“The bar for freemium models at the time was Skype, which converted about 7% of their users to pay at least something—maybe a dollar. We hit that in a few months, but it just continued from there. Past 10%, 15%, 20%—and we realized that we had stumbled on what might just be the most effective freemium model the world had ever seen.”—Gustav... See more
there are three important reasons why NFTs offer fundamentally better economics for creators. The first, already alluded to above, is by removing rent-seeking intermediaries. The logic of blockchains is once you purchase an NFT it is yours to fully control, just like when you buy books or sneakers in the real world. There are and will continue to... See more
It’s brutally hard to tell people when they are screwing up. You don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings; that’s because you’re not a sadist. You don’t want that person or the rest of the team to think you’re a jerk. Plus, you’ve been told since you learned to talk, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” Now all of a... See more
Satoshi made Bitcoin decentralized to solve a specific problem: that previous forms of Internet money kept getting shut down. A decentralized form of money is resilient to insolvency, attack, or censorship. But decentralization wasn’t itself the point. It was just a means to an end. The point was to make a form of Internet money that worked!
I certainly agree that working on the right thing is important, but increasing velocity doesn't stop you from working on the right thing. If anything, each of these is a force multiplier for the other. Having strong execution skills becomes more impactful if you're good at picking the right problem and vice versa.