# A disgusting playbook

Jul 20, 2023

So I started another company. I have even less tolerance for fake bullshit than when I started comma, and I probably will fail because of this.

Cruise Automation is a good example here. If they told the truth, they would be out of business. In 2016, they were bought by GM for $1B. I promise they didn’t tell GM that Cruise would be losing $5M per day 5 years later, though it was obvious to anyone willing to be honest.

They still promise that revenue is right around the corner, and the worst part is that people continue to believe them. They say: look at how much progress they have made! I also heard that Elon was shipping Level 5 self driving this year (also in 2020 and a bunch of other years btw).

The point of communication is not to convey truth, it’s to acheive desired outcomes.

However, is Cruise a failure? A common metric I judge companies by is value destruction. I like to be more clever in my value destruction, for example, releasing open source things to destroy moats. But does it matter? Value destruction is value destruction. How much of the worlds resources have you funneled into your thing?

I pride myself on capital efficiency but then apply a different standard to energy usage. Efficiency is actually a pretty dumb metric, since you can only get to 100%. You need to just use more.

I know what it takes to succeed, but I’m not willing to do it.

Don’t have a product? It doesn’t matter! The company is your product. Hire a marketing division to shill. How the fuck does Zoox have higher google trends than openpilot? Nobody is driving in a Zoox, Zoox’s aren’t real. But that doesn’t matter, use photoshop. Perception is reality.

Also hire many people! Hire recruiters. Shill shill shill. Get a big office. Put warm bodies in seats. Spend $10M+ to brand your office. You are the next big thing. How could you not be, you have hundreds of people in an office and 3 months ago you had nothing. You are growing so fast!

You need sales! Do you have a product? Doesn’t matter. Sell it. Close the deal. It’s only other people’s time you are wasting, it doesn’t cost you much. You can build a product later. I mean, you hired 100s of people surely you can build a product right? Sell it first.

Did you do enough advertising? Remember, the company is your product. Do you have billboards? Do you have Instagram ads? Are you sending e-mails to huge mailing lists? There’s more channels to explore! Don’t worry about what you are advertising this is brand advertising not performance.

And oh…this all costs money? Don’t worry about it! You are super legitimate. People know about you. You can just get more investment. Who wouldn’t want to invest? They have seen your ads and nice office and 100s of people in it. You are real! You are the next big thing!

> LA told me, “You’ll be a pop star
> All you have to change is everything you are.”

In conclusion, fuck this game. I would rather lose than sell out. If you lie to the world you lie to yourself and one day you can no longer tell what’s true or not. I would live under a bridge and eat out of dumpsters if I got to know the truth.