ethos: the purpose of writing this was to document why the way textql will be run will become the way that all good companies will need to operate. a more opinionated version of this detailing why i emotionally prefer this and why someone should work with us will be written here - but this is more analytical. feedback requested on axioms that feel… weak.

translation: noah pointed out to me that this whole piece felt kinda cowardly and third-party-analytical… while my normal writing communicates more “fuck you, i’m right, this is obviously true, if you don’t agree you’re stupid”… he’s not wrong, but idk how to turn this into smt more tonally true to myself… so i’m gong to put that rant in a separate piece.

skeleton

1. the best engineers are getting more leverage
2. because of capital liquidity and general productivity trends
3. higher leverage ICs need partnership-like exposure to be retained and build big things
4. these will look like partnerships for other industries with high leverage ICs
5. system partners are going to destroy traditional tech firms.

Leverage is the ultimate amplifier of power. It takes the smallest of moves and inflates them into monumental victories. Yet, beware its allure, for it is a force that can just as easily lead to ruin. Like a double-edged sword, it cuts both ways, slicing through fortunes with a merciless edge. ~ What ChatGPT thinks Gordon Gecko would define leverage as

the best technology ICs are becoming 2 orders of magnitude higher leverage & proportionally harder to keep

the cost to attract and retain the best science and engineering talent in the world has been exponentially going up over the past 10,000 years. it once required not imprisoning them at home or setting them on fire for heresy.

in 1957, the stakes were raised by fairchild semi, attracting the brightest by promising them no suits and intellectual freedom. netflix raised the stake with top of market pay. google raised the stakes with professional chefs and ping pong. facebook invented RSUs to give them more equity in the venture they were working on. ramp raised the bar still - by enabling 23 year old college drop outs to command a staff engineering title and $700K compensation…

and still - ramp’s finest are leaving left and right to start their own companies. if you were one of the first 50 at ramp, retool, rippling, scale, palantir, or stripe, you’re basically always evaluating your current job against the opportunity to swing at a $7b venture of your own. not everyone is leaving in pursuit of monetary upside, but intellectual achievement and clout are intricately tied with the financial upside as a founder. today’s best companies have no way to compete against that opportunity cost.

well, they have one way. scale, ramp & even openai have compensated by acqui-hiring their most entrepreneurial talents back into the fold after a year of working on their own thing. in the process. the brief year they spend on their own venture rewards them with usually a P&L of their own, a promotion, and an outsized equity grant that those would-be-founders would’ve never been able to negotiate for in the traditional career ladder. they secure an “acquired founder” title.

but this deterministic script is stupid. a year of productivity is gone. thousands of legal fees are set on fire to fund, facilitate, and acquire the small startup. there was no new information gained by the would-be-founders… other than “year 0 is hard.” there’s no new information gained by the acquirers - they knew how valuable the talent was before they left the door. there’s no information gained by the VCs - wow a great founder who recommended these great ICs to you ended up wanting them back. big woop.

this whole process is a meme to get around the fact that companies today don’t have a mechanic to give founder-level exposure to engineers who command founder-level leverage.

this is happening because capital is rushing into venture and general output has gone up & concentrated

so what changed? two things: