The only way to grow a product is to use it.
... stable enough to build from and grow from. With an iterative path towards your north star. Don't aim for perfection, aim for good enough.
Topic: north star
14 chunks · 14 episodes
Topic summary
?
A short read on the topic's time range, peak episode, and strongest associations. Use it as the quick orientation before drilling into examples.
- north star appears in 14 chunks across 14 episodes, from 2023-10-02 to 2026-03-23.
- Its densest episode is Bits and Bobs 10/2/23 (2023-10-02), with 1 observation on this topic.
- Semantically it travels with disconfirming evidence, combinatorial explosion, and possibility space, while by chunk count it sits between infinite content and party trick; its yearly rank moved from #19 in 2023 to #114 in 2026.
Over time
?
Raw mentions over time. Use this to see absolute attention, not relative rank among all topics.
Observations
?
The primary evidence view for this topic. Sort it chronologically when you want concrete examples behind the larger pattern.
Netflix saw that streaming would be a thing.
... be a thing. But they also built a monster of a DVD business on the way to that north star. Had they focused on streaming prematurely it wouldn't have work, they would have died.
Everything is just gradient descent.
...a new even faster pace layer on top. Gradient descent without a goal, without a north star of meaning, optimizes for something hollow. Meaning reduces down to just "MOAR."
Data can only tell you the gradient, not where to go.
...long term. Then, pick the gradient that is steepest that brings you towards the north star.
In a bottom up culture, don't try to convince everyone on strategy, because it will be impossible to cohere.
...momentum. Before there's momentum, trying to get momentum around your strategic north star is nearly impossible in the bottom-up chaos. Instead, get momentum on the short-term in things that you know align with a compelling long-term strate...
A frame for moral actions: The actions that, if everyone did them by default, would create the world that you want to live in.
... makes the world better by default, by drafting off what we want ourselves as a north star to help orient. Everyone has a different north star, but they all point in roughly the same direction, so the average direction of travel is consiste...
Getting a consortium to change the world is hard.
...world is hard. Doesn't work: 1) Found a consortium 2) come up with a compelling north star The consortium will all be pulling in random directions, giving you a mush outcome or more likely simply no outcome. Does work: 1) Come up with a com...
What is the simplest next action that will generate the most momentum in the direction you want to go?
...tion you want to go? Do that, then repeat. If you have a plausible and valuable North Star you're sighting off, this can work very well. No need to overthink it! Surf the possibility space; as long as you have a consistent bias, it will def...
Game studios use Unity to coordinate the approximate actions of thousands of employees into a coherent game.
... that makes games built in this internal swarming approach coherent is a shared north star vision that everyone working on it is compelled to share. If they didn't share the north star they'd have never been hired, or would be fired. Unity,...
If you take two distinct coherent ideas and average them you get mush.
...resting eddies of gradient to surf to achieve a distinct, interesting, valuable North Star vision. An auteur choosing which interesting details to absorb is way better than a group decision made by consensus. There has to be someone applyin...
The less strategic clarity you have, the more that too many layers of middle management will create chaos.
...y layers of middle management will create chaos. With a comprehensive strategic north star, everyone can break ties easily. Even though each middle-manager wants to put their stamp on the outcome, their stamps tend to nest mostly cleanly. B...
Last week when the Slack redesign rolled out, my knee jerk reaction was almost visceral hate.
...ality changes you can hill climb easier, which gives you a better self-steering north star. Of course, the quality can change so much that it's effectively an interface change ("this workflow that used to work now fundamentally doesn't") bu...
A sketch of a model for choosing what projects to invest in.
.... Parallels to the Assembly Theory academic paper I linked last week. Imagine a north star representing your vision or long-term goal. Imagine each adjacent (edge + node) combo has a few components: An orientation (angle towards or away fro...
Coherence means that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
...elerating rate. Things that make something more automatically cohering A shared north star Independent components with clear boundaries, where it's OK for that boundary to be visible externally (Conway's law) Ecosystem (relying on third par...