🔧 how to build a brand

A web of gambles

As long time readers know, I like to think of companies as a bundle of related bets. Sublime is betting its existence on three things:

1. Communal knowledge management: A multiplayer knowledge graph beats private note silos on discovery, and returns more ideas per note.


2. Taste unlock: Users will pay for software that injects their own

... See more

We think of it as three pillars: AI, human, and brand. AI brings power and speed, the human brings taste, intuition, and problem-solving, and the brand provides the framework that keeps everything on-point and relevant. Without that balance, you either get work that’s technically impressive but soulless, or work that’s imaginative but not aligned... See more

Abstraction should become core to the way we speak biology, in particular outside of the confines of academia. How can you wonder at the marvel of biology if all you hear is “envelope capsid design”? We need to carefully survey how we present our ideas to the public, such that they can marvel and wonder at the beauty of what we have built.

Throughout history, we have often been explorers in biology, rather than inventors. Now, we are at the cusp of biological innovation where we are starting to build with biology rather than just exploring the maps that exist.

If this is truly the dawn of a biological revolution, then we should strive to romanticize biology in every way possible and bring the next generation of builders into the field. This will be no small feat. Biology is complex and difficult to observe. But it doesn’t need to be. We need to make biology education accessible and engaging, while... See more

When Patagonia launched its sustainability campaign, it wasn't the design that won the world over. It was the simple sentence: "The Earth is Our Only Shareholder." It worked because it was smart. It landed because it was human. That small selection of words tells an entire story, not just about a company and its values, but about our world and its... See more