Britt Gage

Stack rank all the candidates for a highly competitive school or job. Typically, offers would be made to the top-k candidates. Instead, make offers probabilistically, with probability proportional to

[approx # top tier candidates]

[candidate's stack rank]

. Benefits include: greater diversity of accepted candidates; less ridiculous resources spent

... See more

There should be Retroactive Public Goods Funding for those founders crazy enough to try something truly new that failed as a business but succeeded in creating useful mutations, maybe even ticker tape parades, and certainly not derision.

“If done well, from a perspective of making everyone feel safe to share, to give themselves permission to fail or to not be perfect, virtual can potentially even nudge out face-to-face

When you assign something or someone a negative label, your ego prevents you from seeing the truth. If company culture isn’t taking the form you expected, it’s important to take a step back and get curious about what's going on instead of immediately trying to change things. That might mean evaluating whether or not you hired people who are a good

... See more

First-principles thinking, or thinking from first principles, sounds a lot more complicated than it is. It’s simply a technique for approaching problems with a beginner’s mind. Instead of working within assumptions and what people around you “know” to be true, you do the hard work of figuring out what’s actually true and, thus, what’s truly... See more

When I’m clearing my inbox, responding to comments in a doc, cooking lunch–these are chores.

Chores are the backbone of industrial productivity. We can check them off, measure them and see them stacked up.

Most of the time, most of us do chores. Finding a way to do your chores more productively is quite leveraged, and you can put it to use right... See more

Marketing strategy: This is the work of positioning, story telling, status and affiliation. It’s understanding network effects, the user experience and the change we seek to make. Good marketing strategy overcomes just about everything else. Some of my books are about this.

Promotion : This is more tactical. It’s coupons and PR and perhaps... See more

Entrepreneur and investor Paul Graham on fooling yourself:

"If you're trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right."