For The Better - Email 9/19

For the Better comes to you bi-weekly with ideas about how and why to build companies focused on human flourishing and stories of the people who are doing it. Other enthusiasms may occasionally appear.

Innovation Shapes Values: The Choice Of How Is Ours

The invention of the cotton gin is a story that’s often told to illustrate the power of innovation. But I realized recently that I’d never heard the whole story, which is about much more than how a new labor-saving machine facilitated the dramatic expansion of the cotton industry.As this piece explains, the cotton gin not only revived the fortunes of farmers who had been struggling, but, regretfully, saved slavery from impending collapse. As demand and competition rose along with productivity, this incredible invention turbo-charged a cruel and damaging institution that it could have eradicated, if only a different set of choices had been made about how to use it.Innovation is a vehicle, rather than an engine, for the consequences of disruption. It has the power to change the values of everything it touches, but what those values are is not a given. As the story of the cotton gin shows, assuming that new things are always good is a long-standing habit we need to break, especially as the AI age arrives full force.Currently, there’s a tendency for people to take a position on AI: either it’s a conduit for evil or the path to a new utopia. In fact, both of these outcomes are possible – the trajectory depends on how we decide to use it. That choice will be our legacy.Every generation has choices like this. Disruption naturally turns over the old order. The good news is that it offers a chance to reshape previously intractable institutions. The bad news is that it doesn’t always turn out for the better when we do (think of Facebook, to name just one example). The trick – and it’s a hard one, though far from impossible – is to be aware of the dangers of disruption without impeding all progress. The way to pull it off is to instill good values into innovation from the start. Maybe AI will make work obsolete. Maybe it won’t. The power to decide is all ours, and the implications are enormous. The time for naivete is over.

Things I’ve Enjoyed Lately 

🔵 Illiquidity is a feature, not a bugAn argument for the idea that illiquidity is what makes VC so appealing (its “unique defining characteristic”) and that the real issue with it is its instability, including some strategies for how to solve the problem.🔵 Founder Mode Trade-off Kent Beck takes on Paul Graham’s post on Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky’s recent talk at a YC event. He elaborates on Graham’s theory on ways to run a company: founder mode vs. manager mode, and concludes that “Wielding power comes at a cost. Ignoring that cost serves no one in the long run.”

Athena:

One of the things I enjoy the most about what I do is that every day is a little different. I meet people building incredible companies and doing great things for the world, do my writing and work, and always reserve time for my family. Athena, which offers executive assistants at affordable rates, shares my belief that the key to making the most of everything life has to offer is keeping it running smoothly. I've partnered with them so you can focus on living your life rather than managing it. 

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🔵 How to succeed in Mr. Beast productionA fascinating (leaked) onboarding document for Mr Beast’s production company: “a snapshot of what it takes to run a massive scale viral YouTube operation in the 2020s, as well as a detailed description of a very specific company culture evolved to fulfill that mission.”