Published in The Startup·PinnedMember-onlyThree drawings I use to explain agileAnd the stories I tell about them — Sometime in grade school, I had an epiphany. I discovered that my memory for numbers, dates, and equations was average at best, but my memory for images and stories was fantastic. If I found a way to represent something visually there was a pretty good chance I would remember it…Agile5 min read
Published in Crypto Scribbles·Updated Aug 10, 2021Member-onlyYour crypto wallet isn’t what you think it isFour mental models to help you think about crypto’s building blocks and what conclusions you should draw from each. — The way we describe the world around us shapes the way we act and, most importantly for crypto, the mistakes we’re likely to make. Here are the four mental models that I use to describe crypto’s building blocks and what you can learn from each.Blockchain3 min read
Published in Crypto Scribbles·Jul 29, 2021Member-onlyHow do Automated Market Makers work?The decentralized trading platforms that are changing the face of financial markets — Part 1: Market creation and exchange rate mechanics In traditional markets, “market makers” are people who help make trades possible. They do this by maintaining an “order book” where they match buyers and sellers together when their preferred prices match. In exchange for keeping this book, market makers take a small fee. …Crypto4 min read
Published in Crypto Scribbles·Jul 15, 2021Member-onlyHow does Compound work?A visual guide to the lending protocol that’s putting banks out of business — Quick aside on how banks make money: Banks take the funds they hold and loan them out to others at an interest rate. When the loan is repaid, some of the interest goes to the bank’s depositors (the people who provided the money to lend). And some of the interest…Defi5 min read
May 27, 2021Member-onlyQuestions that product managers forget to ask50+ questions that are essential to remember but painfully easy to forget — for individual contributors to CPOs — Product management tends to attract people who are high ownership, who like to help, and who have a strong bias towards action. In many ways this personality cocktail is great. People with those this are fantastic at moving things forward. But that set of personality traits also can make it…Product Management3 min read
Published in Unstoppable Domains·Jan 16, 2021The Decentralized Web in 2021What we’re focusing on at Unstoppable Domains this year — Dear Unstoppable Community, What a year! Since we started on this journey in 2019 we’ve registered over 450,000 domains, helped launch nearly 30,000 decentralized websites, and signed partnerships with some of the biggest names in crypto. 2020 saw Coinbase, MEW, Gemini, Opera and many others join the Unstoppable community. We’re…Unstoppable Domains3 min read
Oct 20, 2020Why I’m Joining Unstoppable DomainsJust before sitting down to write this I stumbled across a brand new post by one of my favorite internet thinkers, Chris Dixon. In this post he says: “The most common mistake people make when evaluating new technologies is to focus too much on the “doing old things better” category…Blockchain2 min read
Published in Level Up Coding·Aug 25, 2020Member-onlyHow to bootstrap a nocode SaaS platform in 40 minutes or lessGo from zero to recurring revenue in less time than it takes to do your laundry (Stripe + Webflow) — When I started to build my latest project — a platform for personalized job alerts — I found myself in a predicament. I was planning to manage the delivery and support of the product over email so I didn’t need a very heavy app. All I needed was a landing…Startup8 min read
Jul 29, 2020Member-onlyHow long should OKRs last?Navigating the first stumbling block to writing great OKRs. — “How long should they last?” is one of the first questions that comes up when a team starts writing their OKRs. It’s not a hard question to answer, but it will take some thought (and maybe some experimentation) to get it right. There are two things you need to balance…Okr2 min read
Jun 24, 2020Member-onlyTwo simple analogies to explain Bitcoin and the Lightning NetworkWorld War II Salvage, Ponies, and the birth of a new financial system. — Bitcoin In 1952, a North Carolina man named Malcom McLean took out a $22 million dollar loan that would change the face of international commerce. With that loan, he bought a pair of WWII-era oil tankers. Over the coming months and years, Malcom gutted them. He ripped out baffles, braces, and…Bitcoin7 min read
