Disagreed with 5, it's too prescriptive. Lots of great writers use progressive disclosure to keep people hooked

Being unselfish also helps with building great products. Reminds me of this article, treat your reader like a customer: https://www.productlessons.xyz/article/improve-business-writ...

I don't think progressive disclosure applies in the cases the author is discussing.

Slide 8: "Most of the writing in the world is for information." Readers looking for information aren't interested in being teased to keep reading. That's a recipe for 'unhooking' them. They want to know what the author thinks they should know.

No pussyfooting.

Agree. Adopting a less helpful structure in the name of manipulating the reader, is surely incompatible with unselfish writing. From the article:

> I’m not going to demand that you put up with my quirks (bad spelling, bad organization, sloppiness). I’m going to package the information so that it enters your heads as easily as possible.

If we were discussing fiction writing, that would be different. Fiction writers aren't aiming for maximally efficient communication.

I feel like progressive disclosure is such a broad term that anything can be made to fall under it...any book written, show filmed, movie created is progressively disclosing information/story.

FWIW plenty of informational books pussyfoot just to get a bigger piece out, there is fluff, anecdotes, tangents, but humans understand through storytelling, and ultimately that is usually a good way to go about sharing ideas.

This is great! Here are my takeaways from that article.

1. Easy writing makes for hard reading; invest in editing and treat your reader like a customer

2. What’s the biggest difference between great writers and all the rest? It’s not talent, it’s treating the process like a product

3. Make it skimmable; expect that your reader is busy

4. Every word should serve a purpose

5. Your points should fit like a jigsaw puzzle, each connected to another

In the article, author reduces (1.)

From: "One of the best ways to improve your writing is to learn how to cut out words that are not necessary"

To: "To improve your writing, cut out unnecessary words."

Progressive disclosure isn't what's keeping me hooked on the meaning of the registers of your chip. People asking about the status of my open bug is doing that. Give me a table.

You have to know the rules to break them. This is a good rule to know and then know how to break.

I agree. Sometimes a transition statement is better. Sometimes one must present evidence, then summarize. This is just my summary of the full 120-slide PowerPoint.

Ya I sometimes just keep track of newsletters I like in a doc, then make the rounds when I'm in a reading mood

VC capital is useful assuming it's a winner-takes-all / capital-intensive market, but many markets are not, in which case optimizing for $ raised is actually a distraction

Example: Delicious was sold to bootstrapped competitor, Pinboard for only $35K. Pinboard is still around to this day

https://www.productlessons.xyz/article/pinboard-delicious-fa...

No company is incentivized to do what's sustainable for society

Cost $300K total: $100K to exercise, $200K in paper gains. Looks like it will pay off bc valuation has continued to go up, but the 90-day exercise window is punishing for cashflow.

Didn't know about 83b election, didn't make use of QSBS exemption; learnings here: https://www.productlessons.xyz/article/how-stock-options-for...

Found this useful 1:1 template a while back: https://giddy-amusement-c74.notion.site/Manage-your-manager-...

Ya although $162M is not that much, barely a mark-up from the last round

Total funding for Area 1 according to Crunchbase is $82M. Employees probably got next to nothing except retention bonus from Cloudflare.

Good thing employees get paid a salary

Well it's a 50% stock deal and Cloudflare's stock is a tad down from their high, too.

The whole SAAS sector have gotten killed lately. If Area 1 wanted an public exit via IPO they'd probably have received the same reduction in valuation. It's an odd time for an exit with how the market has been.

Google, Airbnb

Yes those matter to selecting any company, but equity % does as well

Why? Assuming we’re talking about normal employee options, if you’re early and get a big % that gets diluted, someone with a smaller % later can end up with more shares.

Strike price is much lower, so it's cheaper to exercise and potentially more tax-favorable due to QSBS too

Startups and VCs have long had really good data on what to pay people. Like that this is now being made public!