If your role is focused on creating user and customer value, but management and leadership are incentivized to goose shareholder value, you are subject to that structural relationship and often have very little power to change it.

We earn trust by stating our business model upfront – instead of ads, we monetize by charging directly. Directly charging creates high expectations from our members, and in aspiring to meet those expectations, we are held accountable to creating something you love and use.

But, then, ultimately, we get to this somewhat stark moment of conviction – a decision without certainty but with some level of instinct and belief. The work you’ve done is a big input, but then, I find there’s something else, too. It’s some combination of understanding, excitement, experience, gut, and fear. And this process repeats throughout our... See more

BTW, OpenAI is raising funds at a $90 billion valuation — a threefold increase from earlier this year. It has real revenue and explosive growth. When will it go public? A: When existing shareholders believe there is no additional upside.

Your job, really, is to find people who love you for reasons you hardly understand, and to love them back, and to try as hard as you can to make it all easier for each other."

I don’t want to know about the roadmap, I want to know how we got there. How are we segmenting the market? Where do we play? Where do we want to play? Who do we beat and why? Who do we lose to and why? What is our plan for relevant differentiation, for creating a moat, for sustainable competitive advantage? How are we optimizing each piece of the s... See more

Speed and efficiency are the promise of modernity. But speed and efficiency are all destination and no journey. And it is journey that gives life meaning.

Intrinsic and extrinsic motivators both exist and need to be carefully balanced. There is a long tradition of open-source development, and adding financial rewards can derail a project. (See: there is yet to be a successful "token-powered Wikipedia")

Tokens aren't a silver bullet that make a product or business viable. In fact, tokenization creates its own set of challenges. For example, if you want stable recurring revenue, you can't rely on a tokenized membership model – this would require consistent sales of a token rather that consistent member dues.