Recent content on Ali Asaria
To start: To Muslims: You should not take physics or religious advice from a random guy on the internet. Also the ideas here are not fully formed. 1 To Those Less Familiar with the Muslim Tradition: this essay was written for a Muslim audience, assuming a lot of shared understandings — things that sit deep in the Muslim imagination. 2 Pepe Silvia meme (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, FX)…
There is a miracle sitting in your pocket right now. Decades ago, the computing power you hold in your hand would have cost millions of dollars. It would have filled a room. Today, you can have it for $500. This is the fundamental promise of engineering and technology. Our job, at its best, is to make the impossible possible and the expensive affordable. We take scarce resources and, through…
Do you believe that Canada is facing an existential crisis? The answer to this question determines the kind of actions we, as a nation, take going forward. History has examples of nations that faced existential threats and responded by aligning their government and private sectors to achieve the impossible. They didn’t just “encourage innovation”; they launched Mega Projects that…
The tech world’s use of the term “Builder” is one of the most successful branding campaigns I’ve seen. It is a brilliant piece of marketing. The word is romantic, active, and universally respected. It evokes images of rolled-up sleeves, tangible creation, and physical reality. It’s a term of action, of virtue. You might be skeptical of today’s tech leaders, but who…
In my time, if you wanted to be a computer engineer, you had to go to university. It was the only place this level of specialized knowledge lived. For example, if you wanted to build and program chips one day, there was simply no other way to learn the details and math of semiconductor physics. Recently, I was browsing YouTube and watched a video on how p-n junctions in silicon diodes work. You…
I remember first learning to program on a Commodore 64. I have gray hair, kids, and a Costco Executive Membership Card. I am an old man. The next zillion-dollar company that changes our country and our world won’t be built by someone like me (though I will try). No, the new world will be built by someone who is still in school right now, or just graduating. But when it’s time to talk…
After criticizing boring Canadian ideas and making fun of attempts to be US-light, many of you challenged me: it’s easy to tear things down; what do we build in their place? We can’t do anything until we answer the stereotypically Canadian question: What is actually special about Canada? I know, it’s a running joke that Canadians aren’t able to say what is unique about us. But…
An analogy: if you are a startup trying to succeed in a market dominated by IBM, the worst thing you can do is copy them. The incumbent has superior scale, capital, and market power. Your only path to victory is to be different – to be more more nimble, and to play by a set of rules they can’t or won’t follow. Now, let’s apply this to our country. We are the startup. The United States…
Over the years, I’ve been invited to the rooms where Canada’s future is discussed. The conversation is usually the same. We talk about what Canada can do to secure it’s future in innovation, venture funding, competitiveness, and (now) AI. Suggestions are made, policy documents are written. Then, five years later, we get together and have the exact same conversation. Because…
For generations, the United States wasn’t just a superpower; it was the center of the moral universe. It represented the best of what we could be—the most progressive, the most free, the most welcoming. The unspoken assumption was that America was the future, and we in Canada were fortunate to be in its orbit. But that light has dimmed. The story America tells about itself no longer feels…
Open source software is crazy! It shouldn’t work, yet it thrives. Its core principle is to give away its core secrets—the source code—for absolutely nothing. This simple act of sharing, allowing anyone to use and build upon it freely, operates on a logic that should be horrifying to a pure capitalist. It stands as this beautiful, powerful rebellion against the conventional rules of how the…
Someone once showed me a secret to winning product debates in a company, even if it’s up against the CEO. One time one of my best designers was showing me a product design and I, as CEO, thought I knew a better solution. I’m sure we’ve all been in a meeting like that :) But this designer did something that made me stop and give in… Instead of arguing her point more…
Fellow leaders in tech, we need to look in the mirror. For years, we’ve lamented the absence of a true “builder culture” in our country. We’ve complained about risk-averse investors, insufficient government support, and a public that seems to derive more satisfaction from tearing down success than celebrating it. We’ve convinced ourselves that if only these external…