Aleks Shamis Silly Thoughts

https://team-brain.com/ is so incredibly powerful. I will start posting our use cases soon.

⁣I often tell myself not to write or talk about my approach to health because what I say can have a consequential impact on people’s lives, and I can’t fully control it. Once I convince myself, I can be uncontrollably convincing and salesy, a useful quality for a founder. But at other times, I feel like I’ve found a health magic wand and must share it with the world. In most cases, when friends struggle with chronic issues, I just tell them to do a little research and point them to a few people to follow. They come back enlightened, grateful, and often healed. It seems that those who dig instead of entrusting their health entirely to doctors end up discovering very similar paths. So, here, I’ll share a few links to content that opens the door into a world that took me several years to build conviction about. The information is there, but reading it once or twice is not enough. Given my natural skepticism, I had to traverse every possible path and consider many opposing experts and views to reach a point where I felt comfortable endorsing these sources. First, there is the Cholesterol Code movie. I stumbled upon the people behind the film long before it was made. I was so impressed by the research that I reached out to Nick Norwitz and recently ended up funding his startup. That film and their research are a gift. Watch it to save years of research. Then subscribe to Nick’s channel, https://www.youtube.com/@nicknorwitzMDPhD. It is one source of health content that I personally trust because Nick is genuinely curious, low-ego, capable of changing his opinion, and has a ton of skin in the game, having healed himself. Second, Dr. Sten Ekberg is the most balanced health influencer out there. He explains complicated concepts in the simplest terms. I got completely addicted to his channel. I recommend starting with this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3Hu5R7ZwE4 Don’t forget to be smart about your health at your own risk.

Kelsi Sheren on the state-sponsored death cult disguised as healthcare: https://youtu.be/gG-e06kJTvo

I realized that it is basically me and Carlson Tucker with English channels on Telegram. I did not watch the video, but a state-sponsored death cult disguised as healthcare sounds right. If you read any other English Telegram channels, drop the links in the comments.

AI is creating a boom of unconscious incompetence. There are two types of incompetencies. Conscious incompetence - when one is aware of their shortcomings and blind spots. This is the good one. Unconscious incompetence - when one is not aware of not only of what they don’t know but even that there are things that they don’t know in the work they are doing. I believe AI is creating a boom of unconscious incompetence. This is especially visible among vibecoders who feel omnipotent and omniscient. I hear phrases like - “I don’t need a developer anymore” and then the same folks cannot explain the most basic architecture. Some can’t even explain what a token is. It is going to be the same across other domains: writing on topics you don’t understand, relying on AI to make decisions in domains of law, education, health. I am not saying that it is a bad practice. Even with the mistakes, AI is times better than an average doctor. Point is to stay in the conscious incompetence zone. It is the zone of curiosity and triangulation. Unconscious incompetence snowballs

When your agents don’t work as intended again and agian, do you catch yourself feeling frustrated as if they were incompetent humans?

This is the question that we ask the founders on every pitch call. And this is where most stumble. In reality, we expect to find the answers in the deck even before the call, but rarely do. When founders pitch, they tend to spend most of the time on describing things that are table stakes, things that everybody knows, things that don't create moats and are not strategic. They tell us how x, y, z is a big problem, what their product does, explain what their tech does, etc. This is all good, but should take 10% of the time. What we really want to go deep into is the part of the pitch that explains what the founders are competing on. It has to be something unique to this team. Something that allows them to get a headstart against even the largest incumbents. It could be a unique data set, a unique combination of talent and expertise, a unique tech or a unique insight into a problem. I will give an example. A team is building a marketplace of sport influencers matching them with advertisers. They spend 80% of the pitch explaining how many influencers there are, how bad the current experience advertising through them, how much the agencies charge and how unsophisticated they are, and how their marketplace matches them. That's all great but should be condensed into 10% of the pitch time. At the pitch, I take everything you say for granted. I give you the benefit of the doubt that it is all true. So, enough to give a market size number, TAM, SAM, wedge, etc in 10 mins. What I want to go deep in is why this team has the right to win against hundreds of other influencer marketplaces who can add that category. That particular team actually had good answers. We were able to extract them eventually. They are insiders in an industry that is heavily guarded by old school agencies. They were able to sign a critical mass of sport stars. They built the tech for tracking the sponsorships and viewership of merch deals that horizontal influencers marketplaces don’t want to go into. Enough differentiation to get the marketplace going. As investors, we look at what the founder prioritises to say as a proxy for the ability to extract essence and focus on what's important. If we have to pull it out like a wisdom tooth, we tend to pass on the deal. Think about it - what gives you the right to win?

These are photos and corresponding AI characters of myself at different ages. I've been out of Instagram/Facebook for quiet some time. Planning a comeback with something exciting. I think there is a unique opportunity in time for myself and everyone, really. Will share more as it happens. https://www.instagram.com/p/DZhSM_rjB_O/?img_index=3&igsh=MWNtNGc4MmN3NmNocA%3D%3D very #silly_thoughts

As I was meeting the fifth delivery yesterday, I was thinking what this Western overconsumption reminds me of. My mind started estimating: how many deliveries we had since we moved into our house two years ago, how often we throw things out, where does all this crap go to. It all reminded me of a real life tetris. Sometimes the lines align and you throw some stuff out. But eventually you lose anyway, unless you have to move to a different house(better country) and hit reset. That works at the house level. Not so sure about the planet, though. #silly_thoughts

I am sitting, watching 5 agents do the work 1. Downloading invoices that I failed to send our accountant - goes through my emails, logs into services, reconciles that everything matches 2. Writing a memo on the deal 3. Building a list of event attendees for an event in Amsterdam 4. Doing research on a complicated multi-country tax system 5. A agent that goes through my todo - mostly related to writing emails, and writes drafts in my inbox based on the oral team discussions we've had over the past two weeks My mind is wondering if I am procrastinating because I could do more than just confirm some actions or am I a god of efficiency?

Elon Musk is a genius at naming companies. Tesla and Neuralink. Great names. The Boring Company - genius. Doge - hilarious. SpaceX hits different after the merger of his "Space" business and X.com. As if he knew. And then MacroHard. Mic drop. That's Elon's new company taking on Microsoft. Not a coincidence. Humor, naming, sarcasm are traits of clear, sharp thinking. Musk is not the best speaker, but I enjoy his interviews more than anyone's because of the density of insight. He extracts and verbalizes the essence of his companies brilliantly. Making humans multiplanetary. The global town square. As you might have guessed, I'm an open Musk fan boy. Clarity, sharpness, emphasis. These happen to be key traits we look for on first calls with founders at s16vc. If a founder spends 10 minutes explaining why EdTech, HealthTech, or Construction is a big market, instead of how they win, it's a big orange flag.

For over two years, I've eaten mostly beef and eggs. Sometimes I eat cheese, other types of meat and fish. But most of the time, it is just beef. In fact, I eat at least one ribeye steak almost every day. I do not eat any vegetables, fruits or grains. Zero fiber. A few grams of carbs from milk with coffee. This lifestyle is called carnivore. I stumbled on this by accident. Shawn Baker - the guy who coined the term Carnivore, was on Joe Rogan's show. It sounded insane enough to pique my curiosity. I hesitated for around half a year but eventually decided - why not give it a try. The effects that people describe in YouTube comments are nothing short of miraculous. People and many doctors claim to be able to put in remission almost any disease with this lifestyle. The comments to YouTube videos sound so Jesus-like that I thought there is not going to be any doubt whether this works or not if I just give it a try. I don't want to preach this lifestyle or convince anyone. Don't know if I'll stay on it forever or if anyone should. I'll just list out facts of what happened to me. One thing I will say is that carnivore works not just because it is an elimination diet. I have eliminated everything conventionally considered unhealthy many years ago. - Back pain - gone completely. Before that, was not able to lift a suitcase since about 20 years old - Any sort of intestinal issues I had - gone. In fact, my body just feels like a temple - completely quiet. Not a sound. - Energy - that's an obvious one. No energy swings. Same level all day long - HbA1c and insulin levels - became more perfect than perfect. I was pre-diabetic before even on a whole food plant based diet. - I used to get sunburn very quickly. Now, my skin does not burn at all. It gets red and then goes back to being fine the next day. I could not believe it so walked around without sunscreen at Burning Man to push the limits - it did not burn - My gums completely stopped bleeding. The dental hygienist could not believe it. - I used to get some sores on my lips or cheeks a couple of times a year. None of that in the past 2 years. - My cholesterol has gone up. For those who are curious why I don't mind, you should read up on lean mass hyper responders. - I have my best weight and I don't need to think about it anymore. If you care about your health, I encourage you not to take anything for granted, especially from doctors employed by the "sick care" system, keep an open mind, especially about cholesterol, fats and insulin level. Start by learning about homa-ir score and getting it measured. Might not be easy, depending on where you are. My journey started with an attempt to prevent diabetes, which as I know now, is very curable and can be predicted 10 years before it happens.

What do you think? Is it funny? Clear? My first real attempt at video

No matter how easy it becomes to build a perfect app, 99% of people will never do it, for the same reasons most people don't bake their own bread or make sushi at home. It means that if you are a builder, you can solve a niche problem in a very specific way and compete for 99% of your audience. Let's say you build an app and sell it for $5/month. Given how easy it is to build an app, at just 1,000 active users you can make a pretty good living from just one app. But then the question is: how do you compete against the 1% who do build apps? You need to build your audience first. I think this will become the new frontier and the new scarce resource. Engineering used to be a scarce resource. Now attention is. Being a builder is not enough. You need to become an influencer, even if a small one. Or team up with an influencer. In Japan, the vast majority of good restaurants are tiny places, seating 8–15 guests. These restaurants are named after their owners and chefs. People refer to restaurants by the chefs' names. They visit them to experience a chef's take on something they've had a million times before at home or from other chefs. Without the chef, there is no restaurant. I think the same will happen to apps. They will be associated with their creators. It will be Aleks' take on learning English. Or Maria's take on teaching a child the multiplication table. Or John's personal finance assistant. Each will have their tiny — or not so tiny — following on one of the social media platforms. Time to build: both the app and your audience.

Was in a mood to generate this. Definitely #silly_thoughts

Dodobrands turns 15 years old today. It is a remarkable story. Today, there are 1,460 pizza locations in 26 countries, as well as 186 Drinkit coffee shops in 4 countries. About 12 years ago I saw the founder's post on Facebook trying to raise a round from his subscribers because none of the funds believed in them. The message was full of open and unspoken frustration. At that time they had a few locations, maybe around 10, not sure. I was building my own printing business and got intrigued by the level of automation that they had achieved in the pizzeria and by the radical transparency of the business. I went to visit one of the stores. Back then it was a mind-blowing experience, way ahead of their time. Among many other things, they had broken down the cooking process into tiny steps, guided by a video animation on the tablet for each step. This process fragmentation allowed a completely untrained fresh employee to effectively plug into the pizza production process within 30 minutes of joining Dodo. They'd roll the dough, looking at how it is done on the tablet and the countdown to complete the step. As they finished on time, they got the praise from the virtual manager. I saw an outlier before I learned what it meant. I was pretty broke at the time, but I took out a small personal loan at the bank and invested. In the investor world, we are always looking for Hell Yeah decisions. These cannot be codified. You just feel them. This turned out to be one of the best investments I've made. I don't mean just financially. For all these years I've been following Dodobrands' development and learning from it. Radical transparency is probably the biggest lesson. Turns out it is not just for PR. Radical transparency is the best manager at scale. It cascades accountability in front of the public through all the levels of the organization, making the management job so much easier. At s16vc we live and breathe that ethos. We are probably one of the few funds in the world that openly publishes everything we do, our financial performance, and how well we fulfill our promise to the founders via our newsletters.