A singularity and a punctuated equilibrium feel very similar in the early stages.
A singularity and a punctuated equilibrium feel very similar in the early stages.
Topic: early stage
24 chunks · 23 episodes
2.5x burst in 2025 Q1
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Peak quarter intensity across the topic's active span. Higher values mean attention was concentrated into a shorter stretch rather than spread evenly over time.
Topic summary
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A short read on the topic's time range, peak episode, and strongest associations. Use it as the quick orientation before drilling into examples.
- early stage appears in 24 chunks across 23 episodes, from 2023-11-06 to 2026-09-15.
- Its densest episode is Bits and Bobs 1/27/25 (2025-01-27), with 2 observations on this topic.
- Semantically it travels with late stage, power dynamic, and emergent phenomena, while by chunk count it sits between critical mass and grubby truffle; its yearly rank moved from #43 in 2023 to #53 in 2026.
Over time
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Observations
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The primary evidence view for this topic. Sort it chronologically when you want concrete examples behind the larger pattern.
A friend was asking me whether they thought they should join an early-stage startup.
...tarted a cult, would you seriously consider joining?" If not, then don't go. An early stage startup is a cult. You have to believe.
If you, a non-expert, can come up with an effective workflow that an expert is surprised by and thinks is interesting then it implies the ecosystem is in the early stage.
... surprised by and thinks is interesting then it implies the ecosystem is in the early stage. There are low-hanging fruit everywhere, and there are too many for even the swarm of experts to find. This is the state we're in with applying LLMs ...
In the early stage true momentum can be hard to observe.
In the early stage true momentum can be hard to observe. For example, imagine looking at the stars on Github as a signal of momentum. If there is a discontinuity, for e...
People who aren't on the bus are "zeds."
...the team, they'll be default-diverging energy. They can't be on the team at the early stages, or nothing will ever be produced.
At the early stage of a game-changing company, everyone who joins the team must be on the bus.
At the early stage of a game-changing company, everyone who joins the team must be on the bus. They must believe fundamentally in the goal and vision. If you're trying ...
A lot of best practices in large organizations are anti-patterns in early stage pre-PMF teams.
A lot of best practices in large organizations are anti-patterns in early stage pre-PMF teams. Best practices for large, post-PMF orgs are about structure, communication, and bookkeeping. In a small team that is iterating tightly...
In a pre-PMF mode, don't chase tail lights.
... resources to catch up and surpass the entity whose tail lights you're chasing. Early stage all you have is being first.
A few reflections Claude and I had thinking about valuation "multiples" as an emergent phenomenon.
...ees on "true value," but they converge on a price that allows exchange. Private/early stage: wide variance, high friction leads to price is what the most motivated pair agrees to. Public markets: millions of participants leads to prices conv...
Interdependent work needs very fast feedback / interaction loops, so does best in person.
...vious from momentum), or in research systems (convergence isn't that important) Early stage product work is highly interdependent at the very least until the moment of PMF.
In the late stage the power dynamics don't change.
In the late stage the power dynamics don't change. Let's hope we're in the early stage of the AI era.
LLM companies are trying to get a premature monopoly on LLMs.
...idn't figure out the participatory architecture yet, which is necessary for the early stage of new technologies!
A fundamental, inescapable battle that shapes a lot of the world around us: the warring curves.
... shows up if you try to capture the real world with top down rules. At the very early stages, you get a high amount of value for a small amount of effort, and everything seems to be going great. But unbeknownst to you, you are locked into a ...
In uncertainty (like in the early stages of a disruptive paradigm) people cling to legibility, not importance.
In uncertainty (like in the early stages of a disruptive paradigm) people cling to legibility, not importance. An example of the streetlight fallacy–the drunks looking for keys not where th...
Technology on its own is great, an optimistic force for humanity's thriving.
...hat we have a disruptive technology bursting onto the scene. The birth of a new early stage where we can put the tech to humanistic ends.
Sometimes early momentum traps you, a phenomena you could call creating a tech island.
...back. Stuck on an alternate branch of history. This dynamic only happens in the early stage of a paradigm, not the late stage.
To help people thrive they need structure and support.
...s. Things that would exist even if you personally stopped working on it. But in early stage, pre-coherence contexts, you can't take any structure for granted. You have to create it.
When extracting information from LLMs, we're like cavemen poking them in the dark.
... encode vastly more information than we know how to retrieve. We're in the very early stages of figuring out how to wring out all of the information they encode. Getting great results out of LLMs is entirely the domain of folk knowledge, wit...
A check for a system being good: the carrying capacity of the novelty of the system goes up over time.
...overy, not monoculture and centralization. Systems have different stages In the early stage it will be more about hill-finding and novelty generating. In the late stage it will be more about hill-climbing, centralization, optimization.
Compounding loops have balancing loops that create an asymptote.
...xisting dots. It's much harder to imagine the balancing loop, especially at the early stages of the s-curve where the balancing loop isn't yet powerful. Another reason it's hard to imagine a balancing loop is the balancing loop is often not ...