Bookmarks

At 37signals, three is a magic number.

Nearly all new product work is done by teams of three people. A team of three is usually composed of two programmers and one designer. And if it’s not three, it’s two or one — not four or five. We don’t throw more people at problems, we chisel problems down until they can be tackled by three people, at most.

We rarely have meetings, but when we do, you’ll hardly ever find more than three people on a call. Any conversation with more than three people is typically a conversation with too many people.

What if there are five departments involved in a project or a decision? There aren’t. Too many dependencies. We don’t work on projects like that — intentionally.

What is it with three? Three is a wedge, and that’s why it works. Three has a sharp point. It’s an odd number so there are no ties. It’s powerful enough to make a dent, but also weak enough to not break what isn’t broken. Big teams make things worse all the time by applying too much force to things that only need to be lightly finessed.

The problem with four is that you almost always need to add a fifth to manage. The problem with five is that it’s two too many. And six, seven, or eight on a team will inevitably make simple things more complicated than they need to be.

Just like work expands to fill the time available, work expands to fill the team available. Small, short projects become bigger, longer projects simply because all those people need something to do.

You can do big things with small teams, but it’s a whole hell of a lot harder to do small things with big teams. That’s a disadvantage of big teams! Small things are often all that’s necessary. The occasional big thing is great, but most improvements come as small incremental steps. Big teams can step right over those small moves.

Three keeps you honest. It tempers your ambition in all the right ways. It requires you to make tradeoffs, rather than keep adding things in. And most importantly, three reduces miscommunication and improves coordination. Three people can talk directly with one another without introducing hearsay. And it’s a heck of a lot easier to coordinate three people’s schedules than four or more.

Three is all-in for us.

“Your inner voice pretty much determines your destiny.”

That’s a quote from Dr. Jim Loehr, one of the world’s foremost experts on mental toughness and performance psychology.

He’s worked with some of the best athletes in the world to help strengthen their mental game so they can outperform others. He believes one of the most important parts of mental toughness is being able to change the stories you tell yourself—which are often lies—so they’re more aligned with reality. In this conversation, he’ll teach you everything he knows.

You’ll learn:

• How to identify and change the negative stories you tell yourself (that often bring anxiety, depression, and underperformance when they’re wrong)

• Why and how your private and public voices impact your kids, and what to do when those aren’t aligned

• The best reflection questions that reveal your blindspots on a situation

• What the best in the world know about high performance that you’ve never been taught

• Why intentional downtime is crucial for relieving stress and conquering your mind

…and more.

Dr. Jim Loehr is a world-renowned performance psychologist and author of 16 books. Dr. Loehr possesses a masters and doctorate in psychology and is a full member of the American Psychological Association.

set design shot w/Midjourney✨

PROMPT:
An arrangement of vibrant flowers and plants of various varieties and colours, including a large red bloom, pink orchids, a yellow ranunculus, and green foliage. These are interspersed with a collection of classic hard surface. A plain, light-coloured backdrop to emphasize the still life composition. The books are arranged at varying heights, creating a dynamic visual structure. The entire setup is on a polished marble surface, enhancing the elegance of the scene. The composition aims for an elegant and balanced still life aesthetic, with the botanical elements and books complementing each other.A rich and visually engaging still life setup that combines the natural beauty of flowers with the intellectual allure of classic literature, structured to draw the viewer’s eye across the varying textures and colours.

OH at @USV: a new experiment where an AI records our conversations during the current week, synthesizes themes from them and shares them with the world

Week of Apr 22:

1/ Organismic approaches to carbon sequestration - synthetic biology platforms to design microorganisms that can improve the carbon capture in agriculture as well as nature based solutions

2/ Advancing Computational Material Science - the development and application of computational methods and algorithms to predict and understand the properties of new industrial materials.

3/ Won't be evil on the frontend, can't be evil on the backend - the emergence of hybrid architectures where a front end is designed to be very consumer friendly and accessible and secure but its operating on a fully decentralized protocol

4/ Human Certified Content - amidst the rise of AI-generated entertainment, there may be a growing importance placed on content that is certified as human generated and there may be a premium placed on it.

5/  Sign all things - the importance of digitally signing all types of content (images, essays, etc.) to maintain authenticity and ensure the original creator is credited. It was discussed in the context of the potential of blockchain technology to facilitate this process.

Because so many people doubt that GPT-5 even exists, I would like to refer you to the Business Insider article, which shows that GPT-5 has already been presented to numerous customers. These customers are surprised at how accurate GPT-5 is and speak of a groundbreaking breakthrough.

GPT-5 is real, it is here. It is yet to be introduced to mankind because it is powerful and perhaps even very computationally intensive. But there is no question that it will come.

"The generative AI company helmed by Sam Altman is on track to put out GPT-5 sometime mid-year, likely during summer, according to two people familiar with the company. Some enterprise customers have recently received demos of the latest model and its related enhancements to the ChatGPT tool, another person familiar with the process said. These people, whose identities Business Insider has confirmed, asked to remain anonymous so they could speak freely. "It's really good, like materially better," said one CEO who recently saw a version of GPT-5. OpenAI demonstrated the new model with use cases and data unique to his company, the CEO said. He said the company also alluded to other as-yet-unreleased capabilities of the model, including the ability to call AI agents being developed by OpenAI to perform tasks autonomously."

The indie hacking community is turning into some weird bubble where some 'successful' people sell to those that aspire the same success.

Courses, boilerplates, coaching, products targeting other founders..

Entrepreneurship is not a 'follow this checklist' type of thing, but some of these indie hacker influencers make it look like that.

You can identify these tools/products/content bundles by looking at their founder here on Twitter. Are they continuously promoting success and selling a dream only if you buy that product? Is their success the exact thing they're trying to sell you?

'I make 50k a month and so can you with <insert boilerplate/course>, it's what I'm using myself!' > except that the 'success' and 50k a month income comes from selling exactly that.

Products solving real problems don't have a founder that is continuously promising on Twitter how good it is and how bad you need it for your own success. Instead, the product speaks for itself.

Don't read next bit if you're too sensitive (you'll read it anyway hehe):

They're selling tools/info you think you need for a dream you will never achieve unless you are comfortable figuring it out on your own.

If you continuously look for 'quick ways' to do something and buy product after product from these 'successful' indie hacker influencers, hoping to emulate what success they have, you likely won't succeed.

Identifying as (only) an indie hacker, building a product for other founders and only doing your 'marketing' on twitter and product hunt is essentially a limiting belief. You're sticking to a comfortable bubble.

Think bigger, don't be too influenced by this indie hacker / founder bubble and don't fall for the buy-this-product-for-success shit.

When I tell people I am about to publish an O'Reilly book on prompt engineering and AI, their first question is always "won't it be out of date the moment it's printed?". It's something @jamesaphoenix12 and I had to think about, a lot...

So we took the things that were working for us back in 2020 with GPT-3, and ditched any hacks or tricks that stopped working when GPT-4 came out. What was left was a set of timeless principles that are transferrable across models:

1. Give Direction: Describe the desired style in detail, or reference a relevant persona.
2. Specify Format: Define what rules to follow, and the required structure of the
response.
3. Provide Examples: Insert a diverse set of test cases where the task was done
correctly.
4. Evaluate Quality: Identify errors and rate responses, testing what drives performance.
5. Divide Labor: Split tasks into multiple steps, chained together for complex goals.

The whole book is based on these principles, so even if OpenAI drops GPT-5 the week after the book is published, I'm still confident the content will remain relevant. That said, after a year and a half of writing and editing, I'm really looking forward to getting it out there in the world and see what people think!

“I run a community for small-time entrepreneurs who are satisfied with reliably attainable mediocre success.”

That’s one of the most refreshingly honest descriptions of any business I’ve ever read. He knows his business. Exactly.

So many would feel defensive or inadequate describing their business as a course for “small-timers” looking for “mediocre success”, but Daniel embraces it proudly — and honestly — and knows it’s actually The Right Fit for nearly all entrepreneurs.

The rest of the piece is about Y Combinator, but the golden lesson is really in his statement I’ve quoted at the top. Know what you offer as well as Daniel, and be honest about it, and you’ll have a better shot at making anything work.

Botanical Bliss shot w/Midjourney 🦋

PROMPT:
Sliced grapefruit, vividly coloured with hues of pink and orange, accompanied by delicate flower petals in matching tones and fresh green leaves, all seemingly suspended mid-air as if caught in a gentle breeze. This closeup composition is set against a pristine white background, creating a striking contrast that highlights the vibrancy and freshness of the subjects. The arrangement suggests a moment of natural harmony and ephemeral beauty, captured in a freeze-frame that emphasises the texture and detail of each element

Products that resonate tend to violate traditional values of anglo society and founders (or their partners) will dismiss these directions very early in brainstorming process.

For example, let’s say you think of a disappearing photo app: the next thought might be “that shouldn’t exist, what do you have to hide, anyway?”

You should be extremely conscious of these biases, because sometimes you might reject something that people really want. Even if it is egregiously amoral, there is probably a derivative concept that is a net good.

For example, it would be awful to anonymously rate people on an app. In fact, I was rejected from YC for pitching this idea. But several years later, I modified the concept where you could only say positive things—which had immediate viral success.

There are plenty more unexplored areas that are regularly rejected: someone pitched me an app that showed how much money everyone had. My gut reaction was to reject it since that’s private and money is taboo to talk about. However, I quickly caught myself, realizing that in many Scandinavian countries, your tax returns are public — so maybe it could work.

One of my favorite insights from this paper: knowledge graphs not only help with retrieval, but also with scientific discovery of new ideas/connections that were previously unexplored.

You can do this by feeding an LLM an existing knowledge graph, and it will overlay the KG with its own reasoning capabilities to extrapolate new ideas. Check out the prompt below for how this works! 📝

@ProfBuehlerMIT generated a massive knowledge graph of materials papers (thanks in part to @llama_index, and also a novel approach to combining multiple KGs), and was able to generate new materials science research ideas by aggressively prompting LLMs with different subgraphs and their connections.

Super interesting paper, definitely worth the read:

Excited to introduce a new project I've been working on called Payman!

Payman is an AI Agent tool that gives Agents the ability to pay people for tasks they cannot do themselves.

While many people imagine a future where humans pay AI agents for services they want completed, I believe that as AI agents become more advanced, they will be paying humans for tasks they can’t do. There will always be important roles for humans, and as we move towards an agent-driven world, Payman’s goal is to support a symbiotic relationship between AI agents and humans.

Payman addresses three major challenges to make this collaboration possible:

Access to Funds: AI agents can't open bank accounts due to current regulations. It might be a long time before this changes, if ever. Payman simplifies this by allowing AI agents with access to their own funds to spend as they want, without a bank account.

Quality Task Completion: It’s hard for AI agents to find reliable, skilled human workers. While platforms like Fiverr and Upwork exist, they don’t meet the fast-paced and quality-specific needs of AI workflows. Payman is developing the largest vetted database of skilled workers that AI agents can tap into for task completions.

Verification of Work: Ensuring that tasks are completed correctly is crucial. Payman is creating a suite of verification agents that will check that work meets task requirements, helping AI agents achieve their goals and ensuring humans are paid fairly.

There are tons of use cases that Payman opens up for Agents!

Design: Humans add creative input to help Agent's design better products.
Code: Humans perform code reviews to ensure it meets specifications.
Law: Humans provide insights to gauge public sentiment about legal cases so Agents can make better strategies.
Gaming: Agents pay humans to complete real-world tasks in games.
Medical: Medical professionals help to improve diagnostic accuracy for Agents.
Sales: Humans execute sales strategies developed by AI agents.
Marketing: Humans are hired to promote products based on the Agent's strategy.

Right now this is still in early beta and I am looking for any Agent builders that are interested in adding superpowers to what their Agent can do! DM me if you’d like access or sign-up to the waitlist at paymanai.com.

If you’re interested in the project and want to help contribute, please send me over a DM! I’m looking for people passionate about the intersection of Humans and Agent’s working together.

18 useful razors and rules:

1. Bragging Razor - If someone brags about their success or happiness, assume it’s half what they claim

If someone downplays their success or happiness, assume it’s double what they claim

2. High Agency Razor - If unsure who to work with, pick the person that has the best chances of breaking you out of a 3rd world prison.

3. The Early-Late Razor - If it's a talking point on Reddit, you might be early. If it's a talking point on LinkedIn, you're definitely late.

4. Luck Razor - If stuck with 2 equal options, pick the one that feels like it will produce the most luck later down the line.

I used this razor to go for drinks with a stranger rather than watch Netflix. In hindsight, it was the highest ROI decision I've ever made.

5. Buffett's Law - "The value of every business is 100% subject to government interest rates" - Warren Buffett

6. The 6-Figure Razor - If someone brags about "6 figures" -- assume it's closer to $100K than $900K.

7. Parent Rule - Break down the investments your parents made in you: Time, Love, Energy, and Money.

If they are still alive, aim to hit a positive ROI (or at least break even.)

8. Instagram Razor - When you see a photo of an influencer looking attractive on Instagram -- assume there are 99 worse variations of that photo you haven't seen.

They just picked the best one.

9. Narcissism Razor - If worried about people's opinions, remember they are too busy worrying about other people's opinions of them. 99% of the time you're an extra in someone else's movie

10. Everyday Razor - If you go from doing a task weekly to daily, you achieve 7 years of output in 1 year. If you apply a 1% compound interest each time, you achieve 54 years of output in 1 year.

11. Bezos Razor - If unsure what action to pick, let your 90-year-old self on death bed choose it.

12. Creativity Razor - If struggling to think creatively about a subject, transform it:

• Turn a thought into a written idea.
• A written idea into a drawing.
• A drawing into an equation.
• An equation into a conversation.

In the process of transforming it, you begin to spot new creative connections.

13. The Roman Empire Rule - Historians now recognize the Roman Empire fell in 476 - but it wasn't acknowledged by Roman society until many generations later.

If you wait for the media to inform you, you'll either be wrong or too late.

14. Physics Razor - If it doesn't deny the law of physics, then assume it's possible. Do not confuse society's current lack of knowledge -- with this knowledge being impossible to attain.

E.g. The smartphone seems impossible to someone from the 1800s -- but it was possible, they just had a lack of knowledge.

15. Skinner's Law - If procrastinating, you have 2 ways to solve it:

• Make the pain of inaction > Pain of action
• Make the pleasure of action > Pleasure of inaction

16. Network Razor - If you have 2 quality people that would benefit from an intro to one another, always do it.

Networks don't divide as you share them, they multiply.

17. Gell-Mann Razor - Assume every media article contains a % of false information.

Sandbox the article from your worldview until you've:

• Seen primary sources
• Spoken to 3 domain experts

18. Taleb's Surgeon - If presented with two equal candidates for a role, pick the one with the least amount of charisma.

The uncharismatic one has got there despite their lack of charisma. The charismatic one has got there with the aid of their charisma.

-----

Just turned 30 and these are the non-obvious rules that always produced outsized returns when following them -- and outsized downside when neglecting them.

Taken from my newsletter. Link below.

Michael Bloomberg:

Take lots of chances, and make lots of individual, spur-of-the-moment decisions!

"Although I was serious about my career, I never had a “budget" for my future.

Unlike so many of my classmates, I didn't set out to be a partner or vice president at age thirty, or a trillionaire at thirty-five.

Make a comprehensive scheme for the rest of my life?

Both at business and at home, I've never let planning get in the way of doing.

Life, I've found, works the following way:

Daily, you're presented with many small and surprising opportunities.

Sometimes you seize one that takes you to the top.

Most, though, if valuable at all, take you only a little way.

To succeed, you must string together small incremental advances—rather than count on hitting the many lottery jackpot once.

Trusting to great luck is a strategy not likely to work for most people.

As a practical matter, constantly enhance your skills, put in as many hours as possible, and make tactical plans for the next few steps.

Then, based on what actually occurs, look one more move ahead and adjust the plan.

Take lots of chances, and make lots of individual, spur-of-the-moment decisions.

Don't devise a Five-Year Plan or a Great Leap Forward. Central planning didn't work for Stalin or Mao, and it won't work for an entrepreneur either."

Healthcare is quietly going through a paradigm shift because of AI.

Since 2010, VC firms have poured $44B+ into healthcare-focused AI/ML startups

Insights from @byFounders:

• Healthcare is a $10 trillion "problem": Spending is soaring globally but health outcomes such as life expectancy are plateauing—or even declining, and disease prevalence is rising.

• There is hope (thanks to AI): The rapid progress in AI is sparking a generational shift in how healthcare operates: from automating back office workflows to augmenting decision-making.

The future startups are building towards:

• Personalized and full-context: We will no longer have to turn to the dark corners of the internet for self-diagnosis; instead, we will all have access to a personal AI health companion that has access to the full context of our health. This is what Livv Health is building towards.

• Human-centered care: The days of manual note-taking into clunky systems are a relic of the past: startups like Corti and Nabla are eliminating doctors’ time spent on documentation—giving back “the gift of time” to clinicians.

• AI-augmented: With OpenEvidence providing easy access to medical literature and startups such as Glass Health supporting clinical decision-making, we are poised for a future where every doctor can make the best decision, grounded in evidence and augmented by real-time AI.

I locked myself in the garage for 3 years - to create what I see as the most impactful machine that can possibly be created. I built it from scratch with my hands and my own design ethos.
This is “The Story Behind Mona.”

Mona learned to stand stable on her legs in February 2022 and started reasoning about her actions in December 2022.

At Kind Humanoid, we are now developing humanoid robots with general task capability to assist humans in building an inspiring tomorrow. Follow for updates.

#KindHumanoid #Humanoid #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #HumanoidRobot

Editorial texture shot w/Midjourney 🝆

PROMPT:
A close-up composition featuring a variety of oil droplets in water, with the subject being the interplay of these elements. The background should be implied rather than explicit, suggested by the distorted reflection of pine needles or similar foliage within the droplets. Additional elements include smaller bubbles scattered around the larger droplets, adding complexity. The effect to capture is the intricate light reflections and refractions within the droplets, utilizing a warm colour palette of yellow, amber, and burgundy. The overall composition should fill the frame, showing a depth of field with larger droplets in the foreground and smaller ones fading into the background

With the rise of of gen ai, we are going to see an interesting clash of cultures as new creatives start & learn with gen ai tools first

A big cohort of coders, visual artists, musicians & video makers will go midjourney, dalle, suno & udio, runway before photoshop, canva, final cut, ableton and fruity loops

Expect some wildly different styles as this younger cohort learns creativity at a higher abstraction level, and then learns traditional media & producitivity tools backwards

Also expect 90% of the previous cohort to cry and whine about it, "this isn't real art"

The other 10% will embrace the new tech and build the most amazing things you've ever seen by combining new and old techniques

My 30-minute Udio Journey to discovering this Dune The Musical track.

Ok, so yes I have been running into errors on Udio.

Yes, I wasn't BLOWN away by what others were sharing. I could def hear more clarity, but there was also a...tinniness? to the outputs that didn't quite like. It definitely has a distinct SOUND, as doesn't Suno. Much like visual AI tools, each has a "look".

And yes, I went on to try to make a good morning Twitter musical hit to see how I liked it in comparison with my Suno one, thinking it probably couldn't compare.

Well, I couldn't give it a good test due to the errors, but I went to the community page, and the first one on there was this. So, I guess you can say I am not an appreciator of Udio and look forward to playing. Kudos to BobbyB who generated this brilliance.

I created an app from idea to production in less than half a day using ChatGPT, and SwiftShip ... and already generated 3 sales in less than 48h hours.

Here's the full process synthesized👇

💡Ideation:
When needed I'm always checking word pronunciation in Google Translate, so I've mainly a personal need for a minimal, and simple app that helps check accent/articulation in one click.

🔎Market Research:
Starting from a personal need, I've done a quick market research using @TryAstroApp and AppFollow then I decided to build an app MVP that pronounces words and helps in checking articulations in multiple languages accents.

*With help from chatGPT and reusability from SwiftShip boilerplate I estimated the app MVP to be completely done in a few hours so I've bet more on validating with the MVP rather than a deep market research.

👨‍💻Development:

• I used my swiftship boilerplate to get analytics, iAP monetization, notifications, and other common features in the app ready-made.

• I used chatGPT to generate the core functions/features of the app with a main prompt then I asked it for a few adaptations till I got a good MVP.

🎨Design/UI:

• I found a good dribbble design that fits my simplicity/minimalism need, then created a view based on it and edited it to fit the requirements of the app.

✅Metadata & Distribution:

• I got the app keywords and ASO stuff from Astro and AppFollow.
• Created the screenshots with AppScreens
• Generated the app description with chatGPT

... and Voila the app is currently live in the appstore.
💰 After less than 48 hours of distribution, the app already got 3 sales.

*I may record a video with more details for every step of the process if I have some time later and if it's needed by a few people.

Find the app link below.

Fascinating.

"For decades in art circles it was either a rumor or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact.

The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art - including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko - as a weapon in the Cold War. In the manner of a Renaissance prince - except that it acted secretly - the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years.

The connection is improbable. This was a period, in the 1950s and 1960s, when the great majority of Americans disliked or even despised modern art - President Truman summed up the popular view when he said: "If that's art, then I'm a Hottentot." As for the artists themselves, many were ex- communists barely acceptable in the America of the McCarthyite era, and certainly not the sort of people normally likely to receive US government backing.

Why did the CIA support them?"

The Independent reports:

I shouldn’t be surprised by this community’s love and support, but…

I’m truly in awe.

24 hours later, I’m looking at:

• 183 downloads
• 42 countries represented
• 12 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ reviews
• $69 in revenue*

All for a free magazine. 🤯

I’ve always believed that the internet is a positive place, and your love confirms that belief and that our little corner—which turns out is far more global than I thought—is the most supportive.

Thanks to all of you for sharing, downloading, and reviewing.

And to those of you who left a little extra for coffee, I promise to use caffeine as a source of good.

I’m grateful for this amazing boost into the weekend.

And looking forward to catching up on all your creations.

🖤🖤🖤

*So fitting for the guy who runs After Dark 😈

Editorial ingredient shot w/Midjourney🍥

PROMPT:
A single, ripe raspberry is the subject of this image, presented in vivid detail. Each individual drupelet, plump and glistening with moisture, stands out in a rich, red colour that suggests a juicy and fresh quality. The raspberry is delicately held between the thumb and forefinger, which have neatly manicured nails and appear soft, adding a human element to the composition. The background is deliberately blurred, ensuring the raspberry commands the viewer's focus. Additional elements, like the fine hairs on the drupelets that catch the light, contribute to the tactile realism of the fruit. The soft shadows cast by the fingers create an effect of depth. Overall, the composition is an intimate and detailed celebration of natural simplicity, emphasising the texture and freshness of the raspberry.

The double slit experiment was first performed by Thomas Young in 1801, as a demonstration of the wave nature of light. He used a coherent light source, such as sunlight or a candle, and passed it through a narrow slit in a card. Then he placed another card with two parallel slits close to the first one, and observed the light pattern on a screen behind the second card. He expected to see two bright spots on the screen, corresponding to the two slits, but instead he saw a series of bright and dark fringes, called an interference pattern. This meant that the light waves passing through the two slits interfered with each other, creating regions of constructive and destructive interference. This was evidence that light was not made of particles, as Isaac Newton had proposed, but of waves, as Christiaan Huygens had suggested.

However, with the development of quantum mechanics in the early 20th century, it was discovered that light could also behave like particles, called photons. In 1905, Albert Einstein explained the photoelectric effect by assuming that light was composed of discrete packets of energy that could knock electrons out of metals. In 1924, Louis de Broglie proposed that matter could also have wave properties, and derived a relation between the wavelength and momentum of any particle. In 1927, Clinton Davisson and Lester Germer, and independently George Thomson and Alexander Reid, confirmed this hypothesis by showing that electrons could produce interference patterns when scattered by crystals. Later, it was shown that atoms and molecules could also exhibit wave-particle duality.

The double slit experiment was then repeated with single photons or electrons, one at a time. Surprisingly, even when only one particle was sent through the slits at a time, an interference pattern still emerged on the screen after many repetitions. This meant that each particle somehow interfered with itself, as if it went through both slits at once. However, if detectors were placed at the slits to observe which slit each particle passed through, the interference pattern disappeared. This showed that the act of measurement affected the outcome of the experiment, and that the particle's behavior depended on whether it was observed or not. This phenomenon is known as quantum superposition and collapse, and it implies that quantum systems exist in a state of uncertainty until they are measured.

The experiment has profound implications for our understanding of reality and the nature of observation. It challenges our classical intuition and forces us to accept that reality is not deterministic but probabilistic at the quantum level.

Editorial ingredient shot w/Midjourney🍊

PROMPT:
A vertical alignment of three citrus fruits with accompanying leaves. A stark white backdrop that enhances the vivid colours of the subjects. Water droplets on the leaves to convey freshness, and the gradation of ripeness from unripe green at the top to a mature wrinkled texture at the bottom. The glossy sheen on the fruits and leaves suggesting recent harvest or dew. A conceptual display of the citrus lifecycle, or variety, creating a vibrant contrast between colours and textures, invoking a sense of organic growth and vitality

Returning from an experimental ~2 week detox from the internet. Main takeaway is that I didn't realize how unsettled the mind can get when over-stimulating on problems/information (like a stirred liquid), and ~2 weeks is enough to settle into a lot more zen state.

I'm struck by how an over-stimulated brain automatically keeps bubbling up problems into consciousness, creating a state of persistent anxiety and nervousness. After some time, in the settled state, this activity just... stops. You can sit down and your brain doesn't immediately go into some kind of problem solving overdrive, it just stays silent. Nothing happens.

I'm sure this could read a bit duh to many, but I haven't been to this subset of "brain dynamics" state space in I think a very long time and it is comforting to know that 1) it exists, and 2) you can visit, if you like, but the journey there takes a few weeks.

Anyway, where were we :D

Brian Chesky’s response to the Samwer Brothers cloning Airbnb: “Missionaries will outlast mercenaries”

In mid-2011, the Samwer Brothers cloned Airbnb’s website.

At the time, they were notorious for cloning companies that were working in the US and replicating it across Europe and non-English-speaking countries.

Before cloning Airbnb, they sold their Groupon clone, MyCityDeal, to Groupon itself for roughly €100 million.

Brian describes the situation Airbnb was facing:

“We had 40 employees and had raised $7M. They cloned us and raised $90M, and in 30 days they hired 400 people and wanted to sell the company. And if they couldn’t they were going to destroy us around the world. And the problem with Airbnb is if we’re not everywhere around the world, a travel site not being in Europe is like your phone not having email. It doesn’t actually work.”

At the time, a lot of people were telling Brian and the Airbnb cofounders to buy the clone because they couldn’t risk losing international. But Airbnb didn’t buy them.

Brian explains his reasoning:

“The reason we ended up not buying them is I just didn’t like the culture. I didn’t want to bring in these 400 people. I felt like we were missionaries and they were mercenaries. I didn’t think they were doing it for the beliefs. I thought they were doing it to make a lot of money very quickly. And I believed in a war missionaries would outlast and out-endure mercenaries. I also felt like the best revenge against an internet clone was just to make them run the company long term. It’s like, you had the baby, now you gotta raise it.”

In the end, that proved to be the right decision. Today, Airbnb is valued at more than $100B, and most people have never heard of Wimdu, the Samwer brothers’ clone.

Video Source: @ycombinator