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No, we’re not a startup — and that’s fine

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Turn ideas into reality

Inadvertently, the other day, I became one of those people.

My team and I were sitting together as part of a week-long summit; some attendees were in New York City, while others attended remotely. I was taking them through the principles that I believe are important for developing software for our newsroom: a laser focus on the needs of a real user, building the smallest thing we can and then testing and iterating from there, shortening feedback loops, and focusing on the most targeted work we can that will meaningfully make progress towards our goals.

And then I said it:

“I see our team as a startup.”

Oof. It wasn’t even the first time the words had left my mouth. Or the second or the third.

One of my colleagues very kindly gave me feedback in a smaller session afterwards. She pointed out that this has become a cliché in larger organizations: a manager will say “we act like a startup” but then will do nothing of the sort. In fact, almost nobody in these settings can agree on what a startup even is.

And even if they did, the environment doesn’t allow it. Big companies don’t magically “act like a startup”. The layers of approval, organizational commitments, and big-org company culture are all inevitably still intact — how could they not be? — and the team is supposed to nebulously “be innovative” as a kind of thin corporate aspiration rather than an achievable, concrete practice. The definitions, resources, culture, and permission to act differently from the rest of the organization simply aren’t there. At best it’s naivety; at worst it’s a purposeful, backhanded call for longer hours and worse working conditions.

But when I said those words, I wasn’t thinking about corporate culture. I was remembering something else entirely.

I often think back to a conference I attended in Edinburgh — the Association for Learning Technology’s annual shindig, which that year was held on the self-contained campus of Heriot-Watt University. There, I made the mistake of criticizing RDF, a technology that was the darling of educational technologists at the time. That was why a well-regarded national figure in the space stood up and yelled at me at the top of his voice: “Why should anyone listen to you? You’re two guys in a shed!”

The thing is, we were two guys in a shed. With no money at all. And, at the time, I was loving it.

A few years earlier, I quit my job because I was certain that social networking platforms were a huge part of the future of how people would learn from each other and about the world. My co-founder and I didn’t raise funding: instead, we found customers early on and gave ourselves more time by earning revenue. Neither one of us was a businessman; we didn’t know what we were doing. We had to invent the future of our company — and do it with no money. It felt like we were willing it into existence, and we were doing it on our own terms. Nobody could tell us what to do; there was nobody to greenlight our ideas except our customers. It was thrilling. I’ve never felt more empowered in my career.

There is no way to recapture that inside of a larger organization. And nobody should want to.

The most important difference is that we owned the business. Each of us held a 50% share. Yes, we worked weird hours, pulled feats of technical gymnastics, and were working under the constant fear of running out of money, but that was a choice we made for ourselves — and if the business worked, we’d see the upside. That’s not true for anyone who can be described as an “employee” rather than a “founder”. Even if employees hold stock in the company, the stake is always orders of magnitude smaller; their ability to set the direction of the company, smaller still.

Another truth is that almost nobody has done this. If you’ve worked in larger institutions for most of your career, you’ve never felt the same urgency. If you’ve never bootstrapped a startup, the word might conjure up memories of two million dollar raises and offices in SoMA. Maybe a Series C company with hundreds of people on staff. Or Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, backstabbing his way to riches. In each case, the goal is to grow the company, make your way to an IPO or an exit, and be a good steward of investor value. In places like San Francisco, that’s probably a more common startup story than mine. But it’s an entirely different adventure.

So instead of using the word “startup” and somehow expecting people to innately connect with my lived experience on a wholesale basis, what do I actually want to convey? What do I think is important?

I think it’s these things:

  • Experiment-driven: The team has autonomy to conceive of, design, run, and execute on the results of repeated, small, measurable experiments.
  • Human-centered: The team has their “customers” (their exact users) in mind and is trying to solve their real problems as quickly as possible. Nobody is building a bubble and spending a year “scratching their own itch” without knowing if their user will “buy” it.
  • Low-budget: The team is conscious about cost, scope, and complexity. There’s no assumption of infinite time, money, or attention. That constraint is a feature, not a bug.
  • Time-bound: The team is focused on quick wins that move the needle quickly, not larger projects with far-off deadlines (or no deadline at all).
  • Outcome-driven: The point is to help the user, not to spend our time doing one activity or sticking to a known area of expertise. If buying off the shelf fits the budget and gets us there faster, then that’s what we do. If it turns out that the user needs something different, then that’s what we build. Quickly.

That’s what I was trying to say. Not that we’re a startup — but that we can and should work in a way that’s fast, focused, and grounded in real human needs. We don’t need the mythology or the branded T-shirts. We just need the mindset — and the permission.

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billyhopscotch
7 days ago
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Ben really captures something here
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For Fascists, Hypocrisy Is a Virtue

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A.R. Moxon:

It’s best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a virtue. It’s how they signal that the things they are doing to people were never meant to be equally applied.

It’s not an inconsistency. It’s very consistent to the only true fascist value, which is domination.

It’s very important to understand, fascists don’t just see hypocrisy as a necessary evil or an unintended side-effect.

It’s the purpose. The ability to enjoy yourself the thing you’re able to deny others, because you dominate, is the whole point.

For fascists, hypocrisy is a great virtue — the greatest.

Yeah, this is basically why I don’t waste time anymore railing against the many hypocrisies of conservatives — they’re not gotchas that you’re catching them in, they’re part of the domination.

Tags: A.R. Moxon · politics

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billyhopscotch
8 days ago
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1 public comment
cjheinz
8 days ago
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Wow. Everyone needs to know & understand this. I didn't.
Lexington, KY; Naples, FL

An Alternative to Hope

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Emily and Amelia Nagoski discuss how to cope when you've either lost your hope or never had any. Emily and Amelia made the Feminist Survival Project podcast in 2020. In 2025, they brought it back. In a recent episode, they discuss what to do when you don't have hope.

Notes I took from the podcast:

* Emily has to say that her hope is "broken" rather than "gone" because people get freaked out that you're not going to try any more.
* Hope is measured in pathways and agency. Pathway: "I can think of many ways to get what is important to me, I can see a way forward." Agency: "I can meet my goals." But the problems on the news are too big for any individual to think their way out. This would take collaboration on a massive scale, and no one has that individual power except for maybe four people in the world, who are the actual problem right now.
* Hope doesn't take scale into account. Hope is a general sense of positivity. Faith is a belief in something and is more specific.
* The Monitor keeps a ratio of effort to progress and "has a very strong opinion of what it's supposed to be." It objects when you put in a whole lot of effort and don't make much progress. If no amount of effort will make progress, such as constitutional crisis...How do you keep the motivation to keep on trying when nothing you do will make any progress?
* Emily's answer is faith, even if she's an atheist.
* Stillness, time and rest help you heal. Stay with the people who care about you.
* "Hope is a scam." It's great if you have access to it, but if you don't, there are other options that are very good.
* What people fear is that if they lose access to hope, they think there are no other ways through the jams of their lives, they have no agency or pathways, they become stuck or isolated. My brain has decided that if I can't change these things, I can't change anything.

Step 1: ask for help. Have a list of 3 people at minimum, one of whom should be a professional.
Step 2: Numb intolerable pain in whatever way helps. Do whatever it takes, whatever way helps. Food, drugs, television, whatever lowers the pain to a tolerable level. Do things that help you to release the pain, clean the wound.

Emily also wrote a Substack article and did a separate video on the topic. She lost her hope 20+ years ago, how's she been doing since then?
"Hope is justifying your feelings, thoughts, and plans based on your assessment that a desired outcome is possible.
I had a series of life experiences that broke the link between my assessment of whether or not a desired outcome is possible and whether or not I think, feel, or plan anything about that desirable outcome. I lost my ability to justify my thoughts, feelings, and plans based on what I thought was possible.
That noncontingent sustaining energy is an unimaginable hope.
What's it called, when you have no reason to believe a wanted future may come to pass and yet you continue to work toward it just as if you did believe you could make a difference? What's the name for that emotion, when you walk toward the world you want, knowing that each next step might be off a cliff?

What's broken in me is not my ability to imagine but the sense that I'm justified in believing I can create the outcome I imagine.
What's not broken in me is my sense that I am justified in believing I'm working to create what I can't imagine, the vast unknowable. Faith is an unimaginable hope, a hope for something we believe without reason is on the other side of the mountain."
Amelia has their own follow-up video on the topic, from the POV of someone who never had hope, citing fiction books as well as their own book, Burnout (notes on the book here).
"Hope is maybe not the thing, all the time."
"I think there is an alternative power that can pull you through, and that's love."
Related topic: NYT: How I Lost Hope and Took Up Singing
"When I had given up hope altogether, my sense of abandonment was colored in sadness, for sure, but also with shades of profound relief. Feeling angry and powerless gave me a new freedom to do anything I wanted. I was enjoying the moment, instead of worrying about the uncertainties of the future or mourning the past life that would not return. We can't live without hope forever, but sometimes it can be OK to let go of it. What you find instead may even help you get through."
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billyhopscotch
22 days ago
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The February 28 Economic Blackout

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an illustration of a rabbit surrounded by text about the economic boycott on Feb 28

A broad range of Americans are organizing a 24-hour economic boycott on February 28th to protest the ongoing actions of the Trump administration and to send a message to corporate America. From The People’s Union USA website, here are the details:

  • The boycott runs all day on February 28th.
  • People are urged to not make any purchases that day. No online shopping or in person.
  • Do not spend money on: fast food, gas, or at major retailers. “No Amazon, no Walmart, no Best Buy.”
  • If you need to buy essentials (food, medicine, emergency supplies), do so at small, local businesses and try to pay cash.

The idea is to show corporate America, using the thing they best understand (money), how much power Americans have when collectively organized. Organizers have billed this as an initial move (“if they don’t listen…we make the next blackout longer”) and have planned follow-up economic actions.

Awesome rabbit illustration by Martha Rich.

Tags: 2025 Coup · business · economics

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billyhopscotch
33 days ago
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Let's go!
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Just go for it. Or just sleep on it.

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Inside my ADHD brain are two wolves…

  1. The wolf that overanalyzes everything.
  2. The wolf that says “YOLO” and leaps off a cliff.

The overanalytical wolf gets bogged down in details.

If I’m planning out some code, I’ll get lost in the weeds and the various specifics of the “right way” to structure things. If I’m thinking through a strategic problem or a design decision, I’ll fret over the “right way” to address it.

To quote the great sage Van Wilder

Worrying is like a rocking chair. It’ll give you something to do, but it won’t get you anywhere.

Bad code can literally kill people, but you’re not there yet. You’re trying something. You haven’t shipped it.

Worst case scenario: you try something, it fails and you toss it out, but now you’ve learn what to do differently next time.

But ADHD brains like mine also sometimes lack impulse control.

This can be a gift! ADHD folks can be a lot more likely to take healthy risks, not just bad ones. This makes you exceptional innovator. That voice that tells someone not to explore a new idea because it’ll never work? You don’t have that! You just go for it!

But it can also cause ADHD folks to just blow everything up and start from scratch when we feel bored or overwhelmed. And that’s not great.

When you’re feeling like you’re spinning tires, don’t just go for it.

Step away, sleep on it, and come back in a day or five with fresh eyes and a fresh perspective.

Like this? A Lean Web Club membership is the best way to support my work and help me create more free content.

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billyhopscotch
34 days ago
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Fired NPS, USFS, BLM Employees Share Their Stories

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photos of three fired federal employees who worked in our National Parks and Forests

The Guardian profiled a number of people fired from the agencies that manage federal lands - the US Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, etc. — purged from their jobs by the Trump/Musk administration.

Victoria Winch, US Forest Service wilderness forestry technician, Flathead national forest, Spotted Bear ranger district, adjacent to Glacier national park, Montana:

People come on to these lands to hunt, to feed their families. People are allowed to get firewood. Outfitters, who are a big part of the local economy, use these trails.

But every single field person at Spotted Bear was terminated. Those trails won’t get cleared this year. And it takes less than one season for them to be totally impassable.

Nick Massey, USFS wilderness Ranger, Pisgah national forest, North Carolina:

We were very, very busy with public interaction, conversations, giving directions, educating. I would come up on folks quite often who were either lost or having some sort of emergency, and I’m also a member of two mountain rescue teams in the area.

I really loved seeing so many different people from different walks of life. Being able to be a part of that wilderness experience that people are having was really, truly magical.

Other fired federal land and National Park employees have been sharing their stories with media and on social media, highlighting how little these purges are about saving money and much more about all the services and benefits that Americans will be losing that we paid for. (Their stories also highlight the lies about employees not being fit for their jobs being used as the pretext to fire them. And the lack of due process. And, and, and…) Here are a few of those stories.

Brian Gibbs, Educational Park Ranger at Effigy Mounds National Monument:

I am a father, a loving husband, & dedicated civil servant.

I am an oath of office to defend and protect the constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic.

I am a work evaluation that reads “exceeds expectations.”

I am the “fat on the bone.”

I am being trimmed as the consequence of the popular vote

I am the United States flag raiser & folder

I am my son’s “Junior Ranger” idol

I am a college kid’s dream job

Alex Wild, park ranger:

Today I lost my dream job as a permanent park ranger in the NPS. I’m still in shock, and completely devastated. I have dedicated my life to being a public servant, teacher, and advocate for places that we ALL cherish. I have saved lives and put my own life at risk to serve my community.

I honestly can’t imagine how the parks will operate without my position. I mean, they just can’t. I am the only EMT at my park and the first responder for any emergency. This is flat-out reckless.

The NY Times published an overview of the firings and their effect on federal land management, including interviews with purged employees:

Arianna Knight, 29, of Bozeman, Mont., the wilderness trails supervisor for the Yellowstone District of the Custer Gallatin National Forest, was let go on Feb. 14 along with more than 30 other Custer Gallatin employees. Ms. Knight said she and two workers under her supervision typically cleared 4,000 downed trees and logs from hundreds of miles of trails each year, often hiking and using hand tools for a week at a time in wilderness areas, where federal law prohibits motorized vehicles and mechanized tools like chain saws.

Now those trails won’t be cleared, Ms. Knight said, adding, “People are going to suffer.”

And:

While it may seem as if the cuts will mean fewer people trampling through the parks, allowing ecosystems to regenerate, some fear the opposite: that less oversight and control over huge crowds may damage the parks for seasons to come.

Adam Auerbach, 32, a former park ranger at Rocky Mountain National Park, said visitor numbers at the park has been climbing consistently for decades, to more than four million in 2023 from 2.6 million in 1990. The park has had to institute a timed-entry permit system to control the numbers.

With the new cuts, he said, “There will be fewer rangers on the ground to enforce regulations and fewer public educators to help the public even understand the regulations and the reasons for them in the first place.”

From a news release by the Association of National Park Rangers:

Rick Mossman, president of the Association of National Park Rangers (ANPR) said, “These actions will hurt visitors and the parks they travelled to see across the United States. If a visitor is involved in an automobile accident in Badlands National Park in South Dakota, or has their car broken into at a trailhead in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, there will be a delay in the response by a ranger to investigate — or perhaps no response at all. If a visitor suffers a medical emergency while hiking in Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, ranger response could be delayed.”

Mossman went on to say that visitors are likely to experience reduced hours or days — and even closures — of visitor centers and other public-use facilities. Ranger-led educational programs will be reduced or eliminated. Trash and litter may accumulate, and restrooms will be dirtier because of reduced maintenance and fewer custodial workers. There could even be complete closures of some parts of parks to protect visitors and those park resources.

From the National Parks Conservation Association:

In a phone interview, Moxley said she had to walk away from a year’s worth of research and work on wetland restoration, invasive plant documentation and funding efforts to save Harper Ferry’s remaining hemlock trees from a devastating invasive insect called a woolly adelgid.

Adding that she speaks on behalf of herself and not Harpers Ferry or the National Park Service, Moxley said parks — large and small — have behind-the-scenes staff who work to protect natural habitats, historic structures and museum objects and exhibits.

“Visitors don’t usually encounter us, but without us, there would not be sites to enjoy,” Moxley said. “Without staff, the National Park Service will be unable to carry out its 100+ year mission to leave the parks unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations. This is a mission my colleagues and I take seriously.”

Tags: 2025 Coup · Donald Trump · Elon Musk · politics · USA

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billyhopscotch
35 days ago
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