Ray Kim

I’ve been playing around with YC Founder Matching and it seems like everyone and their mother is interested either in 2-sided marketplaces or B2C businesses, even though they’re ostensibly the least profitable and hardest-to-get-off-the-ground business models there are. Why do people do this? You only have to take a glance at enterprise vs individual pricing to want to switch gears.

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Hope you’re all well! I typically don’t share much publicly about @AptDeco. Most know me as a heads down kind of guy. But today I felt compelled to share some important and exciting developments. We launched a community investment round for AptDeco and I'm excited to share that we've raised over $3.5M from our customers, supporters and institutional investors. The overwhelming response from our community is truly humbling. Nothing is more validating than customers choosing to invest given their belief in the AptDeco team and our mission. Given this enthusiasm, our track record, and our plans for the future, I felt it was time to share this with all of you as well. When we started AptDeco, we set out to build a marketplace to make buying and selling furniture easy. But here’s what most people don’t know—under the hood, AptDeco is so much more than that. There’s a powerful tech engine driving everything we do, and that’s the real magic behind our success. With over $84M in furniture sold, partners like West Elm, Pottery Barn, Article, and many others + reaching profitability, we couldn’t be more excited about the years ahead. We’ve built a platform that has outgrown and outlasted our competitors - All who were much better funded. Now we no longer have competition. We’re the last man standing. Based on our current business trends, immediate plans, and a $58B market ripe for the taking, 2025 is poised to be AptDeco’s breakout year. With that we’re providing access to invest alongside the AptDeco community and our institutional investors. If you’re interested or just want to catch up feel free to message me (It would be great to hear from you :) or you can learn more about our progress and investing here:

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I'm looking for senior front-end engineers to build tools that enable healthcare providers to get paid fairly and quickly. https://lnkd.in/gXUzdCvJ At Anomaly we're solving one of the biggest problems in healthcare-- payments. We are on a mission to fix the broken payment system in healthcare. Despite billions of $ invested in EMRs, revenue cycle vendors, clearinghouses and insurance companies, the outcomes have only gotten worse for everyone (except...shockingly...insurance companies). Providers see 15%+ of all claims get denied and lose 3%-5% of net revenue due to fatal denials, millions of patients have care delayed and receive unnecessary bills, and we all end up paying for the $300+ billion in annual administrative waste that plays a big role in the double digit annual increases in insurance premiums. We are using healthcare expertise, modern ML techniques, and common sense to break through the crap and reinvent the way financial transactions work in healthcare. We are early in the process and have a lot of work ahead of us, but we have the best client partners, a big vision, backing from great investors, and an amazing team...if anyone can do it, we will. Please share and email me at [email protected] if you're interested

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🚨 We're hiring a head of engineering at Warmly,! Who's the best of the best you know? Offering a $5,000 referral bonus for direct intros to someone we hire. You can comment them in directly and then intro We're looking for an engineering leader who's highly technical and scaled a team and product during a period of hypergrowth, $4MM to $30MM+ in ~ 2 years or something similar Our app engineering team is based in the US/Brazil. Meet our Tech Leads Marcos Cury & Scott O'Connor. Our data engineering team is based in Israel. Meet Uri Steinfeld and Dror Ventura brought in from our acquisition of Immagnify (acquired by Warmly). And our QA team is based in Pakistan. Meet Muhammad Ali Arif and Abeer Khan). They're welcome to work out of anywhere. Though we all work US hours. And we have quarterly company off sites - most recently in Mexico City, Greece, and Austin Texas! Our system is complex but resilient. We process millions of real-time website visits/day, orchestrate tens of thousands of automated AI sales & marketing campaigns/day and sync hundreds of customer’s CRMs and email platforms. We move quickly but deliberately. Design, product, and engineering collaborate to come up with the best solutions. It's never a should we build it question, it's a "this vs that" question. Looking for 10x solutions, not just 2x. As a member of the exec team, they'd be part of all the top level decisions we make as a company. No politics here. Just efficient business decisions. We're all humble, open minded, and want every other member of the exec team to win. Know anyone that comes to mind?

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Hi everyone! I don’t share too often on here, but we’re at a very exciting moment at AptDeco, and I wanted to let you all in on it. AptDeco opened a community investment round and the response has been incredible. We’ve raised over $2M so far from institutional investors, customers and supporters. Nothing is more validating than customers doubling down with their own capital. And now, I’m inviting you, my network, to be part of our journey. When we started AptDeco, we set out to make buying and selling furniture easier. Over the years, many of our competitors have come and gone, but AptDeco continues to thrive. Why? Our technology, logistics and branding continues to set us apart and that's why major retailers including West Elm, Pottery Barn, La-Z-Boy, Article and 30+ more have partnered with us. The beauty with this investment round is that anyone can be an investor. Learn more and invest directly at wefunder.com/AptDeco.

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Hiring and working with excellent people is what makes starting a company so fun

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So excited for Jiaona Zhang (JZ) to join us on Sauce's next AI for Product. "The best product leaders are chameleons. They lean into different functions to build the best product. They are able to wear different hats & act as a glue. They spot what needs work & go fill that hole." We'll unpack the spiciest 'AI for Product' Qs and what it's like to scale impactful products as CPO Linktree, SVP Product at Webflow and Head of Product at Airbnb. Got questions for JZ?

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🧑‍🍳 Work with Cathy Guo (and me!) on Iterative We're hiring a Senior Associate to help evaluate the startups that apply to Iterative. We receive 1K+ applications roughly every 3 months and invest in roughly 1.8% of those applications. Maybe somewhat counter-intuitively, we want to increase that % and take more risk. The trick is figuring out what areas (founder, market, country, etc.) that we should be taking more risk in. You'll be an active participant in how we evaluate companies. See the job description for the typical stuff but here's 2 things we DON'T do as part of our investment process. 🤔 Invest Based on Who Else Is Investing We don't care who else is in the round. Most of the time, we make our decision before everyone else does. That means you'll have to do the work of building your own conviction. 🤓 Invest on School, Previous Work Experience, etc. We don't have any filters around what school a founder went to, what company they used to work at, etc. We evaluate all founders based on our interactions with them. Why settle for a proxy of whether someone is good (that's what all of these are) when you can talk to them directly? If you can't tell whether a founder is good by talking to them.. well.. Instead.. you'll have to think for yourself and argue from first principles. Mostly with me :). If that's how you want to invest or want to learn how we do that, you should apply. For more details about the role, look for the 📌 in the comments.

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“There’s no jobs for Jr Software Engineers out there!” NOT TRUE…But there are some major issues in today’s hiring market. 1. MISALIGNED FOUNDATIONAL EXPERIENCE: The majority of aspiring SEs are either: Recent CS grads (less hands-on exp); OR, Bootcamp grads (less theory). Meanwhile...Most enterprise companies who hire a ton of SEs are looking for CS grads that ALSO have hands-on experience already. 2. MISALIGNED TECH STACKS: The majority of aspiring SEs are only experienced in NodeJS and/or Python. Meanwhile…Most of the companies who hire a ton of SEs are using Java or C# backends. Companies using NodeJS or Python backends are often smaller and can't hire as many SEs. That’s why our Enterprise Accelerator is making a difference. We identify diverse CS grads who are hungry, and we teach them the hands-on Java skills that companies are using in the real world over 3 months. Best of both worlds 😎 If you're interested in seeing some of this kind of talent--send me a DM and we'll get you connected. Want to join our next Enterprise Accelerator cohort? Stay tuned for the next webinar in early August.

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"I don't like leetcode style interviews!" See I wasn't making it up! Kurtis Nusbaum tells us more about why engineers don't like leetcode and the types of interviews that lead to a more enjoyable and effective interviewing experience.

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Well said. The alarmism around AI replacing software engineers often overlooks the complexity of our role. While AI tools like Devin are impressive, they are assistants, not replacements. 𝟏. 𝐂𝐨𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐬 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐚𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐬𝐨𝐟𝐭𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠. 𝟐. 𝐒𝐞𝐧𝐢𝐨𝐫 𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐧𝐯𝐨𝐥𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞, 𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧-𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐬-𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐦 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧. 𝟑. 𝐔𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐛𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐱𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐝𝐞𝐟𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐜𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐬𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐬. 𝟒. 𝐄𝐱𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐫𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐟𝐮𝐥, 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧-𝐠𝐮𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐞𝐯𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧. AI will definitely reshape our workflows, but it won't replace the need for skilled engineers. Instead, it may allow us to focus more on high-level problem-solving and innovation. Arvind Telharkar 👏

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It was great hearing from Tony Xu, 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿 & 𝗖𝗘𝗢 𝗼𝗳 DoorDash, speak at our weekly YC dinner. Here are my main takeaways: 𝗦𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁: Tony shared a story where one of the restaurants they were onboarding was short-staffed because the salad chef didn't show up. He personally stepped in as the salad chef for the day, going above and beyond to help. This act built a lot of trust with the restaurant. 𝗡𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗹𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝘁𝗼𝘂𝗰𝗵 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁/𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲: It was surprising to hear that Tony and his team still do deliveries personally at least once a quarter. They believe in staying connected with the customer experience. Check it out - https://lnkd.in/dan3RNXx 𝗖𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗱𝗶𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗽𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝗸𝗲𝘆: With four founders, they made sure each person had a specific area of responsibility. This clear division helped avoid disagreements and allowed each founder to execute their role effectively. 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿-𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗳𝗶𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗰𝗿𝘂𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹: Tony believes one reason for their success is that the founders deeply cared about solving the problem, which resulted in a great founder-market fit. #YC #entrepreneur #startups #founderlessons

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🚀 Strategy and Profitability: Insights from Lenny’s Podcast with Ami Vora I recently listened to a fantastic episode of Lenny Rachitsky podcast with Ami, where they delved into the critical aspects of governance and profitability in product leadership. Their insights were incredibly resonant and thought-provoking, particularly for anyone navigating the complex intersection of innovation and business sustainability. Highlights: Detangling User Needs: • They emphasized the importance of understanding user needs while setting up strategic frameworks. Clear guidelines help product teams innovate without getting bogged down by bureaucracy. GMV and Surface Separation: • Ami made a compelling point about Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) and the need to separate it by surface. This approach helps product leaders see which platforms or channels are driving the most value, enabling targeted improvements and strategic investments. Building User Engagement for GMV: • Ami discussed how different user engagements contribute to GMV. By segmenting GMV per surface, companies can tailor strategies to enhance user experiences across various touchpoints, driving higher overall GMV. Profitability with Purpose: • Integrating profitability into the product development process from the start is crucial. Ami shared strategies for ensuring every product initiative drives financial success without compromising on user value. Data-Driven Decisions: • They underscored the power of data in strategic planning. Leveraging analytics allows product leaders to make informed decisions that balance short-term gains with long-term growth. Building Accountability: • A strong theme was fostering a culture of accountability. Transparency and regular reviews are key to maintaining high standards and achieving sustainable growth. Reflection: This podcast was a powerful reminder that effective strategy and profitability are not mutually exclusive. It’s about setting the right frameworks to foster innovation and ensure our products are financially viable. I highly recommend this episode to fellow product managers and leaders. It’s packed with actionable insights on balancing governance and profitability. How do you integrate governance frameworks without stifling innovation in your teams? #ProductManagement #Governance #Profitability #Innovation #Leadership #DataDriven #SustainableGrowth

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Today, a YC startup asked to test a prompt for personalizing emails to 50+ daily Product Hunt launches - without manual testing. We set up the workflow in 3 min with our Lab feature: 1. Scraped today's Product Hunt launches into a CSV file 2. Created a prompt with "Company" and "Description" variables 3. Import the CSV file to Keywords AI (YC W24) 4. Tested the prompt across all 50+ cases with a single click, using various LLMs Check out our Lab feature here: https://lnkd.in/gqjXeaBT

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⌛ The deadline for YC’s S24 batch is April 22! I get a ton of requests for application feedback, so I’ve consolidated my advice here: 𝐓𝐞𝐚𝐦 > 𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐚 + 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬 Your idea will change; that’s what it means to be pre-product-market fit. A bet on an early-stage company is a bet on the team to iterate rapidly and figure it out; think of your idea and your progress as useful evidence. Don’t be discouraged if you feel like you haven’t made enough progress, because the amount of progress you’ve made is not nearly as important as how fast you made it. In other words: “slope, not intercept”. 𝐁𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞. 𝐁𝐞 𝐝𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭. Explain your idea clearly in 1-2 sentences: who are your users and what problem do you solve? Avoid jargon, marketing-speak, technical intricacies, or an exhaustive list of features. Tacking on “...with AI” or “...with blockchain” is not any more helpful than “...with computers”. Bad: “We are transforming the global software development industry with a revolutionary AI platform that streamlines the SDLC for tremendous efficiency gains using cutting-edge LLMs.” Better: “We’re a developer tool that automatically reviews code and fixes bugs.” 𝐊𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐬 You should feel like an expert on your users, and have some unique/contrarian insights about them. You’ve hopefully identified a “hair-on-fire” pain they have, and you’re building a product to fix their problem. It’s hard to spend too much time talking to your users. Interviewing 50-100 people seems like a good place to start. If you’ve talked to less than, say, 10-20, it might be hard to know you’re solving a real problem. 𝐊𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐲𝐨𝐮’𝐫𝐞 𝐠𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐲 What’s your path to $1B in revenue? Keep it simple. You don’t need a 5-tier pricing strategy and a multi-year product roadmap, you need to know roughly how many potential customers you have and how much they’re likely to pay (bottom-up analysis), and how big the overall market is (top-down). Reasonable estimates are OK. Remember, the VC model is based on a power law of startup returns, where one huge exit makes up for all other investments going to zero. This makes a tiny chance at becoming a $10B company quite valuable, and a high chance at becoming a $50M company surprisingly useless. 𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐥𝐲? Emphatic yes! YC was an awesome experience for us and every YC alumnus I’ve asked so far - it changed the trajectory of our startup. Even if you don’t get in, we found the application process itself was valuable and forced us to think deeply. If you’d like some eyes on your application, send me a message - I’m happy to help!

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🎉 Exciting News! 🎉 I just launched my Substack and dropped my first post: Product Engineer: Nurturing Success Through Holistic Understanding! 💡 If you love talking about tech, product engineering, and what it takes to build awesome products, you’re in the right place. I’ll be sharing insights, stories, and lessons learned from my journey in engineering and product management. Come join me, and let’s dive into the world of innovation together! 💻✨ Subscribe, share, and let me know what you think—your feedback means the world! #ProductEngineering #Innovation #Substack #TechTalk 👉 Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/ggD_ZWis

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In October, we announced our $1.8 billion Series C financing and take-private of SP+ (SP Plus). Today, I couldn’t be prouder to share that we have officially closed our transformational acquisition of SP+. This acquisition and Growth Buyout (GBO) is creating a paradigm shift in how technology companies scale and represents the largest venture-backed M&A deal and the third largest AI fundraise (just behind OpenAI) in the past year. We’ve created a once-in-a-generation opportunity -- allowing us to deploy our proprietary, artificial intelligence technology to more than 50 million consumers, across 4,000+ locations, and processing over $4 billion in payments a year -- enabling checkout-free experiences with a speed, ease, and convenience that is unparalleled, even online. While re-envisioning parking is our focus and priority today, the opportunities for growth beyond parking are limitless. In the future, we’ll use our artificial intelligence platform to power checkout-free transactions in new verticals – making the everyday experience of living, working and playing remarkable – giving us back our most valuable asset, time. From the outside, an entrepreneur’s journey can seem linear and academic – identify a problem, develop solutions, raise capital, deploy, scale – and repeat. In reality, it’s entropic and riddled with roadblocks. We’ve been repeatedly told our ambitions are impossible. But – our team comes back each day with strength, tenacity, determination and conviction. We’ve learned from every failure, every denial, every slammed door, and we’ve gotten stronger, smarter and faster. Today we closed our $1.8B financing and take-private of SP+ – creating a company that’s stronger together. The last six years have been a remarkable journey. I couldn’t be more thankful for our investors, advisors and most importantly, the entire Metropolis Technologies team that helped get us here. Special thanks to my co-founders and executive team Peter Fisher, Travis Kell, Courtney Fukuda, Ryan Hunt, Eddie Thomas and John-Paul Sukkar. I’d also like to thank the newest members of our executive team Chris Sherman, Ritu Vig, Kris Roy and Wenyu Blanchard. Our Series C was comprised of a best-in-class syndicate, led by Eldridge Industries with significant investment from BDT & MSD Partners’ affiliated credit funds, Vista Equity Partners, and Temasek as well as strong support from Metropolis’ existing shareholder group led by 3L. Thank you to all our exceptional partners, investors and advisors who thought outside the box and believed in our vision, every step of the way -- including Tony Minella, Todd Boehly and Lisa Ohlmeyer at Eldridge, Anton Zietsman and Dave Leyrer at 3L, Goldman Sachs and BDT & MSD Partners. We’ll celebrate today but know, we’re just getting started.

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My honest thoughts on the software engineering industry in 2024: *The Negative Thoughts* 😞 1) It's a brutal job market, particularly for developers with no work experience all the way to 5 years of work experience. There are too few open jobs and far too many candidates competing for these few open jobs. 2) It's unlikely to get better anytime soon, if ever. Companies have realized that they're no worse off with fewer engineers than they were with more engineers. The insane over-hiring spree of 2016-2022 was just that: insane. 3) AI is obsoleting developers, slowly but surely, slowly then suddenly. *The Positive Thoughts* 😁 1) Many companies *are* still hiring. Anecdotally, recruiters from Google and Meta have asked me if I want to go back (Meta seems to be hiring aggressively—within the context of this market). The blockchain industry is hiring like crazy. Other pockets of the overall market are hiring at a steady pace. 2) AI is *not* obsoleting developers. No sane business that wants to remain competitive will run the risk of replacing its developers with AI. AI will only make SWEs more powerful and more productive. 3) Software engineering is anything but a dying field. Thinking it's going to fizzle out in the 2020s is akin to someone in the early 1900s thinking construction was going to die out. 4) Victimizing yourself because of externalities beyond your control like high interest rates and AI advancement is pointless. Keep networking; keep applying to jobs; keep prepping for interviews; keep learning; keep out-competing other people. *Conclusion* 💡 The golden era of software engineering—defined by its low barriers to entry, high salaries, and too-good-to-be-true work-life balance—is likely over. But software engineering remains a fantastic field (dare I say the best?), just one with higher barriers to entry and more realistic work expectations. The money is still great. 🤑 As someone eloquently said in the comments of my YouTube video on this topic, neither winter nor spring is permanent, and they come again after a while. #softwareengineering #programming #coding #jobs #job

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