Board

Compute and storage are both present in the definition of edge computing, but they are very different in nature. Compute is nimble, and can be easily moved anywhere. Data is heavy, and moving it has a cost. Compute is unencumbered by regulations, and can happen anywhere. Data is protected, and has to be treated differently depending on the jurisdiction.

This paradigm goes very well with edge computing: since we are assuming there are fewer resources available, allowing potentially wasteful general purpose compute is less enticing. Constraining what the developers can do (through functions and massive multi-tenancy) allows for better utilization and resource packing.

For this reason, companies targeting the edge have so far focused most of their efforts on compute, like edge functions. But bringing compute to the edge only solves half the problem, especially if you’re making calls to a centralized database somewhere in a far away cluster. You end up with as much, or potentially more, latency than if you had just hosted all your compute in a traditional centralized cloud hosted location.

Perhaps the best piece of advice I ever got from Jeff Bezos was this: Invest in things that don't change. His example was that customers won't wake up one day and wish shipping was slower or the selection of goods poorer. So investing in logistics and warehousing was investing in things that don't change, and will continue to pay dividends for decades.

It is possible to be empowered to work how you want (Autonomy), to be leveraging your skills and expertise (Mastery), and to be proud of your role in a cause (Purpose / Why), and yet still dislike every day of your existence. More than contentment (ikigai), you need Joy.

One person at a time, can be all it takes, as in this serendipitous Slack exchange I had with WPGraphQL founder Jason Bahl:

Sinek sums up the answer: These companies Start with “Why.” Meaning: These organizations have clear, simple, compelling raison d’être, a reason for being, something they stand for, something they would never contravene with their actions, even if it hurts sales or profitability.

Having any two without the third creates a well-defined yet common trap. It’s instructive to understand the traps, because it can feel good to be in the trap

Trap: Skill + Need - JoyThis is classic burn-out. When you do the work all day, you feel drained and exhausted rather than energized (as you would if it were Flow = Skill + Joy). You do the work, because the company needs it done. You do the work, because you are undeniably great at it. Even though you hate doing it, you’d rather take it on yourself rather than foist it on others, whether because you want to “protect them from the drudgery8,” or because you believe they can’t do as good a job as you can, or because you can’t afford to hire someone. Because you create great results that the company needs, it doesn’t look like a problem—not to you, nor your team. But because you dislike it, you grow to resent it, and eventually you can’t face it, and you’re finished

Trap: Joy + Skill - NeedAt the intersection of Joy and Skill is “being in the zone,” a.k.a. Flow7. Wonderful! Unless you’re working on something the company doesn’t need done. Being in flow is intoxicating, and does “recharge the batteries,” but it’s unproductive.

Pink’s model; it is compatible. It adds the missing “Joy” component, while reinforcing “Mastery” with the label of “Skill.” It lacks “Autonomy,” however, perhaps because I created it with the founder in mind—a person who definitionally possesses autonomy, even to their detriment. “Need” is more tactical than “Purpose,” really about being useful.

Therefore, my recommendation is to identify that higher purpose, as described by “Start with Why” or ikigai, and fulfill your own part in that purpose at the center of the three circles.

Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen—in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. —George Orwell, Why I Write

“I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” —Vincent van Gogh

Speiser’s portfolio includes companies like Pure Storage and Snowflake Computing. It’s worth noting that Snowflake not only IPO’d and is now at a market cap of over $60B but Speiser and Sutter Hill Ventures owned more than 20% of the company leading up to the IPO. When Pure Storage went public, Sutter Hill held more than 25%. Speiser may have the highest percentage of portfolio companies that have become multi-billion dollar companies—and that trend looks to continue with his newer companies.

We didn’t realize that launching Figma was heresy, a generational assault on top-down, siloed models of decision making and a challenge to the identity of many designers. While some immediately understood the potential of building design software in the browser, our vision elicited an immediate and negative reaction from others. Some even told us that if this was the future of design, they were changing careers.

Initially I didn’t understand the negative reactions to Figma’s closed beta launch. I only saw the obvious benefits: a single source of truth for files, cross platform support, and multiplayer editing. Now I understand that the power of the browser lies in the broader cultural change it delivers — and this change can be scary. The browser is natively multiplayer. It forces a mindset shift on access. It strips away the need for expensive hardware. And it pushes us to embrace working together, especially when we are blocked and our default might be to hide.

Feeling threatened by change is part of being human. It was only natural that moving what had previously been an offline, single-player experience into the browser would be a shock to many. The fears were sensible.

Figma’s vision is to make design accessible to all. If we succeed, putting Figma as a skill on a resume will be as absurd as highlighting Google Docs proficiency. T

Every sufficiently interesting game has a metagame above it. This is the game about the game. It is often called ‘the meta’.

The best marketers are therefore the ones who advance the best practices the fastest to keep ahead of the mainstream, or are able to identify and develop playbooks for new channels before the old ones become too inefficient to fight in. The quicker they identify new channels and the longer they keep their playbooks secret, the better the marketing game becomes for them.

New tools mean new options. New options mean new viable strategies.

In the late 70s, the meta changed again. A man named Michael Milken pioneered the use of an obscure financial instrument called the high-yield bond, more popularly known as the ‘junk bond’. He quickly realised that these junk bonds could be used to raise immense amounts of capital for the purpose of corporate takeovers, with little to no cost to the acquiring company. Such ‘leveraged buyouts’ (LBOs) — which issued debt on the target company’s assets, not on the parent company’s books — changed the rules of the takeover game in ways that persist till today. The players that emerged to take advantage of this innovation, the ones who skated to the edge of the meta? We know them today as private equity firms.

What is interesting about the meta is that metagames can only be played if you have mastered the basics of the domain. In MtG, Judo, and Splendor, you cannot play the metagame if you are not already good at the base game. You cannot identify winning strategies in MtG if you don’t do well in current MtG; you cannot adapt old techniques to new rules if you don’t already have effective techniques for competitive Judo.

What is true in sports is also true in real world domains like marketing and business; it is true even if you are aware of the meta’s existence. The nature of the metagame demands that you play the base game well. It lives on top of the pattern-matching that comes with expertise.

This seems like an obvious thing to say. But as with most such things, the second-order implications are more interesting than the first-order ones. For instance, because expertise is necessary to play the metagame, it is often useful to search for the meta in your domain as a north star for expertise. The way I remind myself of this is to say that I should ‘locate the meta’ whenever I’m at the bottom of a skill tree. Even if I can’t yet participate, searching for the metagame that experts play will usually give me hints as to what skills I must acquire in order to become good enough.