Kevin Urie @KevinUrie

I’m a Growth Technologist who blends marketing, product, and the latest technology to help brands and people grow. alwaysdistracted.net Seattle, WA Joined May 2007

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Swann Marcus @SwannMarcus89

4 days ago

People seem to be misinterpreting why Seattle is fucked. Seattle is not fucked because they over-regulate big business or because of the “millionaire’s tax.” They’re fucked because they overregulate small and mid-sized businesses which caused a massive localized inflationary spiral that is forcing out big businesses because labor costs are too high Seattle massively over regulated the service sector by imposing gargantuan minimum wages on restaurants and delivery apps + implementing a zillion other regulations that caused service sector costs to soar. Seattle’s housing prices are actually *declining* but their inflation rate has been 1-1.5 points higher than the national average despite reduced housing costs. This is caused mainly by food service prices rising at 7% a year due to Seattle’s minimum wage policies and excessive service sector regulations. Inflation in Seattle is now 5% and nominal wage growth is 3%, meaning real wages fell 2% in the last twelve months High local inflation forced big companies to pay artificially high wages because highly paid corporate workers expect wages to keep up with living costs. On top of that, Seattle has a payroll tax that almost exclusively applies to huge companies. Those big companies are therefore paying insane wages to do business in Seattle, whereas if they relocated, they could pay people the same real wages relative to local cost of living and save tens of millions a year in corporate labor costs alone But here’s the thing: Because Seattle overregulated their small and midsize businesses, those businesses are now operating on razor thin margins and are reliant on highly paid corporate workers who can pay exorbitant prices in order to stay in business. So when a corporate office relocates out of Seattle, all of the local restaurants collapse because they no longer have a customer base who can afford the prices they have to charge due to Seattle’s regulatory environment What this means is that as corporations cut payroll in Seattle the entire city’s service sector is imploding, which has resulted in localized stagflation. Their whole labor market is quickly evaporating and now they have 5.5% unemployment, 5% inflation, and -2% real wage growth. None of this has anything to do with the “millionaire’s tax” because the companies are leaving before the people do. Why would companies care about a tax on ultra high incomes that doesn’t impact their cost of doing business?

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Kevin Urie @KevinUrie

a week ago

This is completely plausible and interesting to think about

Chamath Palihapitiya @chamath

3 months ago

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Brian Hall @IsForAt

a week ago

This is Brad Smith-ese for "WTF WA you are killing the golden goose and looking like wackos while you do it". you are welcome for the translation.

KOMO News @komonews

a week ago

Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith said Washington should recognize it is now operating as a high-tax state and consider how that affects economic competitiveness. Speaking at Thursday’s Puget Sound Regional Council General Assembly meeting, Smith compared

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Kevin Urie @KevinUrie

a week ago

@samlambert He only designed the interior and that is nice. Another company did the exterior

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nascum_ @nascum_

2 weeks ago

Please have a laugh at this to take your minds off of the somber NASCAR weekend.

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Kevin Urie @KevinUrie

2 weeks ago

@wbuxtonofficial have you ever worked so hard on prep as you did for the Wienie 500? Unbelievable work. I have no idea how you guys held it together.

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Leigh Diffey @leighdiffey

a month ago

Tell you what ace … forget about NASCAR for a moment … the slowest in a Mazda MX5 last year in Quali at Road Atlanta was a 1min40 sec lap time. You do 10 consecutive laps under 2mins30secs yourself and we’ll see what your stance about drivers and athleticism is then.

Awful Announcing @awfulannouncing

a month ago

Stephen A. Smith randomly called out golfers and NASCAR drivers for not being athletes. awfulannouncing.com/racing/stephen…

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Kevin Urie @KevinUrie

2 months ago

This is key when creating things with AI. Just because you dreamed up the idea is one thing. But what is more important is that when AI is done helping you make it, that the magical experience is still there

Startup Archive @StartupArchive_

2 months ago

Steve Jobs on what John Sculley didn’t understand about building great products “One of the things that really hurt Apple was, after I left, John Sculley got a very serious disease. And that disease—I’ve seen other people get it too—is the disease of thinking that a really great

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Mo @atmoio

3 months ago

AI is making CEOs delusional

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Kevin Urie @KevinUrie

3 months ago

@WesleyLHuff Great work. Not done yet but I feel like the host thinks only the women saw the resurrected Jesus.

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Wes Huff @WesleyLHuff

3 months ago

Make sure to check out to today’s DOAC: The truth about Christianity: the case for Jesus. youtu.be/nrwNSSyKuD4?si…

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Kevin Urie @KevinUrie

3 months ago

@GridRival why are standings not showing for F1 yet?

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aviel @aviel

3 months ago

As expected, @mattmcilwain nails it with geekwire.com/2026/opinion-t… We are in a battle between narratives and reality. Unfortunately, while narratives can make you feel good in the near term, reality is what gets you in the medium and long term.

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jordy @jordymaui

3 months ago

the stages of using OpenClaw: 1. install it confidently 2. gateway won't start 3. use claude, chatgpt and call your tech friend for help 4. it works 5. feel like a genius 6. it breaks 7. repeat 2-6 8. a magical kingdom of unlimited potential so early.

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Kevin Urie @KevinUrie

3 months ago

@trouble_man90 He is not a small guy. Someone his size should be able to put up that amount. He is probably on T as well.

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aviel @aviel

4 months ago

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Kevin Urie @KevinUrie

4 months ago

@JacksonW29657 @mdancho84 Not in skills. Maybe agent, memory, identity or even would be better in soul

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Kevin Urie @KevinUrie

4 months ago

@morganlinton Isn't this an agents file not a skills file if you follow standard setup structure?

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malinvestment.jpeg @malinvested

4 months ago

Of course that's your contention. You're a first-time SaaS bear. You just got finished listening to some podcast, Dario on Dwarkesh, probably. Now you think it’s the end of white collar work and seat-based pricing is screwed. You're gonna be convinced of that til tomorrow when you get to “Something Big is Happening”. Then you’ll install ClawdBot on a Mac Mini, vibe code a dashboard on top of a postgres database and say we’re all just a couple ralph loops away from building a Salesforce competitor. That’s gonna last until next week when you discover context graphs, and then you're gonna be talking about how the systems of record will be disintermediated by an agentic layer and reposting OAI marketing graphics. “Well, as a matter of fact, I won't, because ultimately the application layer is just ….” The application layer is just business logic on top a CRUD database. You got that from Satya’s appearance on the BG2 pod, December 2024, right? Yeah, I saw that too. Were you gonna plagiarize the whole thing for us? Do you have any thoughts of your own on this matter? Or...is that your thing? You get into the replies of anyone posting a SaaS ticker. You watch some podcast and then pawn it off as your own idea just to impress some VCs and embarrass some anon who’s long SaaS? See the sad thing about a guy like you is in a couple years you're gonna start doing some thinking on your own and you're gonna come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life. One: don't do that. And two: you dropped thirty grand on Mac Minis and LLM API calls to come to the same conclusion you could’ve got for free by following a handful of VC accounts.