alt orgs

How could an American getting paid six figures in Mountain View understand how to identify problems and design solutions for a homemaker in Tokyo, a street seller in Turkey, or a doctor in Tunisia?

For the most part, they don’t. Or if they try, they do it badly.

I’ve always believed the best early-stage founders are artists – they're obsessive about new and unusual things, they feel compelled to bring creation into the world, and they are often misunderstood for long periods of time–even lifetimes. Building businesses is their art.

know a guy in France that will take 2 months off and delete his whole inbox when he gets back

"if it's urgent, someone's already handled it

if it's important, they'll just send it again

if it's neither, then I don't care"

The dream was that communities would get very form-fit tools for their particular needs, rather than trying to adapt generic software to solve them.

And the way we fund this is primarily through US-based venture capital funding, which demands hockey stick growth in return.

All the focus goes into making hundreds of millions or ideally billions of dollars in profit to pay back their investors.

As a member of a team that's in the middle of doing this, I can say it affects every single decision... See more

We discussed that what we deem as our “legacy” can, in fact, be hyper-local and intimate. Maybe no one will ever know the details of what you’ve said and done to others, but its subtle or not so subtle effects on another person’s life is rewarding in itself. I sometimes feel that way about writing: it’s less of a mirror or loudspeaker, and more so... See more

if you create titles, people start coveting them, and this ends up creating competitive politics inside the company that undermines internal unity. Better to just give everyone the same title and make them go focus on the goal instead.