Gabor Cselle
@gabor
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Building @southpkcommons . Before: 3x startup founder (T2, Namo Media, reMail). Director at Google, PM at Twitter.
San Francisco, CA
Joined March 2007
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I'm building a Twitter alternative.
Secured first $ commitments today.
Waitlist will be up in the next 36 hours.
Pre-reserve your handle in 1 week.
Hoping I don't get thrown off Twitter before then.
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To convert Fahrenheit to Celsius, know that -10C is 14F, and then follow the NYC MTA 6 stops uptown. (Via Craig NM)
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I finally finished
@andrewchen
's Cold Start Problem book that he graciously mailed to me a few weeks ago. What an amazing book - I nearly ran out of Hi-Liter and stickies. My top takeaways:
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Today I learned that your website have a `og:video` <meta> tag.
iMessage will render the video in the preview.
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First speaker at
#TED2022
: Garry
@Kasparov63
speaking about Russia and Ukraine. “If I wrote a sequel to ‘Winter is Coming,’ it would be called ‘Winter is Here,’ and subtitled ‘I bleeping told you so.’”
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I was once the Product Manager for logged out Twitter. I still can't believe what they did here.
Logged-out is a huge reason for Twitter's cultural relevance. This "concentric circles" chart from 2014 shows its importance.
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Thank you everyone who has reached out, emailed, and DM’d.
Yes, I’m serious about building a better Twitter.
Yes, I’m working on a deck. And team. And the waitlist. And letting you reserve your handle. The roadmap etc is the Google Sheet I shared earlier.
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Here's what Gemini 1.5 Pro had to say about the SORA video:
"The video is of a snowy street in Japan, with cherry blossoms in bloom. There are a few inconsistencies that suggest the video may be AI-generated.
First, the snow is falling very heavily, but the cherry blossoms are
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.
@OpenAI
SORA vs
@pika_labs
vs
@runwayml
vs
@StabilityAI
Video.
I gave the other models SORA's starting frame. I tried my best prompting and camera motion techniques to get the other models to output something similar to SORA.
SORA's just much better at longer scenes.
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I'm building a Twitter alternative. We all deserve a better public square.
Waitlist is here:
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Big T2 news today! We raised $1.1M in funding from a group of amazing investors. This will allow us to keep building out the product and traction.
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A year ago I started a Twitter alternative called T2 (later we renamed it to ).
We're shutting down Pebble tomorrow. We weren't able to grow quickly enough to raise enough to build it out.
Lots of lessons learned. Will share them here in a bit.
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Personal news: After 6 years at Google’s Area 120, it’s time to move on! Here I’ve managed 23 project teams, including our biggest hits. I’ll take the next few months to look inside and outside Google. I’m also considering starting another company.
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Today's my last day of employment at Google after 6 years. Heading into SF shortly to return my laptop, phone, and badge.
Tomorrow I'll be entering the idea maze for my next startup. I think it's going to be fun.
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The moment has arrived - I’m about to drop my badge, Pixel phone, and the beloved 16” MacBook Pro at work. Feeling major nostalgia.
Goodbye Google, goodbye Area 120, I’ll miss you. Excited for what’s next!
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Day 123 in startup land: My "What would it take to build another Twitter?" Google Sheet hit a nerve. At a friend's birthday party last night, this is all people wanted to talk about.
I made revisions based on the feedback. Now adds up to $7.5M.
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T2 is up! This is a very early alpha that we built as quickly as we could. There are just a handful of users right now. We will be adding people from the waitlist slowly.
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Just submitted the filing to incorporate T2!
The corporate name will be a little different, will share in a bit.
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Apple gives Twitter preferential treatment in iMessage.
I've spent hours trying to get T2 posts show up like tweets, but couldn't get it to work.
Here's a brief 🧵 on what I tried. 👇
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Here's what we learned from building our Twitter alternative Pebble (fka T2): What worked, what didn't, and we shut down today:
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On Monday I shared that I’m building the next public square. I’m calling it T2 for now. You can sign up for the waitlist here:
Here’s what I learned since then: 🧵
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Waitlist coming shortly.
Had to make a difficult choice between 3 potential color schemes: "Steel," "Peach," and "Periwinkle."
Chose "Periwinkle."
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I'm super excited to announce that I've re-joined Google to be an operating partner of Area 120!
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SORA vs Pika vs RunwayML vs Stable Video.
I tried the same prompt as in one of
@OpenAI
's examples on the other GenAI video models. All of them produce much shorter videos around 5 seconds.
IMHO SORA's doing prompt enrichment just like Dall-E, will try that next.
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In early November, I saw someone saying that building a basic Twitter alternative "shouldn't take more than 1-3 days."
With T2, we're now entering week 5 of development, and I can confidently say that 3 days wouldn't have been enough.
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It was exactly a week ago that I decided to start T2.
A community is forming around the mission to build a new public square that is delightful, rewarding, and safe. Thank you to everyone who has expressed interest in helping, and to those who are helping already. Let’s do this!
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I'm absolutely blown away by the number of friends, former colleagues and new folks who have reached out to help. Your support is amazing. Thank you! I'm working though the messages one by one. Will need time.
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A week ago exactly, I tweeted that I’m starting a better Twitter alternative. This tweet changed my life. I will remember this past week forever.
To everyone who has reached out, thank you.
To everyone already helping, thank you.
Let’s do this.
I'm building a Twitter alternative.
Secured first $ commitments today.
Waitlist will be up in the next 36 hours.
Pre-reserve your handle in 1 week.
Hoping I don't get thrown off Twitter before then.
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The most important challenge to overcome will be to solve the cold start problem. What will be the first dense network of folks on the platform?
I'm hoping to do this through a well-designed waitlist + handle hold system. That is my top priority. Waitlist will be up tomorrow.
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Couldn’t sleep again last night. Too excited for what’s ahead.
Today I need to work on setting up the company, and the 0 to 1 plan.
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T2 is getting better by the hour, we're fixing a lot of bugs.
Just a handful of folks on the site now, hoping to send the first small batch of invites on Monday.
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I became a US citizen yesterday 🇺🇸! After my swearing in, I got on a redeye flight to NYC for a work trip.
This was my view when I opened the window shade on final approach to EWR just now.
Perfection.
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Big T2 news today! By
@ingridlunden
on
@TechCrunch
.
Twitter rival 'T2' raises its first outside funding, $1.1M from a group of high profile angels by
@ingridlunden
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Called in a lot of favors today.
Everyone responded. Agreed to meet. Agreed to help.
Making progress in figuring out how to build T2. Thank you!
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Thank you to everyone who has reached out and offered to help. The response has been overwhelming. I bought this domain for $7.16 (the TLD was on sale!), but the name isn't final.
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Respect the user.
Respect each other.
Respect employees.
Respect the planet.
Respect the opportunity.
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T2 realization this morning:
This is just so my jam. I just love working on this.
Love working with our small team.
We're making good progress.
Very happy.
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Overwhelmed by how many have reached out and want to help. This domain name was available and cost $7.16, but it's not final. Sign up on the waitlist to follow, get involved, and get early access.
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When I started my last company in ad tech, it certainly didn't feel like this.
This feels like the start of a community.
I feel a great responsibility to deliver.
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It feels like the original T2 roadmap I posted here a while ago is woefully out of date. We need it sooner than I thought. Working on that now.
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I'm wrapping up 6+ years of work in Area 120 at Google this week!
Next on the agenda: A trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton.
Then ... starting a new startup in the consumer space!
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Opened my inbox this morning and was reminded of the Mr. Rogers quote that "you will always find people who are helping." Feeling inspired. Thanks everyone.
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Excited to share that I've joined the
@southpkcommons
community to explore new ideas and meet fellow builders!
Going through orientation today. Feeling inspired - and have already met some impressive folks. Also ... South Park is a generally a pretty serendipitous place.
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I miss the office. Seeing people in real life is energizing in a way that 12 daily Google Meet calls aren't. There are no spontaneous exchanges, no "let's just chat for 5 mins" to quickly resolve problems. Everything is a formal 30 minute meeting. It feels slow. Ideas?
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Of all the speakers at
#codecon
so far,
@Benioff
and
@satyanadella
seem to be having the most fun running their companies.
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T2:
We’re starting small.
We’re starting simple.
We’re starting soon.
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Spoke to
@ingridlunden
at
@techcrunch
about my hopes for a new platform.
“Google and Twitter veteran maps out a Twitter Alternative”
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Those who know me from Area 120 (Google's zero-to-one incubator) joke that I used to wave my worn copy of
@andrewchen
's "Cold Start Problem" book into the camera at least once a day.
Here's my thread on it from a while back:
I finally finished
@andrewchen
's Cold Start Problem book that he graciously mailed to me a few weeks ago. What an amazing book - I nearly ran out of Hi-Liter and stickies. My top takeaways:
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Today is the 6 month anniversary of my last day at Google! Feels like >2 years ago.
After this photo, I entered the startup idea maze for 4 months trying to come up with a great consumer social idea.
On Nov 7, lightning struck and I felt that just had to do T2.
The moment has arrived - I’m about to drop my badge, Pixel phone, and the beloved 16” MacBook Pro at work. Feeling major nostalgia.
Goodbye Google, goodbye Area 120, I’ll miss you. Excited for what’s next!
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Camped out outside the closed 101 Second Street atrium to use their WiFi to DocuSign some paperwork. I was just there a few weeks ago working on a completely different idea.
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Every day, we send out a handful of T2 invites.
Every day, we feel a bit embarrassed that the product isn't ready yet.
Every day, T2 is getting a little bit better - thanks to those invited sending bug reports and feedback. (Thank you!)
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Day 122 in startup land: A lot of folks here have suggested building a Twitter competitor not run by Elon.
What would this take? Some 1-3 days. Others say $50M.
I costed it out.
I think it would take 8 months to build and ~$7M.
Details in this GSheet:
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Yes we are still working on a new name for T2 ().
The new name will not be X2.
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Which social media site or app has the best-designed onboarding flow? Looking for inspiration.
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There are no rate limits on T2, a kinder, safer, more fun version of this website.
We just opened up some invites. If you want to join now, use this link:
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Idea: What if T2 only had quote-retweet, i.e. you had to add some commentary of your own?
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Just wrapped up 6+ years at Google with happy hour drinks and stories of Area 120 projects. Still need to come back to drop off my badge and laptop, but feels surreal to be done.
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I forgot my badge at home and our security guards didn’t recognize me, so I’m taking my calls from here now.
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After four+ years at Area 120, I still get asked whether we "ever launch anything." Yes we do! Here are some of my favorite experiments we launched this year.
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I know I'm being repetitive, but I'm just so excited to be working on this.
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Today: got feedback on the T2 product plan from the community, decided on the name of the corporation (more soon!), had a barrage of meetings.
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Area 120 friends, my heart goes out to you today. Reach out anytime.
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Working from the Salesforce Tower WeWork this morning, and the views are something else!
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One of the VC funds I'm an LP in has a prioritized list of whom to approach for your later stage fundings, and in what order (from harmless but helpful to middle-of-the-pack to top tier), and I think it's one of the most useful documents for founders that I have ever seen.
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What would a Twitter alternative look like that optimizes for engagement in the "Thumb Zone?" TikTok's actions are all in this zone. Twitter's actions are outside the zone because it started as a desktop web product.
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This page is an amazing resource for tracking the vote count and see how it’s trending in PA, GA, AZ, and NV.
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I finally finished reading "Attention Factory: The Story of TikTok and China's ByteDance" by
@mbrennanchina
- very interesting book and pretty relevant to my job. A few takeaways I wanted to share:
👇
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Slowly rolling out T2, a handful of new users each day. We’re working on getting it to our minimum quality bar. It’s getting there. Aiming to cross 1000 users in mid-Feb.
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Got a surprising amount of work done on BART. Now about to get on a flight for a quick trip to see someone important.
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How many is enough? Slack takes 3 people to deliver value. Zoom needs 2. AirBnb needs 100 reviewed listings in a market. Uber needs to get ETA under ~5 minutes to reach that point. Networks that are harder to get starter are more defensible the product is in the long run.
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Today I have a full day to tinker. Decided to build something that GPT-4V can't do yet: Identify fonts.
I'm going to build it right here in this thread, you're welcome to follow along. I'll need to finish by 5 pm PT to pick the kids up from school. No idea if I can make it work.
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Getting ready to post some roles at T2. What online platform does one use for that these days? We're thinking of just posting on LinkedIn.
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T2 Update: In a few days, we'll close the current waitlist at
We'll start assigning the first set of T2 handles shortly thereafter.
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Here it is:
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Trying to figure out how much we should build T2 in public vs. figure out a good plan and execute quietly.
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The day after the T2 fundraise announcement was ... a bit overwhelming. Apologies if I owe you a response to your email. Spent the day recruiting, testing a new build, reviewing designs, and more.
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I thought I cared a lot about fonts.
Now I know there are people who care a lot more.
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