manifesto craft

The startup is a song, not a fixed story. New movements arise, old ones fade, new harmonies join. A manifesto is great way to coalesce the current movement but it must be a living document.

A startup is a story The story is useful because it brings people to work towards something together The story is limiting because employees let it dictate what they can and cannot do The story isn't real - a startup is just people and what they choose to do every morning

Caught in a contradiction, playing both despot and revolutionary, artist and critic, “straight man” and clown, the manifesto writer must persevere. The secret to this perseverance is drama. The theater of the absurd. You build a little self-contained world and invite the audience in. Describe this world in detail. Don’t be afraid to make it enterta

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Demons must be named to be defeated, just as our deepest and most vile urges or emotions must be acknowledged to be integrated

I couldn’t quit smoking until I convinced myself that smoking was for losers.

Wasn’t enough to “want” to quit. I had to actively disdain it in an over the top way.

After the identity-belief changed, the rest was (relatively) easy.

Aaron Francis

When you make something for someone else, you get glimpses. When you make something for you, you get goosebumps.

Changing the interpretation of the past is critical to controlling the future.

“If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing” - Ben Franklin