Entrepreneur
Your first customer is not paying for effort but for something to become true, and the past-tense verb is how you see it. As AI makes artifacts cheap, the value moves to verbs that need someone else’s yes: signed, shipped, paid, renewed. … readLook for the Past-Tense Verb
A technicality is ordinarily described as a requirement that decides an outcome while having nothing to do with it. Derived from the foundation’s definition of a condition, the word turns out to name the one place people see conditioning bare — and the word they use for what they see there is only. … readWhat Is a Technicality
An ancestor is ordinarily described as someone you can trace, and the tracing is thought to run out where the documents do. Derived from the foundation, the word turns out to name somebody exactly as settled as your own mother and, for the overwhelming majority of them, permanently unreadable — and those are two separate facts, which is the distinction the family tree has no room for. … readWhat Is an Ancestor
An opportunity is ordinarily described as a window that opens, makes something possible, and closes. Derived from the foundation’s definition of a condition, the word turns out to name a prerequisite and then credit it with three things the definition denies — which is why two people can stand in front of the same opening and only one of them is standing in front of anything. … readWhat Is an Opportunity
A detail is a small part of a bigger thing, and small parts matter less — except that the proverb says they matter most. Derived from the compass at the base of the foundation, the word turns out to be reporting on an axis that has no size in it, which is why the two proverbs were not rivals, why “how much detail is enough” has no answer in the form it is asked, and why looking harder will not supply one. … readWhat Is a Detail
Company is counted by who is in the room. Derived from the step inside the relation result that does the work — an end that cannot be altered cannot stand in relation — company turns out to be a rate rather than a state, which is why a full room can hold none of it, why two strangers can have it inside an hour, and why nobody can be owed any. … readWhat Is Company
A visionary is not inventing the future. He is reporting from a relationship with an Idea—and the evidence is precision, scar tissue, and artifacts. … readHow to Recognize a Visionary
Vision is not the enemy; consequence-free vision is. The Steve Jobs Test asks whether ideas became artifacts, recommendations survived consequences, and the person accumulated scar tissue. … readThe Steve Jobs Test
Hope and fear are the same fiction with different endings. Neither one is happening. You do not live in the future — you manufacture history, one artifact at a time. … readFire Your Hopium Dealer
A first time is treated as an event with more in it than the ones that follow. Nothing in the event is different. Derived from the two halves of the Arrow Theorem’s antecedent, a first time is a reading taken where expectation holds no term — which is why nothing is lost at the second time, and why no first time can be arranged. … readWhat Is a First Time