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Tobi Lütke: Anthropic's research on employment at Anthropic
Tobi called Anthropic's employment-at-Anthropic research piece an "interesting read." He then posted what he says is "the same viz but from inside Shopify's River," which puts Shopify's internal data next to Anthropic's chart. He gives no takeaway of his own. The comparison is the point: a founder checks a frontier lab's look at its own workforce against what his company shows.
Emmanuel Ameisen (Anthropic) on Lenny's Podcast: two books and a film
In the lightning round of Lenny's Podcast, Anthropic interpretability researcher Emmanuel Ameisen named the books he recommends most:
- A Brief History of Intelligence follows the history of brains through "five key moments" in evolution, each building new brain systems on top of the last. He calls it "super accessible," with no neuroscience background needed.
- Story of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang is "maybe my favorite sci-fi book of all time." These short stories are "the high art version of sci-fi": take "one weird idea" and imagine "what would the world look like if that happened." Host Lenny Rachitsky has described himself as an investor in startups . He said he thinks the book is on his own shelf and that he "also highly recommend[s]" it.
- Obsession was his favorite movie of the year. It's a horror film that "takes a lot of romcom tropes and... subverts them," which he says makes it feel "so fresh."
Patrick O'Shaughnessy: Colossus profile by Blake Harris
O'Shaughnessy called a profile coming soon from Colossus "an amazing profile about someone unwilling to compromise." The Colossus teaser credits Blake Harris as author and gives the release as "Tomorrow." Neither post names the subject in its text. O'Shaughnessy is linked to Colossus, so read this partly as promotion of his own outlet.
Shorter mentions
- Paul Graham quoted OpenCode's @thdxr and wrote, "This is how things will be for the foreseeable future." The quoted post says attackers had been hitting OpenCode's systems nonstop for 48 hours, and "we basically need agents going 24/7 because that's what they have."
- David Sacks quoted Andrew Curran's post on the same incident. It says frontier models OpenCode was using for defense began refusing to help, because analyzing the attacks triggered safety guardrails. Sacks's takeaway is that "the guardrails backfired." He calls for a decentralized approach: make powerful models available so defenders "can build and run their own cyber defenses."
- Tobi replied "Killed it" to a clip billed as "the best intro ever made by Apple," from Apple's October (Unleashed) event.
- Alexandr Wang quoted a post calling an FT article on him "really good." His only comment was that the piece "leaned a little too hard" into one angle, so this is a reaction, not an endorsement.
- Jason Lemkin promoted his own SaaStr takes on this week's 20VC, so this is self-promotion. His headline advice: if you're cut out of a round, "say it once, then drop it," because "pro rata was priced into your seed round."
Jason Lemkin shared a new YouTube video (link); the post’s accompanying clip says the answer was to keep Salesforce, consider HubSpot, Attio, or Affinity if starting from scratch, and avoid migrating. Its takeaway: winning customers may require convincing agents, not just people.
Elon Musk amplified Scott Presler’s post asking for votes for Ken Paxton; Musk wrote that control of the Senate would decide America’s future. Presler’s post said Texas in-person early voting began “tomorrow” and listed Monday, October 19.
Lenny, who identifies himself as an investor, also recommends Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life and Others; he says it is on his bookshelf. In the same exchange, Emanuel calls it his favorite sci-fi book and praises its short stories for exploring one unusual idea and imagining what the world would look like if it happened.
Patrick O’Shaughnessy praised an upcoming profile as “amazing,” describing it as about someone unwilling to compromise . The Colossus post credits Blake Harris as the author . Colossus post
Tobi endorsed the intro to Apple’s October “Unleashed” event, replying “Killed it” to @TechnovityTech’s post, titled “The best intro ever made by Apple” and identifying the video as the Apple October (Unleashed) Event.
Tobi called Anthropic’s research piece on employment at Anthropic an “interesting read” and shared what he described as the same visualization from inside Shopify’s River.
Jason Lemkin recommends a free guide to AI Sales Agents, linking to saastr.ai/ai-agents-playbook; he gives no reason beyond identifying its subject.