Kishan Patel, Caitlin Clark and Elon Musk
What do they have in common?
Free agent alert
One of the best software engineers I know is on the market. We’ve worked together for the last three years at Pie. He is a wonderful human being and an outstanding software engineer. He has that rare gift: he asks great questions. Kishan is based in New York. He’s looking at his next move. If you have ideas💡for an amazing senior engineer — a resilient, energetic, and soulful person — please forward this email to your founder or CTO/engineering leader friends.
Kishan is having great discussions with a number of firms, offers are imminent — but I want to make sure he finds the highest and best opportunity in terms of mission alignment. He is leaning towards post-product market fit companies, maybe at the Series A or B stage, but is open-minded for the right thing. After a number of years toiling in consumer software with me, he is very much curious on enterprise software, as well, whether B2B or B2B2C.
Here is Kishan’s LinkedIN and here is the LinkedIN post I shared about his availability. Here is his email:
kishan8910@gmail.com
Fire away.
Let’s build.
Women’s basketball
The most exciting thing happening in sports right now, other than the Bears on the verge of drafting Caleb Williams, is women’s basketball.
Did you know that the women’s March Madness final may well have more viewers than the men’s final?
Did you know that Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark have 50x as many Instagram followers as comparable top men’s NCAA players?
Did you know I co-own season tickets to the Chicago Sky and the Indiana Fever? (Write me if you’d like to go to a game this season, we’ll see what we can do!)
Angel and Cameron Brink and Caitlin are not WNBA level stars. They are NBA level stars. And they haven’t been drafted yet. Once in a while, the zeitgeist makes a big move. This is a big move.
I don’t think Caitlin is the best women’s basketball player right now. I think she’s the best basketball player right now. The female Michael Jordan has arrived? Above and beyond her abilities, it’s her ferocious competitive spirit that reminds me of him. The desire to crush others. The ability to dominate them psychologically.
Invest three minutes of your morning on being inspired:
What about the guys? Of course I tip my cap to Nikola Jokic. This New Yorker article (by maybe our best living long-form sports writer Louisa Thomas) entitled How Nikola Jokic Became the World’s Best Basketball Player is illuminating and incredibly well researched and written.
I mean, stop it. A point guard and a center, in the same person:
Elon Musk
I don’t like disagreements on social media. They lack so much of the in-person generosity of spirit and civility required for productive dissent and conflict. There is not much actual listening, let alone norms of decency.
But on this exchange, I couldn’t resist.
The TLDR is an entrepreneur was reacting with incredulity on how Don Lemon approached a conversation about mental health and medication with Elon in their now infamously contentious interview. I like Vanity Fair’s take on it: Elon Musk, Notorious Man-Child, Outdoes Himself Yet Again.
That entrepreneur made a great point—Don Lemon approached Musk’s use of ketamine in an attacking and judgmental way. (Ketamine, according to my psychiatrist, has increasingly valid applications.) And I’m no Don Lemon fan.
But there is a larger point, about holding ourselves accountable to improving our mental health and the way it impacts the suffering of others, which I think is important.
As someone who didn’t take their medication for sixteen years, and who deeply regrets that for the pain it caused myself and others, I think it’s time to have higher expectations of anyone who faces treatable mental challenges. We need to have higher expectations of ourselves—to be our best, no matter what we face.
Ya know what I mean?
So what do they all have in common?
They are all very good at what they do professionally.
Gratefully yours,
Andy