work

Lately, I've been asked what it's like to work at a tech startup. I work at Akorda, a "legal-tech" startup selling a software-as-a-service product to corporate lawyers. We help lawyers analyze risk and streamline the negotiation of their sell-side contracts. Working at a small company—we're a team of 6 programmers—trying to disrupt an entire market is both fun and difficult. There are many unknowns. We need to move fast. User feedback causes constant plans and priority changes....

In an interview with Joe Rogan, David Goggins describes a time when he was invited to discuss the workings of the mind with a panel of experts at MIT. During the panel, a professor went on and on about how the mind works. All David could think was "You read a bunch of books and think you know how the mind f* works." Now, you've got to understand David and his choice of language....

Remote work came under the spotlight when COVID-19 turned into a pandemic earlier this year. But is it here to stay? Will our homes become our offices forever? Not too long ago, the idea of remote work seemed like a faraway dream for most knowledge workers. All but a few companies—Automattic, Basecamp, Gitlab, Buffer come to mind—already operated in a fully-remote fashion. But as Matt Wullenbeg said: "change happens slowly, then all at once"....

Last week we talked about "Small Tech". There is an alternative to pursuing growth at all costs. So much so that there are people and companies staying small on purpose. The canonical example of this is Basecamp, a tech company that has not taken outside investment for the past 15+ years, doesn't give its employees stocks and builds great products at their own pace. But there are many other examples, and not only in tech....