Collection of random thoughts from talks / conversations
- Fintech: Focus on the full stack
- There was a lot of prior focus on the frontend, but the backend is also ripe for innovation (e.g. clearing, etc) and an integrated solution is key
- Joseph Gordon Levitt: Creators first, fair commission and attribution
- Union Square Ventures (on blockchains):
- Innovations usually start out as a worse version of something we can relate to, e.g. blockchains are like a crappy database right now
- Have to find the marginal uses for new technology to see their futures
- Try to supplement current infrastructure before disrupting it (e.g. Ripple as an information layer over traditional financial infrastructure)
- Key question: how to incentivize providers of infrastructure? Especially in decentralized settings?
- Focus on protocols, e.g. protocol for moving money around
- UX as an opiate: Everyone and everything competes for attention
- We should define good rules of engagement for attention-sucking experiences
- It's a race to the bottom for attention; we need to redefine our values and goals to make sure that attention is spent usefully
- Ad based models create unbounded hunger for attention
- Make the right choices easy because that's what people will reach for
- Perl (Larry Wall): Focus on the community, and get the culture right
- Start up advice:
- Talk to, and get advice from, those who have just gone through the same thing (things change fast, and you want recent opinions!)
- Keep investors updated: even if they didn't invest the first time, they might the next time.
- Ask other founders and CEOs to talk about their interactions with their investors so you know who you might be stuck in bed with
- Get warm introductions from good founders (they really matter!)
- Empathy in an organization: Make sure someone is fighting for it
- E.g. making everyone come out of an interview feel positive
- Daniel Pink: Drive. Motivation from destination.
- Don't forget where you're going, and why you're going there.
- Establish feedback loops and measure to make sure you're getting closer
- Only you can make sure you're taking care of yourself
- APIs and Stack Overflow (Jon Skeet): Trust the other side's intentions, and help them!
- Don't criticize symptoms from the other side; they're your fault!
- Dig into the root goal of someone and try to understand them
- Help your users if they screw up, and learn from how they screwed up!