When you try to make something that solves everything, you obsess over questions of power: how to make something that is omnipotent and everlasting. But when you make something that does one thing well, the questions are much more personal: does it solve my problem? and for how long? and who for? and where will it push the space around it? I want... See more

Consider the cascade of specialized productivity apps (not suites) over the years, like Evernote, Wunderlist, Any.do, Todoist, Trello, Clubhouse, Basecamp, and the list goes on. Many of these are stable businesses, but they all claim a small piece of a large pie (and one could argue, were not great VC investments from a multiples perspective). The... See more

OpenAI, Twitter, Shopify: you depend on a much bigger business to run your own, and they don’t care much about you. They’ll allow you to work with them, but they’re not going out of their way to promote your things. You need your own distribution to be successful. This reminds me of Rob Walling’s stair-stepping approach: he suggests starting small... See more