Jonathan Quaade

Understand the specific moves a writer is making, in as much detail as possible. This involves a lot of close reading and reverse outlining. I’m essentially taking apart an essay and making extremely pedantic, precise observations: 12 paragraphs; first paragraph is 6 sentences long and opens with a quote, then context for the quote, then 2 short... See more

Peter enjoyed pointing out that while most things valuable are pretty hard to do, few truly difficult things are of much value at all (the many possible examples are obvious). Underwriting risk in millions of real-time financial transactions per day is a tricky, but very lucrative, business at scale -- PayPal is a valuable solution to real problems

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“People try to do all sorts of clever and difficult things to improve life instead of doing the simplest, easiest thing: refusing to participate in activities that make life bad.” ➪ Leo Tolstoy

As more and more identity formation happens online, it is inevitable that most of it happens in private spaces. As we spend more and more time living in these spaces, it’s inevitable that their intentional shaping should become more important to us. As more and more internet-first communities choose to build the means for themselves to live, it is

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Like the artist, the business professional or founder must develop the capacity to see what others have missed—to recognize patterns and possibilities invisible to those trapped in conventional thinking. While we praise businesses as competitive when they capture market share, we might better describe them as artful when they've mastered value

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