Find people who've been there

Nir on why we reach for our phones without deciding to“Your brain has learned that opening social media relieves a quick pang of boredom, loneliness, or uncertainty, so it now cues the habit before you consciously decide.”

Lorraine on getting noticed for your work“Doing great work doesn’t guarantee recognition. Make your impact easy to explain so people can advocate for you when you’re not in the room.”

Guillermo on building Vercel and Next.js“The best things we've done for our brand is the things that we did without thinking we're working on our brand.”

Kevin on two months of runway and what to do next“I spent 14 months in the desert with Circles and almost every time I thought a breakthrough was coming, it wasn't, but staying in the game turned out to be the whole game.”

Suzanne on what happens behind closed doors in a layoff“I've personally been involved in laying off well over a thousand people, and the part no one talks about is how fast the dignity gets stripped away: one minute you're trusted, the next a manager you've never met is reading you a script while someone cuts your computer access.”

Kit on cutting a huge to-do list to three big things“I used to write forty-item lists and call it ambition, but it was just avoidance dressed as hard work.”

Matthew on finding the right partner“You want to be happy enough that the right thing doesn’t become your everything.”

Andrej on how far we are from AGILed Tesla Autopilot computer vision team and founding member of OpenAI.

Omar on what to figure out before quitting for a side project“I went all in only after my side hustle matched my salary on half the hours, because once it had legs, the real unknown became whether I could build systems instead of just doing the work myself.”

Jeffrey on why treating symptoms is the wrong place to start“Symptoms are late signals, not first causes. In chronic illness the biology starts drifting years before a diagnosis. If you start at the symptom, you are downstream. You may mute the alarm without finding the fire. The body is a network, so ask what shifted in the person's story and physiology that made the symptom possible, then address that.”

Austin on turning buying signals into pipelineRaised $40M Series B and customers: Cursor, Perplexity, Flock Safety.

Pedro on where machine learning is headed“The same basic paradigms have been used since the 1950s. At the end of the day, we’re going to need some new ideas.”

Jim on enjoying competition when teammates are more intense“I stopped enjoying baseball when I was chasing what everyone else valued, and I found my game again only when I started competing to raise my own level, not to beat theirs.”

Brian on scaling a company“The leadership style that gets you to ten employees won’t get you to a thousand. Your company can’t evolve unless you do.”

Kathryn on negotiating higher pay and getting it“I watched my own mom retire dramatically underpaid after 30 years, so I teach women to frame the ask around what they’ve already delivered and what they’ll deliver next, not just what they need.”

Nyree on why you crash at 2 p.m. after a full night's sleep“Eight hours in bed means nothing if your brain never entered deep restorative sleep, and by 2 p.m. your adenosine tank is still full from incomplete overnight clearance.”

Vanessa on sexual expectations couples never say out loud“I don't believe in a universal normal for any stage, but I do think it's completely natural for that early honeymoon frequency to taper off after about a year.”

Vinod on which jobs AI will replaceLed KV's first OpenAI investment and juniper Networks: 2,500x return.

Codie on buying businesses and building wealth“You don’t need a revolutionary idea to build wealth. You need a business people already pay for, and the skills to run it better.”

Nir on the science of living longer“To delay the biology of aging, we don't prevent just one disease, we prevent many of them. We used to think each age-related disease was separate, but they share common roots. Longevity becomes a side effect of staying healthy longer.”