8VC does some meaningful defense investing - they were founded by Joe Lonsdale (co-founder of Palantir) and they are invested in Anduril, and have some folks on the team who specifically focus on defense.
OT (and pretty random, apologies in advance!) but my company is distributed and might be a good fit for your spouse (we're an international e-commerce marketplace) if interested at all or if she'd like to chat, feel free to hit me up (email in profile!), thanks!
i immediately fell in love with dostoevsky's work (just finished my third read of TBK), but it took me a long time to get into david foster wallace - now, i think of them as very similar. DFW is known for a lot of things (long books, footnotes on footnotes, early death) but to me at the end of the day both infinite jest and the pale king (his posthumous novel) are both incredible works that ultimately deal with existentialism. what made me think of them esp. is your comparison of C&P (cynical) and the Idiot (optimistic).
to me, infinite jest is the cynical but fun work (it's about a lot, but it's a lot about how people use drugs and entertainment and tennis(!) to (unsuccessfully) distract themselves from their larger existential problems), and pale king is the optimistic but more serious work (but with a strange reason for optimism, built in large part around the transcendence of being able to tolerate crazy boredom - it's a post-modern book about IRS employees for heaven's sake. there's a good dose of "we should probably be better citizens" - one of my fave sections describes how US taxpayers view themselves as "consumers of the government" vs. "participating citizens", digs really deep)
i actually like pale king slightly more even tho it's posthumous. it's also shorter (500 vs. 1000), i'd highly recommend starting there, though since you did TBK first, maybe you can just jump into infinite jest no problem =)
I gave up reading Infinite Jest after getting 10-15% into it. I decided to come back to it later but never got back to it. It was somewhat difficult for me (not American). But this was a few years ago. Will try it again sometime soon.
ya, i did the same, took a few tries - i actually ended up reading the pale king first, might be worth trying that. it's shorter (around 500 pages) and i think written in a more digestible/measured manner - still a DFW work, the plots are barely discernible until pretty late in the work but there's less gymnastics to the writing, i like to think because he was more mature at that point but maybe the editor played more of a role since it was posthumous, who knows!
a few years back i learned that glassdoor was co-founded by Rich Barton who founded both Zillow and Expedia (another interesting fact I didn't know until then: Expedia was a MS spin-off, Rich Barton built in-house at MS and then Gates and Ballmer gave the blessing to go on their own) - he's also a partner at Benchmark.
Never loved glassdoor but find it useful on a regular basis when hiring (esp. as one data point for comp comparisons when hiring in tech) and seems to fill a need that isn't served elsewhere (essentially yelp for HR, serving both sides), but it's not-very-sexy design made a lot more sense when I thought of it in the lineage of the majorly successful but also not-very-sexily-designed expedia/zillow. in any case, impressive for Barton to have so many successful businesses/exits and still be relatively under-the-radar compared to other comparable founders (maybe because he's based in SEA), definitely someone to follow for those who like to keep track of serial entrepreneurs.
it's normal and you can expect that no matter what, as CEO you'll have phases like this on/off throughout your tenure, for better/worse it is part of the job. that being said, without knowing more details, I'd venture a guess that after 2 years, you are at a size (in terms of customers, volume, team size, etc.) where you may need to start thinking about not just getting shit done, but managing your team more actively (the thing that clued me in on this beside time/revenue is "people need things from me constantly"). there's lot of resources for how best to do this, but overall it all comes down to identifying big picture goals for the business, setting clear direction for your team, identifying metrics for performance, and then allowing your people to operate relatively autonomously but have regular check-ins / reports on performance relative to the established metrics. this can be as simple as well-defined product development milestones, support tickets closed, sales number achieved, customer acquisition targets, etc. it's important to identify the correct metrics, but often times part of that process is just starting with something simple/obvious, being consistent in evaluating, and then being willing to adapt / add / modify as you and the team learn what really matters.
hope this helps, doing similar things at my company now, not easy but once I appreciated it as a new problem set it's been interesting and satisfying to work on. hit me up if you want to chat more, happy to help.
biggest jump ball: Apple/Google/Amazon competing services. spotify deserves real credit for changing how people consume music, and I think that story will serve them well in the short-term, but their biggest risk is Apple/Google/Amazon who provide competing services that don't have any current pressure to turn a profit - Tim Cook basically said "we don't plan to make money"[1], a bad thing to hear from your primary competitor who also happens to be the most valuable company in the world. as i've said before on diff threads, I would not be surprised if Apple announces a big price decrease or other apple music news right before Spotify's first or second earnings report.
still, impressive for them to make it this far, if they can really find a path to profitability that also fairly compensates artists, I wish them the best! I think it's more likely that as apple/google/amazon force them to continue to operate at a loss, downward pressure on their stock will make them a good acquisition target for one of the big tech companies looking to compete with Apple Music (Amazon seems like a real possibility here - a spotify acquisition feels similar in size and scope to their recent WF acquisition, essentially another double-down on their "everything store" vision/story).
I for one would not switch to Apple Music. No web app, no desktop app for Linux.
Google Play Music could be an option, at least they have a functional web player, but neither it nor the Android app are anywhere close to Spotify's apps.
Apple is not even close to a competitor to Spotify, they don't even have a web interface for listening to music..do you think everyone in the world is Apple product user?
a lot of the comments are about the validity/tenability of your position, and while I overall agree with a lot of what is being said (unfortunately, the fact that an adversarial dynamic has been introduced strikes me as the hardest thing to overcome here, though still entirely possible to overcome) here's a few other things to consider:
1. you can lead without being CEO. early on in the life of a company, co-founders often share CEO-like responsibilities on strategy matters and each will separately own / be responsible for their own domain (so in this case, it sounds like you should own the technical part, and your co-founder may own sales, marketing, fundraising, etc.). i think at this early stage the concern regarding leadership can be managed without explicitly changing title - as CTO and co-founder you should have significant influence and decision-making, regardless of title or equity split. if the problem is that the CEO is trying to steer / control things that they don't have an understanding of that you DO have a much better understanding of, regardless of position / equity you should view your job as helping both your cofounder (and any other people on the team) to understand and get behind the strategy that your expertise and experience tell you is right - this is a big part of leadership, getting people to believe in your vision, and the substantive act of succeeding at that should be more important than title, especially at this early stage. don't think to yourself "I'm not the CEO so therefore I can't lead" - you can! especially if you have good logic / basis for your positions. now, if the CEO is intractable, doesn't understand and doesn't want to understand and you can't convince them or the team, I'd say it's not a good match regardless of position (and truthfully, while you may have good reason to consider your cofounder at fault, I'd also argue that the inability to communicate the strategy / expertise is a at a minimum a joint failure in communication, again, good reason to just call it, as understanding each other is key, esp. at this early stage). this is all to say: you should be able to position yourself as the leader on the things you want to lead, regardless of title, esp. at this stage.
2. the board decides who the CEO is, so they should be making the decision (but proceed with MAJOR caution). the board decides who the CEO is, so i hate to suggest this as it will get very messy, but if you really have deep conviction then you may also want to go to the board (which presumably you are part of, so that's good access). since you are VC-backed, there's a good chance you have a VC on your board, and they can act as tie-breaker - if not, you can still rely on investors who own a controlling interest of the investor's class of shares - even if you did a note, whoever is the "lead" or "leads" and have the most sway can help be a tie-breaker here. the board and investors should have the best interest of the company at heart, and if you can really make the case that the best thing is for you to lead, they can arguably help. the problem here may be that if the CEO led the fundraising efforts, their relationship will investors may be stronger (though I could be wrong here), and there's a good chance that going to the board / investors will only accelerate your getting pushed out. of course if you did the fundraising and own those relationships, it should be easier to make a change. the key thing here is to recognize that this is a big escalation, things will move quickly one way or the other (boards are trained to resolve founder disputes with total urgency), so only proceed if you have total conviction and are not afraid to be pushed out entirely over it. I've seen this go many different ways, and while most of the time this blows up the company, it seems like the company would have blown up inevitably because the board maneuverings were just a symptom of deeper underlying issues that could not be resolved. in a small minority of cases, I've seen this work out, usually because one of the founders gets pushed out and the company is able to recover - of course, works out means from the company's perspective, you could of course be the one who is asked to leave. a secondary effect is that if you lose at that level, those VCs will view you as a trouble-maker, and getting funding may be tough for your future projects (from those VCs, but also others as its a small world). again, this is really the highest escalation you can make, proceed with loads of caution and take into account the very serious risks, and view it as a last resort.
3. cofounders need to trust each other. overall, the key issue here seems to be trust: you don't trust that the CEO can lead, and I would assume at this point the CEO may not trust you to accept their position. while the adversarial dynamic may be impossible to reverse at this point, I think more than anything the only way for this to succeed with both of you involved will be if you can both learn to trust each other, cheesy as it sounds this is probably the most important things to have between cofounders, esp. at this early stage (you are both risking a lot betting on the other, trust and good faith is required). again, might be irreparable at this point, but I think now that you've aired your concerns, you can try to guide that into a productive dialogue that establishing trust of the other, acknowledges both your and the cofounders strengths/limitations, and perhaps you can both begin learning to trust eachother more - that being said, at this early stage where you may need to move fast, the process of developing trust will slow the company down and unless you have some serious financial padding (which you may), that time spent on building trust will be what allow your more already aligned competitors' teams (if any) to outrun you. that all being said, if you just don't trust them and you don't think you ever will, then I'd say either leave or think about option 2 above.
sources: worked with execs and boards of many early stage companies around these kinds of issues, as an outside attorney, general counsel and as a business exec.
also - all of the above applies to the CEO as well, so if you're not already talking to the non-founder board / investors, then I'd guess the CEO is (or should be).
even worse for spotify: Tim Cook said that Apple isn't particularly interested in on Apple Music turning a profit - when asked the question directly, he responded: "you're right, we're not in it for the money. I think it’s important for artists. If we’re going to continue to have a great creative community, [artists] have to be funded."[1]
I'd say his stated rationale for not caring about money (artists getting funded) is at best a low priority and at worst total fluff - they don't care because they make money on phones/hardware, and it also long-term allows them to price competitors (like spotify) out of the business (I don't think it's a coincidence that he gave this interview in the days before spotify's F-1 went public). to apple, streaming is an ongoing marketing campaign for their hardware and hey, if it breaks even great, but even at a loss they can make it up in hardware profits.
I would not be surprised if apple is planning to waiting to announce a significant price or other change to Apple Music right before spotify's first or second quarterly earnings report - not very nice, but it would be a pretty smart thing to do.
Native Americans used to live in North America, the colonists who became the United states nearly annihilated the native americans, and certainly annihilated their way of life.
