After advising 50+ consumer companies over the last year, the one thing that separates those who can execute and those who can't:
Having a full-time designer in the room at all times
I've met with countless companies that have raised millions—and even one that has raised billions—that do not even have a designer on payroll.
This makes product development broken:
1/ You simply cannot have constructive conversations about ideas without visualizing them in real-time
2/ Your experiments will frequently have inconclusive results because users cannot discover features or they misunderstand how they work
3/ There is no one who can galvanize the team with a vision of what the product could look and feel like
And to be abundantly clear: I'm not referring to visual UI or graphics. I'm talking about someone who can think through the fundamental building blocks of product comprehension—like navigation, interaction and copywriting—and is technically savvy enough to visualize those components in high resolution.
There can certainly be exceptions to not having a designer, like where the CEO is an exceptional visual thinker, but that does not scale beyond a small team.
At the end of day, products live and die in the pixels: it's what the users see and tap. And without someone shepherding that process, you are effectively wandering the desert blind.
So prompt engineers learned English is imprecise for coding and started using stricter syntax. I wonder how long it will take before they come full circle and land back at programming languages again.
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Announcing https://t.co/FAZQ1Bpe7T - the open standard for Agent Companies
Import and run entire companies with a single command
Just run `npx https://t.co/FAZQ1Bpe7T add <repo/company>`
More 👇
I think we’re seeing the beginnings of a genuinely new art form here.
Tellingly, social media mostly hates it. That tells you there’s something important here. Audiences are reacting to a quantity outside their experience. Most don’t “get” it yet. But it feels fresh
We finally have something new in modern art after many decades of relatively stagnation. Art doesn’t feel “stuck” anymore. That’s exciting
I spend a lot of time talking to startup founders.
the private conversations right now are blunt:
there is a material cost to their life's central ambition in speaking out right now.
there is capital that will become inaccessible.
talent they'll never win.
customers that they'll lose.
they'll have a target on their backs drawn by ascendant power that disregards civility and law alike.
but building a company is not a game for the cowardly. if the people whose entire life is about embracing risk aren't willing to speak up when fundamental freedoms are on the line, who will?
what is that fountain of agency worth in a country that rejects individual freedoms? america won the space race for a reason. authoritarian countries do not innovate.
and so the conclusion is clear. the cost of speaking out is high, but the cost of not speaking out is higher. the moment demands courage.
The amount of crap I get for putting out a hobby project for free is quite something.
People treat this like a multi-million dollar business. Security researchers demanding a bounty.
Heck, I can barely buy a Mac Mini from the Sponsors.
It's supposed to inspire people. And I'm glad it does.
And yes, most non-techies should not install this.
It's not finished, I know about the sharp edges.
Heck, it's not even 3 months old.
And despite rumors otherwise, I sometimes sleep.
Carney: "American hegemony in particular helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security ... this bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition ... recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as a weapon. Tariffs as leverage ... "
every guy who was in the tea party, buying rifles to prepare for government overreach, is now telling you utter servility to masked agents of the state is necessary or your life is forfeit
these people have no coherent political beliefs. they are just angry chuds drunk on epistemically closed algorithmic feeds that make them hate the next thing