Kevin Kwok @kevinakwok Twitter profile

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

6 years

@devonzuegel Tapping a tuning fork and seeing who resonates

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

1 year

Apple to Facebook, Google, and Snap

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

1 year

Google pays Apple $20B a year to be their default search engine. That's 75% of Apple's entire research and development budget. @narayanarjun pointed out to me that Google's basically funding all of Apple's r&d haha. Should put that on back of every device

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

10 months

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

6 years

Lee Kuan Yew has a line about how if you allow two generations of corruption you permanently lose an institution - Good people leave - Others normalize new incentives and become bad - Entire system reshapes I think this is true of all groups. And means we underweight its damage

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

1 year

You in reality vs you in the shower later

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

4 years

We are learning in vaccines what most startups inevitably realize too late Product is great. but most of the time, you live or die by distribution

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

4 years

New essay up. Why Figma Wins - Why browser-first matters - Figma is built for design, not just designers - Intra-company network effects + bringing designers to decision making table - Global network effects, pushing progress, & how to become a platform

Why Figma Wins - kwokchain

Companies are a sequencing of loops. While it’s possible to stumble into an initial core loop that works, the companies that are successful in the long term are the ones that can repeatedly find the...

kwokchain.com

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

1 year

tim apple is just going down the list of things zuck loves and taking them from him. ad targeting. VR/AR. next he's gonna announce he's a black belt at brazilian jiu jitsu. or has solved AI

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

11 months

Our industry will never got back the decade it spent cargo culting every part of google except the multi-hundred billion dollar revenue per year cash printer

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

4 years

My new quarantine hobby is taking stock photos of San Francisco

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

6 years

When I was young I used to walk around malls with dad, and he would walk me through the unit economics of the different stores and restaurants. Friend brought up idea of coffee table book of the unit economics of different companies. And yes this is my dream coffee table book

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

5 years

Zoom founder, Eric Yuan, applied for visa 9 times before getting it That might make one suspect our Visa system could be better...

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

3 years

Want to add your CA vaccine record to your Apple wallet? Kevin Kwok Prime ( @antimatter15 ) has made a little web app to make it easy for you

CA Vaccine Record → Apple Wallet | CovidWallet.app

Add your California SMART Covid-19 Vaccination Record to your Apple wallet. Covid Wallet is free, open-source, privacy-first web app.

covidwallet.app

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

1 month

I’ve joined Sutter Hill Ventures to find and build companies with our next generation of EIRs and CEOs

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

3 years

Microsoft, Adobe, and Pfizer Name companies that have done better transitions to SaaS business models

Pfizer CEO says third Covid vaccine dose likely needed within 12 months

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said people will "likely" need a third dose of a Covid-19 vaccine within 12 months of getting fully vaccinated.

www.cnbc.com

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

5 years

New essay up. The Arc of Collaboration. - Slack is an Else Statement - There is no distinction between productivity and collaboration - The Slack of Gaming may be Discord, but the Discord for Enterprise is not Slack

The Arc of Collaboration - kwokchain

The arc of collaboration is long and it bends in the direction of functional workflows. Why Slack is an Else Statement, there is no distinction between productivity and collaboration, and why the...

kwokchain.com

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

5 months

@0interestrates the answer is tesla

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

3 years

I heard people don't like reading 10 page essays, so now you can watch an hour long video @eugenewei & I are launching a video series called Closing the Loop: we'll cover a lot of topics we write about. w/ some guests too First episode, on TikTok, here:

Tiktok, Emergent Creativity, The Limits of Social Graphs, and...

In the inaugural* episode of Closing the Loop. Kevin interrogates Eugene about why he felt TikTok was important enough to inflict three (THREE) essays on us ...

www.youtube.com

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

3 years

Uber pool was such a fever dream. Can’t wait to try to explain it to my kids. Love things that carbon date their year or month so effortlessly

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

4 years

New essay up. How to Eat an Elephant, One Atomic Concept at a Time - How Figma & Canva are taking on Adobe—and winning - New use cases drive new needs - Atomic concepts of companies - Becoming platform ecosystems - Dimensional reduction + narrative debt

How to Eat an Elephant, One Atomic Concept at a Time - kwokchain

How Figma and Canva are taking on Adobe—and winning In 2010, Photoshop was ubiquitous. Whether you were editing a photo, making a poster, or designing a website, it happened in Photoshop. Today,...

kwokchain.com

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

5 years

Interesting to see the rates at which COVID hit different social media platforms Twitter: Has been freaking out for weeks Facebook: Now freaking out Youtube: Jussst starting to show up Instagram: Covid? What's that! Who's he?!

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

5 years

Many stories on tech can be overblown. Not this one though I have seen this app in use and it 100% works and is even more disconcerting than description here Global facial recognition doesn’t exist only because of social norms rn. The tech is trivial

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

4 years

OneTab failed on me, and I lost 10k+ saved tabs And I can't for the life of me decide if this was a tragedy or a feature

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

4 years

Reddit is so great haha I'm just imagining this person. Immortal and 2000 years in the past, excited they can now finally buy that Tesla dip before the pump to the moon

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

4 years

New essay up. The Mike Speiser Incubation Playbook - Advantages of being interim CEO - Betting all-in on secular transitions - Optimizing only for incubations - Local maximas of venture and function not form - Breaking the wall of VC-company engagement

The Mike Speiser Incubation Playbook - kwokchain

In Formula 1 racing, you can win a world championship as a driver with one team but then not even make the top 10 without that team’s car and infrastructure. Venture can often feel like this, too....

kwokchain.com

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

5 years

New essay up. Notes on Superhuman’s Acquisition Loops - Superhuman's acquisition loops are driven by social capital, not personal utility - Lessons from their onboarding process - Scalability of social capital loops, and sequencing to network effects

Notes on Superhuman’s Acquisition Loops - kwokchain

Recently sent some notes on aspects of Superhuman’s acquisition loops and business model that interested me to some friends. Since I often ask people to write and send me more memos, thought I’d...

kwokchain.com

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

5 years

[new post] Underutilized Fixed Assets - Why every successful marketplace is initially built on underutilized fixed assets - How marketplaces sequence eventually as their supply professionalizes - Why chinese restaurants kicking you out fast is true love

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

3 years

People often ask me how valuations get negotiated. Normally I tell people there's no formula. But that's lie. Here's the formula (2021 edition) Founder proposes valuation VC proposes valuation And then you add them together That's the valuation.

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

6 years

I've come to believe everyone systematically underestimates how influenceable people are in the last inning of deciding major life decisions like jobs. The smallest moment magnifies. Managing the last mile so key. And conversely getting lazy for a second so fatal

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

8 months

@delk took me long time to square the stories of many older family friends about a century ago having mansions in china. but also the family member funding them doing menial labor in US. until I connected exactly how far apart the currencies carried

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

6 years

Kris Jenner is the best accelerator program in the world - probably eugene

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

1 year

No one needs to write life advice blog posts in tech anymore. Glad to announce I’ve solved it

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

5 years

New essay up. On Making Uncommon Knowledge Common + the Rich Barton Playbook

Making Uncommon Knowledge Common - kwokchain

The Rich Barton Playbook for winning markets through Data Content Loops Preface: This is part of a longer private memo analyzing Zillow and its recent shift towards Opendoor’s model. May publish rest...

kwokchain.com

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

10 months

Microsoft now joins the time honored cloud giant tradition of having two competing AI labs

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

4 years

If you are mindblown about what's happening with GME in finance Just wait until you see it happen in politics

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

5 years

Google going to ban ad blockers from chrome Welp. Guess that's goodbye to chrome

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

3 years

This is so wild.

Radar Interference Tracker: A New Open Source Tool to Locate Active Military Radar Systems -...

Many military radars interfere with open source satellite imagery when they're turned on. A new tool lets anyone monitor when and where these radars are deployed.

www.bellingcat.com

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

5 years

The hype cycle

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

6 years

Add online branding to the list of things @AOC is just *better* at Everyone talks about the big stuff, but she and her team are just better at the small details too Whether you support her or not, worth understanding. Because the delta shows And her Facebook ads tell the story

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

6 years

I think my replacement for book clubs Is meetings where you both read a blog post and then discuss it

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

4 years

Everything about the financial markets makes sense once you think of it as a competition by everyone to make it into @matt_levine ’s newsletter

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

3 years

Dune is everything. Best sci-fi movie I can remember seeing. And more true to the books than my imagination Unreal. See it in full imax and sound as it was meant to be seen.

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

11 months

how do we explain to interns how seriouesly 2010 vibes were about putting in multi-colored slides in the office and having everyone do brainteasers in interviews as a way to summon down cash like a rain dance

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

5 years

A very good proxy for how enjoyably walkable a city is, is the orange zones in google maps Also makes it easy to compare cities, here's Paris vs SF at same zoom. Insane how much more walkable Paris is--and how distributed.

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

3 years

Am consistently very impressed by vitalik's writing. Who else in crypto is anywhere close to his level of thoughtfulness x prolificness? Fine if blogs, discourse, etc.

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

5 months

@0interestrates Think answer is 2010. Which is not that early from product perspective. But from company stock perspective is very early haha

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

3 years

New essay up. Narrative Distillation - modern IPO env is about owning marketing, not pricing - increasing impt of narrative leverage as accounting too backwards facing - product market fit as one facet of narrative distillation - founder led narratives

Narrative Distillation - kwokchain

The shifting sands of tech IPOs If the IPO process is like a debutante ball, the top investment banks are akin to a finishing school. They help gussy up companies, teach them proper manners like how...

kwokchain.com

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

4 years

I'm starting to think Call Me Maybe is a song about enterprise pricing and sales

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

4 years

sf classic

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

5 years

Loops is the correct way to view the world. Eventually everyone will realize this

Max Olson

@maxolson

5 years

3/ And some real-world examples I sketched out that combine multiple advantages into the flywheel engines driving growth:

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

3 years

cheatsheet guide that's hopefully useful for others

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

4 years

entering sf

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

5 years

Star Trek Picard is the best of optimistic scifi Especially the part where the federal government upzones the Presidio and Marin And builds dense pedestrian plazas and skyscrapers

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

5 years

There is a beautiful stage of startups early on where you report bugs and they get fixed within 24 hours I get why it doesn't last. And few companies are even good at it. But wow it never ceases to be amazing

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

1 year

This is painful to read. Very dark

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

3 years

Scenes from writing last essay Been so long it started in quarantine

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

4 years

marin

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

6 months

What’s needed is a firm that specializes in this. Maybe with a name that reinforces that focus like Long Term Capital Management

Dani Grant

@thedanigrant

6 months

Early stage founders, find patient capital. - Notion took 3 years to PMF - Airtable took 4 years to PMF You need early VCs who are up for a long adventure. Feel lucky to have VCs on board who didn't give up on us when we didn't hit PMF right away. It makes such a difference.

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

10 months

@arthgupta we asked for chat generated transparent pngs and all we got was super-human intelligent AIs

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

1 year

Morris Chang oral histories are so great. Recently reread one on plane ride How can you not love this haha

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

5 years

Whoever gave Quantam Supremacy its name is a genius How can the US govt not invest in our Quantam Supremacy. This is like government catnip

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

5 years

Caro on how encouragement and the moments when the people around you have significant impact on your ambition

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

10 months

@alexeyguzey Yes. Most people who professionally post on both platforms do this now. The bigger reason is that Twitter debuffs the direct link I believe than YouTube. But YouTube may also count it less

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

1 year

Marvel made every kids company realize they can get much more returns by becoming IP for cinematic universes. And now Mattel and Sony fully pivoting to fracking your childhood as the business model

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

4 years

When we say Parler's decision was about free speech This is what they were kicked off Amazon for. This isn't some case of partisan free speech being stifled

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

2 years

Talked to friend of friend who has offer at tech unicorn. They won't tell them what valuation the RSU pricing is at Besides fact that that's unethical imo. Esp crazy in today's time where huge possible spread in valuation of employee shares. In way that massively matters

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

5 years

It's good to remember that sometimes things get worse over time

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

3 years

Remember when Blake Masters was supposed to herald smart tech people running for office? lol

Alex Salvi

@alexsalvinews

3 years

AZ GOP Senate candidate Blake Masters: “I think Trump won in 2020 ... We saw states change the rules at the last minute to flood the zone with mail in ballots … Big Tech censored true information about Joe Biden in the weeks leading up to the election.”

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

3 years

Stripe's payment link is pretty cool. There are so many products that really should have better implementations as shareable link

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

5 years

There have never been moats. It's always been loops Once we all embrace that can start discussing the real questions. Like how to quantify them. Map then to user loops and internal resource allocation. How to sequence them. How to make new ones

Patrick OShaughnessy

@patrick_oshag

5 years

Moats are actually loops. Fun exercise—try to draw this for whatever business you work in or a company you love. From @maxolson

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

6 years

New post: aligning biz models to markets - How internet is changing hospitality - Why Shake Shack & USHG's biz models enable better employee retention & service - How the trend maps to tech, from gaming (Fortnite) to productivity (Airtable, Figma, Notion)

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

5 years

@Altimor Craigslist has the ideal design aesthetic. You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like.

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

5 years

When I used to talk to people at Amazon. They all said they hated that they were underappreciated vs SV peers on the way up. But once dominant loved that they had low radar profile Shopify feels similar. Still so under radar despite being absolute elephant in room of ecommerce

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

1 year

Apple just needs to ship that all texts from Vision Pro are in gold bubbles. and this thing is locked in

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

5 years

Prop 13 makes property tax in California a joke Here's property tax paid by houses on one street in SF compared to their market value If you're wondering why you're paying $40k in property tax on your $2M house, it's because your neighbor with a $5M house is paying $4k

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

5 years

My roommate - caught wild salmon - built smoker - made smoked salmon I - ate it This is peak synergy and collaboration

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

5 years

Biggest takeaway from this should be that private markets people have HUGE information edge over public markets about health of tech companies when they go public

Eugene Wan

@eugenewan

5 years

The list of what ISN'T in Uber's S-1 from @benthompson and @stratechery today. Oh boy.

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

1 month

Seeing demo of this was one of those times I’ve really felt the direction of where software is going. - models that understand my companies database *and* design system - manage both ephemeral, exploratory, and enduring work - text input but also higher order interface

Meter

@meter

1 month

Meet Meter Command. A generative UI product for getting information, taking action, and building real-time software – all in natural language.

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

7 years

@lulu_cheng omg. The real story here is your handwriting.

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

4 years

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

2 years

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

3 years

Costco delivery of frozen items uses frozen kirkland water bottles to keep it cool. That is some real big brain thinking

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

4 years

A star is born

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

5 years

Le relais de L'Entrecote Such a great restaurant format. Only serves steak and fries. No menu. Sit down and they just start bringing it until you tell them to stop The kitchen must be like an overcooked level

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

5 years

Dark forest is the most popular metaphor from three body problem But in a few years it'll be sophon locking

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

5 years

This is so obviously true about what Buffet does. And a great strategy. Just like him "living" in omaha. Also, as always. Matt Levine is a national treasure

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

5 years

Finally going to find out if the internal McK book is all it’s hyped to be So far have really enjoyed it. Fun reading about the stage of McKinsey when it was truly a startup in new space

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

5 years

the nytimes should offer a subscription where I pay more money and they remove the opinions section

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

6 years

Status as a Service I have been so excited for @eugenewei to drop this monster of a manifesto. Understanding social capital the way we do Financial capital is supremely impt. Eugene is my favorite person to discuss and learn from on it. Read this!

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

5 years

It's clear Mary Meeker now has the ability to choose any companies and just ask them for whatever metric she cares about. And they'll provide the data From now on when people ask me what superpower I'd like, I know my answer

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

4 years

The societal surplus of tech. When consumer grade software like Eventbrite is now more reliable and scalable for govt use than Deloitte managed official projects We’re barely taking adavantage of this yet though

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

4 years

Silverlake: 😏

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

1 year

@kane @powerbottomdad1 And a global pandemic

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

11 months

They don’t do politics like they used to People say SF politics is at an all time low. But 1800s sf would like you to hold its anchor steam Also yes this is de young as in de young museum haha

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

5 years

People I know who work in tech generally seem to think minimal risk of layoffs--and it'll be only in retail, etc But that's *very* different from what I sense from founder/VC side If you're an employee, take stock of your company and role and make sure in good place. Stay safe!

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

5 years

Ideas are cheap and execution is everything. but conclusion you should share ideas is likely wrong Execution wins bc hard to stop spread of ideas + low defensibility vs execution once known Takeaway is that its *dangerous* to share with those misaligned from you who will rip it

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

5 years

Apple really needs a flow that will let me save a screenshot/photo and paste it into chat. But then auto delete the screenshot so it’s not forever saved to all my cloud storage services

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

1 year

The natural end state of marketplaces and social media is the eventual shift from user generated supply to professionalized supply/content. They can fight it for some time, but eventually there is no other way to keep scaling (or prevent power users from peeling off)

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Kevin Kwok

@kevinakwok

3 years

Always reminded there is no substitute for learning by doing something end to end once And no matter how many times you learn it. Always surprisingly true the next time around

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