Founder. Pursuing the interesting.
Joined February 2018
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Bo Simango retweeted
a critical vulnerability was just discovered in PHP. the language that runs 80% of the internet
severity score: 9.2 out of 10. that’s about as bad as it gets
what can an attacker do with this? take full admin control of a server. steal entire databases. passwords, credit cards, payment histories. plant malware and use the server to attack other systems
but here’s the terrifying part that most people missed
the moment the patch drops tonight attackers are expected to use AI to reverse engineer what was fixed within 15 minutes
15 minutes. that’s the window between the fix going live and automated attacks launching worldwide
every online store, booking site, and corporate system running PHP that doesn’t update in those 15 minutes becomes a target
this isn’t just a developer problem. if you’ve ever signed up to a website, entered your card details, or created an account online your data is sitting on servers that might be vulnerable right now
and someone just publicly dropped the working exploit on twitter before the patch was even ready. gave every attacker on earth a head start
engineers worldwide are pulling all-nighters tonight to patch their systems before the attacks begin
change your passwords on any service that matters to you. enable 2FA everywhere. and watch out for fake “maintenance” or “password reset” emails over the next few days
the internet is about to have a very long night
Bo Simango retweeted
Apple was the 15th smartphone maker
Spotify was the 10th music platform
Google was the 21st search engine to enter the market
Facebook was the 10th social network
Netflix was the 7th streaming provider
Uber was the 4th ride sharing service
TikTok was the 8th short-video app
Zoom was the 11th video-calling app
Being first doesn't mean winning
Bo Simango retweeted
You need to stop and read this again…
Warren Buffet’s final words of advice from his very last annual letter 🥹
"One perhaps self-serving observation. I’m happy to say I feel better about the second half of my life than the first. My advice: Don’t beat yourself up over past mistakes – learn at least a little from them and move on. It is never too late to improve. Get the right heroes and copy them. You can start with Tom Murphy; he was the best.
Remember Alfred Nobel, later of Nobel Prize fame, who – reportedly – read his own obituary that was mistakenly printed when his brother died and a newspaper got mixed up. He was horrified at what he read and realized he should change his behavior.
Don’t count on a newsroom mix-up: Decide what you would like your obituary to say and live the life to deserve it.
Greatness does not come about through accumulating great amounts of money, great amounts of publicity or great power in government. When you help someone in any of thousands of ways, you help the world. Kindness is costless but also priceless. Whether you are religious or not, it’s hard to beat The Golden Rule as a guide to behavior.
I write this as one who has been thoughtless countless times and made many mistakes but also became very lucky in learning from some wonderful friends how to behave better (still a long way from perfect, however). Keep in mind that the cleaning lady is as much a human being as the Chairman."
And then today, his last letter to shareholders as chairman…
Warren Buffett is stepping down as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway $BRK.B, effective immediately - CNBC
Bo Simango retweeted
Short but great reads:
- Self reliance (~45 pages)
- The stranger (~120 pages)
- Fear and trembling (~160 pages)
- The generous gambler (~5 pages)
- Notes from underground (~160 pages)
- The myth of Sisyphus (~140 pages)
They may be short but the ROI is insane
Bo Simango retweeted
With AI Engineering skills, you actively shape the build: You influence what gets built, and drive the build loop. Here're key skills to do this.
Bo Simango retweeted
The Toronto Blue Jays helped fund and build the world’s northernmost baseball diamond in Arctic Bay, Nunavut — a hamlet of about 1,100 people sitting some 3,200 km from Rogers Centre. ⚾️🇨🇦
Bo Simango retweeted
if you can imagine yourself achieving it easily, dream bigger. if your five year plan feels doable, extend it, complicate it, add a zero - the whole point is to strive for something so far beyond your current capabilities that you have to build entirely new versions of yourself just to survive the pursuit. dream bigger and attack it daily
Bo Simango retweeted
It’s crazy that this account is giving me newfound respect for a film I already considered one of the best looking films of all time.
Bo Simango retweeted
who the fuck made this. billiondollartweets.com/
Bo Simango retweeted
6,000 years of world history on a single timeline. Zoom in. You could spend 30 minutes exploring this.
Bo Simango retweeted
I repeat, Paul is the most analytical VC in Europe and this is a must read 👇
Nvidia acquires Hugging Face for ~$12.9bn. But who gets the 💰? My usual breakdown below 👇
*Investors are sharing ~$7.3bn of profits on <$400m invested. A cool ~20x blended.*
*1) The single biggest winner here? Lux Capital.* 👑
Lux is taking the crown for the most $ returned in this transaction. The two rounds they led (Series A & Series C) generated ~$2.6bn combined. They also participated in the Series B.
Congrats to @wolfejosh and team. The $15.0m Series A alone will return ~132.5x the capital invested, or ~$2.0bn. The most lucrative round in absolute $ returned.
*2) Backing an exceptional team paid off with a >1,000x return for Betaworks and the angels* 📈
The story few people know: Hugging Face started life as a chatbot for lonely teenagers... You sent it a selfie and a sad emoji, it told you it understood. Quite far from where it landed!
That is why backing an exceptional team in @ClementDelangue, @Thom_Wolf and @julien_c is always the right thing to do. It paid over 1,000x for Betaworks, Kevin Durant and Thibaud Elziere.
*3) Founders and team are crushing it: not taking too much dilution along the way paid off* 👏
I estimate they will share ~$5bn in proceeds, assuming no secondary was taken along the way. A life changing outcome for them and many employees.
Taking a 15% attributed option pool at exit, this would mean ~$2bn for the team and >$3bn to share for the three co-founders. Legendary!
*4) Salesforce Ventures is cementing its reputation as one of the very best corporate VCs.* 🥇
Salesforce is adding Hugging Face to its long list of successful exits: Snowflake, Zoom, DocuSign, nCino, Auth0... Very few investors can claim as many successes, let alone corporates.
The $235m round they led returned $675m in just three short years. Meanwhile, Salesforce's own stock has been flat for the period. Capital well invested!
*5) This is a little bit of a heartbreak: but I wanted to congratulate @joinstationf here:*
Hugging Face walked into StationF as a 4-person team on day one, June 2017. Back when it was a chatbot for teenagers. They went through multiple corporate programs (Microsoft, Ubisoft, then Naver). Unfortunately they were not investing or taking equity at the time - but they contributed to making it possible. And so for that: hats off.
And of course, congratulations to all others involved: Addition, Sequoia, Coatue and many others. No one will be left out!
Bo Simango retweeted
It is the longest recreational, multi-use trail network in the world.
The trail extends over 28,000 km and took 25 years to complete.
Today, it is maintained by thousands of people.
This is the story of the Trans Canada Trail!
📸 tctrail.ca
🧵 1/12
ALT Coast-to-coast trail across Canada highlighted in green and blue on a country map, tracing routes through western mountains, the central plains and eastern provinces, with major rivers, lakes and some city labels shown faintly.
Bo Simango retweeted
New episode: The Masters of Private Equity
And what I learned from studying Joe Rice, Warren Hellman, Tully Friedman and the early masters of the buyout business:
1. The best private equity investors develop something many CEOs can’t: pattern recognition from seeing dozens of companies succeed and fail across multiple industries.
2. Joe Rice understood decades ago what almost every private equity firm talks about today: operational value creation. “Don’t just become good at buying companies. Become good at making companies better.”
3. CD&R’s operating partners weren’t consultants sitting around giving advice. They stepped in as interim CEOs in roughly a third of the firm’s investments. If something went wrong, someone on their side of the table could actually run the company.
4. When CD&R carved Lexmark out of IBM, they gave every employee direct or indirect ownership. They weren’t simply changing the capital structure. They were changing how thousands of people thought about the business.
5. “Do the work before the deal. Go beyond the numbers. Be willing to change quickly. Apply the same scrutiny to yourself that you apply to your investments.”
6. Warren Hellman’s rule: Every potential investment should be considered guilty until proven innocent.
7. Markets repeatedly convince investors that the old rules no longer apply. Hellman learned the opposite: great businesses still have lasting franchises, exceptional managers, strong free cash flow and attractive economics.
8. Think like an owner, not an employee. Hellman inherited a simple idea from his great-grandfather: “I don’t run businesses. I own them.”
9. Hellman and Friedman didn’t immediately raise a fund. They worked together first to find out whether the partnership actually worked. Only then did they ask institutional investors for money.
New episode on the book The Masters of Private Equity and Venture Capital: Management Lessons from the Pioneers of Private Investing
Joseph Rice, co-founder of Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, and Warren Hellman, co-founder of Hellman & Friedman
I explore the ideas, decisions, successes and failures of two people who helped define modern private equity.
Timestamps:
0:00 The Masters of Private Equity
2:15 Private equity is more than buying and selling companies
5:42 What separates the best private equity investors
7:14 Joseph Rice: Building Clayton, Dubilier & Rice
10:13 Jack Welch’s advice during the 2008 crisis: “Hammer them”
15:23 The failed deal that changed how Rice invested forever
19:28 Lexmark: Turning an IBM division into an entrepreneurial company
22:06 Kinko’s, a total loss, and the danger of believing you can do anything
26:20 Joseph Rice’s five lessons from 40+ years in private equity
31:03 Warren Hellman: Building Hellman & Friedman
32:23 “This time is different” — the investing lesson Hellman never forgot
36:35 Every investment is guilty until proven innocent
39:51 Think like an owner, not an employee
42:38 Levi Strauss and the deal that put Hellman & Friedman on the map
45:34 Why a great security can still be a terrible investment
49:08 Warren Hellman’s five rules for investing
Bo Simango retweeted
Cheaper Inference is selling API access to most major models for 30% off.
cheaperinference.com
Bo Simango retweeted
Never give up
