Jimmy Cerone

“Sometimes,” Dalinar said, “the prize is not worth the costs. The means by which we achieve victory are as important as the victory itself.”

There is research showing that when we introduce what are known as “emergency reserves,” basically “get out of jail free” cards, into the process of goal setting, we’re much more likely to stay the course and to reach those goals.

The web hasn’t had its artisanal moment. Right now, giant, ad-based networks created by six men that everyone begrudgingly uses with diminishing emotional returns, control the vast majority of the web.

Another model is embedding the check cashing into a larger suite of services. Cash App is a notable standout here (and, IMHO, probably the most interesting financial product the tech industry has created for the un-/underbanked.) On the backend, Cash App has simply convinced a bank to have a wider risk envelope as part of the price for working with

Only if they trust you to loop them in will they feel free to go heads down and focus.

Two challenges: first, yes, this does make life harder for Slack etc, but, if we took this logic at face value then your word processor would not be allowed to include a spell checker and your spreadsheet could not do charts (in the 1980s both of these were separate purchases). What’s the coherent theory for how we choose the trade-off between

If you aren’t sure what to do, make the choice that preserves or expands future optionality . Remember: Most startups fail. Will you be okay with your choices if (& when) this one does too?

“A prototype is worth a thousand meetings” (building a simple way to ‘taste test’ is often faster AND better than trying to figure things out in our heads)