How do you know if your price is too high? A few things could be happening: the product isn’t actually as valuable as you think, you’re talking to the wrong customers, you’re not conveying the value properly, or some combination of the three.

Product isn’t actually valuable

You may have identified a problem that isn’t critical or a solution that isn’t good enough to overcome the inertia needed for a customer to buy. This can be difficult to determine but requires keen observation—especially to rule out some of the other causes below.

Talking to the wrong customers

If you have any sales, look at what the most successful customers have in common (not just any customer otherwise that could be misleading). What was the key challenge they were facing and how did your product address that? Similarly, look at sales lost or customers that churned to see what they had in common. Focus on a single customer profile until you’ve really figured it out before moving on to the next.

Not conveying value

You can have the best product in the world and people still won’t buy it if you can’t convey the value it creates. In B2B sales, it’s possible to solve a real problem but customers don’t have the motivation to do anything about it. Finding the right hooks are important to get a potential customer to take action.

See also:

• A third of sales comes from doing nothing at all and that might be misleading
• Willingness to pay should be at the core of product design
• Founder led sales helps identify product problems

The paradox of alcohol consumption is that it’s bad for our health and costly to society yet continues to thrive. There is no evolutionary reason for humans to have evolved to enjoy the taste of alcohol (in fact certain Asian gene pools like mine have developed allergies to it). However, alcohol provides an extremely important benefit, down regulating the pre-frontal cortex and thereby improving cooperation.

The PFC helps us focus and analyze, but it also gets in the way when we are “thinking too much”. Alcohol down regulates the PFC which improves creativity and reduces inhibition. In an important negotiation, the thing that builds trust is turning down your PFC. That’s why, since ancient times, alcohol is at the center of all gatherings and negotiations. It’s a vital technology to improve cooperation among people and, ultimately, civilization building.

Listen to Edward Slingerland, Drinking for 10,000 Years: Intoxication and Civilization.

See also:

• Drinking alone is a distinctly American phenomenon (as is drinking distilled liquor which is probably very bad for civilization building)
• This explanation for why alcohol exists is elegant and elegance is a heuristic guide to truth

Having a meaningful mission that draw people in and compels them to do their best work together is more powerful than good culture alone. A company might have a distinctive culture of how they work together and other behaviors but if it’s in service of something trivial, there is a natural ceiling to how connected someone will be.

(Not an original thought, but I’m not sure where I heard this first to give credit).

See also:

• The most effective people care a lot and being obsessed with what you are building is a competitive advantage

A news diet is intentionally limiting yourself to certain quantities and outlets for news and media. This might help maintain focus throughout the day and improve mental health.

There may be a link between exposure to bad news and depression. For example, researchers found a positive correlation between news about COVID-19 and depressive symptoms.

The idea that everyone has their own learning style and learning is most effective when teachers use your style is not based on any scientific evidence.

VARK (visual, auditory, reading/writing, kinetic) was invented by Neil Fleming after observing some good teachers failing to reach certain students and while some “poor teachers” succeeded: “one topic that seemed to hold some magic, some explanatory power, was preferred modes of learning, ‘modal preferences’”.

People seem to connect with the idea of learning style for the same reason we have a favorite color, it seems like some part of our identity.

See also:

• Outdated scientific studies can perpetuate for years and this isn’t even scientific
• Identity is a powerful motivator for behaviors—if you think you are a visual person you probably think you learn best with visual materials and seek them out (or demand them from others)
• Surprise plus memory equals learning

Tailwind has a plugin for line clamping @tailwindcss/line-clamp that uses pure CSS to truncate text to the specified number of lines. What if you want to show an indicator to read the rest of the truncated text?

We can create a react component that dynamically truncates text and shows a toggle for expanding or hiding text.

import React, { FunctionComponent, useState, useCallback } from 'react';

type TextTruncateProps = {
  text: string;
};

/* Note: The number of lines to truncate to needs to be static
otherwise the css classes won't be generated by tailwind. If you need
a different number of lines, create a new component */
export const TextTruncateThree: FunctionComponent<TextTruncateProps> = ({
  text,
}) => {
  const [shouldTruncate, setShouldTruncate] = useState<boolean>(false);
  const [readMore, setReadMore] = useState<boolean>(false);

  // Measure the element to calculate the number of lines and
  // determine whether to truncate
  const measuredRef = useCallback(
    (node: any) => {
      // Before the component mounts the node ref will be null
      if (node?.parentElement) {
        // Calculate the number of lines based on height
        const elHeight = node.offsetHeight;
        const styles = window.getComputedStyle(node);
        const lineHeight = styles
          .getPropertyValue('line-height')
          .replace('px', '');
        const elLineCount = elHeight / parseInt(lineHeight, 10);

        setShouldTruncate(elLineCount > 3);
      }
    },
    [text]
  );

  const shouldClamp = shouldTruncate && !readMore;

  // Our toggle for expanding or hiding truncated text
  let toggle;
  if (readMore) {
    toggle = (
      <span onClick={() => setReadMore(false)}>
        Show less
      </span>
    )
  } else {
    toggle = (
      <span onClick={() => setReadMore(true)}>
        Read more
      </span>
    );
  }

  return (
    <div>
      <p
        ref={measuredRef}
        className={`${shouldClamp ? 'line-clamp-3' : 'line-clamp-none'}`}
      >
        {text}
      </p>
      {shouldTruncate && toggle}
    </div>
  );
};

See also:

• Truncating text is complicated but this method keeps the height of the element consistent

I use org-mode for taking notes and keeping track of tasks. I use Notion for work as an internal wiki.

I take meeting notes in org-mode but want to share them in the internal wiki for work.

Is there a way to do that?

• Notion now has an API
• Someone wrote a package in 2019 to export org to notion
• With a bit of emacs elisp it should be possible to export from org-mode to markdown to Notion

Update: I used ChatGPT with Emacs to come up with the following export backend:

(require 'org)
(require 'ox-org)
(require 'request)

(org-export-define-derived-backend 'notion 'org
  :menu-entry
  '(?n "Export to Notion Meetings"
       ((?n "To Notion Meetings"
            (lambda (a s v b)
              (org-notion-meetings-export a s v b))))))

(defun notion-create-meeting (meeting-title meeting-notes)
  (let* ((notion-api-secret (getenv "NOTION_API_SECRET"))
         (database-id (getenv "ORG_NOTION_MEETINGS_DATABASE_ID"))
         (url (format "https://api.notion.com/v1/pages"))
         (headers `(("Notion-Version" . "2022-06-28")
                    ("Content-Type" . "application/json")
                    ("Authorization" . ,(format "Bearer %s" notion-api-secret))))
         (data `(("parent" . (("database_id" . ,database-id)))
                 ("properties" . (("Name" . (("title" . ((("text" . (("content" . ,meeting-title))))))))))
                 ("children" . ((("object" . "block")
                                 ("type" . "paragraph")
                                 ("paragraph" . (("rich_text" . ((("text" . (("content" . ,meeting-notes))))))))))))))
    (request
     url
     :type "POST"
     :headers headers
     :data (json-encode data)
     :parser 'json-read
     :error
     (cl-function (lambda (&rest args &key error-thrown response &allow-other-keys)
                    (message "Got error: %S, response: %S" error-thrown response)))
     :success (cl-function
               (lambda (&key data &allow-other-keys)
                 (message "Meeting notes page created: %s" (assoc-default 'json data)))))))

(defun org-notion-meetings-export (&optional async subtreep visible-only body-only ext-plist)
  (let ((title (org-element-property :title (org-element-at-point)))
        (body (org-export-as 'md subtreep visible-only body-only ext-plist)))
    (notion-create-meeting title body)))

(provide 'org-notion-meetings-export)

Opportunity comes in many shapes and sizes but a consistent limiting factor compliance—the set of rules (written or unwritten) that one must follow to participate in a prosperous endeavor.

Examples of products that make compliance easier:

• Mosey automating employment and tax compliance to simplify hiring remote and staying compliant
• Stripe Atlas start a company and get access to financial infrastructure from anywhere in the world
• Legalpad solving immigration and work visas
• Gusto payroll and benefits without having to figure out tax filings
• Vanta navigate security certifications to sell to regulated customers

Startups don’t have information about them needed for techniques you would typically use to value an investment. There is little history, cash flows, and even assets to do a discounted cash flow. As a result, public market investors are confused at how early-stage startups carry the valuations they do. That’s because these companies are like investing in options.

Being successful is mostly luck but working smartly (skill plus hard work) increases your luck. The trick is to balance intellectual honesty (it’s mostly luck) with controlled self-deception (success is due to skill and hard work). If you are too honest, you become pessimistic and if you’re too self-deceptive you get a false sense that everyone less successful is lazy or dumb.

Watch the video Is Success Luck or Hard Work?.

See also:

• Emotional intelligence is more important for entrepreneurial success than general mental ability
• It’s easier to blame others for lack of success but it is more correct to blame bad luck
• The easiest person to fool is yourself especially when it’s about your contributions towards your own success

The Three Body Problem captures your imagination and uses science as a plot point that I haven’t seen before. Some spoilers ahead.

I loved that the book is framed around the Cultural Revolution in China and told in unforgiving detail. It was a unique experience for me to have science fiction told through the lens of Chinese politics and history.

The dimension of time becomes a mind bending consideration for the decisions Earth and Trisolaris make. It’s interesting to think about how things might play out when the incoming danger is 400 years away and the advancement of technology in the intervening time between launching an invasion fleet and arriving at the destination. (Although, this does presume that no advancement can be made along the journey when matter, energy, and evidence are all that’s needed for knowledge creation).

Some of it is admittedly far fetched. The proton computer is super cool, but it’s stretched to the absolute limit—AI + multi-dimensional transformation + quantum sensing, and so on.

Remote work can save employers and estimated $200B per year and help reduce inflation. Workers are willing to accept smaller pay for increased work from home options. A recent paper found that this would reduce wage growth by 2 percentage points over two years.

Read Remote Work Could Save Firms $206 Billion and Ease Pressure on the Fed from Bloomberg.

See also:

• American workers are willing to take a pay cut to work remote
• Google employees could face pay cuts due to working remote
• But there might be perks too, places that will pay you to move and work remotely
• Could inflation make remote work part of monetary policy?

Prospective customers will want to review an order form and master software agreement. Their lawyers will want to propose changes. This causes a few issues: it increases the cost of the deal because now you need to pay lawyers to resolve the feedback and it makes it difficult to understand contractual obligations if every customer is slightly different.

To reduce this complication, set a contract value minimum before you will make revisions to your agreement. If someone asks about it you can tell them the rule that you’ve set for sales. If they push back, you can give a clear reason why—the expense of making revisions and maintaining your obligations.

See also:

• Founder led sales helps identify product problems, but also sales problems where you’re spending a lot in legal fees on every deal regardless of size

People tend to think of objects and living things as having a soul or not having a soul when really it’s a continuous scale of souledness. For example, people reject the idea of eating certain animals like cats but not chickens, we remark about how, after a major cognitive decline due to old age, that person “isn’t all there”. There is a continuous assignment we make as to the degree of souledness in everything we see and interact with.

This isn’t to say this is correct (a souledness scale points out a lot of inconsistencies and contradictions) but it provides a good explanation for the moral issues we face today—a binary view of souledness (the predominant view) requires consensus and is therefore indeterminable.

From I Am a Strange Loop.

See also:

• Soul shards bring to life fragments of someone’s interiority

Music is a soul shard, little fragments of experience from the composer recreated in your head. They bring to life something ineffable inside us like little pieces of someone’s soul.

Pictures, writing, or even memories are all similar in this regard. A rare glimpse into the interiority of someone else.

From I Am a Strange Loop.

Written by Douglas R. Hofstadter.

A recent survey from The Partnership for New York City found 38% of Manhattan office workers are in the workplace as of April 2022. Office employees that are fully remote dropped from 54% in late October 2021 to 28%.

While NYC is one city and it’s industries are not reflective of all jobs, it is the largest city in the U.S. and a pretty good indicator of where we are with remote work.

See also:

• NYC office real estate value declined due to remote work

Contingency recruiting is not very effective for early-stage hiring. Since contingency recruiters get paid only if they are able to fill a job opening and charge 20-25% of the new hire’s first year salary, they tend to share candidate profiles with larger companies that pay higher salaries which make them more money.

Early-stage startups tend to get candidate profiles that the larger companies passed on. This results is less desirable candidates and a lower volume than if a startup were to do recruiting in-house.

There is so much writing that goes into running modern organizations but very little of it is ever seen. Every email, chat, document, slides, spreadsheets that gets produced is limited in distribution to a handful of people or teams. What you can observe from the outside is only the most polished published content.

So what?

A common complaint about writing is that it’s too hard to do. Yet, everyone seems to create prolific amounts of writing every day. There is more capability than people give themselves credit for.

How might this vast trove of content be utilized? Is writing primarily for communication so disposable that it ought to never be looked at again? Perhaps there is something there, maybe that’s how we can train a minto linter.

See also:

• An easy piece of advice to give about how to write more is to do it every day, but everyone already is

An algorithm for working on hard problems is to shake and pull. Complex systems and problems are like a tangled up wire that by shaking (introducing randomness to open new paths) and pulling (stretching the system so there are no tangles) you can solve the problem quickly. If you were to pull without shaking you would tighten the knots which is like going depth first. If you were to only shake you wouldn’t actually try any new solutions.

Read The Only Algorithm for Hard Problems: Shake and Pull Gently.

See also:

• The author also likens this algorithm to “simulated annealing” where you are heating (shaking) and cooling slowly (pulling) which is also like product development: the path from concept to product is an annealing process

While you can use Emacs in the browser using Codespaces, it involves getting all of your emacs config set up on Codespaces. By using the GitHub CLI you can also use emacs TRAMP over SSH to work in the Codespace instance from your local emacs.

To do that, update your init.el to create a new tramp method. (Copied this from the emacs-codeql readme).

(let ((ghcs (assoc "ghcs" tramp-methods))
      (ghcs-methods '((tramp-login-program "gh")
                      (tramp-login-args (("codespace") ("ssh") ("-c") ("%h")))
                      (tramp-remote-shell "/bin/sh")
                      (tramp-remote-shell-login ("-l"))
                      (tramp-remote-shell-args ("-c")))))
  ;; just for debugging the methods
  (if ghcs (setcdr ghcs ghcs-methods)
    (push (cons "ghcs" ghcs-methods) tramp-methods)))

;; provide codespace name completion for ghcs tramp method
;; use C-j if you use ivy to kick in host completion
(defun my/tramp-parse-codespaces (&optional nop)
  (let ((results '())
        (codespaces
         (split-string
          (shell-command-to-string
           "gh codespace list --json name -q '.[].name'"))))
    (dolist (name codespaces)
      ;; tramp completion expects a list of (user host)
      (add-to-list 'results (list nil name)))
    results))

(tramp-set-completion-function "ghcs" '((my/tramp-parse-codespaces "")))

Install the GitHub CLI, authenticate your machine, and create a codespace.

brew install gh
gh auth login
gh cs create

Now you can use TRAMP to open files directly in your Codespace! C-x C-f then type ghcs:/ and use autocomplete to choose your codespace.

Everything that works with TRAMP should work including eglot and magit.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed said that workers are not returning to the office which has resulted a loss of $400MM in tax revenue. Some of the reasons for this is fewer people in the city (while not an exodus, the office vacancy rate is more than 24%) but I suspect this is also due companies moving out of SF for tax reasons (Stripe moved to Oyster Point).

Read San Francisco Mayor Breed says city faces remote work challenge as tech workers leave town or stay home.

See also:

• NYC office real estate value declined 32%
• Other cities are competing for tax revenue from remote work
• With declining tax revenue, it’s more apparent that remote work will become a political issue

Up to this point in the COVID-19 pandemic, remote work has been a buoy keeping many parts of the economy afloat. We’ve seen that working from home was so successful and fears of loss of productivity were unfounded. Now we are starting to see a reactionary movement that will find it’s way into political agendas—how to get workers back in the office.

It’s easy to dismiss this problem as a non-problem. Remote work is just work. The economy likes growing businesses because it creates jobs.

Who loses out when the number of people working from home increases? Commercial real estate is seeing their value decline considerably, cities are losing tax revenue. Millions of people without access to high speed internet and a home environment conducive to work creates inequality in remote work.

It’s a matter of time before a political party includes remote work into their platform or scapegoats it.

According to a recent survey from McKinsey & Company, American workers say they have the option to work part time or full time from home (58% and 35% respectively). That’s roughly 55 million people in the US.

87% of people offered to work from home, take up the offer (either 5 days a week or some days per week).

Flexible work arrangement is the 3rd most important motivator of finding a new job—just behind “better career opportunities” and “greater pay or hours”. It also ranks ahead of “better health insurance”.

See also:

• The motivators for finding a new job seems to line up with this: half of Millennials and Gen Z would consider quitting if employers don’t allow remote work
• 25% of all job postings are premanently remote
• The survey found greater work challenges for those in partially remote and fully remote setups which doesn’t square with this survey’s result that remote work is correlated with happiness
• According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 45% of jobs can be done remotely which is far lower than what this study suggests (so take both reports with a bit more than a grain of salt)