Somewhere in the early 2000s, a software engineer at a small avatar-chat startup watched six months of work evaporate. His team had built an elaborate system for importing contacts from other messaging networks – the whole product hinged on the assumption that people would want to chat with their existing friends using 3D avatars. They’d…
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Nobody tells you, when you start a company, that the job is to become a stranger to yourself – not once, but five or six times over, on a schedule that has nothing to do with your readiness and everything to do with the organism you’ve built. The startup doesn’t care that you were good…
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I learned early that a face could be a weapon. Sixth of six children, I occupied the basement of the family hierarchy – everyone’s punching bag, no one beneath me to absorb the cascade. My siblings had refined the art of passing misery downward like a bucket brigade, and I stood at the end holding…
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