Lachy Groom
@lachygroom
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Since leaving Stripe I've been spending a lot of time helping friends, and friends of friends think through career decisions (and very often comp negotiations). It's something I really enjoy doing—if you know anyone who needs help, DMs are open and my email is in my profile!.
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Was just chatting with @delk about how I joined @stripe—I was (politely) rejected after interviewing. We had a process where you could "champion" someone & overrule the hiring committee. @ricburton championed me at Stripe, a few weeks into a 30-day trial I got my full time offer.
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I'm starting a company with @brian_ichter, @chelseabfinn, @svlevine, @hausman_k, @QuanVng, and @SurajNair_1 called Physical Intelligence (π.com!). We're bringing general-purpose AI into the physical world.
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@patrickc @_TamaraWinter @mollyfmielke @salonium what happens to us (or our families) if we don't reach out.
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founders, do not be surprised when the VC that was very very very excited about your company passes. it's their job to convey excitement right up until the moment they pass!. do not let yourself believe it's real until you have a signed termsheet in hand.
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been pondering this a lot since this morning. is baklava dessert lasagna?.
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sam is the most supportive, generous, inspiring person i know. openai has forever changed the world, and i know whatever comes next will be even greater.
i loved my time at openai. it was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. most of all i loved working with such talented people. will have more to say about what’s next later. 🫡.
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recently i've found it hard to keep up with the pace of developments in AI. i found myself wanting a curated source of all the most noteworthy developments. so i built it!.
hello, world!.
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Super excited to share what we've been up to for the past 7 months!.
At Physical Intelligence (π) our mission is to bring general-purpose AI into the physical world. We're excited to show the first step towards this mission - our first generalist model π₀ 🧠 🤖. Paper, blog, uncut videos:
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there’s no free lunch in business but being extremely responsive on email is pretty damn close.
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very bullish founder signal: actively (and genuinely) soliciting feedback, ack'ing it promptly, and closing the loop when its fixed. even better if done broadly with customers. the positive feedback loop is a great experience and instills patience when things inevitably do go.
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Hugely grateful to Ric as I wouldn't even be close to where I am without Stripe. Take a risk and hire young unproven talent!.
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i've always wanted to write more, but i struggle to come up with anything that isn't well trodden ground or trite thinkfluencer bullshit. what do you wish was written about that's not adequately covered? (particularly if i might be in a position to talk about it!).
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Stripe Issuing is going to be a team that's comparable to early Stripe in calibre and compounding impact. If you're interested in joining me, email me: lachy@stripe.com.
Introducing Stripe Issuing:
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i almost never shill my investments, but after a week with @ImpulseLabs_ it is very hard not to. had high expectations and it has consistently exceeded. speed to boil water is incredible, temperature control, ease of use, all 👌.
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literally if you don't use these products you'll wake up with a severed horse head in your bed.
1/ In the past 10 days, there have been some headlines about Spotify, Ford, and Shopify signing up for @Stripe Issuing, Treasury, Connect, and Billing. The thing is, these products aren't just built for big companies—you can sign up to use these very same products too.
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Finally get to show what we've been working on for the past year!
Introducing Stripe Issuing:
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I've been fortunate enough to have a great group of smart, well connected, and knowledgeable friends to help me think through major professional life decisions. It's hard to understate the enormous, compounding difference it has made.
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there needs to be a short hand for when you text "(this is confidential)" but then need to follow up with "i trust you obviously and know everything sensitive we talk about is confidential but just want to state this particularly thing is v confidential".
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Google Reader comes up all the time as a beloved product to the same degree as Notion, Figma, etc. I never used it -- what was so great about it? Has no one made anything of similar quality/appeal?.
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If anyone has built a personal financial dashboard, I'd love to chat! lachygroom@gmail.com.
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so much opportunity to build a better calendar if you could own the network (or if a better protocol) existed. - i'm running late. - i'm free earlier. - dynamic re-balancing if you're both free at different/better times. also why do private notes on events not exist!!!.
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i'm hiring an engineer that loves operations. we will work very closely. need to be comfortable building usable frontends, iterating quickly with users, love creating leverage and efficiency, very creative and high agency. DMs open. will pay generous referral bonus.
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after a few weeks of hard work, excited to release huge thanks to @____brock____ @brotzky_ @tcosta_co and @davidtsong for all the help. (and @josephofiowa, @karrisaarinen, @amasad, @tszzl for feedback.).
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Very excited to see this launch—the final thing I worked on at Stripe!.
Stripe Issuing is now available for all US businesses! 💳. Instantly create your own virtual and physical cards.
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wholeheartedly agree with all of this. recommended reading for prospective early employees.
If I were approached with an opportunity to be an early employee again, here's how I would do it. A thread 👇.
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best guide to testing out Roam? i've tried a few times and it never stuck.
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After an *incredible* 6 years at Stripe, this week will be my last. What should I make sure to do in my last week? (What's next? A break! Would love suggestions, though. The currently plan mostly just includes cliches like traveling, reading, exercising, etc.).
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you know, it's funny, whenever people say "it's funny" at the beginning of a story it's literally never funny.
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Thrive has been such an incredible partner to Physical Intelligence over the past 5 months. I feel very lucky to have their support—congrats @JoshuaKushner and team!.
We are humbled to announce the close of Thrive IX. Exceeding $5 billion, Thrive IX comprises $1 billion designated for early-stage investments and $4 billion designated for growth-stage investments. At Thrive we aim to be concentrated in both people and ideas. The ways in which
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can we please start a movement to abolish the current formatting standards for technical papers? who thought this was a good idea? . is there something i don't understand? is there any logical reason for it?
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I just finished a book that closed with recommendations from the author on what one should turn to next to read further on the topic. More books should do this.
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can someone please create an agent that responds to these emails with what was actually in the order
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some of the most gratifying work I've done lately is working closely with @sjwhitmore on her new company. if you're an engineering founder, or an engineer considering founding a company and want to talk through product (or really anything!) just email me! lachygroom@gmail.com.
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I'm looking to hire an exceptional full stack engineer to our early team at @physical_int (we're now 20 people!): Ideally you've either founded a company or owned large projects from inception to scale and you're not put off by thorny operational problems.
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just a friendly warning. if you spoil a worldle you will end up without kneecaps.
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very excited to release (including open source!) our action tokenizer.
There are great tokenizers for text and images, but existing action tokenizers don’t work well for dexterous, high-frequency control. We’re excited to release (and open-source) FAST, an efficient tokenizer for robot actions. With FAST, we can train dexterous generalist policies
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relentlessly removing inefficiencies is a fantastic startup strategy.
for folks not-in-the-know . the general process of buying large training clusters is talking to 20 different vendors to get a quote and see if they have availability. afaik we're the only provider that's just like "yo, here's the whole cluster calendar".
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There's been so much progress in AI, but it's been largely constrained to the digital world. At Physical Intelligence, we're developing foundation models to power any and all physically actuated devices, with an early focus on dexterous manipulation. We're spending most of our.
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We are _extremely_ early in setting out to create a world where atoms are (almost!) as easy to manipulate as bits. I'm excited to share a lot more soon! Also, a big thank you to @khoslaventures, @Lux_Capital, @OpenAI, @sequoia , and @ThriveCapital for their support to date.
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feature request of email clients: a search modifier of from:human. currently i do -"unsubscribe" which is a reasonable proxy . (cc @superhuman).
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ok glad everyone has posted their 2019 reading lists but please post movie and tv show stack ranks now.
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this thread sums up my current outlook (and advice) well. if I was to add an 8. it would be to form a strong opinion on what it would take to get your current investors to put more $ in and ensure your plan gets you there.
PREDICTION: There's a mass extinction event coming for early & mid-stage companies. Late '23 & '24 will make the '08 financial crisis look quaint for startups. Below I explain when, why & how it will start & offer *detailed advice to founders* on surviving the looming die-off. /1.
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@HarryStebbings We're onboarding a few more people to now if you're interested! Just need to promise to give a lot of feedback :).
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favorite app of 2020. gg @kishanbagaria.
This Week in Apps:. 💬 👤 @KishanBagaria. 📜 The ultimate messaging app.🏡 One home for iMessages, DMs + more.⚡️ Super-fast interface & onboarding.😴 Snooze specific messages/threads.⌘ Strong shortcuts (search, filters, etc.). 🧙🏼♂️ Truly feels like magic 🙌🏼
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apple vision pro review: crashed twice, now giving errors i don’t know how to resolve 🥲. otherwise a stunning piece of hardware…
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Unclear if LinkedIn's job recommendation AI is really good or really bad
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@zoink I'm sorry, but as a large language model trained by OpenAI, I don't have the ability to stop sending you ever so slightly personalized cold emails.
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For those that use Docsend, why? It sucks to be on the receiving end: can't save decks to review later, no ability to review when offline, and can't share privately. Seems immediately distrustful and starts the relationship on a not great note.
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Unrelated, but we're also looking for a house/apartment to rent in the Mission to put some robots in 🤖🤖🤖 (needs to be empty, furnished welcome, ground floor or elevator/easy to bring things in and out of preferable). DMs open!.
I'm looking to hire an exceptional full stack engineer to our early team at @physical_int (we're now 20 people!): Ideally you've either founded a company or owned large projects from inception to scale and you're not put off by thorny operational problems.
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+1, first republic, and more specifically garret spiecker, have been phenomenal partners -- helping me navigate some of the complexities of leaving stripe, starting my first fund, and the insane level of support they provided during the craziness of the past few days.
As a 1st time founder, @firstrepublic believed in the business I was trying to build, helped me get my 1st mortgage (and offered the same my employees.) They stood by me through the highs and lows. This is a great bank with unparalleled service. You should work with them.
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9:41pm musing: why aren't _internal_ recruiters comped like enterprise salespeople? Is it just due to limits around recruiting that aren't inherent to sales (infinite sales = good, infinite people = bad)?.
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@jonathonbarkl a friend does something i absolutely love. if an investor doesn't respond to a few updates he emails them saying that they have a lot of interest from other investors that want to get actively involved and help out—would they be interested in selling their position?.
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Probably one of the last sets of countries launching from Stripe that I was very involved with 😢 Launching Stripe in a new market is such an incredible undertaking. The people involved in a launch are uncompromising—it takes a long time, but it's worth it.
We're kicking off our betas—and seeing our first customers go live—in 6 new countries today! Delighted to take our first steps in Estonia, Poland, Greece, Lithuania, Latvia, and Malaysia. 🇪🇪🇵🇱🇬🇷🇱🇹🇱🇻🇲🇾. You can sign up for these betas at
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@jaltma Don't agree with this take -- most employees aren't investors, nor do they have the market data to make a determination of a fair valuation. I think better advice may be to index on the quality of the investor that set the price.
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@collision I'm so used to people coming up to me and saying "John, love what you're doing at the Stripe!".
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Probably the last thing to ship at Stripe that I had some part in 😰 Congrats to everyone involved!.
Stripe is now available in Malaysia. 🇲🇾
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“If you want a task done quickly, ask a busy person to do it.”.
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thank you @ashleevance for writing about us!.
It's a two scoop kinda day. Welcome, world, to Physical Intelligence - a team of robotics and AI all-stars out to build a universal AI for machines. $70 million in !seed! funding from Thrive, Khosla, Lux and Sequoia .
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Very happy to do mock YC interviews too!.
Since leaving Stripe I've been spending a lot of time helping friends, and friends of friends think through career decisions (and very often comp negotiations). It's something I really enjoy doing—if you know anyone who needs help, DMs are open and my email is in my profile!.
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Fantastic essay by @zebriez. Captured my experience perfectly (despite how painful the 2015 era she cited was, it remains one of my favorite periods at the company too.).
A really insightful (and bravely unconventional) essay by Brie Wolfson about the excitement of working hard.
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something that continues to perplex me on a daily basis that i wish i understood better: why is the cellular to wifi hand-off so difficult/fraught/not solved? every time i walk into my house (with bad cell coverage) i lose any ability to have a conversation for a good minute.
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I’m looking to talk to a handful of high potential college students across all majors who are great at internet research (i.e. answering hard questions related to their major). Are you one, or know one? Email me: lachygroom@gmail.com. (To be involved in an interesting company.).
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some people that do this really well: @KishanBagaria, @jarredsumner @sjwhitmore @josephofiowa @grinich.
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i noticed this a while ago and built something to help catch it (working surprisingly well!). if anyone wants to contribute, my next project was to distill a small model to see if i can reliably infer intent—minimizing contexts vs. time cc @TodePond.
So good. This here is the level of self awareness all technical people should aspire to. It takes introspection like this to actually improve computers, since most people who happily tolerate esoteric tools usually forget how much pain they went through to become proficient.
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If you're an engineer that is excited by what Chris is talking about, please shoot me a DM. I am spending most of my time on this.
While AI is having a summer, robotics is stuck in winter. While the perception problems have been largely solved (thanks to AI), the other robotics problems -- understanding, planning, grasping, energy, flexibility, judgement, etc -- need breakthroughs.
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We're hiring! We're looking for an incredible full-stack engineer, business / operations generalists—ideally former founders—please either DM or write in at
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I wish I could view a store’s real-time inventory to spare a wasted trip. I assume there is a good reason why this doesn't exist?.
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rarely am i surprised by the pessimism of hacker news comments, but this is particularly bleak: the impact large language models will have on education is extremely exciting, particularly in language learning (shout out to ).
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what college course do you wish you could take today? bonus points if it exists.
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@gravicle (i have an Ai Pin). i think this video is just to demonstrate the interface if you want to use it. the Pin is a voice forward device. for me to send a text it's literally a few seconds and all voice.
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take two -- favorite course you took in college? most interesting or paid the greatest unexpected dividends later in life? . looking to spend some time learning about areas that i (ideally) have no existing foundation in.
what college course do you wish you could take today? bonus points if it exists.
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@bella_bongiorno i'm so impressed by what you, imran, and the team have accomplished and i can't wait for everyone to get their Pin! . using Interpreter in Mexico City was 🤯.
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