Build something to disagree with
A rough first version gives everyone the same thing to react to. Make ideas concrete before debating them.
Max Stoiber's Essays
CEO and co-founder of Stellate, creator of styled-components and react-boilerplate and angel investor in early-stage startups.
Latest posts
Save polish for where it matters
Internal communication should be clear and useful, not performatively polished.
How I get things done
The smallest project management setup I need: visible workstreams, one accountable owner, deadlines, status updates, and fast weekly demos.
How I run gratitude circles
Credit to Sue Ko who taught me this many years ago. Gratitude circles are a beautiful way to get team members feel seen by their peers. I run them in-person at least once a year with each of my teams. Quote from one of my engineers after their first ...
How to present to executives
1. Know all your details Know and be able to speak to all the details. Review your own work and ask yourself what somebody else might ask you about it, then make sure you have a solid answer to all those questions. Even things that are technically ou...
Message me whenever
Send me messages whenever inspiration strikes or when it makes sense for your workflow. I'll respond when I'm back online. This isn't about being "always on," quite the opposite: it's about respecting that we each know how to structure our own work l...
How I manage my todos as a CEO
Kanban board with five columns: Inbox, Backlog, Blocked, Delegated, Done Most importantly: GTD-style “if it takes less than 2 minutes, do it immediately.” Create todos for everything (and I mean, everything, including replying to people) that go in...
How to run recurring virtual meetings efficiently
Start with a checkin question for connection (10% of the meeting length) Capture decisions made Capture open action items and check in on open ones every time, otherwise they get lost/forgotten due to poor personal execution Align on discussion ...
How to have great taste
Taste is what differentiates the good from the great. So, how can I have better taste? This is my ongoing log of what I have learned.
How to be great at storytelling
The more my stories resonate, the higher the chance I will achieve my goals. So how can I better at it? These are the tips that have stuck with me.
How we make brainstorming work
Brainstorming usually fails. But, I noticed a pattern in the times that it worked exceptionally well. Here's how to make it work.
How do you invent the future?
Innovation happens by combining things we can see and touch today in novel ways. So how can we have more things to see and touch?
Being unreasonably responsive has made my projects more successful
Creators who respond to feedback quickly unlock two virtuous cycles that allow them to build better solutions more quickly.
Why I'm vigorous about giving feedback
Every day, you will find me hunting down a founder's email to send them feedback about my experience with their product. Why?
How to ship faster
Humans have the ability to get ambitious things done ridiculously fast. How can I get more things done quickly?
How to be better at making decisions
What can I do before, during, and after making decisions to be better at making them?
How I tend to my digital garden
My quests with this digital garden are to publish more and to have fun. Let's explore why I even have a digital garden and how it's going.
David Cain: Do Quests, Not Goals
I love this reframing from "goal" to "quest": "goals" feel like pressure, "quests" feel like excitement and adventure!
Deliberate practice beats every other form of training, even via transfer learning
Many people are doing deliberate practice wrong in one specific way though. The Brazilians are an example of what happens when you get it right.
How we foster deeper connections in our remote team
I believe that teams that are more connected perform better and that remote teams have worse connections. How can we improve that?
Why I don't compliment people for their talent
When people see somebody they perceive to be really good at something, they often say, “Wow, they are so talented!” I think that’s a bullshit compliment.
How can you slow down life? (which is perceptually half over by 23)
Childhood memories seem endless because they were filled with constant discovery. Learning new things can potentially slow our internal sense of time.
1:1s are for personal connection, not project updates
My 1:1s are unusual. Here's why.
Developer tools startups are playing on hard mode
How do you build a business selling tools to people who can technically build anything you can?
Developer tools are different than tools for any other profession
We developers build our own “commercial-grade” tools every day. On top of that, sharing one of these abstractions with the entire world takes git push!
You probably don't need GraphQL
It might be surprising to hear the co-founder of a GraphQL company say you probably don't need it. Let me explain.
Why I Love Tailwind
Why Tailwind is blowing up, why I (the creator of styled-components) love it and how I avoid the downsides of atomic CSS.
Margin considered harmful
We should ban margin from our React components. Hear me out.
I am joining Gatsby
I am joining Gatsby to work on open source R&D projects including Blocks, the visual editor for React apps, theme-ui, mdx and Gatsby themes! 🎉
Why I Write CSS in JavaScript
For three years, I have written all my CSS in JavaScript. In fact, I am the creator of styled-components, one of the most popular CSS-in-JS libraries. Let me explain why.
Tech Choices I Regret at Spectrum
Spectrum is an open source chat app for large online communities. With the benefit of hindsight, here are the technology choices I regret.
Streaming Server-Side Rendering and Caching
We recently implemented streaming server-side rendering and caching for Spectrum, here is how