Joey DeBruin
@joeydebruin
Helping communities build public knowledge online. Founder @withBackdrop. Past/current product/advisory roles @Benchling @ResearchGate @Forefront__ @SeedClub
Joey DeBruin
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.
every.to • Twitter as a City-State
Software is expensive to create. You have to pay people to create it, maintain it, and distribute it. Because software is expensive to create, it has to make money. And we pay for it–software licenses, SaaS, per seat pricing, etc. Software margins have historically been an architectural envy–90+% margins and zero marginal cost of distribution.
Software is expensive because developers are expensive. They are skilled translators–they translate human language into computer language and vice-versa. LLMs have proven themselves to be remarkably efficient at this and will drive the cost of creating software to zero. What happens when software no longer has to make money? We will experience a Cambrian explosion of software, the same way we did with content.
When I was younger, I was never this lucky. It is partly because I was less skilled. But it is also partly because I would interrupt the nonconscious processing back then. Unintentionally, I would tell my brain to focus on something else—a conflict in a TV series I was watching, for instance. I would watch an episode before bed, and the cliffhanger... See more
Henrik Karlsson • Almost Everyone I’ve Met Would Be Well-Served Thinking More About What to Focus On
Samo's Law of Funding:
The more money an organization is supposed to give out, the less likely it is to fund unusual people.
Samo Burjatwitter.comThat right there is the recipe for genuine innovation:
- Embrace uncertainty and the fact one doesn’t know the future.
- Understand that people are inventing things — and not just technologies, but also use cases — constantly.
- Remember that the art comes in editing after the invention, not before.
Stratechery by Ben Thompson • Stratechery by Ben Thompson
Because foundations can exist into perpetuity [4], they can even be usurped and weaponized towards other goals.
Nadia Asparouhova • Idea Machines
