Peter Hagen

One of the best ways to build the confidence to get started and enter the exploratory process of finding a solution is to set as well-defined a search space as you can: outline the "hard edges". Setting this defined space gives you constraints to comfortably work within, almost like a cozy room with padded walls where we've got the freedom to... See more

Very little of the richness of a walk like this can be explicitly planned. You must give yourself up to the walk.

Instead of spending time planning and concocting roadmaps, replace that activity by talking to current or potential customers on how their lives can be improved, and letting that determine your next feature. Injecting the actual customer who uses the software into the development process is key to creating value. The more proxies you have between... See more

please take a moment to read Jeff Atwood's and Joel Spolsky's introductions of Stack Overflow.3 Did you notice what I did? Both describe Stack Overflow as the solution to a very specific problem: programming knowledge locked up in minds and forums whence it's difficult to retrieve. They also explain how they intend to solve the problem including... See more

Constraints limit where you can apply your attention. With limitless time, money, and resources, your attention bleeds off in all sorts of directions, following costly hallways where you find nothing interesting. Even more likely, a lack of limits paralyzes your decision making while you try to assess the 100 possible paths. You're better off... See more

I know the founders of an AI chip company that taped out and got working chips on their first go. They got their chip done, it’s pretty solid. Chip has great perf and is super power efficient, a solid delivery. I knew they'd nail it and they did.

The SW story is a train wreck, though. The problem basically was that they couldn’t hire any good SW... See more

Great user interview questions: 1. What are some alternatives to our product you've used or considered? 2. What's a problem that our product has helped you solve recently? -I have all these ideas to write but I want them in one place to draft this... See more

The engineers at Google were wonderful to work with up to 2010. It was like a switch flipped mid-2011 and they became actively hostile to any third party efforts to monitor what they were doing. To put it another way, this would like NBC trying to sue Nielsen from gathering ratings data. Absurd.