Bret Stephens says never write with AI. Reid Hoffman says judge the work, not the tool. I'm with Reid, and the argument Stephens is making has been made about every writing technology we've ever invented.
I finished A Parade of Horribles (book 8 of Dungeon Crawler Carl) on my run today. I laughed out loud when the AI said the title of this post. I’ve savored this series for the past eight months, listening to about one a month on Audible while I run. If you don’t know this series, the setup is that an alien corporation destroys every man-made structure on Earth, drops the survivors into a dungeon, and broadcasts the whole thing as the most popular game show in the galaxy. The protagonist, Carl, goes down in his boxers and no shoes because he ran outside chasing his ex-girlfriend’s cat Donut. The cat comes with him and becomes the co-protagonist.
A month ago I opened up Zero Knowledge, the crypto-thriller I'm co-writing with my AI. There are twenty chapters now, a cast page, a plate for every chapter, and a pile of reader notes I'm grateful for.
Zero Knowledge, the crypto-thriller I'm co-writing with my AI, now has a home at zeroknowledge.ink. Six chapters are live, you can mark up any sentence, and the whole thing is being built in the open.
Josh Baer, the founder and CEO of Capital Factory and the godfather of Austin's startup scene, died last night in a plane crash. He was my friend and I'm sad today.
I've written about the Rule of 40 since 2015, and it's now gospel in SaaS. Does it mean anything for a company that makes physical things? Yes - but you have to read the curve, not the snapshot.
I’ve written or co-written nine non-fiction books. I have no clue if I can write a novel. Non-fiction is “I know a thing, I researched a thing, and here’s the thing.” You don’t have to make anyone care about people who don’t exist. The characters are real and the lessons are the point. Fiction is something totally different. Nobody owes your made-up CTO their attention. As a novelist, you have to earn it on every page.
I’m good friends with Phil Weiser and Michael Bennet. I think the world of both of them. So let me start with the easy part. Colorado is going to be in good hands regardless of who wins the Democratic primary on June 30th. Whoever wins is highly likely to be our next governor, and they’ll be a smart, decent, and hardworking person in the job. I’ve spent real time with both Phil and Michael over many years. I’d be glad to have either one as governor of Colorado.
Eric von Hippel was my doctoral advisor at MIT. I didn’t finish the Ph.D. - I dropped out - but Eric stuck with me through all of it, more as a mentor than an academic. Around 1978, Eric said something that was radical at the time. “Innovation comes from users, not manufacturers.” Today that sounds obvious. You read it and think “yeah, uh huh.” In 1978 it was heresy. The entire model of how products got made assumed the manufacturer was the source of the idea and the user was the recipient. Eric spent the next 48 years building the academic foundation underneath the opposite claim, along with a worldwide research community to go with it.
A summer weekend in Aspen - close friends, a gloriously bad movie, running again, and Phin Argofy quietly going autonomous in the work cave.