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At Airtable, we struggled with the high hurdle rate for the product: unlike SaaS products like Zoom, Dropbox, or Slack, Airtable’s product is incredibly complex. That Airtable has had such strong bottom-up adoption for such a horizontal, versatile product is astonishing. A key challenge for Airtable and its counterparts will be how to communicate t... See more

My concern is not an explicit critique of what Li Jin would describe as the need for a creator’s middle class. Although I do believe that some of my beliefs would make for an interesting conversation clash with her. Instead, it is circling what happens when we make monetization an expansive possibility within the platforms we interact in.

When Steve Jobs set goals, he kept them shockingly simple and didn't include any metrics or benchmarks. Are specific, measurable goals a waste of time?

For example, Zynga grew up on Facebook’s growth. Or rather, drove Facebook’s growth. At one point, over half of the United States was playing Zynga games. For a while, Zynga’s incentives were aligned with Facebook: Farmville, a Zynga game, became a viral hit. So much so that people would convince their friends to get a Facebook account just to play... See more

When it comes to class size, the tradeoff is "signal" vs "utility". Signal itself has utility, but there are diminishing returns to it. You want to increase utility as much as possible without sacrificing signal. In other words, admit enough people to provide the value, but not enough to kill the signal.

“The six principles of groundedness are as follows: (1) Accept where you are to get you where you want to go. (2) Be present so you can own your attention and energy. (3) Be patient and you’ll get there faster. (4) Embrace vulnerability to develop genuine strength and confidence. (5) Build deep community. (6) Move your body to ground your mind.”

The High-Level This Week: There are 4,000 universities in the United States that generate over $650 billion in revenue and educated 20 million people annually. A perfect storm involving declining revenues and state funding are putting many of these universities at risk of bankruptcy. Many will not survive. Is this the end of University Inc in the U... See more