Building

Brooklyn-based art collective MSCHF describes this phenomenon:

"No one talks about the future anymore. Instead, everything accelerates the present to a fever pitch, intensifying and weirding the dysfunctions of the current moment. There’s a hole where the future used to be, and all that remains is the increasingly spicy present."

This presents both a... See more

It's the artisan’s question. It's the monk's question. It’s also the user’s question. Because what users often want is not maximum features or optimal price. They want something that works and keeps working, something they can live inside. That’s what makes recurrence a test of sufficiency, not a punishment. A test, of whether your business is shap... See more

The internet has created new forms of leverage analogous to the printing press, democratizing access to information and tools for creation. Digital platforms enable network effects that would have been impossible in earlier eras. Computational power (AI, etc) allows us to solve problems systematically in ways that would have seemed divine.

But the ... See more

“In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”

Charlie Munger once said the test of a good business is whether a truly stupid person could run it, because someday a truly stupid person will. Nietzsche's version is more perverse: could you run it, over and over, with no prospect of relief?

You might be a genius.

Can your genius tolerate stasis?

So instead of looking sideways at what others are building — or upward toward the mythical “next level” — we focus ahead on what we're good at. We like to make useful, straightforward things we need. Specific tools and familiar ingredients combined in different ratios, different molds, for different purposes. Like a baker working from the same tigh... See more

So here’s the formula, if you can call it that:

1. Find a real problem (not a hypothetical one)


2. Make the solution emotionally resonant (not just functional)


3. Time it right (not too early, not too late)


4. Communicate the why (not just the what)


5. Focus on existing needs (not invented ones)


6. Win decisively on what matters most (not marginally on everything)


7. Remove o

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Because it said what people wanted to believe: that clarity of ambition would bring control, that intention would yield destiny.

The cult of goal-setting thrives in this illusion. It converts uncertainty into an illusion of progress. It demands specificity in exchange for comfort. And it replaces self-trust with the performance of future-planning. ... See more