Tom So

A natural forest is illegible. A tangle of plants. This is inconvenient from the standpoint of harvesting lumber. How do you quantify yield? Can you even make a meaningful map of this mess? Much easier to clear the forest and plant a legible “scientific” forest. Uniform rows of trees that produce good lumber. Now we can count the trees, make a map,... See more

Startup COO job boils down to this: 1. Pick a problem area, and build 0 to 1 yourself. First principles get you pretty far! 2. After it gets going, start recruiting for an experienced leader for the area. 3. Onboard the leader well, nuke yourself out and attack next problem.

Many team members feel as if they don’t matter. They feel as if they’re just another number. It’s your job to let them know that their input is valuable.

Applying process by the book: With Agile or Scrum, there's no need to apply the rules as they come, but interpreting them in order to find the right balance for your team

I’m talking about using in-product levers to grow, in place of or in conjunction with external marketing and sales channels. When people can try your product for free, they experience the value of your product before making the decision to pay. This turns more people into happy users, creating more opportunity for them to tell their friends, who in... See more