On June 23, 1868, the first typewriter patent was granted — but the machine that eventually put QWERTY in everyone’s hands almost didn’t get made at scale. The company that pulled it off wasn’t a printer or a publisher. It was a firearms manufacturer in trouble. Matt digs into how Remington, struggling after the Civil War dried up its business, reinvented itself around the typewriter, and why the least obvious partner turned out to be the perfect one.

That history opens up a sharper question for anyone building something: most of us go looking for partners who can send us business. Matt makes the case that this is exactly the trap. The better lens is asking who’s remaking themselves right now — and where their reinvention happens to overlap with what you do. (Case in point: the viral shoe brand that just rebranded itself into an AI company.) It’s a short, practical reframe on why the best partnerships start with intention rather than extraction.

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