Consequence Scanning – an agile practice for responsible innovators
Advice
against the dark forest
The complex of ideas I’m going to call the Dark Internet Forest emerges from mostly insidery tech thinking, but from multiple directions.
Pick one and own it
What if your company could have only one single advantage over the competition? This exercise will make your positioning and strategy stronger.
Brief and practical tips for public speaking
A friend who went back to school recently asked for public speaking tips, here's what I told her.
What made Steve Jobs' presentations so magnificent?
5 secrets behind Steve Jobs’ iconic keynote speeches.
Power Up Your Brain with Mental Models
Think of software design patterns but for your mind and thoughts.
The Sad Case of the Tech T-Shirt (Fashion and Programming, part ii) - Holly Cummins
A year or two ago, I wrote about the connection between fashion and programming. For reasons I don’t totally understand, it’s my second most…
Functional Generalist
A Site For Interesting Things I Make or Do
Who can you trust with your online business?
I get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach when I have to tell someone that there is something deeply wrong with their website—especially when I know that it is too late to fix it. I hate that feeling. And I felt it twice recently.
Don’t Fuck Up the Culture
On Monday, October 21, 2013, I sent this letter to our entire team at Airbnb. I have decided to publish this in the event it is helpful to entrepreneurs building their cultures. Our next team meeting…
LinkedIn's Series B Pitch to Greylock: Pitch Advice for Entrepreneurs
At Greylock, my partners and I are driven by one guiding mission: always help entrepreneurs. It doesn’t matter whether an entrepreneur is in our portfolio, whether we’re considering an investment, or whether we’re casually meeting for the first time.
Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook’s Early Days: Go Hard or Go Home
The Facebook CEO gives sage advice to a crowd of young entrepreneurs.
Good and Bad Reasons to Become an Entrepreneur
Update (Sept 2014): I gave a talk on this topic during lecture 1 of Stanford’s CS 183B course. Check out the video if you’d like to hear more about deciding to become an entrepreneur. I’ve also added…
Advice for ambitious 19 year olds
“I’m an ambitious 19 year old, what should I do?” I get asked this question fairly often, and I now have a lot of data on what works, so I thought I’d share my response. Usually, people are...
Stand Out and Dare to Disagree
As someone who’s been in the tech industry for more than 15 years, I’ve come to recognize a fundamental truth about being a software dev: the key to
Staying Sharp
Why Interview Even When You’re Happy
Online business ideas and growth playbooks that actually work
Real experiences on growing an audience, driving traffic, and turning your knowledge into products that sell on autopilot with practical and repeatable playbooks.
"Just"
I feel like an idiot while doing my job. A lot. Now there’s a damn good chance I’m actually an idiot, but the self-respecting part of me wants to challenge that notion. When I get stuck on a task or am looking for recommendations for tools/resources/strategies/solutions/whatever, I often take
Mental Models: 349 Models Explained
Here are 349 mental models explained to carry around in your head. Make better decisions with the right toolbox of mental models.
Good Managers Don’t Make These Mistakes
To break unhealthy patterns of thinking and acting, managers need to pay special attention to how they communicate, collaborate and get…
The Feynman Technique
The following article was first published in Custo
Welcome to the Jungle
You might be the Tech Lead, but you don’t decide how your team develops software — their cultural ecology does.
How to do what you love and make good money | Derek Sivers
Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) - Symptoms and causes
This childhood mental health condition includes frequent and persistent anger, irritability, arguing, defiance or vindictiveness toward authority.
Demand avoidance
Resistance to demands is a characteristic experienced by and observed in some autistic people. It is sometimes labelled as Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA), but there is debate about the evidence for and usefulness of this label.
I analyzed code review best practices for a year. This is what I learned.
Over the past year, while building Pullpo, I've been highly focused on one specific area: code...
#35 A Tech Sales Guide: Stop Selling Technicalities, Start Selling Outcomes
As engineers, we love our technical solutions, but business leaders speak a different language. Learn how to turn your technical proposals into outcomes that the business cares about.
The Psychology of Human Misjudgment, by Charlie Munger
In The Psychology of Human Misjudgment, Charlie Munger explains why we behave the way we do. This is a transcript of the fully updated talk.
How to Monetize a Blog
A guide on turning your diary into dollars.
How I increased my visibility
Someone asked me this and here's my answer.