Notes on scale + quality

Scale is not the goal. Scale is a tool to make the concepts better and more powerful.”

One way to rationalize this is that after being in the driver’s seat of such a large-scale, fast-paced effort, it’s hard for people to do nothing at all or go back to working for someone else. So pursuing something that can’t scale is a happy medium — maintaining full autonomy and control without the stress of chasing scale (and all that comes with... See more

“I have a theory that chasing things that scale makes you need therapy, and the therapy is pursuing things that can’t scale. I once wrote that every entrepreneur’s dream is to succeed at building an impossibly hard business and then finally open a local coffee shop to be happy.”

Scale is quite valuable, but the costs are usually hidden. Consolidation leads to monoculture, it reduces the stock of unique ferments. Culture, taste, and invention are often bottom-up phenomena. They require the opposite of scale. They require distance, and working alone.