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.”

Nick on metabolic health, nutrition, and brain healthCarnivore IBD case series, Frontiers in Nutrition and harvard MD, Oxford PhD, Dartmouth valedictorian.

Zack on a post-AI worldBuilt OpenAI's sales and partnerships teams and honorary Dean, HKUST AI Leadership School.

Soleio on designing products people love“Good design starts with knowing what matters. If your team can’t agree on the problem, polishing the interface won’t fix it.”

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

Kyle on what revenue leaders look for when they hireHead of Revenue, Shopify Canada and grew Owner.com $3M to $21M ARR.

Tiago on turning knowledge into action“Saving information isn’t the goal. Organize it around what you’re trying to accomplish, so the ideas you collect become things you actually create.”

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.”

Joshua on hiring an operations manager before you feel ready“Hiring my first employee scared me because it felt like a massive expense, but I learned your first hire should be operations, not another you.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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

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.”

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.”

Elena on when product-led growth needs salesLed growth at Miro, Amplitude, Dropbox, SurveyMonkey and head of Growth at Lovable.

Julian on using a system to curb phone distractions“I don't try to restart at full speed; I drop back to the mínimo viable version of each habit until the momentum returns, because a 20-minute workout and one focused block on the side project beats another day of zero.”

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.”