You don’t have to live like a monk, but it sure does help. — I’ve been going back and forth between San Francisco and Amsterdam for the last 7 years. For those of you not keeping track, there is a massive 9-hour time difference between the two cities. The jet lag is no joke. While it didn’t bother me at first, over the years…

Microsoft’s product line and track-record make it a natural fit for Figma. — Figma was always going to be acquired. Despite its outsized impact on the design world, it’s no Airbnb or Uber: a well known brand with a broad appeal. Instead, it’s a niche product with limited growth potential beyond its current user base. Going public has never been a viable option…

Computers will, and should, become better writers than humans. — If you told me 12 months ago that by the end of the year computers would write better prose than most adults I’d think you are out of your mind. In 2050 for sure, but today? No way. And yet here we are: OpenAI’s GPT-3 already writes so well that…

Partnering with Silicon Valley isn’t ideal but it might be the best choice for now. — Cars have changed a great deal over the last decade. Touchscreens, wireless connectivity, electric engines, cameras, and AI continue to transform every aspect of driving. Despite all the progress, though, the way we interact with our cars still leaves a lot to be desired. Voice commands are a hit-and-miss, touchscreen…

In order to succeed in social media you need more than mathematical equations. — It should not come as a surprise that Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a pioneer of space and motor industries, would think that he could run a social media company. It is not rocket science after all. Rocket science it is not, indeed. But that doesn’t mean social…

If Einstein didn’t keep a phone on his desk, maybe you don’t need to either. — In 1947 J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man best known for heading the Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II, accepted an offer to become the director of the prestigious Institute of Advance Study in Princeton, New Jersey. The overarching goal of his tenure there was to…

GreetBot is shutting down on August 16th, 2022. [Update: Loop HQ acquires GreetBot to continue offering the service.] — Update January 6th, 2023 Great news: We’ve closed the sale of Greetbot to Loop HQ and are excited to announce that the app will remain open and available under the new ownership. It has been an incredible honor to facilitate more than 5 million introductions across 14,000 Slack workspaces and…

The one thing that matters more than your new design is how you came up with it. — You’ve just finished working on a new design and you are about to pitch it to your team. You’ve been at it for days, obsessing about the tiniest details, getting stuck along the way and wanting to give up on it more often than you’d ever admit. Now that you’ve…

How startup life and the pandemic rekindled my passion for chess. — It was a gray, damp Sunday afternoon, one of the many such days in the Richmond District of San Francisco. I was working for the 7th day in a row, obsessed with fixing some obscure aspect of my startup’s website. As the afternoon wore on, though, and the caffeine kick…