Most career advice treats networking like compound interest – just keep depositing connections into your account and watch wealth accumulate. Build relationships. Expand your circle. Never eat lunch alone. The advice isn’t wrong, exactly. It’s just radically incomplete. What nobody tells you is that some connections subtract. They drain energy, compromise judgment, or expose you…
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The first time someone steals your work, you remember the room. Mine had fluorescent lights that buzzed at a frequency just below conscious awareness and a conference table scarred by years of coffee rings. Nadya was presenting my distributed systems architecture to the board – not our architecture, not the team’s architecture, but hers. Three…
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The essay “Building Something New” maps the territory of company creation with all its contradictions – patterns that usually hold, except when they don’t. Principles that often apply, except when violating them works better. Mathematics that generally governs, except when exceptions prove more instructive than rules. That essay reveals the fundamental uncertainty at the heart…
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What happens when you build something from nothing? I’ve lived this question and been with many others who have – the companies that succeeded and the many more that failed. Certain patterns surface. Not the glossy narratives we tell at conferences, but uncomfortable realities that aren’t particularly inspiring. About ninety percent of attempts fail, but…
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