Build Something Beautiful
The craft of building great things
Yoshio Goto and
Build Something Beautiful
“You feel differently towards the world when you make things.”
– Milton Glaser
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
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
Bree Groff • The E Corp
in order to will any meaningful new project into existence, I actually must be untethered from reality. I need to view the world as bendable and controllable, not as this unchangeable force for me to analyze and carefully dodge around. So for me, “becoming more agentic” has really been a project in carefully maintaining a state of delusion.
Kurt, Dave and Chris:... See more
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
Shaun Usher • I would like to be paid like a plumber
a great f*cking letter from Steve Albini to Nirvana.
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
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
Do: make creative decisions that don’t (or do) scale + makes the heart sail.
Don’t: make creative decisions based on PnLs, on balance sheets, on gimmicky trends that appeal to a short-term audience.
Double diamond model: The creative process
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
Reconsider
Our choice of the particular work we do depends on the whole context of our life and society and current needs, of course; but there is also just a general orientation that emerges out of almost any set of accumulated experiences of doing something useful, particularly as part of a coordinated exchange with others. And there is profound, life-giving value in even the seemingly mundane ways we apply our minds and direct our focused efforts toward purposeful ends that matter to us. This could be as complex as building an entire company, or it could be as simple as flipping burgers at a restaurant. It could also be volunteering at a shelter, if we make a serious and sustained project of it.