The NFT Crash Was Predictable
NFTs crashed 95% from their 2021 peak. This was predictable from the start....
The Myth of Overnight Success
Every startup success story is a lie by omission. The media compresses years of grinding, pivots, and near-death experiences into a simple narrative....
Shareware: The $25 Honor System That Built An Industry
Andrew Fluegelman shipped PC-Talk in 1982 and asked users to mail $25 if they liked it. Doom, WinZip, and id Software grew from the same honor system....
Founder Ego Kills Startups Faster Than Bad Code
Founder ego sinks more startups than market fit or capital. Twelve patterns I see across due-diligence calls, with the questions that surface them in 20 minutes....
Programming Before Google: When You Read Manuals
Programming in the pre-internet era meant libraries, magazines, and BBSs....
Technical Debt Isn't Debt - It's Rot
Debt implies payback. You won't. It compounds faster than interest. Every startup that says 'we'll clean it up after we raise' never does....
How 'Piracy' Actually Helped Technology Move Forward
Software piracy in the 80s and 90s built the networks, protocols, and communities that became legitimate tech infrastructure....
My First Computer
1977 was the year everything started. The Apple II, TRS-80, and Commodore PET created personal computing....
Debugging Before Stack Overflow
Stack Overflow launched in 2008. For the first thirty years of my career, 'Google the error message' wasn't an option....
What Prodigy Taught Me About Walled Gardens
Prodigy invested $1 billion building walls that collapsed when the open internet arrived. The pattern has repeated with every major walled garden since....