Why are the Raptor sea level engines used for orbital insertion and deorbit, instead of the RVACs? @grok
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Some lessons after 8 years at @OSHCutInc
1. Funding matters. A lot. Bootstrapping sounds great, but you kneecap your growth if you can't afford to throw $20k to $50k a month at an advertising channel to see if it works. It also hamstrings your business if you can't hire great people right away.
2. Distribution is king. A "good enough" product with amazing distribution will win against a better product with poor distribution 100% of the time.
3. In large markets, competitive advantages only matter if you can scale them.
4. Great people and great leaders make everything easy. Hire as fast as your unit economics support it. Pay well. Create an amazing work environment.
5. You probably don't need professional HR. Use a PEO to help manage compliance and logistics, and to provide advisory support. But don't hire a full-time professional HR manager.
6. Accounting really is the language of business. Learn it. Understand financial documents deeply. They show you how money moves in the business, help avoid cash flow minefields, and help plan for future capex.
7. Customers love speed and simplicity. Make their lives easy and they'll keep coming back.
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My version of this is starting an excavation-for-hire company, mostly just me driving a skid steer or excavator around for the whatever price because it's fun (and not for the money). Annoying clients get dropped because I'm post-economic.
There are days I want to liquidate everything, buy a small farm somewhere south of Dublin, and just read classics and trade stocks everyday for the next 70 years.
Then there are days I want to maniacally grow my consulting business and “win the game.”
This is normal, right?
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Bonus depreciation is a big win for capex-heavy businesses, but IT IS NOT A PERMANENT WRITEOFF.
Usually you book depreciation over time, ideally aligned with the real life of the asset. If you take it all up-front, yes it decreases immediate tax liability. But you pay for it later, because you aren't taking depreciation in future years.
In fact, if your accounting is GAAP compliant, you recognize the tax expense in the year you take the bonus depreciation, and you book it to a deferred tax liability account. You will pay those taxes.
You should take bonus depreciation anyway, because it keeps cash in-hand to support growth. You can put those dollars to work today.
But don't be fooled. You'll pay the piper eventually.
Bonus depreciation, you can profit with tax write offs. If I finance the building of a certain type of manufacturing building asset as an example for $5,000,000.00 it can qualify for 100% bonus depreciation.
Meaning in the first year I can remove $5m from my taxes. So if I was about to owe $5m to the government, I can instead drop $1m on the down payment for the loan to build the building, but I still incurred the $5m expense so I reduce my tax bill by $5m.
There are a lot of bonus depreciation setups like this, also maintenance (non capex) on real estate comes out the first year you spend it. So you can buy a shitty property with a renovation loan, your out of pocket might be $30k to close but if you have $100k in maintenance which is funded by the loan, you get to write off $100k
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Caleb (OSH Cut) retweeted
We put a GoPro inside a 6×6 steel tube and then cut it with our tube laser. For science.
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There are two labor strategies:
1. Pay as little as possible, hire recruiters and trainers to deal with high attrition.
2. Pay very well. Have zero attrition and an amazing, experienced team.
Spreadsheets might favor option 1. But option 2 is why @OSHCutInc has an NPS of 80.
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This is too funny not to share.
Back in 2018, just before the @OSHCutInc instant quoting app went live, I accidentally pushed our API keys to our private Github repo.
I must have fixed it shortly thereafter, but the keys remained in our Git history.
Anyway, our much more experienced software team just ran some security scans and it found the keys, with this commit message showing where the breach originated.
"Switched to LIVE API KEYS!!!"
lol
Glad to have actual professionals running the team now. :-)
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Someone registered a domain name very similar to oshcut.com and then filled it with fake material, using our brand name.
We filed a DMCA complaint and got it taken down.
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Caleb (OSH Cut) retweeted
We took a Yamaha R3 and gave it a serious OSH Cut makeover. Check it out here:
piped.video/watch?v=kv6U-GFQ…
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Great read. Two lines stood out:
1. BLS says a machinist makes $58,750 a year, median.
2. Welders and machinists are now the hardest people for a hardware company to find.
EVERY employee at @OSHCutInc makes more than a median machinist.
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Unexpected behavior from FSD on my Tesla Model 3 today.
A biker riding toward the road disappeared behind a large, parked vehicle. I saw it happen and got ready to take over.
But my Model 3 handled it! Well in advance, it slowed and moved away from the road edge, in case the biker popped out into the road. He didn't - he turned onto the sidewalk, behind the parked car.
So my Model 3 saw the biker and three to four seconds later took defensive action, just in case.
Actually a mind-blowing moment. It's not perfect, but damn is it amazing.
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Perk of being in manufacturing is that this isn't true, unless they randomly decide to start filling warehouses with lasers and press brakes.
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Moving in next week! The @OSHCutInc R&D space is going to be epic.
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Woah. Reminds me of Travis Kalanik saying "Just make stuff. Make it for yourself."
Just build.
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