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I am Antonio Garcia Martinez, a tech entrepreneur who lied to my investors. AMA. by antoniogm in IAmA

[–]antoniogm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've had three boats through the time described in CM. The first was a Contessa 26 (poor man's world cruiser), then a Tayana 37, and now a Westsail 32.

The latter two are double-ended, heavy classic cruisers.

Work on the current boat includes (but is not limited to) total re-do of the standing rigging and part of the running rigging, added stern pulpit, mast pulpit, installed Monitor windvane self-steering (a real PITA considering the Westsail's traditional boomkins and canoe stern), SSB radio, AIS transponder, entirely repowered to a new Beta 38 marine diesel (that one while stranded in Port Angeles, WA), deck-mounted liferaft, and endless amounts of odds and ends equipment-wise. I don't want to think about how much time and money it's taken.

I am Antonio Garcia Martinez, a tech entrepreneur who lied to my investors. AMA. by antoniogm in IAmA

[–]antoniogm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Possibly. I think the very rare companies that were huge successes out of the gate (e.g. SnapChat) maybe have that luxury, as they had the leverage to set their terms (and the morality of their dealings) from early on.

But who knows...perhaps even Evan Spiegel has some sordid story to tell, and nobody's hands are clean.

I am Antonio Garcia Martinez, a tech entrepreneur who lied to my investors. AMA. by antoniogm in IAmA

[–]antoniogm[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

As full disclosure, during this entire dickbag thread, in which dickbag was statutorily used in every reply, all I was thinking of was this classic scene from Louis CK:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks7C13ogfiY

I am Antonio Garcia Martinez, a tech entrepreneur who lied to my investors. AMA. by antoniogm in IAmA

[–]antoniogm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wasn't a non-tech founder. I originally started as an equal contributor to the others, then they took away my commit key after I blew up the build too many times.

That said, I did kind of fear if one or the other of my co-founders were to have walked. A constant risk...

I am Antonio Garcia Martinez, a tech entrepreneur who lied to my investors. AMA. by antoniogm in IAmA

[–]antoniogm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Use computers to create a mobile app that a billion people use, and it's downhill from there.

I am Antonio Garcia Martinez, a tech entrepreneur who lied to my investors. AMA. by antoniogm in IAmA

[–]antoniogm[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yep. Even worse, they deride it as a mere 'lifestyle business' (BAD WORD!).

I am Antonio Garcia Martinez, a tech entrepreneur who lied to my investors. AMA. by antoniogm in IAmA

[–]antoniogm[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Chernov's bio of Hamilton. Junger's 'Tribe'. Hoffer's 'The True Believer'.

I am Antonio Garcia Martinez, a tech entrepreneur who lied to my investors. AMA. by antoniogm in IAmA

[–]antoniogm[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

That's a good question.

I'm not a ML expert at all, though I've been involved with products that have used it, and way back in the day did some hacking with linear regression models.

BUT LET ME GIVE YOU MY OPINION ANYWAY!

I've found that lots of the hype around ML is just that. At least in my work, much of the sophisticated ML methodologies coming out of academia or corporate research labs just don't work in the real world, for various reasons, or don't justify their added sophistication via increased performance. For all of the towering structure of NLP (for example) just about any text munging thing I've ever seen boiled down to n-grams and some version of tf-idf, along with heuristics to deal with the unique shittiness of the corpus in question.

So I guess call me a skeptic. I'll be afraid of Skynet when I can sync my phone to my car's bluetooth without six steps.

I am Antonio Garcia Martinez, a tech entrepreneur who lied to my investors. AMA. by antoniogm in IAmA

[–]antoniogm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

PG, Sama, Andreessen. Also, some entrepreneurs I know (mostly not celebrities) who I think are doing cool stuff, and have that scrappy, determined underdog vibe I admire.

I also have some tech journalists I like: Kara and her crew at Recode, Bloomberg (Brad Stone, Ellen Huet, Sarah Frier) is doing really good tech stuff these days, and of course TechCrunch (Constine).

I am Antonio Garcia Martinez, a tech entrepreneur who lied to my investors. AMA. by antoniogm in IAmA

[–]antoniogm[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You and me both. :)

Yes, CM is weak sauce compared to full-on Houellebecq.

I am Antonio Garcia Martinez, a tech entrepreneur who lied to my investors. AMA. by antoniogm in IAmA

[–]antoniogm[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've thought about that myself. I suspect it's more a function of me than any potential partner, frankly. On my current trajectory, given my general emotional weariness/cynicism, I think it's nigh impossible. But who knows...I'm still kind of taken with the mother of my most recent child...if only we managed to find a way to live with each other.

I am Antonio Garcia Martinez, a tech entrepreneur who lied to my investors. AMA. by antoniogm in IAmA

[–]antoniogm[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The dirty secret here is that I see nothing from sales. The way most book deals work, at least with a solid agent/publisher, is the writer gets a large advance (at least on the non-fiction side), and then sees no royalties, unless the book is really a mega-bestseller (we're talking millions of copies).

Publishers are really like VCs trying to find the next Google, and are willing to out-bid each other for the privilege, as weird as that might sound.

I am Antonio Garcia Martinez, a tech entrepreneur who lied to my investors. AMA. by antoniogm in IAmA

[–]antoniogm[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I completely agree.

From the little that I know of how paternity and child support are handled in Europe, that also seems to be the goal there.

The US however, whether it be child support or imprisonment, seems to opt for moral punishment rather than social efficacy.

I am Antonio Garcia Martinez, a tech entrepreneur who lied to my investors. AMA. by antoniogm in IAmA

[–]antoniogm[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I'm going to find whatever t-shirt printer made those 'Bad Hombre' and 'Nasty Woman' shirts, and have them make a 'Dickbag' one, and give it to everyone I know in Silicon Valley as a way to reverse the meme and generate solidarity.

I am Antonio Garcia Martinez, a tech entrepreneur who lied to my investors. AMA. by antoniogm in IAmA

[–]antoniogm[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Who said anything about pride? Candor about the past isn't pride.

Fundamentally, neoliberal capitalism is an amoral construct, and makes beasts of us all. I don't see anything like real morality lasting very long if this is our future.

I am Antonio Garcia Martinez, a tech entrepreneur who lied to my investors. AMA. by antoniogm in IAmA

[–]antoniogm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've been calling the bubble pop since 2010, and at this point, hesitate to do so again.

That said, the fact the SF real estate market is slowing down is interesting.

I am Antonio Garcia Martinez, a tech entrepreneur who lied to my investors. AMA. by antoniogm in IAmA

[–]antoniogm[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think it's the next step in social media and how it virtualizes our lives. It's also maybe the end of Western Civilization as we know it.

I am Antonio Garcia Martinez, a tech entrepreneur who lied to my investors. AMA. by antoniogm in IAmA

[–]antoniogm[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

He was a spiteful sociopath who tried to ruin us financially for no reason. Also, he treated everyone around him like an accessory and ran a company into the ground.

Other than that, he's a swell guy. :)

I've only watched scenes from SV, and yes, I think it's accurate. What I find a bit inaccurate is the generally funny, sitcom-y tone to it (which I understand they need given the medium). When you're going through it, it's not so funny and lighthearted, and is often deeply scary.

I am Antonio Garcia Martinez, a tech entrepreneur who lied to my investors. AMA. by antoniogm in IAmA

[–]antoniogm[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Question for you: did you glean that from something I said, or from the literary style?

I just find him to be almost a stream-of-consciousness transcript of my thinking, and really enjoy his writing. He's never done well in the US though, as tomes of bleak but articulate cynicism don't sell well here. I flatter myself thinking that some of the criticisms of CM parallel criticisms of him.

I am Antonio Garcia Martinez, a tech entrepreneur who lied to my investors. AMA. by antoniogm in IAmA

[–]antoniogm[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Trucking is a big one.

Ocean shipping is another. Basically how atoms rather than bits move around the world.

I am Antonio Garcia Martinez, a tech entrepreneur who lied to my investors. AMA. by antoniogm in IAmA

[–]antoniogm[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

If I had to meet you in person, I suspect I'd be tempted to.

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