26 entries for March 2021

“Free Software”: An idea whose time has passed

[The GPL only fails bad actors if hobbyists are responsible for regulating cyberspace and preventing cybercrime.]

Jeff Morris Jr on Investing In Product Companies

[A lot of people use Tinder just to see who likes them back because it's like a game.]

[If you buy Tinder boost it shouldn't feel like Google Adwords, so we created superpower-like animations to make it feel like a special moment in art or NBA Allstars.]

[Most people would say that they let me invest because they wanted me to help with product, so I decided to re-brand the fund as product-focused and I would be the product person on yor cap sheet.]

[We chose TikTok influencers over Silicon Valley investors because we knew our product worked and needed an audience, distribution.]

[Why shit on the city where you grew up and received many opportunities?]

Phil Libin: Find a new way to ski

[You know everything's going right when it had nothing to do with you.]

Let's talk about Duckworth, Walsh, and systemic issues....

[If you're complaining about diversity quotas, you are the reason they exist.]

Your First 60 Days

[Talk to people. It's never a bad time to talk to customers or prospects if you're having high-bandwidth conversations with them about their problems, desires, or what they need.]

[Knowing how to cook is a friend catcher.]

[Problem-solving is a friendcatcher. When you solve people's problems, they come to you with their problems.]

[A friendcatcher is resonant, tractable, and underserved.]

[The email subject is the promise: overdeliver in the body.]

[When someone first pays, they probably are more motivated than normal, the iron is hot so take advantage, you can reach out more then and then cool off later.]

[Don't start the work of a SAAS company until you've had 10-25 conversations.]

[Have 10 commits to buy before launch.]

[There will probably be 1 primary thing and 2 secondary objectives during any week. One of those should be 'talking to people' and another should be 'less interesting but necessary'.]

[Being able to credibly say 'this is what I do' builds trust.]

[You can be unreasonably good at what you do, irrationally responsive to customers.]

[Move fast and make things.]

[Price tiers are a way for customers to acknowledge they are getting outstanding value, you can ask them why, this can tell you what to build next.]

Makes A Scene

[Trolling is posting where the reaction is the content.]

[The real hallmark of abundance is variety not quantity.]

[Facebook's real product is the ability to find lookalike customers: turn this audience of 10 into 1000 that are similar.]

[Kids understand systems well because because they don't think in terms of cause and effect: they look around and make things.]

[Silicon Valley wins because it is a culture that values building over solving problems.]

[The purpose determines the course. If we are clear about 'why', then the how is more evident and we can define success.]

Indian music, sangeet, was originally conceived as an offering. Tagore said that creativity comes from a recognition of the excess that life has given to us: we offer what is bit ours.

Friendcatchers

[Learn to cook so that you will have an excuse to invite friends over for he rest of your life.]

[Spreadsheets integrate text and graphics by organizing textual programs or formulas into the tabular grid of visual cells.]

[Spreadsheets pre-name variables according to their position on the grid.]

Let's talk about Biden's mental state....

[In the face of a wild accusation that's false, try leaning into it: isn't it great that a team of experts rather than a politician is making decision? If the vice president has the final call, it must be terrible for Trump. Can you imagine how bad it must have been that we elected a guy with dementia?]

More than people knowing who you are, give them chances to see you in action.

Trapped Priors As A Basic Problem Of Rationality

[Van de Bergh et al suggest that the brain reduces bandwidth in 'raw experience' when it is intolerable, which is why trauma victims describe their traumas as short, undetailed, and to-the-point.]

Whenever the party you don't like says something seemingly reasonable, you can interpret in context as them wanting something horrible. Whenever they want a seemingly desirable thing, you secretly know it means they want a horrible moral atrocity. If a Republican talks about "law and order", it doesn't mean they're concerned about the victims of violent crime, it means they want to lock up as many black people as possible to strike a blow for white supremacy. When a Democrat talks about "gay rights", it doesn't mean letting people marry the people they love, it means destroying the family so they can replace it with state control over your children.

If it's essentially harmful can it be justified as 'temporary'?

[Contemporary utopia is resistance against entities claiming that history is over, that we should accept things as we are, that there are no alternatives.]

Nature is prolific.

Baremetrics Founder Josh Pigford on Side Projects and Growing a $1 Million SaaS Startup

[If they're not paying, their feedback will likely be that of someone trying to get something for nothing as opposed to those who value the offering.]

Not all bricks are nourishing. Be aware of what is being practiced.