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And all this happened with surprisingly little at stake: in the case of open source the main incentive is just individual software engineers gaining prestige and high-paying jobs. Nadia Eghbal has written extensively about the incentive problems in the open source community holding back progress.

Do an unsentimental evaluation of what resources and staff you have versus how much you really need. There is usually more performance and efficiency to be gained from your existing staff, before you take the path of least resistance—unplanned, incremental growth, leading to mediocrity and waste. One of your biggest responsibilities is to stop that... See more

Losers innovated internally. Winners innovated with their users. Losers jealously guarded their data and software interfaces. Winners shared them with everyone.

The most fun and clever Instagram and Snapchat filters come from the community, not the company. The company needs to find ways to unlock the creativity of the community.

How do I know if I’m being patient (a skill) or stubborn (a flaw)? They’re hard to tell apart without hindsight.

I myself write online of course and I will continue to do so but save for this essay, this latest contribution to the thousands of terabytes of jeremiads that festoon the worldwide web, I don’t have much to say about our online world anymore. I’m tired of it. Half an hour or so a day is ample time to catch up with my online community of people and... See more

Many crypto startups raise traditional venture capital to fund product/market fit discovery, often under a Simple Agreement for Future Tokens (SAFT), a structure developed by Protocol Labs and Cooley that’s similar to Y Combinator’s SAFE, except that it converts into tokens instead of equity should the company issue tokens in the future.

Geeks can refuse to admit mops. In fact, successful subcultures always do create costly barriers to entry, to keep out the uncommitted.6 In the heyday of subcultures, those were called poseurs.7 Mop exclusion keeps the subculture comfortable for geeks, but severely limits its potential. Often there’s a struggle between geeks who like their cozy... See more