One of the basic mechanics of tech over the past few decades has been that we tend to start with special-purpose components, but then over time we replace them with general-purpose components. When pe
Jeff Bezos, chief executive officer of Amazon.com Inc. Photographer: Mike Kane/Bloomberg Visit the office of Amazon’s head of Devices, Dave Limp, and you may get an offer to look at a piece of corpora
It hasn’t been a great couple of years for Neil Woodford — and it has been just as miserable for the people who have entrusted money to his investment funds. Mr Woodford was probably the most celebrat
Last October, we announced that we'd partnered with Kickstarter to start a new project to succeed Drip, their subscription platform for independent artists. Unfortunately, we’ve decided to cancel the
Published inPodfund · 3 min read· May 7, 2019 -- We’re incredibly excited to announce the launch of Podfund. Jake Shapiro has written an excellent post outlining our inspiration and vision, so I thoug
Ringer illustration Instagram has long been an unofficial shopping platform, where people (i.e., me) can purchase useless stuff (i.e., novelty winged cat pins) while tipsily scrolling through their fe
Almost as suddenly as the electric rent-a-scooters appeared, everyone had an opinion about them. They began clogging sidewalks across the Bay Area in late 2017 ($1 to start!) as brands with four-lette
Whether you’re hiring your first or hundredth engineer, you can build a hiring pipeline to discover, interview, and recruit quality candidates at scale. We’re here to help with every step: Background
I always liked writing. In the fifth grade, I wrote a dark, brooding story about a rat in a dungeon. My teacher liked it so much she read it in front of the class. At first I was embarrassed, but afte
Published inDesign at Meta · 11 min read· Feb 24, 2016 -- I come to Facebook to share all kinds of things with people I care about — from celebratory posts about practicing yoga for 60 days straight,
Colin Kroll, a college dropout turned startup millionaire, drifted through his company’s holiday party at Gran Morsi, a cozy Italian restaurant in downtown Manhattan. Dressed in a gray sweater and jea
published February 10th, 2019 This week’s essay is on on how to interview an executive, though it may also be helpful to read when preparing to be interviewed. From day 1, one of the most important jo
11 min read · Jan 16, 2019 -- We recently celebrated a decade (!) of building Thumbtack so I’m sharing a few hard-fought lessons from growing a startup to $1B. To set some context… A decade ago: Thumb
In August, an analyst for a little-known U.S. startup called NewsGuard tried to contact the editors of the Daily Mail Online, the U.K.-based news and celebrity-gossip site that ranks as one of the int
If you remove the societal impact, just for a moment, the story of publishers’ demise — first newspapers, and now digital-only companies like BuzzFeed and Huffington Post, which both announced signifi
2 min read· Jan 16, 2019 -- Today, Techstars announced a new initiative called Techstars Studio which will allow Techstars to source new company concepts from Techstars alumni founders, community lead
Feedback, performance reviews, appraisals. A collective shiver just went down all of your spines. These words are so highly politicized in today's work environments it's no wonder people can't stand t
Getty Images A conversation with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey can be incredibly disorienting. Not because he’s particularly clever or thought-provoking, but because he sounds like he should be. He takes lo
There’s this great moment in the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011) when the world’s most celebrated sushi chef turns to his son, who is leaving to start his own restaurant, and says: ‘You have n
Are You There, User? It’s Me, Facebook! Social platforms want to run the world. But look how they treat your email. By Dec. 24, 2018 A fellow worker (at a store in the greater metro Manila area) check
Be careful not to throw your weight around without knowing it. Yesterday I was in a board meeting for a company I advise. Great group, strong business, profitable, all the good stuff. But the owner-CE
I’ve been pestering Apple for years publicly and privately about the manipulation and outright scams going on in the App Store. Apple has made some progress here and there, but overall Apple’s strictn
Weekend Investor The father of the index fund says it’s probably only a matter of time before they own half of all U.S. stocks; ‘I do not believe that such concentration would serve the national inter
Simon Landrein When Microsoft leapfrogged Apple last month to become the world’s most valuable company, the symbolism was rich, given the pair’s i... Already a subscriber? Sign In
For the system at work, I am on call one week every seven weeks. For most of the past ten years, I have been on organized on call rotations for the systems I have been developing. I think being on cal
I'm not going to sit here and blame kevin or anything, I don't think anyone could have seen this coming (except maybe Ted Kaczynski), but instagram turns us into a hyper-specialized version of ourselves. People are reduced to a single identity Do you love to travel? Do you love photography? What…
Yesterday the Supreme Court held a hearing in the case Apple Inc. v. Pepper. “Pepper” is Robert Pepper, an Apple customer who, along with three other plaintiffs, filed a class action lawsuit alleging
More than graphic design, typography is an expression of technology, precision and good order. Typography is no longer concerned with meeting the lofty and difficult demands of art but with satisfying
Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis Facebook has gone on the attack as one scandal after another — Russian meddling, data sharing, hate speech — has led to a congress
December 8, 2012 To climb or not to climb Cotopaxi, that has been our question. Arriving to the city of Latacunga, gateway to Ecuador’s greatest climbing and high mountain hiking opportunities, we dec
Facebook, believe it or not, has actually made virtual reality better, at least from one perspective. My first VR device was PlayStation VR, and the calculus was straightforward: I owned a PS4 and did
I've long believed that the design of your software has a profound impact on how users behave within your software. But there are two sides to this story: Encouraging the "right" things by making thos
With Discourse, it was clear that we needed to totally reboot the software to create next-generation forum software. But code is only part of the story. Any reasonable attempt at delivering a Civilize
What are the real world consequences to signing up for a Twitter or Facebook account through Tor and spewing hate toward other human beings? Facebook reviewed the comment I reported and found it doesn
One of my favorite insights on the subject of online community is from Tom Chick: Here is something I've never articulated because I thought, perhaps naively, it was understood: The priority for parti
Tech Gates describes the moment Allen showed him a new computer called the Altair 8800, which marked the end of Gates’s college career and the beginning of Microsoft Updated Oct. 18, 2018 11:23 am ET
Tech The kingdom is now the largest single investor for U.S. startups, an unsettling fact for Silicon Valley Updated Oct. 16, 2018 1:50 pm ET Turkish officials say a team of alleged Saudi assassins ap
Amazon’s ‘Rekognition’ program shouldn’t be used as a tool for mass surveillance 4 min read· Oct 16, 2018 -- Photo: Matt Cardy/Getty The authenticity of the following anonymous op-ed has been verified
J F C Fuller did not invent the tank. That distinction should probably fall to E L de Mole, an Australian who approached the British war office in 1912 with a design that was — in the words of histori