Build Something Beautiful

There are the two convictions: one that focuses on the numbers and one that feels.

Kurt, Dave and Chris:

First let me apologize for taking a couple of days to put this outline together. When I spoke to Kurt I was in the middle of making a Fugazi album1, but I thought I would have a day or so between records to sort everything out. My schedule changed unexpectedly, and this is the first moment I've had to go through it all. Apology

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There is a children’s TV show called Bluey 3, which follows a family of anthropomorphic dogs and their life in Australia. The lineup includes Bluey, a 6-year old Blue Heeler puppy, and her family: her dad Bandit, her mom Chilli, and her little sister Bingo.

Bluey is an Australian TV show that premiered in 2018 created by Joe Brumm who wanted to por... See more

We can't build a sustainable business by chasing every opportunity.

A sustainable business is strategically constrained. Its leaders know what the business is and, more importantly, what it's not.

In a world of fast content incentivized by advertising-based attention-hacking business models, being slow and considered is a superpower.

If you want to sell music, you must love those songs. If you want to succeed in journalism, you must love those newspapers. If you want to succeed in movies, you must love the cinema.

But this kind of love is rare nowadays. I often see record labels promote new artists for all sorts of gimmicky reasons—even labels I once trusted such as Deutsche Gr... See more

For a long time shareholder capitalism reigned alone: businesses exist to make money!

Then one day came the benefit corporation (B corp): businesses exist to make impact!

BUT WHAT IF... companies weren’t primarily vehicles to make money or vehicles for customers to receive value. WHAT IF... companies were vehicles for people to contribute vibrantly... See more

The antidote to burnout and the existential inquiry it brings seems to be doing things that don’t scale in pursuit of things that can’t scale. It becomes exciting not to see what you can do without limits, but to see what you can do with them.

I wanted to make a product and sell it directly to people who’d care about its quality. There’s an incredible connection possible when you align your financial motivations with the service of your users. It’s an entirely different category of work than if you’re simply trying to capture eyeballs and sell their attention, privacy, and dignity in bul... See more