Amara's Law: Too Much in Two Years, Too Little in Twenty
The same technology gets overestimated early and underestimated late. Both errors come from drawing a straight line through something that is slow first and rapid afterwards.
Topic
Startups
Gall's Law: Complex Things That Work Were Never Built That Way
Every complex system that works turns out to have grown from a simple one that worked. Designing the finished version from scratch doesn't just take longer — it has a startlingly poor success rate.
Survivorship Bias: The Bullet Holes That Weren't There
Wartime analysts mapped damage on returning bombers and proposed armouring the places full of holes. A statistician pointed out those were the survivable hits — and inverted the entire dataset.
The Innovator's Dilemma: How Doing Everything Right Ends Companies
Incumbents rarely lose because they were careless. They lose because listening to their best customers, protecting margins, and ceding the unprofitable low end are each individually correct — and collectively fatal.
First Principles Thinking: Separating Physics From Habit
A pallet's dimensions are not a fact about pallets. Most of what looks like a constraint is an inherited decision — and telling the two apart is where the method earns its cost.
Inversion: The Easier List Is the Backwards One
Ask how to be a good manager and you get admirable vagueness. Ask what would make you a terrible one and the answers are specific, short, and something you can act on tomorrow.
Startups: Most Advice Comes From the People It Worked For
Persistence and bold bets describe the founders who succeeded — and just as many who didn't, and aren't being interviewed. A structural view of these companies is more useful than the folklore.
Competition: Better at What, Exactly?
Two firms selling something interchangeable can only compete on price, and every improvement gets matched. The useful question is not how hard to compete but what you are competing on.
Venture Capital: The Maths Only Works With Outliers
Most investments return little; one or two return the entire fund. Every practice in the industry that looks strange from outside is a rational response to that distribution.