In 2014, Alan Kay was a guest lecturer in my programming languages class at the University of Toronto. I thought it was cool, but I definitely did not appreciate it as much as I should have. To this day, one of his infamous quotes still resonates with me: “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” A Pattern I Can’t Ignore With the new year, I’ve been reflecting on my career up until this point. ...
I’ve seen dozens of crypto projects fail. I’ve seen a handful of crypto companies succeed. To succeed, many hard things must align. To fail, only one key thing needs to go wrong. After nearly a decade in this space, one pattern repeats itself: the fastest path to failure is biasing toward idealism over pragmatism. I joined the industry for its ideals. It took years - and a few hard lessons - to unlearn them. ...
A Read Through On Venting I have a close friend to whom I vent every once in a while. He recently shared a post he wrote called On Venting. I immediately understood why he responds to all of my non-venting messages and pretends as if the vents never happened: When folks interact with me, I often skip past the emotional complaints. I like to think I do the following, but it’s probably only true half the time—at best: ...
Founders create problems. Operators solve them. I’ve met a lot of executives and CTOs who resonate with two things: They like to solve puzzles. They like to be given an end goal and just make it happen. The job of a founder is to identify opportunities (i.e. problems), set a vision for what a solution looks like, and build a team that’s enabled to get there. That idea, of course, comes with plenty of qualifiers and caveats. It simply defines a founder’s end goal, not their day-to-day. ...