Brie Wolfson
@zebriez
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weird & warm, used to @stripe @stripepress @figma and wax about company culture (), 1/3 host of @redqueenpod
San Francisco, CA
Joined August 2012
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I'm going by Brie now. 🧀
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I recently left Stripe after 4.5 formative and magical years. Some reflections on what made working at Stripe feel different than working other places:
1/Turpentine
2/Writing
3/Meticulousness
4/Principled decision-making
5/Ambition
6/Talking up
7/The API metaphor
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Had too much fun and too much gin making this.
Do your thing, Twitter. Who’s missing? Who’d I get wrong?
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1/Turpentine: Picasso said, “when art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine.” Stripe is obsessed with turpentine.
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Overall, Stripe changed the way I think and changed my outlook on how a company could operate. It was a magical place to spend the majority of my career and if you ever want to talk about life at Stripe, get in touch. DM’s are open.
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SF is a really easy city to hate on, but when I'm here, I get more veggies, exercise, sleep, and time outside. I drink less, buy local more, and feel more motivated by/about my work.
It may sound kind of parochial, but I can't deny that I'm the best version of myself here.
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In his words, “the reason writing a good 4 page memo is harder than ‘writing’ a 20 page powerpoint is because the narrative structure of a good memo forces better thought and better understanding of what’s more important than what, and how things are related.”
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Good API’s make things easier by providing a layer of abstraction between complex systems and I think it’s a pretty good metaphor for collaboration and communication. Abstract away the crufty bits so the interfaces are clean and interactions are more elegant (and more pleasant).
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First, clarity of writing reflects clarity in thinking. Surely writing is not the only proxy for clarity in thinking, but I think it’s a good one. Jeff Besos famously banned presentations at Amazon in favor of “Narratives.”
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Friend asked for advice on hiring his first employees.
I set a 60 min timer and ✍️
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Early career advice keeps boiling down to
Do what you say you’re going to do
Be the kind of person that’s easy to root for (attitude, integrity, work ethic)
Know how to talk about yourself (particularly strengths and what you want)
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Turpentine is what is really going on at the one-inch altitude. It’s not the generic, cliched, shape of it observed from 10,000 feet. Even the smartest, most thoughtful, best-intentioned people won’t get it right without the ground-level perspective and visceral sense of what is.
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Turpentine makes Stripe’s product *and* culture better. Getting neck-deep versus ankle-deep into the minds of users and watering holes of the problem space makes the work more rewarding because Stripes can feel their impact and hone their instincts for what to put into the world.
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Second, writing democratizes ideas. Anyone with an insight or idea can write it down regardless of status or access. And, anyone can read it, regardless of status or access. Stripe’s leaders explicitly open themselves up to receiving memos. I’ve seen people get hired this way!
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7/The API metaphor: When spinning up new projects or processes (ex- standing up company planning, welcoming newly acquired teams into Stripe, building Stripe Press), I was often encouraged to think of myself as the “API to X.” I always think about this.
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Things I didn’t like until I had the nice version:
-olives
-baths/hot tubs
-noise cancelling headphones
-boys
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I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m starting a company.
I’m building something for teams that have found themselves hankering for more of that “we’re all in this together feeling” lately.
Full scoop on what I’m dreaming up:
We’re thrilled to introduce the latest cohort for Arc, Sequoia’s seed-stage catalyst for outlier founders.
🧵 👇
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Third, good writing scales. On more than one occasion, I’ve seen a document written in a corner of the organization generate so much enthusiasm that it directly and meaningfully influences top-level product and company decisions.
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2/Writing: Over time at Stripe, meetings, company plans, product strategies, important company announcements, and even board meetings, increasingly oriented around prose versus presentations. I’ve got a few hunches about why:
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When making Ratatouille, the entire crew visited restaurant kitchens in Paris to get an feel for them. Ed Catmull credited these trips with the “obsessive specificity” of the kitchen scenes; the sound of clogs on the tiles, how chefs held their arms while chopping, etc.
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5/Ambition: Stripe’s leaders are often asked what companies we should focus on and the answer has always been the same; “the ambitious ones.” It’s inspiring.
@mmcgrana
’s post on the impact of ambition on product, culture, and talent also resonates here:
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3/Meticulousness: Stripes aren’t afraid to spend the extra hours, weeks, or months to get every pixel perfect. It may sound exhausting but it’s surprisingly energizing to push the limits of craft and ship something truly spectacular. Plus, users and onlookers always notice.
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Hey friends working at startups. A friendly reminder to take a look around today.
The people you're setting next to right now are your **teammates for life**
You'll be helping each other out far, far longer than you'll be in this office together.
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6/Talking up: Stripe believes that its users and employees are smart, curious, ambitious, and excited to learn. And, as such, they don’t shy away from technical terms, big ideas, or challenging concepts. Talking up rises the tide for everyone.
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At Stripe, the principles behind a decision are as important as the decision itself. I’ve observed that a sound decision is more likely when conversation and documentation is encouraged about the why *and* the what. (This also helps Stripes teach and learn from each other.)
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4/Principled decision-making: Building a great company requires that great decisions are made at all levels; not just the top. As a company grows, the number of decisions and the number of people making them proliferates. What to do?
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4 years in at
@stripe
! So many people who use Stripe or follow us get to see *what* we’re building. It’s been the highlight of my career (and in many ways my life) to see *how* we build it because it’s done by some of the smartest, most thoughtful, most ambitious people I know.
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This weekend, team
@Sequoia
took our Arc cohort to Disneyland to experience one of the most iconic, delight-and-details obsessed, storytelling-oriented brands and organizations of all time.
some surprising learnings and observations I hadn’t stumbled across in my prior research:
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Call me one-note, or devoid of Real Values, or a masochistic Peter Pan...but I'm nostalgic for the time when we collectively agreed that really, really cool to devote ourselves fully to work.
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company-building cliches that are true (so true, it's tempting to overlook them.)
1/ high-performing people are very responsive
2/ feedback is a gift
3/ the reward for good work is more work
4/ people don’t leave companies, they leave managers
5/ manage up, get face time
6/
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Recently got the advice “don’t think your way into doing, do you way into thinking”
a surprisingly useful reframe for this chronic overthinker that has helped me:
-feel more emboldened to bias towards action
-report from a place of experience vs assumptions
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Examples? The first time our CFO addressed the company, he talked about EBITDA. I had never heard of EBITDA before but I learned. To launch Sigma, Stripe’s *maximally flexible) reporting product, Stripe trusted that users would either know or learn SQL.
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While getting to know
@patrick_oshag
and the Positive Sum & Colossus teams over the last year, I stumbled on this line buried in a doc and it got every gear in my brain turning.
Our life’s work is stoking curiosity and agency in others.
Seemed like a reasonable mission for an
Exciting news about an incredibly talented person who will be a key force behind much of what you see from us…
Last year, my partner Alison sent this article around to our team (written years before taste became such a hot topic and meme).
A few months
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💁♀️21 startups with a female founder or co-founder became unicorns in 2019. Up 40% from 2018. 💁♀️
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my career completely took off when I started taking more ownership over my work, its impact, and where *I* wanted go next...instead of waiting for the people around me to tell me
it required a bit of a mindset shift & these are the docs that helped me stick with it
New on The Review:
At Stripe, Figma, and now
@KoolAidCo
,
@zebriez
has found the best operators uphold the 30,000-ft. view while still getting the 3-in. level work done.
She shares 10 docs for doing just that, with helpful templates & calendar reminders:
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Still not crystal clear on why turpentine matters? Pixar’s research trips are a great example.
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one of my fave management exercises
(especially impactful for greener folks)
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everyone at the tippy top of their craft is polymath.
science always surrenders to art and art always surrenders to science.
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a few months ago we decided to ramp down Constellate
soon after, I met a crew of kind, ambitious people with an open source project going 🚀 & BIG dreams for the future of building with LLMs
I just *had* to join
@LangChainAI
🦜🔗Here's what we're up to👇🏽
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Today is the first anniversary of Stripe Press! Getting it here has been the most rewarding and humbling work I've ever been a part of and I just can't wait for what's next.
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The best networking advice I know is to be a fucking pleasure to work with.
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After 11 glorious years in the Bay Area, I'm moving to Seattle!
Who's got happy PNW living tips for me?
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when open this package, and i flip through these pages, I can feel the care. it makes the words on the pages hit different.
thank you
@_TamaraWinter
and
@stripepress
for treating ideas as art
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A conversation with my longtime friend
@david_perell
about a longtime favorite topic, writing!
This How I Write guest is an underrated gem of a human being.
She launched Stripe Press, wrote the famous About Us page for Figma, and is an expert on all things business writing.
I bring you Brie Wolfson, and 14 things she's learned about writing:
1. You cannot do great work
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once, a boss took me out for dinner and told me what I was good at.
it was one of the most life-changing conversations I've ever had. lots surprised me.
I've also had dozens of performance reviews that I think about...never. What's that about?!
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if you want something done right, clarifying a *single* owner is probably the highest impact thing you can do.
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Work Terms I dislike:
-Postmortem, too morbid
-Buy-in, too Machiavellian
-Thought-partner, too stiff
-Eyeballs, too nondescript/indifferent
-Content, not substantive enough
-Individual contributor, egregiously misrepresents the job and is thoroughly uninspiring
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someone asked me what companies are the best at marketing and I said OpenAI, MSCHF, and Browser Company.
interestingly, none of these companies Do Marketing in the ways we traditionally think about it.
They're just cool, speak authentically, and match actions to words.
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how can startups maintain a culture of innovation without losing focus on the core?
⌛️I set a 60-min timer and wrote about Bets
(including a deep-dive on Spotify's iconic Bets Board)
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If you’re a hard-working generalist with great judgement looking for your next role and are 5ish years into your career (or know someone who is), DMs open.
So many awesome roles have made their way into my inbox this summer and I wanna show em off!
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I turned 35 a few days ago!
I’ve changed a lot in the last decade and it got me thinking/writing about why.
Here are some things I’ve learned and changed my mind about.
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How to get someone to help you:
1- determine the smallest unit of work required of the other person
2- determine if there is some work you can do yourself that would make [1] smaller
3- do that
4- make a direct and concise ask
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.
@tylercowen
and his colleagues have been the catalyst for so many people pursuing their dreams.
Very proud and very excited to find myself on that list.
Thanks, Tyler and team, for believing in us.
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I’m incredibly lucky to have team
@sequoia
in my corner by way of Arc, their seed-stage catalyst.
Eternally grateful to
@DannieHerz
@laurenmhreeder
and
@mvernal
, who ushered me into this company trajectory-altering program.
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⏱️60 min on Internal Comms
Friend asked for advice on hiring his first employees.
I set a 60 min timer and ✍️
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Thinking about changing jobs this year? Here's the model I use to evaluate new career opportunities (with instructions on how to make it work for you).
Comments, feedback, sharing encouraged.
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Gulp. This one was a little hard to write but I’m glad I did.
thank you to
@nbashaw
,
@danshipper
, and
@DidYouWriteThat
for helping me get the words right and share it with you all.
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One of the best things about San Francisco is that it's full of hidden gems and crannies to explore.
It also means it can be slow to unfold to newcomers.
Here is 10 years of exploring and loving the Bay Area in one tricked out Notion page. Enjoy!
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Something clicked in the last couple of weeks about what is so special about
@figmadesign
.
What? How? Why? Some thoughts...
(also, now I can make things like this)
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🙋🏻♀️🙋🏽♂️🙋🙋🏿♀️If you want to come to a free workshop on writing a brag doc/personal press release?
We’ll produce a concise artifact that articulates the impact you had at your current/former company and highlights the qualities that make you special.
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I recently wrapped up 7 weeks of looking in the company mirror under the tutelage of team
@sequoia
through Arc, their seed stage accelerator.
Here's the capstone talk I gave about what we're building and why at
@hiconstellate
.
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A lot of people want to know what makes working at stripe so great and this is it
Patrick shared this note internally about the Financial Connections/Plaid kerfuffle. Glad to put it behind us, and I'm look forward to continued vibrant competition in fintech (which customers benefit from!) in the future.
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"several people are typing" by
@SlackHQ
and "keeping tabs" by
@browsercompany
are suchhhhh good names for corporate blogs.
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Well, officially back to taking taxis from airport and staying in hotels.
Taxis cheaper/faster than Lyft and Uber and hotels more reliable than Airbnb.
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Andddd, this big ol' pile of tree pulp became a trip down Figma memory lane and a vision for the future of design that is more open, accessible, and collaborative.
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Ship stuff you’re proud of.
Work among Your People.
Nothing else matters.
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when we started
@stripepress
we said "favorite articles don't end up on desks, coffee tables, or bookshelves. but if we do something right, our books will."
thanks to
@SJArchive
,
@stripepress
, &
@mwichary
for helping me fill my home with these little delights.
I walk by them
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Life skill that’s surprising hard to cultivate: knowing and articulating why you like what you like
Applies to everything. People, music, foods, spaces, jobs, film, literature, activities
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@mollyfmielke
Just stumbled across this from Brian Eno “ For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.”
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I think it's really cool how Replit spotlights the individuals shipping this stuff...and I think it says a lot about their culture of ownership and agency
Replit now has a changelog!
Every week we'll share an insider's view of what we shipped, show you how we made Replit better, and introduce you to some of the people building the future of software development.
Find Week Two of Replit Updates here 👇
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insight I really like from Jensen at NVIDIA for the latest
@AcquiredFM
companies don’t have to predict the future, they just have to be close enough to the opportunities that a diving catch can get you there
Or “It’s better to be approximately right than exactly wrong”
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Ed Catmull describes two types of creative genius. Each alters our reality in its own way.
One "invents the new," "brings things into being that did not exist before"
The other is a "master of explaining that which already was"
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I do wish art could be more central to the culture, though. And that the streets were a lot cleaner.
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do you have a 'working with me' doc or a readme? can I see it?!
here's mine if trading seems more fair
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milestone I'm really proud of and excited about: Founder Fodder Newsletter now pays my rent!
come read it with us!
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the most visionary and effective leaders I've worked with have two seemingly disparate skill sets
1/tastefully guiding strategy and pointing attention towards the right things ta the 30k foot level
2/meticulously getting in the weeds to edit/perfect at the 1 inch level
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My favorite fun facts about Marriott
-almost acquired Disney!!!
-owns Ritz-Carlton
-only major hotel company not srsly into casinos (company values > profit)
-actually a franchise–they don't own their real estate (asset lite)
-over 30 hotel brands & doesn't feel the need to
🛎️On the latest episode of Red Queen Podcast🛎️
How Marriott evolved from a local rootbeer stand to into the world's biggest hotel company.
...and turned a spirit to serve and a culture of quality into a repeatable playbook and $65B international business.
Listen now!
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"defensive process" is a term I learned from
@chughesjohnson
and it can kill an org and suck the joy out of work if you let it.
a stunning portrait of what it looks like when defensive process takes over. whole thing is worth reading. maybe even twice.
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been sending 3 bullets on "here's what I took away from our conversation" after no-agenda/informational calls.
it helps me codify whatever wisdom I absorbed during our time *and* shows a more specific (and IMO more meaningful) form of gratitude to the person on the other end
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Things I got in perf that made me quit:
- write shorter emails
- don’t say when the emperor’s not wearing any clothes
- don’t require so much to be convinced of an idea
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One way I think about a job is that you’re being paid to care more than anyone else about something.
That creates tension bc it can be frustrating/lonely to care the most.
finding a way to get curious & excite your colleagues will make you way happier & better at your job.
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If you’re thinking about applying to Arc, maybe I can help!
I was part of Arc’s summer cohort via
@hiconstellate
.
TBH I wasn’t sure an accelerator program would be my cup of tea. But Arc had a tremendous positive impact on the trajectory of my company.
More 👇🏻
Are you an outlier founder looking to build for the next decade? Interested in Arc? Learn more here: 👇
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Increasingly think internal comms is amongst the highest-impact roles at a company.
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how to get your team humming the same tune 🎵🥳
thanks to
@NotionHQ
for helping me put pen to paper on my very favorite topic 🖤
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My faves
The best way to criticize something is to make something better.
Try to define yourself by what you love and embrace, rather than what you hate and refuse.
If you think someone is normal, you don’t know them very well.
The patience you need for big things, is
It's my birthday time, and my present this year is to offer another 101 bits of advice, in a nice handy list. Enjoy!
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A bright spot in 2024 has been hanging out with
@eekedm
and
@tarstarr
to see what we can learn from longstanding institutions.
Biggest takeaway so far: re-invent or die
We turned our lil’ book club into a podcast and the first two episodes - 👩🚀NASA and 🧱LEGO- are out now!
I
Welcome to the Red Queen Podcast
Where we tell the stories of the invention and reinvention of the world's most innovative companies.
First up, LEGO and NASA! Let us know what you think!
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my favorite thing about working on big new exciting project is that everything I read and learn seems to relate to it somehow
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leave it to
@AcquiredFM
to get me into planes
This is one of the coolest and most turpentine-y episodes to-date.
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Been testing out a new format for my weekly to-do list, designed to keep me more energized at work, and liking it so far.
Putting work into three buckets, with cap on # of things I can include:
-Deep Thinking (max 2)
-Meaningfully Advance (max 3)
-Housekeeping (max 5)
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