Be specific

Many concepts that sound good on paper are infeasible to implement, or simply don’t produce the expected results. It’s frustrating when that happens, of course, but the pace of experimentation and learning at a startup is unparalleled. I think this is an especially important form of rigor for theorycels like me. Building product forces a different ... See more

We often think making things for the web is a process of simplifying—the hub, the dashboard, the control panel are all dreams of technology that coalesces, but things have a tendency to diverge into a multiplicity of options. We pile on more tools and technology, each one increasingly nuanced and minor in its critical differences. Clearly, converge... See more

Principles for growable tools

There are three critical pieces to building a tool that can grow around its users over time.

1. Design around play . Sometimes I call this design around experimentation . Using the tool for day-to-day work should involve playing and experimenting with what’s possible with the tool. Whether that’s writing small programs to

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