Joey DeBruin

A capital allocator would need to have two things happening simultaneously.

1. Limited fund size: The fund would need to be $150M or less, or otherwise, you’ll be back to being wholly subject to the power law.


2. Equity optionality: Investors in a startup utilizing this product need to be able to get returns even if the outcome is smaller. That would

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Great ideas tend to come from a single mind and leadership is a requirement for effective human collaboration. Hierarchies are well-optimised to enable strong leaders to achieve strong outcomes. DAOs do not get around this fact. Hierarchies work because they enable leaders to synthesise the contributions of a group.

There are oddly few modern examples of individuals funding individuals, despite it being a far more decentralised and human-scale version of patronage that's easily achievable by large groups of people.

This realization made several things click:

1. All program managers are program leaders but not all program leaders are managers. Licklider and many other PMs did not manage but they did lead (even if the ideas were not their own). (As such, I think the term “program leader” is much more accurate and I’ve started using it to describe the position

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I don’t think ‘public utility’ is the most useful metaphor to understand what Twitter and its peers actually are.Public utilities make sense when the product is a simple commodity, essential for everyday life, and delivered through a set of pipes that are incredibly expensive to install and maintain.

Today, producers can launch products more easily. But so can their competitors. And ultimate success depends on the behavior of large groups of people. These people cannot be coaxed or threatened. But they can be bribed.