The percentage of employees working for enterprise companies (500+ employees) has increased as a percentage of the workforce compared to SMBs. From 2007 to 2017, the percentage of the workforce employed by enterprises increased 1.9%.

See also:

• PEO has a market size of $56 Billion in the US

One of the benefits of a PEO for small businesses in the U.S. is access to better healthcare plans. Since the PEO is an employer of record, they have many employees which improves their buying power when negotiating plans. A small business on their own does not have many employees to negotiate better rates.

See also:

• Back office
• PEO has a market size of $56 Billion in the US
• PEOs taking care of everything is a myth

Curtis Yarvin wrote in a blog post announcing his departure from Urbit, that building a product is like an annealing process. It starts as gas (an idea, amorphous and unconstrained) and ends in metal (a product in the hands of users). In the process, it can cool too fast causing structural weakness requiring heat to temper it (iteration and refinement).

Read the blog post

See also:

• Product work is hard because it necessitates change
• The number one job of a startup CEO is finding product market fit

NASA uses a Human-Rating Certification for vehicles transporting a human crew into space. The vehicle must have a 1 in 500 probability of a loss on ascent and a 1 in 500 probability on descent.

Read the requirements Read Certified Safe

In a tweetstorm from Andrew Wilkinson about how their task list app Flow was out competed by Asana. To summarize, his team built an early SaaS task list web app that was growing fast until Asana arrived and quickly outpaced them. Their growth slowed and eventually decided to shut down after many years. He frames the underlying causes as bootsrapped vs venture backed and how, “Good product with great marketing beats amazing product with no marketing.”

He offers a word of caution about bootstrapped businesses that are in a highly competitive space with low barriers to entry (like a todo list app) and how a well capitalized competitor can win.

See also:

• 7 Powers might offer some more explanation. It seems like Asana used it’s process power in engineering to outpace Flow (e.g. building iOS, Android clients) and branding to market and position the product.

There are two approaches for creating something of significance, the cathedral and the bazaar. The cathedral is best for creation and the bazaar is best for growth.

The cathedral is unified coordination mechanism that is well suited for reaching a singular vision. It is hierarchical which provides a clear line of decision making. This consolidation of decision making makes it efficient for coordination.

The bazaar is a distributed and loosely coordinated mechanism best suited for growing something that is well defined. By agreeing on a few rules (like commerce, or open source code) it can grow autonomosly—far exceeding what a single person or group (cathedral) could do on their own. However, the bizaar fails to create something new that’s also great (like designing by committee).

Read Curtis Yarvin’s blog post A Founder’s Farewell.

See also:

• The path from concept to product is an annealing process
• Putting both together, the bazaar is like compounding interest and the cathedral is the initial investment

The core thesis of Monetizing Innovation is that product failure is rooted in the failure to put the customer’s willingness to pay at the core of product design. Designing around the price—which measures value and priority—helps guide product design based on the customer. Companies often build the product and then do marketing and pricing, but that amounts to a leap of faith at best and a painful disconnect that leads to failure at worst.

See also:

• Build an initial product a small group of users love is YC and Paul Graham’s answer to this problem
• The number one job of a startup CEO is finding product market fit
• Methods of product ideation seems to leave pricing out (as does most startup advice)

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Inspiration quickly fades and is not enough to sustain a prolonged effort. That’s why you should act immediately when inspiration strikes. For example, when you have the idea for a blog post, jump straight into writing it—waiting causes the inspiration to pass and the likelihood of writing it goes down.

See also:

• Naval Ravikant writes about this in ‘How to get rich’.
• When it comes to writing, it’s like getting naked in public so you probably do need some inspiration to put yourself out there.

Public data from San Francisco revealed disturbing statistics about buildings and homes that show how difficult it is to create new housing. 54% of homes inn SF are in buildings that would be illegal to build today and 34% of buildings would be illegal.

See the map

See also:

• Zoning laws are a well known example of structural racism. By making it difficult to build new homes, property values go up and become unaffordable—disproportionately effecting Black people.
• Substituting economics for racism

A product design partner is an early user and potential customer that provides regular organized feedback about your product. In return, they get a hand in designing the product to fit the needs of their organization, early access to the product, and discounted pricing once it launches.

These partners should match the target market closely otherwise you will end up getting misleading guidance (or guidance on a different problem). A good sign of validation is when several design partners convert into paying customers after launch.

See also:

• Product work is a pursuit of facts about the user, market, and their problems
• Founder-led sales
• Founder led sales helps identify product problems

In the early years of his career, Robert Moses—with all of his idealism and arrogance—failed to reform the New York City government and improve efficiency as he proposed. None of his reforms were ultimately taken up and Tammany Hall retook the mayorship from the ‘Boy Mayor’, John Purroy Mitchel the reformist, after three short years.

After his brief stint in local government he was out of a job and bounced between jobs or was fired.

It wasn’t until Belle Moskowitz chose Robert Moses to be her Chief of Staff did his career take off.

See also:

• The Power Broker

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PEO’s often position themselves in the market as a service where you can entrust them to do everything for you. However, that is not the case.

For example, while using a PEO you still need to handle leave of absences (e.g. customizing a leave letter), prepare for involuntary separations, develop a parental leave policy, set up harrassment prevention training, and even set up certain employer tax accounts (i.e. Client-reporting states).

See also:

• Back office

The probability that belief A is true, given new evidence B is equal to the probability of B given A times the probability of A (regardless of B) divided by the probability of B (regardless of A).

For example, suppose you are getting a medical test to find out if you have a disease. The disease only appears in 1 out of 100 people and the test is 99% accurate. What is the likelihood you have the disease if you receive a positive test result?

Plugging it into the equation:

P(A|B) The probability of having the disease given a positive test result (what we want to find out).

P(B|A) = 99% Probability that the test is accurate if you actually have the disease.

P(A) = 1% Probability of having the disease regardless of the test.

P(B) = (1% x 99%) + (1% x 99%) The probability the test is accurate means summing a positive test result and the probability of a false negative test result. To get the false negatives if you have a population where 100 people have the disease and take the test which is 99% accurate, you get 1 false negative.

Result There’s a 50% probability you have the disease given a positive test result

(99% x 1%) / ((1% x 99%) + (1% x 99%)) = 50%

A traditional rhythm which is a variation of the Chaabi found in Northern Africa. It’s characterized by low beats (like a base drum) 5 and 10 with ‘high’ hits (like a snare drum) on 3 and 8 in two bars of 6/8. This creates a unique groove that, for western listeners, can be difficult to find beat 1 (which is not important in the Moroccan Chaabi rhythm).

Conventional ways people (and law enforcement) use to spot a liar is pseudoscience. Research studies have found that markers like fidgeting, looking away, and emotional response are not science-based and no better than guessing. This is problematic in the justice system and other law enforcement like the TSA because they are convicting people based on appearance of guilt that is baseless.

Alternatives that are found to be effective and science-based include withholding evidence to catch contradictions and sketching interviews which aids in recall (liars are less detailed).

Read the article

See also:

• This is an example of structural racism e.g. cultural differences about eye contact will result in racial profiling
• Interrogators may believe spotting liars is tacit knowledge, but that was also found to be incorrect

Being all consumed by engineering (writing blogs, contributing to open source, giving away your time) is not good because it leads to burnout and perpetuates more people to do the same. Open source for example, is co-opted by large corporations to exploit passionate developers that provide high quality code for free and putting the training burden on the person rather than corporation.

A counter argument to that is most effective people care a lot—a subtle difference, but you can be both dispassionate and care a lot.

Read the blog post

See also:

• Open source and ‘passionate developers’ have greatly increased the productivity of the field and contributes to Baumol’s cost disease (managers did not get 10x more efficient in their field, but salaries have gone up nonetheless)

In Bayes' Theorem, the probability of something occurring is based on probabilities of other parameters of the problem. Put simply, using the theorem builds on prior knowledge of the problem domain to update a prediction. This became very popular because, in the real world, there is much uncertainty and Bayes Theorem provides a way of modeling that uncertainty through probability (e.g. machine learning).

A survey by Microsoft found that 41% of employees are considering leaving their current job and 46% say they are likely to move to work remotely. This would result in a major change in the percentage of remote workers at companies compared to before the pandemic. A survey by McKinsey about remote work found that 20-25% of workforces in advanced economies could work from home after the pandemic.

See also:

• Two-thirds of remote workers want to continue to work remotely
• Topeka Kansas estimates a 10x return on relocating remote workers to their city

Like software bugs, strategy bugs are a failure of understanding of how the real world works and the value your product creates. They also have varying degrees of severity—some which should be solved right away and some which can slowly accumulate without significant harm.

Company and product strategy doesn’t tend to have the same rigor as more concrete practices (like software development), but one could imagine a ‘strategy bug’ tracker or a ‘bug bash’ where you try to rapidly iterate or gather evidence about an issue.

See also:

• 7 Powers lists macro company strategies that could be used to evaluate progress or file ‘bugs’.
• Metacognition and epistemology are a potential corollary for being more rigorous about strategy and spotting bugs (how do we know what we know and does that match reality).
• Gödel Incompleteness For Startups states we are probably wrong about because formal systems (acquiring knowledge about the market) can not also be complete systems

Thousands of Ice Age paintings were discovered in the Amazon rainforest in Colombia which earned the nickname ‘the Sistine Chapel of the ancients’. Researchers date the artwork in part because of the depictions of long extinct animals (including mammoths) and plants around the time of the Ice Age.

Read the article

See also:

• Brewarrina Fish Traps is another example of a long lasting artifact from 40,000 years ago

The Pyramid Principle by Barbara Minto.

Overview

Always give the summarizing idea first before the individual ideas that are being summarized. Summarizing is explaining the links between the ideas.

Readers can only take sentences one at a time. The right sequencing is vital.

Vertical relationships are formed by making a statement and then answering the next logical question. E.g. pigs are great -> why, reasons a b c. You shouldn’t answer a question the reader won’t ask.

Horizontal relationships are formed by an inductive or deductive argument. A deductive argument is a statement about a situation and the second idea comments on the subject and predicate of the first idea and the third idea states the implications e.g. a is b, c is a, therefore c is b. An inductive argument is where all the ideas can be described with one plural noun e.g. reasons, steps, problems.

Introductions

An introduction sets expectations of what the reader knows or will know and the initial key question that it raises which will be answered in the document. This is the root node for the rest of the document. Situation, complication, question, answer SCQA.

Never write about categories, only ideas. For example: a section called ‘background’ is not helpful.

Introductions remind rather than inform. The length should be based on the needs of the reader—history, background, prior works—interwoven in narrative form.

Intros as narratives build credibility and say up front what is in the supporting body.

Sometimes the S, C, and A are in a different order, but they are always present. Sometimes the question is implied.

There should only ever be one question (stated or implied) the document answers.

Sections

To transition between sections or chapters, use backward references. Restate the main idea from the section and state the next idea which raises the question the next section answers. You don’t need a full narrative to connect them because that was already done in the intro.

Long sections should be summarized as a form of good manners.

Conclusions are not necessary, but if you do add them do not just summarize, leave the reader with an appropriate emotion (e.g. the implication or philosophical point) or next steps that are not controversial.

When structuring the connections of key lines use inductive arguments rather than deductive otherwise there can be a large separation between the problem and the answer. Deductive arguments are best when the arguments are close together e.g. in the same paragraph.

Inductive arguments that have a single supporting argument should be deductive arguments otherwise it’s an implied connection and unclear.

Headings

Headings should also follow a pyramid pattern. There should always be more than one subheading and they should form an inductive argument supporting the parent heading. Sections (between major headings) have an ‘invisible’ fence that separates them for the reader so emphasize parallel ideas not between groups of subsections.

Headings should be concise and a reminder of the idea—not dominate. Headings are more for the eye than the mind so don’t use regard them as text–the doc should flow smoothly even if you removed the headings. The opening sentence should connect the ideas between sections and not rely on the heading.

Always introduce subheadings otherwise it’s up to the reader to figure out how they connect. Subsections should never begin immediately after the heading.

A good test of headings is putting them in the table of contents to see if it fits together as an overview of the contents.

There are 4 rules to reviewing writing: you can question the order of ideas, the source in your problem-solving, summary statements, and prose used to express ideas.

Impose a structure on the order of ideas to determine if it makes sense (main point is supported, lists are in a logical order e.g. structure, process or ranking, are mutually exclusive and collectively exhausted).

Problem-solving

A problem is either a result you don’t like or a result you can’t explain.

Problem-solving is composed of:

• What is the problem
• Where does it lie
• Why does it exist
• What could we do about it
• What should we do about it

You must identify the gap between where you are and where you want to be, the situation that gives rise to the gap, the underlying processes, alternatives, and a recommendation.

You’ll know when you have researched enough about where the problem lies when you have identified all the parts in the system, can arrange them in sequential order, and you know the inputs and outputs. This means you understand the relationships between all of the things in the system.

What could we do about it enumerates all the ways to solve the problem.

Very often you are writing for a reader who doesn’t know the problem so it must be explained in detail.

Use Logic Trees to organize the analyses that must be performed. Typical logic trees are financial structure (ROI), task structure (increase earnings), choice structure (bifurcate by activity), and sequential structure (combines activity and sequence).

Abduction is the process of problem-solving.

Summary statements

An inductive argument summary is either the effect of the supporting actions or inference from the supporting situation statements. For example, in a list of steps the heading is the effect of each cause listed below.

Deductive argument summaries are the conclusion of the deductive statements.

Action ideas can not be grouped by similarity only by effect. Situation ideas can be grouped by similarity.

Sometimes ideas are actions disguised as statements. In that case, think about why you chose those points and what brings them together. Often it’s an indication that it’s a set of actions that lead to an effect.

Putting it into readable words

Use mental imagery to help the reader call to mind an image as they read it. This helps with recall and enjoyment. Think of it as a skeletal model you are building in the reader’s mind. To do that, visualize the relationships between ideas then use visual sounding pros e.g. “feed information”, “deploy people”.

Problem-Solving in Structureless situations

In analytical reasoning, deduction, induction, and abduction all have a case, followed by a result, followed by a rule, repeating as needed. Where you start in this cycle determines the form of analytical thinking (e.g. deduction starts with a rule, induction starts with a case, abduction starts with a result).

In scientific reasoning, it’s abduction but we don’t know the underlying structure that produces the result. To find that, we create hypotheses and run experiments to prove them until the result is sufficiently explained by the rule and the underlying structure it reveals.

Using plant-based actuators, experiments have shown that we can achieve a limited form of soft robots. In a recent paper An on-demand plant-based actuator created using conformable electrodes, they were able to use conformable electrodes to move Venus flytrap with a 1.3 second latency that can even be remotely controlled via an ESP8266 board.

Soft robots made from plants could be grown (maybe even from existing native species) and tailored to specific factory work tasks or farming. Imagine farming done by plant-based robots?