Every product is a philosophy in disguise. This page tries to take the disguise off — and write down what I actually believe about people, attention, consciousness, and the craft of building.
“A founder is not someone who builds companies.
A founder is someone who is honest
about what they cannot stop noticing.”
The user did not come here to be optimised. Every interface is a small loan of focus. Return it with interest, or do not take it.
Most product mistakes are made in the first 20% of a conversation, when the founder is already drafting the answer. Sit in the customer’s silence.
Polish is not when nothing more can be added. It is when nothing more can be removed without the product losing its dignity.
Some markets cannot be hurried. The hotel, the shop floor, the school — they reward founders who show up the second time, and the tenth.
The interesting answers in AI are coming from philosophy, hospitality, anthropology, and small business. Founders who only read founders sound the same.
Not as branding. As practice. Bad weeks are the only real culture test. Behave well in them, and the rest takes care of itself.
I have been trying, for several years, to find one word for what I am building. I have not yet succeeded. The closest I have come is this: I am trying to build software the way a good host runs a small hotel.
A good host notices that you walked in tired. She does not ask three questions; she asks one. She remembers the tea you took yesterday. She lets you sit in the silence. She is not optimising your stay. She is dignifying it.
When I read about consciousness — Krishnamurti, Iain McGilchrist, Anil Seth, the long-dead Stoics — I keep finding the same temperament. The mind that is paying attention to attention. The person who is, for a brief moment, fully present with what is actually happening.
The first generation of AI products have been the opposite of this. They are restless. They notify. They suggest. They claim your attention before they have earned it. They are technically impressive and spiritually exhausting.
I think the second generation will be different. I think it will be built by founders who read a little outside their field, who remember that software is a guest in a person’s life, and who refuse to confuse productivity with dignity.
That is what I am trying to build. On most days, I fail. On the better days, the failure gets a little more interesting.
An incomplete, ongoing list of books that have shaped how I think about building. Not because they are about startups — but because they are about people.