Johanna

A startup that prematurely targets a growth goal often ends up making a nebulous product that some users sort of like and papering over this with ‘growth hacking’. That sort of works—at least, it will fool investors for awhile until they start digging into retention numbers—but eventually the music stops.

In the pandemic, we (at first) didn’t have enough masks or tests, then we didn’t have enough vaccines or pills. We don’t have enough homes, immigrants, doctors, or microchips. We’re not lacking in scientific breakthroughs. The U.S. is languishing because many of our policies are designed for scarcity. What we need is the opposite: an abundance... See more

The optimal time to make a decision about the candidate is about three minutes after the end of the interview. (...) I ask interviewers to write immediate feedback after the interview, either a “hire” or “no hire”, followed by a one or two paragraph justification. It’s due 15 minutes after the interview ends.

But replacing a job shouldn’t be the goal for unconditional cash benefits. Instead, the purpose of unconditional cash is to grease the wheels of capitalist life — to give people that extra boost they need to pay their parking tickets, or deal with a health emergency, or buy a little more nutritious food for their kids, or just make it to the end of... See more

The best ideas are fragile; most people don’t even start talking about them at all because they sound silly. Perhaps most of all, you want to be around people who don’t make you feel stupid for mentioning a bad idea, and who certainly never feel stupid for doing so themselves.