Build is a book that came to my attention through Papertrail. It looks to be in line with some other books I have read about startups, business, and software development. I look forward to building on that foundation and will read with a particular eye toward what we are currently doing at Biblish. - This book, on xiii suggests exactly what Claire Hughes does in Scaling People. They both propose that the book is to be perused and used specifically, rather than read through. Christopher Alexander says the same about The Timeless Way of Building, coincidentally, and he provides italicized portions that can be read in the matter of a few hours if the reader does not have the time to dedicate to the book as a whole.
Based on my own experience coming out of college, a better model for writers, I believe, is encouraging collective publishing initiatives. Absent direct personal or professional connections to decision makers in publishing institutions that pre-date the writing, the process of writing a book and then attempting to get representation is an inherently batch and queue process, meaning that is inherently wasteful, and there is a lack of small feedback loops that improve the writer's work. I learned this for myself, and Biblish is, in part, an effort to formalize this insight and make it easier to act upon.
A quick look at the wikipedia reveals Tony Fadell to be another member of the Midwest to West Coast tech diaspora. The Big Score is littered with similar examples, of which Bill Hewlett is likely the most consequential.
My twenties were a blur. They saw the composition of two novels, and subsequently their publication, the start of The Rialto Books Review as a regularly released quarterly literary journal, the production of a play, the failure to produce more, and the starts of what is now Biblish. I worked dedicatedly, albeit naively, and I was, to all but a few persons, a failure. The adages expressed on this page, however, I find to be true, and the more direct experience you have in them, the truer and more rife with potential they seem. They can be interpreted. Risk tolerance comes at the expense of dignity. A literary life, especially, offers a few more complications on what is suggested here, as there is no marketable skill to speak of, no institutions in which these skills can be safely plied, but really the attempt at walking on water only teaches you to swim.
Ultimately, writing should be as dynamic as the tech industry, perhaps not financially, but certainly creatively. It was once. In the German speaking world in the first half of the 20th century, a career in writing was the first effort, and the desired outcome, by the sons and daughters of bankers and businesspeople. The class that did not become fluent in risk taking, but who were conventionally successful, wanted writing to be the risk their children took, much like parents in traditional industries today might like their kids to start a tech company. American writing is, at present, simply not as creative as the technology sector. My belief is that this is in large part the result of horrible literary and publishing institutions and the culture within those institutions.
This is advice I am acting on presently. 👋 Tony!
I cannot imagine work in a 300,000 person company. I do not yet have a good intuition about scale and investment. Our team is small, our company privately funded, but the scale of the financial investment in something like Substack produces a difference in the end product that seems negligible. I am certain I will learn what else is going on behind the scenes that necessitates the investment as we grow. Some of the lessons on this front I expect to be painful. If my lead developer was not as adept as he is, then I might appreciate this disparity more.
One comes across the notion that downplays Apple's success by saying there were products that did everything the iPhone could do prior to the iPhone. It's interesting to know that some of the people responsible for those precursors then went on to contribute to the iPhone and help establish its dominance. People frame this criticism of the iPhone like we all got swindled, but this marginalizes the reality that the iPhone, and its improvements over precursors, was the result of many of those same people finally getting it right.
A few notes were deleted because I worked across multiple tabs, but I recreate them in the pages that follow. A 10/10 hire for Biblish would be someone who is deeply curious about the act and habit of reading and how our product influences reading, ideally because they are an avid reader themselves. Many fine products have been built by people who simply implement features and learn from data on how people use it. Curiosity about the esoteric motivations can, in the interactions between employees, and in how it influences their work, increase the likelihood that something special is achieved.
The same note on hiring applies to promotion.
I think this is making a similar point as The Lean Startup. Data has to be utilized in concert with well-reasoned hypothesis about the business.
A whole world I have yet to consider, because Biblish is still exciting and new, is the emotions that people go through as the company changes or stagnates, fails or succeeds. Seeing people through those experiences will require the development of a new skillset.
The title of this chapter calls to mind a notion I frequently apply when considering Biblish's mission of making a home for literature in the 21st Century. That is to make the implicit explicit. As a reader, I know there is an implicit benefit to reading, but convincing others of this good is not easy. Instead, you can design a system where the implicit good is manifested in features and encouragements.
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Podcast mentioned in footnote - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tony-fadell-on-learning-to-see-telling-stories-being/id1456824325?i=1000526374831