Having a stable, nurturing foundation allows you to innovate safely.

Alison Gopnik told me about a study of rats in a maze.

One arm of the maze had neither cheese nor a shock: low variance.

Another arm of the maze had either cheese or a shock: high variance.

Adult rats were more likely to take the safe but bland arm.

Young rats were more likely to take the high variance arm… but only if they could smell their mother near them.

The job of parents is to create a safe environment for experimentation.

You create an environment where it's safe to "F around and find out", by making the "find out" phase sting less.

A safe environment to fail allows much more innovation.

What if you could have a software ecosystem that capped downside significantly?