What should your life look like?
You only know how to do good for the world when you know how to do good for yourself.
Happy Mondayy
It was nice having a quick stop in Battersea for a dinner with a friend on Saturday, but damn, is it not the most fun feeling to be around the flashy London young professional crowds eek anyways, I spent Sunday checking out the Islington Farmers’ Market (which was a bit dead, I assume on account of the season ahah) and visiting my personal favorite street in London at the Columbia Flower Market… 🥰
Enjoy my tidbits for this week!
A bit of inspiration:
“We ought therefore to ascertain, first of all, which is the most generally eligible life, and then whether the same life is or is not best for the state and for individuals.”
—Aristotle, Politics 7.1
Credit for today’s resources goes out to Howard Lindzon’s newsletter!
I really enjoyed reading this, where social media platforms were made analogous to:
The peach-basket is a rigged game. The carny can use a hidden switch to force the balls to bounce out of the basket. No one wins a giant teddy bear unless the carny wants them to win it. Why did the carny let the sucker win the giant teddy bear? So that he'd carry it around all day, convincing other suckers to put down five bucks for their chance to win one
This shell-game with surpluses is what happened to Facebook. First, Facebook was good to you: it showed you the things the people you loved and cared about had to say. This created a kind of mutual hostage-taking: once a critical mass of people you cared about were on Facebook, it became effectively impossible to leave, because you'd have to convince all of them to leave too, and agree on where to go. You may love your friends, but half the time you can't agree on what movie to see and where to go for dinner. Forget it.
Damn was this essay thorough, I want to follow the writer a bit more closely.
For many years, even Tiktok's critics grudgingly admitted that no matter how surveillant and creepy it was, it was really good at guessing what you wanted to see. But Tiktok couldn't resist the temptation to show you the things it wants you to see, rather than what you want to see. The enshittification has begun, and now it is unlikely to stop.
It's too late to save Tiktok. Now that it has been infected by enshittifcation, the only thing left is to kill it with fire.
As I like to think, it is easy to build something big, it’s not easy to nurture and sustain it. Most often, the way something is built big is inherently what is antithetical to what is needed to sustain that growth. The primary motivation for me personally in building a startup is wanting to do things the way I think is right. And this may be easy enough for me to say, because after all what do I know, but I think even if you get large, but are no longer able to control a company to deliver products in a way that—on-balance—does good, then I think it is quite pointless.
This, on Netflix content development, was okay, some fun storytelling, not really my vibe though.
And this was interesting for a more accurate founding and growth story:
“Marc,” Reed said, “we’re headed for trouble, and I want you to recognize as a shareholder that there is enough smoke at this small business size that fire at a larger size is likely. Ours is an execution play. We have to move fast and almost flawlessly. The competition will be direct and strong. Yahoo! went from a grad school project to a six-billion-dollar company on awesome execution. We have to do the same thing. I’m not sure we can if you’re the only one in charge.”
He paused, then looked down, as if trying to gain the strength to do something difficult. He looked up again, right at me. I remember thinking: He’s looking me in the eye. “So I think the best possible outcome would be if I joined the company full-time and we ran it together. Me as CEO, you as president.”
To be honest, what Hastings supposedly says above makes me a bit uncomfortable. Especially since he’s been able to spin the narrative so well afterwards to make it seem like he was the man behind it all from the start… And then basically slandering Randolph by calling him indecisive and framing him as week? Like duh he’s going to be indecisive when you told him his entire company might implode if he doesn’t hand it over to you. ugh ew
Anyways, I always thought there was something off about him
But again, who knows, I don’t know
The last year or so of Randolph’s career at Netflix was a time of indecision — stay or go? He had resigned from the board of directors before the IPO, in part so that investors would not view his desire to cash out some of his equity as a vote of no confidence in the newly public company. Randolph landed in product development while trying to find a role for himself at Netflix, and dove into Lowe’s kiosk project and a video-streaming application that the engineers were beginning to develop. But after seven years of lavishing time and attention on his start-up, Randolph needed a break. Netflix had changed around him, from his collective of dreamers trying to change the world into Hastings’ hypercompetitive team of engineers and right-brained marketers whose skills intimidated him slightly. He no longer fit in.
Anyways, these bits highlighted illuminates how a company’s founding story is shaped by what comes afterward and the differing needs at differing stages of a company, for better or for worse. Who knows if Randolph would’ve been just fine, but was just cornered by a strong-arming Hastings. We will never know.
I’m aware this blog has a reduced amount of opinion now, and is mostly being used to list resources and for my personal sake of content digestion! Hope it’s still fun though hehe
With love,
Angeline