The Swyx Mixtape

Story source: http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html

The Egg

By: Andy Weir

You were on your way home when you died.

It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.

And that’s when you met me.

“What… what happened?” You asked. “Where am I?”

“You died,” I said, matter-of-factly. No point in mincing words.

“There was a… a truck and it was skidding…”

“Yup,” I said.

“I… I died?”

“Yup. But don’t feel bad about it. Everyone dies,” I said.

You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me. “What is this place?” You asked. “Is this the afterlife?”

“More or less,” I said.

“Are you god?” You asked.

“Yup,” I replied. “I’m God.”

“My kids… my wife,” you said.

“What about them?”

“Will they be all right?”

“That’s what I like to see,” I said. “You just died and your main concern is for your family. That’s good stuff right there.”

You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn’t have time to grow contempt for you. Your wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved. To be fair, your marriage was falling apart. If it’s any consolation, she’ll feel very guilty for feeling relieved.”

“Oh,” you said. “So what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?”

“Neither,” I said. “You’ll be reincarnated.”

“Ah,” you said. “So the Hindus were right,”

“All religions are right in their own way,” I said. “Walk with me.”

You followed along as we strode through the void. “Where are we going?”

“Nowhere in particular,” I said. “It’s just nice to walk while we talk.”

“So what’s the point, then?” You asked. “When I get reborn, I’ll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my experiences and everything I did in this life won’t matter.”

“Not so!” I said. “You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all your past lives. You just don’t remember them right now.”

I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders. “Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It’s like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it’s hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the experiences it had.

“You’ve been in a human for the last 48 years, so you haven’t stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for long enough, you’d start remembering everything. But there’s no point to doing that between each life.”

“How many times have I been reincarnated, then?”

“Oh lots. Lots and lots. An in to lots of different lives.” I said. “This time around, you’ll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD.”

“Wait, what?” You stammered. “You’re sending me back in time?”

“Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from.”

“Where you come from?” You said.

“Oh sure,” I explained “I come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And there are others like me. I know you’ll want to know what it’s like there, but honestly you wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh,” you said, a little let down. “But wait. If I get reincarnated to other places in time, I could have interacted with myself at some point.”

“Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own lifespan you don’t even know it’s happening.”

“So what’s the point of it all?”

“Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously? You’re asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”

“Well it’s a reasonable question,” you persisted.

I looked you in the eye. “The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature.”

“You mean mankind? You want us to mature?”

“No, just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect.”

“Just me? What about everyone else?”

“There is no one else,” I said. “In this universe, there’s just you and me.”

You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on earth…”

“All you. Different incarnations of you.”

“Wait. I’m everyone!?”

“Now you’re getting it,” I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back.

“I’m every human being who ever lived?”

“Or who will ever live, yes.”

“I’m Abraham Lincoln?”

“And you’re John Wilkes Booth, too,” I added.

“I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.

“And you’re the millions he killed.”

“I’m Jesus?”

“And you’re everyone who followed him.”

You fell silent.

“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”

You thought for a long time.

“Why?” You asked me. “Why do all this?”

“Because someday, you will become like me. Because that’s what you are. You’re one of my kind. You’re my child.”

“Whoa,” you said, incredulous. “You mean I’m a god?”

“No. Not yet. You’re a fetus. You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born.”

“So the whole universe,” you said, “it’s just…”

“An egg.” I answered. “Now it’s time for you to move on to your next life.”

And I sent you on your way.

Packy is a self described "narrative investor" and so does not do anything remotely close to objective analysis. But his is still a nice recap of what Twitter has done recently and could continue to do.

You can catch Twitter's Revival, Pt. 1 with Kayvon Beykpour, Twitter's head of consumer product, here.

Audio Source: https://www.notboring.co/p/how-twitter-got-its-groove-back

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How Twitter Got Its Groove Back

2020 was a good year for Twitter. Since Elliott Management and Silver Lake took board seats in March, $TWTR is up 94%. As of Q3, the company had 187 million monetizable Daily Active Users (mDAU) up 29% from the previous year. For context, Facebook grew DAUs by 12% over the same period, albeit off a much higher base. 

At the start of the pandemic, Twitter decided to prioritize its revenue products, and after a slow Q2 due to the pandemic, the company roared back. Revenue grew 14% YoY to $936 million in Q3, smashing estimates. Twitter has mostly focused on brand advertising to date, but aided by the rebuild of its ad server, it has started rolling out direct response ad formats, and will launch a new Mobile Application Promotion offering this year. It’s also working on tools to let SMBs better self-serve ads, overhauling what has traditionally been an absolutely terrible product. 

It might be working, too. Last night, @nongaap highlighted a few ads during the Super Bowl that seem more targeted, timely, and relevant than anything I’ve ever seen on Twitter. 

If Twitter finally gets ads right, that’s a huge tailwind, but the most exciting thing about Twitter is that it’s started making moves against the Fantasy Jack Twitter Roadmap. 

• Verification. After nearly four years of letting verification languish, shrouded in uncertainty, Twitter announced in November that it’s bringing back its verification program. It will keep its focus on organizations and influential individuals for now, and isn’t moving all the way towards verifying all real people and companies, but it’s a step in the right direction that shows it’s listening to users. 
• Subscription Products. While Twitter hasn’t launched any subscription products yet, it has publicly announced that it’s planning to, and that it’s being more thoughtful about it than the Prof. At the Oppenheimer Technology, Internet, and Communications Conference in August, CFO Ned Segal said: 

Notice that he didn’t mention Kim Kardashian’s 69 million followers once, but he did highlight Creators. 

• Products for Creating, Sharing, and Monetizing Ideas. This is where Twitter has gotten most aggressive recently. Let’s break it out. 

In If I Ruled the Tweets, we suggested that Twitter should build or acquire products for newsletter creation, podcast consumption, and audio-only rooms, among other things. After years of soporific product development, they’re actually starting to make moves! 

In December, Twitter acquired social screen-sharing app Squad and announced the launch of Spaces, its answer to audio-chat unicorn Clubhouse. Spaces lets Twitter users host conversations directly within the app, and the Squad team will work on the product. 

In early January, Twitter acquired Breaker, a social podcasting app, to help build Spaces. Then, two weeks ago, on January 25th, Twitter acquired newsletter platform Revue. 

Combined, these moves point to a more confident Twitter, that, election behind it and Trump out of its hair, is focused on the future. It is going to build Creator-focused products and diversify its revenue streams. The pieces are starting to come together. 

Twitter’s Creator Bundle

With the launch of Twitter Spaces and the acquisition of Revue, Twitter is building a Creator ecosystem in which it keeps some of the value it creates. It’s competing with two hot, a16z-backed startups, Clubhouse and Substack, to own the conversation and the associated monetization opportunities. I think it will win the newsletter wars, which will give it a leg up in the audio wars. 

When Twitter acquired Revue, Ben Thompson wrote about the acquisition, calling it “the sm...

For the record, I don't own any crypto art or endorse it. But there's clearly a movement, Dylan is constantly ahead of the rest of us, and this was a great speech.

• Audio source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb5LapixLbk (59 mins in)
• The sale: https://twitter.com/cryptopunksbot/status/1369812648288804865/photo/1
• Vincenzo Peruggia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincenzo_Peruggia
• Peruggia's statement: https://twitter.com/peruggia_v/status/1370258347341934593
• Dylan's comments: https://twitter.com/zoink/status/1370649011821060097

Help share this clip: https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1371913108684349441

Sriram Krishnan: [00:00:00] Dylan Field is really very well known in our industry for being the founder and CEO of Figma. But what a lot of people may not know is he's been involved with crypto and especially CryptoPunks since the very beginning, which I think in some ways could be the beginning of where a lot of this art moment came from, and Dylan, you had quite the interesting week too, which I'll let you describe.

So can you talk to us about just crypto art, CryptoPunks? You know, your profile picture, your history there, and also what happened this year. 

Dylan Field: [00:00:31] So for those who don't know, CryptoPunks was the first Ethereum crypto art project. It was created in 2017 by two visionary artists, Matt hall, and John Watkinson.

There are only 10,000 CryptoPunks, which anyone could claim for free in the early days. And of those 10,000 CryptoPunks. There are only 88 zombie punks, 24 apes, nine aliens, and exactly one alien punk smoking a pipe. His name is 7804. And I personally believe that in 100 years, we'll look back on 7804 as the Mona Lisa of digital art.

My relationship with 7804 started in January, 2018. When I bought it for 12 ETH, or 15 K USD. At that point, most CryptoPunks traded for about $100 or $200. So why would I pay 15 K for this picture of an alien? It wasn't just how rare it was though. It was rare. 7804 compelled me.

It had gravitas. I found it to be absolutely magnetic and I had a sense that others out there would feel the same way. I also believe that the question of "what is art" would propel the crypto art movement forward. 

So: what is art and what does it mean to own art? What does it mean to have relationship with art in the case of crypto punks?

The answers to all these questions are unclear, which is part of why I personally find the project so, so fascinating. Let's start with "what is art". You might say that crypto punks art piece is the algorithm. Matt and John used generate images. Or we might claim that the art piece is each individual punk. I personally believe that the actual art piece is the CryptoPunks community, which has been feverously speculating on and trading punks and discussing funds over the past three and a half years.

And this might sound absurd to people listening, but many of us in the community have formed deep relationships with our punks. We set them to our avatars. We discuss them ad nauseum. We even dream about them. The punks become deeply intertwined with our identities. They effectively function as mass.

So why I sell 7804? To be completely honest is because I wanted to see 7804 become the Patron Saint of digital art, or perhaps the patron alien, if you will. It bothered me that it was not universally acknowledged that 7804 was the best, most valuable crypto punk. It bothered me that it was not a symbol for the entire crypto art movement.

And there's a paradox because 7804 can not be seen as the symbol for the crypto art movement, unless it changes hands. So I priced it at 4,200 ETH, which was extremely aggressive. It's still a believable price point for someone who resonated with 7804, as much as I did, knowing that it was bought for that price point, it would bring even more attention to her defense, to the project.

And also the 7804 as a piece of art. 7804 was purchased earlier this week by a mysterious figure known only as Peruggia. Peruggia is of course a reference to Vincenzo Peruggia who stole the Mona Lisa on August 21st 1911 and this theft was heavily covered in the news and made the Mona Lisa, the most known piece of art in the world. Since purchasing 7804 Peruggia has made a beautiful statement on Twitter, which I encourage all of you to read.

And I, as I reflect on it,, 7804 has been surprisingly emotional for me, which I think speaks to its power. It's emotional not because I think I could get more money from it, rather because I had a relationship with the work. As I reflected on that sale. I also felt a very deep bond. To Peruggia, the new owner of 7804 and I don't know who it is. I don't know what their gender is or what ethnicity they are or they live. But I have finally found someone who appreciate 7804 as much as I do. So with that it's time for me to change my mask. 

Sriram Krishnan: [00:04:30] This is like an Apple keynote.

Dylan Field: [00:04:34] Hopefully it's updated for all of you. If you're out there listening, enjoy your time with 7804, but please know that owning 7804 is a paradox and possibly a curse. Because if you appreciate 7804 as much as I do, then you'll stop at nothing to make sure it's seen by everyone as the most valuable piece of digital art.

And because of that, your time will be limited with it. And when you sell, which you will, you will forever live with the question of why you parted ways with the Digital Mona Lisa.

Sriram Krishnan: [00:05:19] That was fantastic, man.

Interview source with Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/22319527/twitter-kayvon-beykpour-interview-consumer-product-decoder

Kayvon Beykpour's impressive CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kayvon-beykpour-2b264b4/

The growth of Topics

Again, we didn’t release that at our Analyst Day event, we just gave an update on it and shared some of the substantial progress. In Q3 of this last year, we announced that there are 70 million people that have followed topics. And then just yesterday, we announced that there now are over 100 million people that have followed topics. So a pretty good clip of growth. And we’re seeing really promising signs that Topics is a really useful way for people to connect to their interests.

Reticence Taking Big Bets

So that’s one that I think was somewhat ingrained in the culture. Which is difficult. It’s difficult for PMs, engineers, designers who really want to push and evolve the product to come up against an organizational resistance that is not tuned to take big, speculative bets.

And really, unwinding that, I think, has been the biggest unlock that we’ve had as a company. Today, when we contemplate solving more ambitious customer problems and in turn, postulating more ambitious product solutions, we don’t get the “no, but” as much. Every once in a while, there’s pessimism around, “oh, can we pull that off?” But we get way more of a “yes, and” vibe, and a willingness, and a patience for terrifying, ambitious bets. Whereas three years ago, any idea you would come up with, there was just a lot of pessimism around — that’s going to take a long time to build. Which is true, we’ve got a lot of infrastructure debt to work through. And also like: that’ll never ship, that would never get approved, our customers will freak out.

Product velocity during Pandemic

People, our team included, but people even outside of Twitter, have a lot on their minds, and it’s really stressful when you’re trying to do your job with your kids at home without child care. It’s been a taxing time for everyone, so I don’t think it was a net accelerant. What we’ve done through the pandemic, beyond just continuing to accelerate, obviously, is we did make some focusing decisions around, “Hey, these two projects that were kind of in our periphery and articulated as part of our long-term strategy” [shifted to] “this is the forefront now and all this other shit’s going to pause.” We made a bunch of those decisions that I think helped narrow the aperture, which accelerated some projects and paused or slowed down other projects.

And frankly, energy and momentum is infectious, right? As you see the company and other teams build quickly and you see customers noticing that, it inspires and motivates everyone else to want to live up to that. And so we’ve seen a bunch of that, I think, and we’re seeing it right now with Spaces.

Spaces, we love that our customers love it, but there’s a real kind of energy and movement internally at the company. I’ve been at Twitter for six years now, and I’ve never seen the level of energy and embrace around any singular project at Twitter, ever, in my time, at the risk of hyperbole. We’ve had a few of those moments with these big projects — Topics being another one in the last year — that have, I think, helped the team get through the intensity of what’s going on in the world, especially when we see that the product continues to be used and be really instrumental at a time where the world needs to communicate and learn from others about what’s happening.

Had a really good chat with Brian (Director of Content) and Ben (Co-Founder) from LogRocket and towards the end we even found out a long kept secret about Ben's JS Parody alter-ego!

Show notes and audio source: https://podrocket.logrocket.com/swyx

Share via tweet: https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1369348560198713363

See associated blogpost, Preemptive Pluralization is (Probably) Not Evil.

Clip from The Art of Product (13 mins in)

Preemptive Pluralization is Probably Not Evil

Swyx: [00:00:00] For a while I've been observing that it's much easier to take things from 2 to 3 or 3 to 4,  basically anything to N, than it is to take things from 1 to 2, especially in code. And I didn't really have a frame around this until i heard this part in a recent Art of Product podcast. So I'm going to let Derrick Reimer and Ben Orenstein explain.

Derrick Reimer: [00:00:20] I'm starting to get the sense that like, all right, I can see  the boundaries where the abstractions should be, where they aren't currently today and building this, like building another client, building another major integration, like this forces you to get those abstractions, right. Because, or you're going to just hack stuff in which don't want to do so once those abstractions are truly right with truly two different adapters in place, then it's going from two to three, like you said, shouldn't be that bad.

Ben Orenstein: [00:00:45] Yeah. Once you make the, like one to N abstraction . The N becomes pretty arbitrary

Derrick Reimer: [00:00:50]  I'm excited for the possibilities of what that'll open up once I go into the N territory on that.   

Ben Orenstein: [00:00:56] I have this theory and this is like pretty half baked.

I probably will always be half baked, but like in programming, as soon as you go from one to two, you should just go from one to N. As soon as you're like, Oh, there's not just one kind of user, there's a user and there's an admin. It's like, just assume there's going to be some number of user types and build the abstraction to handle the N and maybe by default, instead of ever assuming there's one of anything, assume there's an, if anything, and if there happens to be one great.

And then when you want to go to two or more, don't change anything. It's like, what if every time you use hasOne in rails you instead just use hasMany, and do you use map over things like, you know, map over the collection and to do that as opposed to being like there's exactly one, do the thing to it.

Derrick Reimer: [00:01:39] I've had to face a couple of those in building SavvyCal, like with respect to integrations, you know, a lot of times you end up coding things like I will assume this person will have one zoom account. So you're only allowed to have one of these types of integrations and it's like, no, I'm going to make sure it's multi, because you always remember this at Drip — we always encountered scenarios where like, couldn't imagine it when shaping the product, but sure enough, someone's like, no, I've got these two Stripe accounts and this is the exact justification. Why? And I need to do this thing. And it's like, okay, well, And it's painful having to  re architect in that direction.

Ben Orenstein: [00:02:09] I've done this refactoring a million times, I'll be like, I thought there would only ever be one subscription, team, user, plan, name, address, and it always ends up being like, Oh, actually there's more. I've done this a million times. I always never go the other way.  What if you just paid the upfront cost of thinking: "this is just always a collection"?

So given that, what should I do and solve that problem as part of the initial design, never build up all these assumptions about singleness and then you have effortless expansion into the N over time. Yeah. 

Derrick Reimer: [00:02:40] Like as much as you can centralize your logic around accessing, like, if you're treating it as one for now, the hard part is sometimes to not  sprinkle hacky things all over the place, like always taking the first element off the array, basically.

 If you can centralize that in one place so that if you end up expanding it down the line, it's pretty, you only have to change in one place. That's, I've found I've had to refactor that multiple times in that direction. Totally. 

Ben Orenstein: [00:03:04] Yeah. This comes up in Ruby in particular. I think this is almost extra true for Ruby because you end up with nil in certain places.

Like if you're like user dot address dot capitalize or whatever, it's like, Oh, address was nil. So you can't call it capitalized. But if you say like user dot address dot map, capitalize. It's like, okay, well, if it's an empty array, no problem. That's just you'll have an empty array or at the end.

And if it's got one thing in it, you get that. And if it's got a thousand things in it, you get that. And it's just  ah, like the map abstraction just clears this up for you and handles those cases. And you're never calling stuff on nail. Like right now in Tuple, it's like, you can be on one team.

It's like, yep. It might be nice to change that one day, but just imagine the magnitude of that change. It's huge. Whereas if we just said users could have many teams and in practice, they only have one, but we just know this always comes back with the collection. And so we operate on that collection and then some day later we changed that and it's like, Oh, this isn't, this actually is way easier.

I guess like it doesn't impose much cost and then potentially gives you big gains later on when the world almost inevitably changes 

Derrick Reimer: [00:04:10] down to at least the database layer. So you're storing it in the database as, as a one-to-many relationship. And maybe at the earliest point in your code where you're touching that you're like forcing it into being a singular.

Thing... so like most of your code things, that's one thing that's still a lot easier to change than like refactoring database stuff is the worst. Like it's a lot easier to change code that operates on a database schema than it is to actually change the scheme.  

Ben Orenstein: [00:04:33] But yeah, it's just everywhere.

I had just done like user dot teams dot map name. It's like, well, if it ever changes, I know I'm not gonna need to come back here and deal with this again. It's like, if you can build, if you can build in a way that you're not going to have to come back and change it, that sure is nice. If it's not too costly in abstraction complexity, this is a pet theory of mine. Next app I make, I'm just going to make everything hasMany.

Don't Go Too Far!

Derrick Reimer: [00:04:54] There's probably an extension of this where it gets too insane , like I do enjoy a good one-to-one if I know for sure. And there are cases where  you know for sure that this is only gonna be one and then it's just really nice.

If you can just  Rely on it being the only thing. And it's like always there. And I also like non-mental constraints. I love those, you know, it's like, Oh yeah. This thing will never be no. 

Ben Orenstein: [00:05:17] absolutely good. No constraints is great. Yeah. Hammer and hammer. And as many of those as I can into the database.

 So of course, neither extreme is correct here, but I think over time, part of the wisdom of being a programmer is anticipating the stuff that's going to come down the line later accurately. And so maybe what I actually just need is like a list of things where it's like, just always assume a team is going to have multiple subscriptions or an organiza...

Audio Source with transcript: https://mastersofscale.com/tyra-banks/ (11 mins in)

---

BANKS: I gave myself one year to be successful in Paris, and that did not mean
supermodel. That meant direct bookings, meaning a client would just call and say, "We
want Tyra." Then you don't have to be a supermodel for a client to say that. I was like, "I
am not pounding the pavement with auditions for a year.”
HOFFMAN: With only days to go before she left the country, Tyra put herself through a crash
course on designer branding.
BANKS: I found a fashion library in downtown LA. And I took the bus to the fashion
library, and the library pulled all these tapes of designers, and books, and all this type of
stuff, and I studied, studied, studied, studied.
I was like, "Yves Saint Laurent loves their women with the hair in a bun. Red lipstick.
Very elegant walking. Karl Lagerfeld, curls, fun, big pearls, smiling on the runway."
HOFFMAN: Armed with this very specific information about Fashion Week designers and their
signature runway styles, Tyra hit the streets of Paris.
BANKS: So, what I did, Reid, is before I went into every single audition, I would go
either in the alley, or on the side of the building, or in the lobby, change my hair, change
my lipstick, my makeup, and then walk what the research told me that designer liked.
Within those two weeks of doing auditions for Fashion Week, I broke history. I was the
only model that booked 25 fashion shows her first season.
HOFFMAN: This is a perfect example of how authenticity and craft come together. At every
stage of your journey, it’s important to be very strategic.
People often misinterpret authentic as, “I shouldn’t change a thing about me, no matter who I’m
talking to. I’m me, deal with it!” But I do not recommend that as a strategy when pitching
investors or onboarding clients.
A critical part of authenticity is being so confident in who you are that you don’t mind meeting
someone halfway on something simple.
Tyra didn’t change anything about herself that couldn’t be undone in the lobby of the next
building. And her willingness to do the research demonstrated a core competency that was
instantly valuable.
We don’t always discuss it, but branding is a two-way conversation. It relies on the beholder as
well as the beheld. You can still be YOU and adjust to your audience. That’s just smart selling.

---

BANKS: Over time, I gained some weight, if we want to talk about the booty. And every
season there were less and less designers that wanted to use me because my body was
changing.
My agent gave my mother a list of eight designers that said, "We're not using Tyra
because she's too big." By the way, I was 120 pounds, but back then it was too big.
HOFFMAN: No, I'm also aware about how crazy the world is. 120 pounds is too big,
you're like, "What?"
BANKS: “Really?”
HOFFMAN: "Okay."
BANKS: If I was 120 pounds now, you guys would be like, "Go give her a sandwich.”
My mom gave me this list, and I start crying. I was like, "I don't know what to do. I gave
up college for this. Okay, I guess I need to like eat super salads for breakfast, lunch, and
dinner.” And my mom just shook me. She took my arms, and she shook me, and she
says, "I will be damned if my baby starves for these b*tches in black." Because she used
to call the fashion people “b*tches in black.”
And then we went to a pizzeria in Milan, Italy, and the pizzeria had a tablecloth. You
know the tablecloths that are made of paper, and she put a pen in my hand, and she
said, "You write down every client in this industry that likes ass." I was like, "What do you
mean ass?" "Write down who likes ass."
And I was like, "Victoria's Secret?" "Write it down." "Sports Illustrated? Swimsuit
Edition?" "Write it down." And so then I had a list of 10 clients that it was okay if you had
curves, and then she drew a line down the paper, and she said, "On this side, write down
who has an ass." And I was like, "What do you mean? Everybody has an ass." "A thicker
ass. Who got a thicker ass in your industry?"
And I was like, "Cindy Crawford?" "Write it down." And I was like, "Claudia Schiffer?"
"Write it down.” And these are models today that's not curvy. Back then, it was curvy.
And so then she said, "These are your future clients, and these are the careers that you
can be inspired by, but you're going to make it your own."
HOFFMAN: This is great advice. This wasn’t like when Tyra was auditioning in Paris and
changing hair and shoes in the lobby. Her industry was asking for something both fundamental
and harmful. They wanted to chip away at what made Tyra stand out, and her self-image along
with it.
This is where true authenticity becomes critical to developing the startup of you. Every industry
has compromises that don’t quite sit right. You have to know how to decide where to draw the
line.

Source: https://www.arresteddevops.com/yelling-at-cloud/ (15 minutes)

thanks to Matthew DiSabatino for the recommendation!

This week's clip from the Startup To Last podcast: https://www.startuptolast.com/episodes/hardcore-week-building-a-content-site

Further reading on TOFU/MOFU/BOFU: https://www.lucidchart.com/blog/what-is-tofu-mofu-bofu

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Transcript:

Swyx: [00:00:00] I was listening to the Startup to Last podcast by Rick Lindquist, the founder of LegUp Ventures and Tyler King, the founder of Less Annoying CRM. And they were talking about this interesting marketing concepts called TOFU, MOFU and BOFU. And I'm going to let them explain it

Rick Lindquist: [00:00:16] Tofu is top of the funnel T O F U MOFU is middle of the funnel, MOFU and BOFU is bottom of the funnel.  Tyler and I worked this out on one of those trips to Utah one week where bottom of the funnel basically means branded terms like Less Annoying CRM, middle of funnel means like basically the product that you offer, but non-branded, so in Tyler's case, small business CRM, , and then TOFU is basically something that a small business might search in general, like a,  small business tools.

For TOFU content to work, it has to be so creative  and it is truly throwing darts, blindfolded against a dark, like after being spun 10 times at a dartboard, it really is entrepreneurial work.

Whereas like  MOFU and BOFU, especially with where you are now, it's blocking and tackling, it's... what was that saying  that you brought to the podcast once was like, get it to 70% or 90%, or I don't know what it was, but yeah, once you get it to that point, it feels like MOFU and BOFU for where you are,  are there and it's about optimization and doing more of what's already working versus trying to figure something out.

Swyx: [00:01:24] I think it's an interesting mental model, which I wish that I had in my previous work, The main idea is tofu. Content is the viral content that everyone wants to read. But doesn't necessarily connect to your particular business or brand and MOFU and BOFU. Further down the funnel where people are more and more interested in what you specifically are selling. 

So in the next clip, they talk about how tofu is actually damaging to your brand  It might help you go viral, but not actually help with any conversions. So they took it out of their website.  

Tyler King: [00:01:54] 

Like right now, if you go to the blog on less annoying CRMs, like we just redesigned it a little bit for web flow. We used to have three sections.

We  basically, we didn't call it this, but tofu, MOFU, and BOFU. And we basically removed tofu and the blog posts are still there, but there's not a section for it. We could maybe re-add it, but it just links off to Less Annoying business.  , 

Rick Lindquist: [00:02:12] TOFU content on your main product website is so dilutive to the brand.

if it's not related to CRM it's not going to be on less annoying crm.com, which means when someone goes to last long crm.com, they're either like just poking around and saying what it's about, or they're a potential customer.

Tyler King: [00:02:29] for example, to your point, it's so hard to measure conversion rates  from someone hitting your website to signing up for a free trial. Cause it's like, what if they were reading a blog post about whether or not to raise money for their startups?

Like, should we really count that as a failure that they didn't sign up? So, yeah, I like that a lot

Swyx: [00:02:45] As someone who works in developer marketing, I've had to deal with this quite a bit. When we were involved in debates on the company blog about whether the blog should be about the company or whether it should be about. 

 Anything that our customers care about, like front end development or the future of JavaScript. And basically there's a civil war  inside of the company. And I think that happens with a lot of companies. I think you also see the result of some companies going all out on tofu, like digital ocean and log rocket. And that's a very valid marketing strategy, but then to expect to mix it together with 

And BOFU content in the same blog. I think could be a very confusing content strategy. So this terminology really clear things up for me.  

The fundamental incompatibility of email and Deep Work collide.

- Clip from Lex Fridman podcast (~1:45:00)
- Was Email a Mistake? New Yorker article
- A World Without Email (book): https://amzn.to/3blXyjv