Alexandr Wang

@alexandr_wang

ceo at . rational in the fullness of time

San Francisco, CA
Joined June 2012

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  1. Pinned Tweet
    5 Aug 2019

    In three years, has grown from an idea into a platform accelerating the progress of the world's best machine learning teams. For more on our progress, take a look at our blog.

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  2. Feb 1

    If you want to be a historian, go into finance. If you want to write the future, go to a startup. Financiers study the ideas that already exist and pick the profitable ones. They study how things have been done already, and cap their imagination. Startups invent the future.

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  3. Jan 26

    Company-building is more about tactics than strategy. Strategy seems easier to apply because it simplifies complex dynamics. But, tactics are more predictive for success than strategy. Being great at recruiting and building product usually overcomes even the worst strategy.

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  4. Jan 20

    The secret to great writing is clear thinking. There aren't many other secrets.

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  5. Jan 18

    There's nothing quite like the magic of a small team, perfectly aligned in accomplishing the slightly impossible. It is electrifying, inspiring, and surprising every time. Don't take this magic for granted if you're on such a team today. It is very rare—most never experience it

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  6. Jan 10

    Uber should make a feature to allow riders to select the route. The amount of frustration from arguing with your Uber driver on routes is the largest driver of dissatisfaction for me. And I already could "implement" this by incrementally changing the destination. pls!

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  7. Jan 9

    Super interesting cognitive bias from Kanneman's work: When all the options are good, people are risk-averse. When all the options are bad, people are **risk-seeking**. It's when people are backed into tough situations that so much value ends up being created (pivots, etc.)

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  8. Jan 5

    Annoying local maximum of planes: Because airlines charge for checked baggage, the "human" cabin of airplanes is always crammed, while the cargo cabin likely has lots of space. The crammed-ness drives more checked baggage, a meaningful revenue src. Not globally optimal at all!

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  9. Jan 2

    I saw many modern art experiences this holiday: NM: Meow Wolf NYC: ARTECHOUSE, SuperReal, ZeroSpace Paris: Atelier des Lumières Very excited about the future of art via calibrated projections, processing.js, GANs, and mirrors, built by artist collectives. Better than museums!

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  10. Jan 2

    It took 22yrs for RenTech (best hedge fund ever) to go from founding to massive success In those 22yrs, many left, thinking it was "one of many" There always will be ppl who don't believe it is special The only way to disprove them is long time horizons and dogged persistence

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  11. 31 Dec 2019

    At the holiday party, I wanted the team to remember 3 things to close the year: 1. Determination breeds determinism. 2. Companies are more about the people than just about anything else. 3. The journey is the reward. Happy New Year!

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  12. 30 Dec 2019

    Bit of startup advice which I rarely hear: Spend the money on a nice office. Be frugal on just about everything else, but get a nice office. It's hard to appreciate just how much your office becomes a representation of your company. Plus, you're going to spend 10k+ hrs in it.

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  13. 30 Dec 2019

    Specialized knowledge economies should make you suspicious because it's hard to understand everything that's going on. Specialization makes it easier to lie about your own & your specialty's greatness. You see this everywhere in academia today, where 75% of papers are garbage.

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  14. 29 Dec 2019

    The time in your life where you make the most friends is your first week in college. No other time comes close. How can we replicate this at other times in our lives?

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  15. 25 Dec 2019

    Fun update: apparently got these guys onto stripe when he was PMing checkout.js. Fun!

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  16. 25 Dec 2019

    Fun stuff on xmas: The creators of Cards Against Humanity () have pivoted to a checkout + shipping platform, I wanted to see if they were using under the hood, and indeed they are! The error msg on 4242 4242 4242 4242 is a dead giveaway!

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  17. 23 Dec 2019

    Bill's ambition of vision early on: "We did BASICs for everything and we knew from the beginning we weren’t the BASIC company. We were going to be a software company." It is now common for companies to paint a large manifest destiny. But Microsoft was before it was obvious 4/

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  18. 23 Dec 2019

    Bill on competitive inspiration: "Our competition said, 'Windows had the risk of just becoming a set of poorly debugged device drivers.' That’s a direct quote, which is great, when your competition motivates you so eloquently. And it was true. That was an actual risk." 3/

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  19. 23 Dec 2019

    Bill on IBM as a partner: "So if you can pick these toughest customers and meet their needs, then you can sit back and wait. You’re going to be fine. And you have to pick the ones that are highly visible and tough and you can mess up either of those." Tough customers matter! 2/

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  20. 23 Dec 2019

    Incredible quotes from and 's episode: Mitch Lasky on Bill: “Bill is wrong. But he works so hard, he probably will succeed even though he’s wrong in this case.” Hard work gives you the ability to bend the world in your direction. 1/

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  21. 22 Dec 2019

    Growing up while the smartphone was invented was such a gift. As I grew up, all these things that were impossible before became possible, and slowly the whole world came online. Most of all, I internalized that invention can seem like a toy, but then entirely change the world.

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