What the product job actually is
It’s been a year since I formally took on the CPO role, and about a decade building products before that, so I wanted to share a few reflections.
The Ascending World
This is my personal blog, here I share thoughts on mindset, technology, progress, and the ascending world (amongst other things).
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You can’t A/B test your way to PMF
There is a quote by the founder of Notion about building new products that I’ve found myself coming back to:
2025 review
One of my favorite annual rituals is writing this review. It forces me to slow down, look back at what I actually accomplished, where my life is heading, and all the little things I tend to take for granted. I started doing this in 2023, kept it up last year, and I’m hoping you’ll enjoy the 2025 edition as much as I enjoy writing it.
The path to engineered luck
For years, I’ve tried to rationalize luck—to see if it’s something I could attract or engineer. In tech, people believe luck can be engineered. Just spend an hour on Twitter and you’ll see phrases like “maximize your surface area of luck,” “stay in the game long enough to get lucky,” “luck is when preparation meets opportunity,” and “expose yourself to asymmetric bets.” But these lines are usually…
The ascending world
The ascending world: forward-looking, expecting next year to be better by design, not by chance.
50 things I know #2
Last year, I published 50 Things I Know—lessons I’ve picked up over time. More notes to myself than advice for others. Since then, I’ve kept collecting. Here’s what I’ve learned since...
Sell something people want
These days, I spend most of my time building new products, but there was a stretch where go-to-market (GTM) was all I thought about.
Signal, noise, and clarity
Exceptional input, exceptional output
The gravity of hubs
If you study history, the pattern becomes obvious. The top people of any generation, artists, scientists, entrepreneurs, often knew each other. Sometimes, they were rivals. More often, they were friends. The gravity of excellence pulls people into proximity.
Addicted to the Maze
The startup maze is addictive because it offers emotional rewards you can’t get in safer environments. It satisfies something primal, a need to struggle meaningfully, to fight uncertainty, to push forward without a map.