Britt Gage

They looked for first principles thinkers, so not necessarily your experience, but how do you approach problems, how do you know the right questions to ask? And then create your own framework around that.

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Dropbox also hired for people that were just really humble, collaborative and team oriented. And the combination of those two things,... See more

When talking to people, look for two things: pain and pull . Pain tells you there’s an opportunity to solve a problem. Pull tells you that you’re actually solving the problem.

Here’s what pain and pull look like in practice:

1. People pay you money: Several people start to (or offer to) pay for your early product, ideally people you don’t have a direct

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These experiences reminded me of a framework developed by Noel Burch (but often attributed to Abraham Maslow). This simple four-step model holds the key to acquiring proficiency at a skill, including how to approach mastery as a speaker.

If you shortcut to the destination you won’t undergo real transformation. Imagine you won the lottery tomorrow: you’d achieve your financial goals, but without the life experience to cope with your change in circumstances.

That’s why you see so many musicians and actors struggle after hitting instant fame at a young age. They have all the success,... See more

In my experience, the most useful approaches to AI are:

1. Ask clearly bounded questions, where you can easily inspect the results.


2. Don’t let AI make decisions for you. Instead, challenge it to broaden your options.


3. Take advantage of the fact that it doesn’t have feelings, and use its honesty to get useful feedback.

Rather than wait passively, "wait for it" requires that you do three things while you wait:

1. Think about what you're waiting for.

2. Visualize what it will look like.

3. Talk to others about it and seek advice.

A difference in emphasis: raising the floor versus raising the ceiling

Matt Clifford has written about how building a world-changing technology company has never been easier than it is today. But for all of the technical, commercial, and industry-specific knowledge that founders can readily access, psychological knowledge still lags behind. (In... See more

While talking to a friend earlier this week, I realized that many of my best projects started out as what seemed like a distraction from more pressing work – ignoring my email inbox to read an interesting thread on Twitter or abandonning a work presentation for an hour to grab a coffee with a colleague.

These so-called distractions would plant the... See more