in the past 35 years – for $440B. Biden’s $1.9T stimulus covers that 4x over, with enough left to automate every US port.
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I think most smart people know that reading widely-read books from your profession (e.g. business, tech) is useless. But people get stuck reading obscure, dense books in their industry instead. Reading basic books from other professions (e.g. architecture, science) is underrated.
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Lots of VC career talk lately. Not as glamorous as it seems. The typical VC spends 30% of the day being 5 minutes late to calls, 25% emailing portfolio CEOs with links to competitors asking “is this competitive?”, and the rest of the time writing about why not to become a VC.
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No - a Korean *company* developed a test and is ramping production. Imagine what the US could achieve if we didn’t need government approval for diagnostic tests and becoming hairstylists.
Korea finished developing the 10 minute Covid-19 diagnostic kit and is now ramping up production. They plan to export 300.000 test-kits per week -
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Imagine being in the room when the ad agency comes back to you with this.
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The ““supply chain crisis”” is a clever rebrand. It makes it seem like there are grand exogenous forces at work rather than the unions holding ports for ransom while dozens of ships pile up, working just 2 shifts with a 2 hour break in between, the country at their mercy.
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“No Rules Rules” and “The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up”: two books that give a simple roadmap to a dramatically improved quality of life, and 99.9% of readers decide after the first chapter that step 1 is too painful but they keep reading because it’s fun to dream.
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“Elon Musk’s vision of an ‘uncontrolled’ internet is the dream of every dictator, strongman and demagogue”; Robert Reich joins other notable activists such as Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in calling for a tighter control over online discourse.
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First, his rich friends gave him money for PayPal, which caused PayPal. Then, because he was rich, his rich friends gave him money for Tesla & SpaceX, which caused electric cars & reusable rockets. Now, his rich friends give him money because he’s the richest person in the world!
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The natural conclusion of telling people that Hitler is on the ballot and democracy hangs in the balance.
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On one hand, the fact that regulation is so deeply, mindlessly ingrained that it is instinctively applied even to imaginary happenings is a testament to the hopelessly sad state of the collective consciousness in California. On the other hand, at least the permits were approved!.
Permits have been approved for 9 reindeer to land in California tonight. Christmas is a GO! 🎅🦌
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