Aside from the doomers who believe that AI will kill us all and the techno-utopians who believe it will solve all of our problems, there are three main ways that people seem to be thinking about AI. 

At one extreme, you might fear that AI will take your job. Certainly, you’ve read as much in the press, and it does seem to be getting better and bette... See more

If alpha is the ability to earn return without taking fully commensurate risk, investors possessing it can do so by either reducing risk while giving up less return or by increasing potential return with a less-than-commensurate increase in risk. In other words, skill can enable some investors to outperform by emphasizing aggressiveness and some by... See more

Shoshin refers to a state of mind in which we approach every task and situation with the curiosity, openness and humility of a beginner.

BUT WE DON’T WANT TO GO VIRAL WE JUST WANT THE BASICS: TO MAKE WORK WE’RE PROUD OF WITH PEOPLE WE RESPECT AND WHO RESPECT US THAT’S TRUE TO OUR INTENTIONS AND WHO WE ARE AND ARE NOT

Expectations are one of the greatest things you can give kids because it’s a way of saying, “I have faith in you. You can do great things.

There is an Overton window of weirdness, which I will define here as the range of things on which it is acceptable to spend one’s time, and when it is narrow we are optimisers, and when it is wide there is a societal random walk and discoveries are made, which might be mundane or might be profound, robot shoes and aliens, and whether you’re working... See more

“You pile up associations the way you pile up bricks. Memory itself is a form of architecture.”

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the companies that have a reputation for building the best products of this generation—Slack, Figma, Superhuman, Notion, and Linear—are basically new versions of successful predecessors. These companies didn’t distract themselves with four-step strategic maneuvers or clever wedges into a new category that they ... See more

Shitty retention is ubiquitous

First, perhaps obvious, but no wonder retention in mobile products is terrible. I’ve often written about these benchmarks for retention:

• daily retention of consumer apps: D1/D7/D28 of 60/30/15


• the % of active users — that is, DAU/registered — should be 25%


• or, for consumer/SMB subscription: M12 of >30%

When you ref