brett goldstein @thatguybg Twitter profile | Pikagi

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brett goldstein

@thatguybg

22,319

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3,554

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1,697

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16,550

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founder of something new/old | x M&A guy at Google | investor in 50+ via @launchhouse | writing | follow for startup advice & subpar memes

nyc

https://t.co/r54ydTOeTv

Joined December 2011

Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

7 months

a lot of new followers (thanks for that!) in the past week, so allow me to reintroduce myself. I'm brett! designer/product guy from the Bay Area and founder of a v cool startup in NYC that I think will change how 1B people live and work outside of that, I manage a small fund

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

6 months

this is insane cashier is literally zooming into nyc from the philippines

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brett goldstein

3 months

what is a good minimalist backpack that doesn’t make me look like i’ve never talked to a girl

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

4 months

@annaarthoe - plant medicine - near death experience - quit a toxic job or relationship - meet your life partner

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brett goldstein

2 months

we live in the real life silicon valley comedy: - two young prodigal hacker/founders are at each others throats building competing AI pin startups - both startups are named Friend - one spends 1.8M to buy the Friend domain and launches on international friendship day - the

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brett goldstein

8 months

Sora's video quality seems impossible so I dug into how it works under the hood it uses both diffusion (starting with noise, refining towards a desired video) and transformer architectures (handling sequential video frames) read on 🧵

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brett goldstein

11 months

this is what I come to this website for

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brett goldstein

3 months

guy sitting next to me in this cafe just came up with a great name for his business. I just bought the domain name for it.

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

6 months

initially i was really excited but now my mind is wandering to this dystopian future where you live in this concrete jungle and none of the businesses you interact with have actual humans in them maybe a punishment for us not treating retail workers more human

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

6 months

only takes a short hop to imagine the near future where this is an AI avatar

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

3 months

pick your poison live in SF - increase your startup's odds of success 3x - decrease your odds of finding a life partner 100x live in NYC - increase your startup's odds of success 1.5x - increase your odds of finding a life partner 100x

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brett goldstein

3 years

18: can I buy some wine? USA: no that's illegal & irresponsible 18: can I go $70,000 in debt for education? USA: we encourage it

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

5 months

I went looking for some good UI design inspiration but instead, I fell down the rabbit hole of designers competing to create the worst UI possible happy to announce I won't use any of these hilariously awful bangers: 1/ the best way to limit username size

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brett goldstein

10 months

ambition in NYC = get rich ambition in LA = get famous ambition in SF = change the world

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

3 months

@soona I like how dubrovnik, the most croatia city in croatia culturally is literally in the least croatia part of croatia geographically

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brett goldstein

6 months

company is called “happy cashier” no website but operating in 5 asian fast food places in new york city

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brett goldstein

3 years

jewish people chinese people 🤝 chinese food on christmas

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brett goldstein

5 months

zuck's leaked 2015 email on facebook's VR/AR strategy is a wild read I did an AR strategy project for the CEO of Google when I worked there and this is next level. 2500 words of pure brilliance from zuck on investing billions in VR/AR and acquiring unity. I obv had to dig in🧵

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brett goldstein

5 months

the tech industry has this obsession with building the "wechat of the west" billions of dollars have been invested in creating new super apps over the years yet we still don't have one. why? 🧵

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brett goldstein

3 months

@WillManidis - what you do for work - who you marry - fries or side salad

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brett goldstein

8 months

I worked on Google's M&A team when we were doing 40+ acquisitions a year 21 things founders should know about getting acquired 1. your team will likely have to pass interviews at the new company, so hire well. 2. every time your valuation increases, the number of potential

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brett goldstein

4 months

i love that this was steve jobs' favorite piece of art perfectly encapsulates what made him brilliant and one of the most important skills for founders - being able to simplify things down into their most essential form

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brett goldstein

7 months

this room temperature superconductor stuff is absolutely insane I dug around to find out how they work and how the world is on the verge of a complete transformation because of them read on 🧵

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brett goldstein

3 years

startups are sports teams, not families you have to put the best people in the right positions to win.

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brett goldstein

2 years

can’t believe how many 4.0 students i knew in college are doing nothing interesting with their lives

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brett goldstein

4 years

My dude. Now is not the time for b2b saas tweets

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brett goldstein

6 months

just stumbled on sequoia's 2005 investment memo for youtube when I was on google's M&A team, we considered it the best acquisition in the history of the company It's 41 pages of juicy details on why they invested (thanks for the lawsuit, Viacom) I obviously had to dig in🧵

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brett goldstein

7 months

someone will always be in a better position than you, but you can still beat them if you care more

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brett goldstein

3 months

why is this in every pitch deck

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brett goldstein

5 years

A designer I know told me his PM writes jira tickets that just say "make onboarding easier" or even "increase retention" 😂

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brett goldstein

3 months

to be clear my current backpack makes me look like i’ve never talked to a girl

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

4 years

My dad died this Friday. Despite knowing this was coming for 8 years (he had a neurodegenerative disease), saying goodbye is still tough. Give your dad a hug for me if you can.

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brett goldstein

4 years

Name that startup █ 　　 █　 █　 █　＿ the growth the twitter hype

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brett goldstein

6 months

@GloboGymCapital @TanArrowz overall it was much more positive and experience the cashier was much more friendly than any in person cashiers in new york maybe says more about new yorkers than the service tho…

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brett goldstein

5 months

the real money in refrigeration wasn't made by the people who invented it but by brands that leveraged it like Coca-Cola. LLMs are gonna play out the same way.

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brett goldstein

3 months

why is it only socially acceptable for immigrants and conservatives to be proud of being american

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

3 years

how to pitch your startup by stage: - pre-seed: "this space is massive and my team was born to tackle this problem" - seed: "same as pre-seed + look how fast we're shipping" - A: "same as seed + we hired a killer team and are seeing traction with a scalable product"

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brett goldstein

6 months

i’m on a flight rn person on my left is eating skittles and watching netflix person on my right is eating mcdonald’s and watching sports i’m eating raw broccoli and chicken while working on some figma designs getting death stares from the others

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brett goldstein

4 years

Psychology is the most underrated major in tech. UX, growth, management, etc all boil down to understanding how people think.

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brett goldstein

2 months

what cities make you too much of: - LA makes you too soft - NYC makes you too hard - SF makes you too weird - Boston makes you too nerdy

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

1 year

my dude now is not the time for b2b saas tweets

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brett goldstein

3 months

@DrewCDennis nothing says “i’m from central europe and i haven’t been on a date in 3 years” more than this

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

8 months

design is vastly undervalued in the Silicon Valley @bchesky who is actually a designer, lays out characteristics of great designers that are actually the exact same for great founders/CEOs. "I design the company. I design the product... and designing starts with curiosity. you

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brett goldstein

2 months

also don't forget the significantly older, veteran founder bouncing around the background also building an AI pin also dropping videos subtweeting the competition and negging investors

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brett goldstein

6 months

@gregisenberg so bad their designers should go straight to jail

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brett goldstein

3 years

excited to announce @launchhouse 's $12M series A led by @andrewchen of @a16z 🧵

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brett goldstein

5 months

@ash_lmb creating a prettier version of the midwit meme is the ultimate mitwit move

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brett goldstein

2 years

I would like to see a startup create a netflix series as a marketing strategy

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brett goldstein

4 years

Soul was great. Couldn't stop thinking about this tho

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brett goldstein

3 years

there are two founders in our current cohort that declined going to stanford and YC respectively to build their startups welcome to the future where great founders don’t need institutions

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

6 months

@JoshDance i would really not want my dentist to zoom in from another country

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

4 months

the most successful founders I know are always pissed off about something

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

3 years

some of the most successful founders ever started startups because they couldn't land jobs

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

2 years

first time founders think that hiring a big team is a sign of success when its actually the opposite

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

7 months

TIL sam altman’s first co was a cliche location sharing app and he used to wear a double popped collar if he can glow up, so can you

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

2 months

TIL the lead singer of system of a down founded a successful vertical SaaS startup for jewelers

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brett goldstein

7 months

@davelu the angst of a 5'7" man is powerful enough to move mountains

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

7 months

I was reading into e/acc and fell down a much deeper rabbit hole - the history of accelerationism humans on the moon, the atomic bomb, and AI are all outcomes of choosing progress over fear how humanity has benefited from these movements & why we need them:🧵

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brett goldstein

3 months

@awwstn no girls will ever talk to me if i wear this in new york

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

4 years

Calendly is 100x faster to set up a meeting than going back and forth with times on email. That said, sending a Calendly link still feels weird. Anyone know why?

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brett goldstein

8 months

@carmguti trash UX is a symptom of entrenchment / anti-competitive practices I'd set up a government agency to investigate every product with horrible UX

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brett goldstein

9 months

I don't believe in venture studios @naval sums it up perfectly here that the scarce resource in startups isn't ideas or capital which is what venture studios provide its entrepreneurs who are motivated to slog through the idea maze to solve a problem they're obsessed with

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

6 months

pretty crazy that GPT3.5 can outperform GPT4 through an agentic workflow reminds me of folks I've worked with in my career who outperformed people who were much smarter merely because they had a better process

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brett goldstein

3 months

@signulll the most competitive industries and universities tend to be dominated by asians, indians, and jews all of whom emphasize academic achievement as a core part of their culture makes sense these groups tend to intermarry

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

3 months

early sign of a startup on the decline is the founder picking up side projects and attending a lot of events

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

5 months

3/ vivaldi would be proud

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

5 months

founders adding “AI” to their landing pages and pitch decks

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

5 months

@aripap they could have easily made it a smile but its so authentic that it isn't i love it

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

3 months

@2024dion no you havent bro

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

3 years

the most brilliant people I know: 1. are truly humble 2. are curious 3. love to argue 4. are controversial yet flexible 5. are willing to be wrong 6. are surrounded by other great people 7. know life isn't binary what else?

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brett goldstein

2 years

hot take - where you live still matters we chose LA in the early days of our consumer startup and we would have failed anywhere else here are 9 reasons I’m bullish on LA:

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

5 months

4/ the ultimate scientific date picker

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

6 months

if you're looking for a cofounder, you need to hear this

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brett goldstein

3 years

web3 is basically a psychedelic "the deeper I go into web3, the less I relate to people who haven't and the more I question the actual nature of reality" (ht multiple people lately)

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brett goldstein

6 months

when I worked at Accenture on the R&D team, I had a project where we built a system kind of like this it was a good idea since ACN has the largest outsourcing operation in the world (millions in the Philippines) but this was 2013 and the technology.... wasn't quite there.

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brett goldstein

3 years

I've officially moved to LA. we may not be as rich as the folks moving to Miami, but we're definitely hotter.

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brett goldstein

10 months

true or false if a candidate fails an interview within 5 minutes it’s ok to tell them and end the interview early

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brett goldstein

4 years

Just got the first payment for my first startup ever. What is this feeling?? 🤩

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

5 months

steve jobs did calligraphy paul graham did art garry tan was a designer see a pattern?

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brett goldstein

9 months

one of the best things I did for my career was take a year off it felt wildly indulgent at the time - I pulled out of interviews with Uber, Doordash, Stripe, and others in their early days to bounce around the world for a year without a job but as Altman rightly puts it here -

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

4 years

99% of product managers think more critically about PM interview questions than their actual products.

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

8 months

@lopez4schools ask some of the engineers at open AI what they make and what they studied in college

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

7 months

being a founder is lonely af you'll meet tons of people for networking, building your team, marketing, and fundraising, but the journey is still lonely. I ran a 1000-member community and I still felt the loneliness. @bchesky puts it well - "the world will isolate you into a

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brett goldstein

3 years

my dad passed away a year ago today every child spends their lives trying to make their dads proud and this year feels like the first year I might have done it feels incredibly bittersweet but I'm also so grateful

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

6 months

@TrungTPhan TJs reverse engineers independent CPG companies' products what goes around comes around bruh

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brett goldstein

2 months

notion is like the 3-in-1 shampoo/conditioner/body wash of productivity tools you can definitely do it, but it's not recommended

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

3 years

the best product people I know are anthropologists they deeply understand - human psychology - the history of technology + society - pop culture - behavioral economics - game theory

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

2 months

@AviSchiffmann creative direction on this was 100/100 gj

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

5 months

how do you create things no one else can? stop being mimetic and ask yourself what do you know that no one else does

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

4 years

"The single largest beneficiary of remote work will be India. It has the largest population of English-speaking, STEM-trained talent in the world." - @naval (via clubhouse) 🇮🇳🇮🇳🇮🇳

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brett goldstein

4 years

I got the second dose of the moderna vaccine today. Was feeling conflicted about it (I qualify but I'm obviously young/healthy). And then I went to the facility and there was almost no one there and heard they've been throwing out vaccines. Just get vaccinated if you can.

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

1 year

i like to invest in founders that are mad about something

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

5 years

Having a ridiculously short commute (10 min walk) may have actually degraded my quality of life. Been reading and listening to podcasts a lot less than when I had a >30min commute. I also feel some cabin fever not really leaving the same area of SF during the week

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

4 years

A lot of people don't realize this: the most famous tech writing isn't actually about tech at all - "Competition is for losers" - @peterthiel (game theory) - Status as a Service - @eugenewei (psych) - Startups are Risk Bundles - @lpolovets (probability)

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

2 years

founders working through weekends and bear markets are the ones to bet on

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

5 months

11/ took me just 15 clicks. a fun datepicker tbh.

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

5 months

the biggest distractions for founders: in NYC: the city in SF: technical rabbit holes that don't move your metrics in Europe: low-ambition people looking down on you

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

5 years

Them: you know what's cool? ✨A billion dollars✨ You: meh... I'd probably be happier running a sub $10M ARR lifestyle business with a few buddies.

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

3 years

startups are exciting again thanks for saving us from b2b saas hell crypto fam

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@thatguybg

brett goldstein

2 years

@steph_zunz we’re still ethically opposed to leg days apologies

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brett goldstein

6 months

@rbhuta95 yea there was! good question. I did ask her a few questions - turns out she can control the POS system remotely!

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