Jeremy Fischer

Today is the one year anniversary of announcing DevClarity! When they say startup life is "peak life", they aren't kidding. From launching our first MVP, landing our initial paying customers, and winning Alabama Launchpad to tackling a massive problem space with no funding (or salary) and getting rejected dozens of times, the past 12 months have been the biggest roller coaster I've ever been on. And yet I have zero regrets about my decision because starting a company has been BY FAR the greatest learning experience I've ever had. So much so that I've lately started telling people that I believe EVERYONE should start a company at some point. In the coming days, I will share some reflections from the past year. But there are two main takeaways that stand out to me: 1. Perseverance is the most important trait for an entrepreneur. More than intelligence, specific knowledge, boldness, or anything else. The entire game is to stay in the game. Everything can change with one conversation, one customer, one investor. But you have to stay in the game long enough for that to happen. Great things take time. Perseverance gives you the mental fortitude to allow yourself that time. 2. People are the most important aspect of a business. When we announced the launch of DevClarity, I said that in the course of a career, or a lifetime, when you meet special people, you bet on them. I continue to feel validated that Will Blackburn is one of those people and am glad that we continue to bet on each other and ourselves. It's hard to know what the next 12 months will hold, but I am open to the journey and excited for what's to come! - Peter

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An interesting article below, that demonstrates out how San Diego is punching above its weight.  And how Connect's strategy and execution over time, contintues to be central to that success. The article describes the current state of the market in Seattle.  (And i love Seattle.) It's a market that we tend to track with relative to venture fundings.  They used to kick our butts, we outraised them each of the last three years.  This despite the fact they have 3x as many funds there, and 9x the amount of resident capital there. (per pitchbook) Some key takeaways:  * They continue to compare themselves to SIlicon Valley. Instead, we leverage our proximity. *They whine there's not enough local investors (see note above - they have more than us). We bring over 200 VCs to SD annually! * They say founders are not connected with one another. We bring CEOs together regularly, in a variety of ways - private dinners and through our Springboard program. * They say they need to elevate their image on a national & international stage. Why we created and continue to build Five.Ten.Thirty (aka Inno Day).  * And the last paragraph - they need to concentrate on making their region a great place to live. Our mantra: "It's about Better, not Bigger." (See XEO, TL Fund). THANK YOU FOR ALL OF YOUR SUPPORT. WE ARE ON A MISSION TOGETHER!!!  (Comments, whining, suggestions on SD always welcome.) https://lnkd.in/g6Rq_f2Y

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Just shipped this week's Diaspora.nz podcast with Paul Copplestone, founder & CEO at Supabase. We talk about: ⚡️why open source is an unfair advantage — as a product development strategy, supercharging recruiting, and helping build customer community. ⚡️how they are building the end-to-end tech stack for AI startups — seeing many customers grow into the millions of users in just weeks, growing to be one of the most tagged products by makers on Product Hunt most redeemed Y Combinator “perks.” ⚡️raising $116M, and scaling to ~80 people in 30 countries over the past 4.5 years, operating as a distributed asynchronous team. ⚡️building three startups over nearly a decade living in South East Asia. Subscribe listen links in comments below👇 Subscribe at diaspora.nz for weekly episodes 🎧👈

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I completely agree about the hype in robotics; do you? I'm not sure why but I keep seeing new startups with ideas that have already failed multiple times secure millions in funding. Yes, there is a lot of potential and there are some companies that have real-world pilots. Yet I almost never see these 1-2 company pilots turn into a stable and sustainable business model. While one on hand I'm happy for them and robotics in general, it's not great to see so many companies go out of business each year. The "successful" robotics companies are judged by how much funding they raise, not by how much profit they make over their series VC raise. While there is a lot of potential with funding, I personally think it usually leads to more expensive robots. Expensive robots lead to fewer sales, which leads to cash burn out. Do you know of any robotics companies actually profiting from businesses more than investors? This would be closed-loop solutions that have publicly proved true product market fit.

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In my experience mentoring at least 10 developers, I've observed a clear divide: about half of them have thrived, while the other half fell short. What makes the difference? It's not just skill, but attitude and willingness to embrace uncertainty, to build and keep building—especially when things aren't clear. The successful ones? They don't stop coding. They push through ambiguity and commit code relentlessly. The ones who struggled? They rely on courses, ask for help on every minor thing, and produce very little code. Here’s the truth: most jobs expect you to have already been coding, in your free time, before you even apply. Are you serious about coding? • Have you built a game? Why not? Unity or PhaserJS is within reach. • Have you created a mobile app? React Native can get you there. • Have you built a web app? Supabase and NextJS are at your fingertips. Imagine being hired as a painter with only a little practice—what would you do? Read a book about painting? Or would you paint over and over until you master it? Programming is the same. The only thing that separates you from being a master programmer is experience. And courses won’t give you that. I never learned from a formal coding course. I learned by building—by googling, by trial and error, by creating games in C and Java when I was 12. I built at least 30 personal projects before I landed my first job. But here’s the best part: You have a major advantage that I didn’t—ChatGPT. You have a super-intelligent code-writing assistant that knows every language, every framework, and can guide you step-by-step. There has never been a better time to learn. So here’s my challenge to you: If you want me to recommend you and help you land a great job, maximize your lines of code every day. Write as much code as you possibly can. I don’t care how broken or incomplete your app is. The only thing that matters is volume. The goal for the first two years should be producing a large volume of code. Here’s your metric for success: Number of lines of code written per day. Period. Your project doesn’t matter. The amount of code you write does. Use ChatGPT, start small, iterate, improve, and commit your code daily. When you show me you’re writing 2,000 lines of code per day and can build a full-stack web app from the ground up, you’ll be ready for a job. Until then, you’re not. Remember the painter analogy. If you want to become a professional painter, you paint as many paintings as possible—not just one, but many. It’s the same with coding. The fastest way to learn is to just code. You’re in the easiest possible situation to become a professional coder that anyone in history has ever had. Take advantage of it.

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If you're thinking of submitting your YC application or are in the midst of the application process, check out this video by Dalton Caldwell. It covers everything that YC looks for in an application and was a great resource for me during my own journey. Take a look! #YC #startup #entrepreneurship

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A cautionary tale for any entrepreneur including warrants in their fundraising efforts. Techcrunch ran a story yesterday on the collapse of Newchip and how warrants flowed through the bankruptcy proceedings. I am guessing in this situation, there were NO clauses protecting the startups from the insolvency of Newchip. If true, my heart aches for these startups now fighting to protect their equity pool/CAP tables from unknown outside investors coming into their company at likely ridiculous valuations via bankruptcy actions. It's a cautionary reminder to get solid advice from legal counsel—or, failing the ability to afford outside counsel, seek advice from experienced entrepreneurs who know their way around term sheets and investment terms. Best of luck to those companies mentioned in this article. And for anyone reading this who is a startup founder or entrepreneur, worth a read! #startup #entrepreneur #fundraising https://lnkd.in/gsvzQ_wT

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Velocity above all else... Love the below story! Google Maps was slow, clunky, and an XML-driven monstrosity. Bret Taylor (early engineer) was pissed off, and re-built it from scratch in a 48-hour coding binge over the weekend. It became the infrastructure that still runs, 1/3rd of the size, and literally 10x faster load times. 10x or rather 100x engineer? :) #softwaredevelopment #coding #startups

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Hey #innovation folks — can I take you to dinner? After a resounding success with dinners focused on startup founders and Sr.-level tech folks (we're booking into September now!), I'm expanding the dinner series idea to innovators. Much of our work at Apollo 21 is executed in partnership with corporate innovation and venture-building teams — who better to take out to dinner to meet other folks working in the space. If you're not familiar with our dinner format, it's pretty straightforward: • Once a month. • Six people around a table. • The only formal question is "introduce yourself." • No website, no sponsors. Split the bill. Yes, our dinners are a "networking" opportunity, but I've yet to see a business card at the dinner table. Interested in joining us for a #founder dinner or #innovation dinner soon? Links in comments.

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This demo seems qualitatively different than every other video I’ve seen to date. If truly 1x speed / no teleop / all AI … then I’m properly impressed. My guess is still quite brittle at generic tasks with a a lot of work to make these demos seem fluid. But still… So then - similar to my earlier “AI is a commodity” vital post … I think AI is absolutely a commodity. All these humanoid folks building cool machines, more and more capabilities being unlocked by myriad SW teams everywhere. The question is - if HW is commodity, and SW commodity - what is the winning play? Where is value created and how captured? Fun article from new atlas on this, just one of many. I like how they point out this humanoid is faster and stronger than a human. Most humanoid companies are purposefully avoiding that 😅 https://lnkd.in/emrcHtXM

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“The secret to building better business software is building a system where you can build multiple parallel business software applications that are all natively built into the same system,” Conrad said. “Now every single software vertical has like a dozen competitors, and it’s extremely crowded,” Conrad said, adding that customers prefer an approach where a software company will “build the system that sort of recombines all of this and gives people one system that combines a lot of these capabilities and wins.” Another great TechCrunch article. This horizontal approach is exactly what we're doing BuyerMatch.ai for Real Estate Brokerages. One system to do everything and one AI that understands it all. https://lnkd.in/e2JeU5ia

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