The Swyx Mixtape

Sorry there's no editing in this one - too tired. I've mentioned I did college acapella. This is one of my fave arrangements from another acapella group in my school - and one of the most successful, in that they've done tours and stuff!Listen to more Penn Masala: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Azvq1ua06wA

Listen to Philosophy Bites: https://philosophybites.libsyn.com/paul-bloom-on-psychological-hedonism

Watch the livestream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E40KwlxZJFI

Listen to Cal Newport's podcast https://overcast.fm/+b1V1bNX7g (40mins in)I have a related essay on The Power of Lampshading.

Listen to MFM: https://overcast.fm/+rTsXrj2F0 50mins in

Lots more songs on Kurt's YouTube!2009: Don't Stop Believing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIoSTbPt_PI2010: Just A Dream https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2RA0vsZXf82013: Cups https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y1aOg_UO_A2019: Proposal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hj41byzzTqs2021: Goodbye https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3-rLh0ZtaQ

Listen to Indie Hackers (35mins in) https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/212-arvid-kahl

Listen to the Indie Hackers podcast https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/232-sonal-chokshi (35mins)Related essay: Particle/Wave Duality Theory of KnowledgeTranscriptI think what's happening is this other phenomenon, which is not only about content, but it's about code building, which is a lot of people on Twitter and social and their own like, one person media brands essentially creating cults. And I think a lot of those are not just subscribers and listeners and audience, but their followers. And a lot of the people I see who are doing that right now are focused on viral hits or like, trying to just get popular. They're not actually thinking about a body of work, like a portfolio of work. And I think a lot of companies and start ups and individuals and even one person media brands should be thinking more strategically about a portfolio and body of work. Well, that's so interesting because there's this sort of polarity between OK, like, viral hits that are sort of trending and that are riding a wave. And these things are pretty good because they can spread far and wide and capture a lot of people who ordinarily would have been exposed to your ideas.Then there is this alternative, sort of like evergreen backlog of content you can produce that people will go back and read for years to come. Like, First Round Capital is really good at this. They put together, like, several websites where I can go and search for great startup advice from years ago. This is evergreen. And that's also, like a valid way, I think, to reach people. If you go through the right channels, for example, search engines and optimization being found on Google is huge. There's perhaps almost no bigger way to reach people than that.And so when you are putting together something like future, as an outsider looking in, my knee jerk reaction is like, these are viral hits. These are things that will cause an uproar when they're written and they're very timely. But like two years from now, they might not be as relevant or there might be something that people reference, but that people aren't sharing to such a large degree. And the downside to that is, like, how do you build over time? How do you grow an audience over time? Will people get basically bored if it's the same thing? Or will people keep coming back if you don't continue producing new viral hits? Yeah. Well, this is an essential question of any media operation. And I don't know how you do your editorial calendar Courtland, but I think about everything in terms of stock and flow. I think was it Robin Sloan or someone coined this? It's an economic term, but he coined it in the context of content.But I think of stock and flow. So, like, the flow is the stuff that you run for volume and cadence and to kind of build an audience. To be clear, you should not be running a bunch of junk. So people ask me, like, number one advice by editorial strategy. And my advice is sometimes it's more about what you don't run and what you kill than what you do run. I think about it in terms of stock and flow, and then the stock is sort of the big ideas that you might put out there. So they're not just things that are timely.And when you're talking about stuff that might get outdated, some of our best content is very windy, like it keeps coming up over and over and over again. It's evergreen, and that is really critical for creating immediately. You have to have both. I'm reading a quote from Robin Sloane when he says Flow is the feed, it's the posts and the tweets. It's a stream of daily and sub daily updates that remind people that you exist. And stock is the durable stuff. It's the content you produce that's as interesting in two months or two years as it is today.It's what people discover via search. It's what spreads slowly but surely building fans over time. And so there are these pieces that have come out of a 16 and other media properties that are like, definitely stuck. Like Marc Andreessen writing It's Time to Build or his idea of sort of product market fit that he wrote about over a decade ago, or writing about Software eats the world. These are things people talk about forever. Legion writing about the passion economy and the greater economy, the idea of 100 true fans. There are these ideas that just last forever that are certainly stuck.Yes, except I will say it's interesting because in the examples you cited, two of them Marc's post on its time to build and Lee's post on the passion economy, which also grew from the conversations with the consumer team here. Both of those are also very much in the zeitgeist and about the timing that they ran in. And so Lending posts like Evergreen post will do really well regardless of the time they're in the product market. Fit post is a great example of that because that is an evergreen essential idea that keeps coming back over and over and over again. Ben's example on this front is his famous like, good product manager, bad product manager post, whereas it's t

Listen to Venture Stories: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/village-globals/greatest-hits-what-kevin-wQPbLh6JyXv/ (19mins in)

Listen to Copyblogger: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-copyblogger/the-truth-about-the-creator-g3O9n_JY4aK/ (30mins in)

Full talk on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iacVfTQA7k

Watch/Listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpiNUKpGI88&list=PLH8IAbt5kqZOFeFAda17MaUe2wrZi9xku&index=32

Listen to the Lex Fridman podcast (23 mins in) https://lexfridman.com/kevin-systrom/The Invisible Asymptotes essay

Listen to the Creator Lab: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/creator-lab/lenny-rachitsky-lennys-bUBLKO_NIG4/Growth Loops are the New Funnels: https://www.reforge.com/blog/growth-loopsThe Racecar Growth Gramework: https://www.reforge.com/blog/racecar-growth-frameworkTranscripttoday for the sake of focus we're going to start with this growth framework called the race car growth framework which i thought was really incredible um so let's just kick it off man from what i could see from the outside from reading your work there's four components to this product growth which is - the first one was the growth engine- the second one is called turbo boosts- third is lubricants - the fourth is fuel we're going to explain what all of those are in a second um but before we even go into the details could you just share like a bit of context around what who who is this for and who is it not for yeah because absolutely this isn't for every single company in the world and um you know you've probably applied this in many different contexts but yeah curious what what stands out to you there so maybe zooming out even further i spent a lot of my time with this newsletter looking into growth stories and how growth strategies and essentially understanding how all the most successful companies grew and i've spent a lot of time on the early days of how they got their first say a thousand users and then i've also spent a lot of time on the longer term down the road strategy of how do they grow long-term what can what needs to work for a company to continue growing and so now there's kind of these two ends of the spectrum that are coming into focus for me of how do i get your early users and then how to long term grow your business so this race car framework is focused on the long term how do you grow eventually and long term and then we can even talk about how to get your first users and then i'm slowly filling in these puzzle pieces through more and more of my research of how companies go from zero to say a million and it turns out it's it's not as mysterious as people think there's not actually that many options it's more of a question of which of the options do you choose and then how do you become the best at that or do something remarkable within that option so so we could start at the end and then we can come back to the beginning days so the end is this race car framework and i this is uh based on work that i did with a buddy of mine dan haukenmeyer so this post is something we both put together and what we found is there's a really cool mental model of thinking about how businesses grow long-term and it turns out you can think of your company like a race car which includes these four components that you're talking about there's the engine there's uh turbo boosts lubricants and then fuel and the engine is the most important part because that's what drives your business and it turns out there's essentially four engines you can choose from as a company and uh and these engines are self-sustaining loops that keep your business growing and there's kind of like a fuel that goes into it and then the output is growth so should we dive into those yeah yeah so i love that so i'll repeat kind of what i heard and understood and then you can clarify if i heard it wrong so the growth the growth engine is the most important part is self-sustaining the turbo boosts from what i understand are more like these one-off events or big hero moments maybe events a super bowl ad and they can maybe make a big splash but they're not self-sustainable the way a growth engine is and we'll go into the details of what that means and then the lubricants are more about running efficiently exactly things that make everything run better exactly and then the fuel is what's actually needed to make the car run so the input that's needed that's that's awesome so maybe yeah we can start off by going into the growth engine itself so i've heard you talk about loops and engines and i have a visual of this thing going around and people talk about flywheels i found like a lot of the jargon sometimes is like overly used but in this case i think it actually is really helpful to see it visually um because i think if you think of like a growth engine in a traditional business you think of a marketing funnel which is not exactly the same thing but a lot of the time when you're getting new users and getting them to convert and become paying users and then spread and share something like in business school you might learn it like a funnel and i think what i like about this is it's not necessarily like a linear thing that just goes from top to bottom it's more something that keeps feeding itself is that accurate before we move on from there yeah that's exactly accurate and there's this uh group called reforge who was one of the first uh i guess um groups that kind of figured out that this is the thing that matters more than funnels so they kind of have this famous blog post

Listen to Writer on the Side: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/writer-on-the-side/065-400k-from-writing-YXOg2DQur-5/

Listen to Village Global: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/village-globals/andy-rachleff-on-investing-YaXZIM2WHuj/ (15 mins in)Don ValentineIf a startup can screw something up it willonly way it can succeed is if the market pulls the product out of its handsSteve Blank: Value hypothesis (what are you building, for whom is it relevant, whats your business model)THEN Growth hypothesis (acquire customers cost effectively)Almost no company succeeds with its original value hypothesis - they succeed and then they revise historyGreat tech companies don't start by evaluating the market and coming up with solutionsThey observe an inflection point in tech that allows them to build a product, then figure out what they can do with thatiterate on the who, don't iterate on the whatmost people change product - you lose insight on tech differentiationiterate on the customer base to find what you have to offerfind desperate people - they dont say maybe, they say WHEN CAN I HAVE IT

Listen to the Sourcegraph podcast: https://about.sourcegraph.com/podcast/swyx/Video version: https://youtu.be/L1ATAYQFMn4We cover: Svelte Society, Learning in Public, and Temporal.

Listen to Endless Thread/20kHz: https://www.20k.org/episodes/zzzzzzzzzzzrr

Clip is 10 mins into this deleted Lindy Talk episode: https://web.archive.org/web/20210312232914/https://paulskallas.substack.com/p/03-lindy-talk-w-marc-andreessenProtocol on a16z and the Lindy Effect

Listen to the Lex Fridman podcast (25mins in): https://lexfridman.com/elon-musk-3/ How I Approach First Principles Thinking via Logic and EpistemologyTranscriptSo what's your source of belief in situations like this when the engineering problem is so difficult, there's a lot of experts, many of whom you admire, who have failed in the past. Yes. And a lot of people, you know, a lot of experts, maybe journalists, all the kinds of, you know, the public in general have a lot of doubt about whether it's possible and you yourself know that even if it's a, non-normal set, not empty set of success, it's still unlikely or very difficult. Like where do you go to both personally, intellectually as an engineer, as a team, like for source of strength needed to sort of persevere through this and to keep going with the project, take it to completion. 2 00:24:49I suppose the strength. Hmm. I just really not how I think about things. I mean, for me, it's simply this, this is something that is important to get done, and we, we should just keep doing it or die trying, and I, I don't need, I source of strength. So 0 00:25:07Quitting is not even like, I'm 2 00:25:10Just not, it's not in my nature. Okay. And I, I don't care about optimism or pessimism, fuck that. We're going to get it done. Gotta to get it done. 0 00:25:23Can you then zoom back in to specific problems with Starship or any engineering problems you work on? Can you try to introspect your particular biologic when you're in that network, your thinking process, and describe how you think through problems, the different engineering and design problems. Is there like a systematic process you've spoken about first principles thinking kind of, 2 00:25:45Well, you know, like saying like, like physics is low and everything else was a recommendation. I'm like, I've met a lot of people that can break the law, but I, I have never met anyone who could break physics. So, so first for any kind of technology problem, you have to sort of just make sure you're not violating physics. And, you know, first principles analysis, I think, is something that can be applied to really any walk of life, any anything really? It's just, it's, it's really just saying, you know, let's, let's boil something down to the most fundamental principles. 2 00:26:29The things that we are most confident are true at a foundational level, and that sits your at your sets, your axiomatic base, and then you reason up from there. And then you cross check your conclusion against the, the axiomatic truth. So, you know, some basics in physics would be like, oh, you Vida and conservation of energy or momentum or something like that, you know, then you're slugging to work. So that's yeah. So that's just to establish it. Is it, is it, is it possible? And then another good physics tool is thinking about things in the limit. If you, if you take a particular thing and you scale it to a very large number or to very small number, how does, how does things change 0 00:27:17Like temporary, like in number of things, you manufacturer, something like that. And then in time, 2 00:27:23Yeah. Like, let's say, take example of like, like manufacturing, which I think is just a very underrated problem. And, and like I said, it's, it's much harder to take a, an advanced technology product and bring it into volume manufacturing than it is to design it in the first place. My more's magnitude. So, so let's say, you're trying to figure out is like, why is this, this part or product expensive? Is it because of something fundamentally foolish that we're doing? Or is it because our volume is too low? And so then you say, okay, well, what if our volume was a million units a year? 2 00:28:05Is it still expensive? That's what I'm invaluable thinking about things to the limit. If it's too expensive at a million units a year, then volume is not the reason why your thing is expensive. There's something fundamental about design. 0 00:28:16And then you then can focus on the reducing complexity or something like that. 2 00:28:19We could change the design to change the chains apart to be something that is not fundamentally expensive, but like, that's a common thing in rocketry. Cause the, the unit volume is relatively low. And so a common excuse would be well, it's expensive because our unit volume is low. And if we were in like automotive or something like that, or consumer electronics, then our costs would be lower on like unlike. Okay. So let's say now you're making a million units a year. Is it still expensive? The answer is yes. Then economies of scale are not the issue. 0 00:28:53Do you throw into manufacturing? Do you throw like supply chain, you talked about resources and materials and stuff like that. Do you throw that into the calculation of trying to reason from first principles? Like how are we going to make the supply chain work here? Yeah, yeah. And then the cost of materials, things like that, or is that too? 2 00:29:10Exactly. So like a

Listen to Akimbo: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/akimbo-a-podcast/the-magnification-of-small-EVg8tLQnljC/

Listen: https://nav.al/failureHN Discussion also worthwhile: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29488641

Listen to Backstage Pass: https://www.pushkin.fm/episode/john-legend/

Listen to the Lex Fridman podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0-SXS6zdEQ- Read about Software 2.0

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2GhBig0OWM (16 mins in)Jess Frazelle: Why Open Source Firmware is Important

Listen to the Sourcegraph podcast: https://about.sourcegraph.com/podcast/sugu-sougoumarane/https://twitter.com/ssougouhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/sugu-sougoumarane-b9bb25/Consensus Algorithms at ScaleTranscriptBeyang Liu:Yeah, tell us that story. What happened between you and Elon Musk?Sugu Sougoumarane:So, this was 2000. Elon had just founded X.com. He had sold off Zip2, which was his previous company, and he was considered one of those up and coming entrepreneurs. He wasn’t as popular as he is today. But when I read X.com, if you read the description then, it said that it was an online bank. So, basically, there’s Wells Fargo, there’s Bank of America, and now there’s X.com, which is an internet-first bank.That’s what it looked like. I said, “Wow. If it’s a bank, I better be formal.” So, I wore a tie and suit.Beyang Liu:Oh no. And I’m assuming the dress code was a lot less formal.Sugu Sougoumarane:That turned him off instantly. So, I’m sitting there, he walks in and says, “Who the hell are you?” “I’m here for the interview.” “Oi, why are you wearing a suit?”Beyang Liu:That’s hilarious.Sugu Sougoumarane:So it turned out that this was 2000, where the boom was happening–‘99, 2000. And there were so many “me too” companies. “I’m going to change the world” kind of companies.Beyang Liu:Sure. A lot of copycats.Sugu Sougoumarane:And I had been interviewing with a bunch of them. And none of them had a real story. A lot of them didn’t even have code written, but they had raised money from VCs because that’s how desperate VCs were to give you money. Anybody that said “I have an idea” got money.Beyang Liu:It was the height of the bubble.Sugu Sougoumarane:Yeah, it was the height of the bubble. I was completely disillusioned saying that, “My God, this is a disaster. There is not a single company that has anything viable.” So I show up there and I’m kind of low energy because I don’t expect anything from this interview. All previous interviews were disasters and I had just walked out. And this one, I was like, “Oh, okay. Let’s hear it out. Let’s see what you got.” And so that came across to Elon as a guy who has no energy. And he was kind of disappointed. And I was wearing a suit. That’s even worse.Beyang Liu:Two strikes.Sugu Sougoumarane:Two strikes. And as I’m hearing his story, by the time the interview ended, I was so excited by what he was building. I just couldn’t believe it. I said, “Oh my God, this will change the world.” That’s basically how I ended up leaving. But that’s not how he ended up seeing me. I went through a recruiter. And the recruiter says, “Hey, they’re going to pass on you. They’re not interested. They think you have low energy.” I said, “What? Give me Elon’s email now. I’ll send him an email.”So I sent him an email. Essentially, paraphrasing what I did, I basically sold him back his own company. I told him why this is going to be huge. And it turns out that, apparently, he was struggling to convince the greatness of his company to his own employees. And so he saw that and he was impressed that I was able to see what he saw. He even sent that email to everyone and told them, “See, there’s a guy outside who believes in what we are doing.” And so he called me back for an interview.And now, looking back, I can see everybody was smiling. Everybody was passing me by, giving me second looks, and smiling.Beyang Liu:You were the guy.Sugu Sougoumarane:Yeah, I was that guy.Beyang Liu:That’s awesome.Sugu Sougoumarane:The rest is history. Then I joined X.com. And then soon after that, X.com and PayPal merged, and that’s how I ended up at PayPal.Beyang Liu:Do you remember what it is you said in that email? Because I’m sure everyone who’s listening, who’s ever bombed an interview, is like, “What do you say? What do you say in an email that gets you that second chance with Elon Musk of all people?”Sugu Sougoumarane:I think actually I relate to what I said even now, because what I said was, “The most important thing is that I am sold on this vision and I will do anything to be part of it. I don’t care what you offer me. This vision is awesome. This is going to change the world. So I want to be part of this. I don’t care. My low energy is situational. Don’t read into that.” I need to dig up that email. I don’t think I was as eloquent as I am now.Beyang Liu:If you dig it up, we’ll link to it in the show notes.Sugu Sougoumarane:Yeah, I’ll find out. I’ll see if I can find it. This is literally 21 years ago.Beyang Liu:I was just trying to think of email systems back then.Sugu Sougoumarane:Yeah, exactly.Beyang Liu:But do you even remember what email you used in those days?Sugu Sougoumarane:I think it was Yahoo.Beyang Liu:Oh, Yahoo. Okay.Sugu Sougoumarane:So it may still be there. I should go look for it.Beyang Liu:Yeah, fascinating.Sugu Sougoumarane:He may not remember me, but I think if I reminded him of the story, he would remember me if I ever met him again. If I told him this.Beyang Liu:Yeah, it seems pretty memora

Listen to Software Dev Journey: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/software/152-shawn-wang-from-the-fine-px_1sYDV9yT/

Listen to Conversations With Paul Simon: https://www.audacy.com/podcasts/revisionist-history-21817/revisionist-history-presents-miracle-and-wonder-conversations-with-paul-simon-947753006 20 mins in

Listen to the Huberman Lab: https://hubermanlab.com/dr-lex-fridman-machines-creativity-and-love/ (2h 43mins in)

Listen to the Sourcegraph Podcast: https://about.sourcegraph.com/podcast/joseph-nelson/ (about 10mins in)

Listen to the episode: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/unthinkable-with/going-bananas-K9rhSCyVziv/ 15mins inSubscribe: https://pod.link/jay

From the MongoDB Podcast: https://mongodb.libsyn.com/ep-93-swyx-learn-in-public-and-temporal

Watch Mike Dawes on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bx9vTF8x2s

listen to the Peter Attia podcast: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-peter-attia/183-james-clear-building-mqgBcuP8-25/

Listen to the Huberman Lab (1h18mins in) https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/huberman-lab/the-science-of-making-1VeFnGW6psA/?t=4702

Listen to the GTD podcast: https://gettingthingsdone.com/2021/02/david-allen-interviews-charles-duhigg/

Listen to the GTD podcast: https://gettingthingsdone.com/2019/10/an-overview-of-gtd/

Listen to Fake Doctors, Real Friends: https://overcast.fm/+ZHU0NDSpM

From The Moth: https://themoth.org/radio-hour/holiday-special-2014-monkeys-megachurches-and-first-elves

Listen to the PH podcast: https://soundcloud.com/thepornhubpodcast/leo-vice-asian-male-pornstar

Watch and subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYFFKuuaF3k

Watch the Intentionally Blank podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dnbmku3lFmg (20mins in)

Listen to Films to Be Buried With (1h in): https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/films-to-be-buried/pete-holmes-films-to-be-6f_tQjdSLmH/

Listen to After On: https://after-on.com/episodes-31-60/057Roger Hanlon's research online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogCIqaCe2zI

From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVmfpULFk-MPoints of interest:11:24 Doc Ock’s theme21:20 "Goosebumps"37:30 Tom Holland standing in the pouring rain while he watches Jonah on the big screen right after SPOILER42:00 The movie's max hype moment48:05 SPOILER 3's theme48:42 SPOILER 2's theme51:44 Final fight1:01:27 Goodbyes1:04:36-1:06:12 Credits-only Spider-man themeTrack List: 0:00 Intro to Fake News1:11 World’s Worst Friendly Neighbor2:03 Damage Control4:20 Being a Spider Bites5:25 Gone in a Flash7:18 All Spell Breaks Loose10:44 Otto Trouble15:04 Ghost Fighter in the Sky / Beach Blanket Bro Down17:52 Strange Bedfellows19:37 Sling vs Bling24:38 Octo Gone28:12 No Good Deed33:13 Exit Through the Lobby37:28 A Doom With a View39:29 Spider Baiting41:04 Liberty Parlance42:33 Monster Smash43:55 Arc Reactor46:52 Shield of Pain51:44 Goblin His Inner Demons55:39 Forget Me Knots1:02:28 Peter Parker Picked a Perilously Precarious Profession1:04:00 Arachnoverture

Listen to the Economist podcast: https://www.economist.com/podcasts/2021/12/15/meet-the-cryptokingsRead the article: https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2021/12/18/the-most-powerful-people-in-crypto

Listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_2fDTuh5aU (start at 25min mark)Crypto villain of the year https://cryptobriefing.com/2021-review-the-top-10-crypto-villains-year/Transcripti would be curious to learn inwhat sense has ether over optimized forbeing money so what at what points didit make a trade-off like a consciencetrade-off to saywewe designed the chain to be better moneyand worse as let's say an executionlayersurei think a good broad way to understandit is if you look at antonio the founderof do idx's tweets about it afterwardand he he said you knowthe ethereum user experience on on layerone has basically not even 10xed overfive yearsum and at that time the roadmapwas very much to to figure out how tocater to users and developers right umand and so i think just like if you justzoom out that far it's pretty easy tosee that we're we're in a very differentplace todayon ethereum than it was uha couple years ago and i think theanother easy way to see this is justwith d5 itself right where if you lookat the d5 that's kind of really takenoff and done well it's been crosstrainedit's been non-ethereum right so you knowluna versus snx but then also you knowumsort of projects on avalanche versusprojects on ethereum the you know thesame exact project but they'll do betteron avalanche um and then you know youyou you kind of get a sense that umi think ethereum rightfully says thatthey're the bedrock or kind of the uhbirthplace of defy innovation right butwhat that also means is that if that'sthemain claim to to to umsort of power that that that becomesquiteit becomes quite nostalgic like in a wayright uh whereum what about the new users or whatabout the new developers where do theygo and and you know what we're seeing isthat new developers are just multi-evmright so theydeploy where the users are because theirgoal is tohave their product be used you know soan example is we back tranches which isaquite quite uh novel mechanism for doingrisk sharing across um longs and shortsand it's got one of the highest tbls ind5 right but they started off on bsc andthe the founders love ethereum but theyjustsaid if i launched on l1uh there's no way and i'm not gonnalaunch on matic becauseif i'm gonna launch on another chainanyways i might as well launch where theactual users areright souh okaythis is what kind of work this is kindof what we're seeing on the app side andthen you look at the performance of d5coins too right you know when we havethat part let's take note with theperformance let's let's stick with thesort of the tech for a second becauseyeah sure sure soumif we i think if we look at blockchainsfromactually first principlesit's really just you know it's a shareddatabase where anyone can can verify orwhere anybody can see that the thecomputation that was done whether it's atransfer or a smart contract executionthat was done withintegrity so that was that was donecorrectly rightand you can have variouskindsof such uhdatabase basically so being the mostcentralized would be just binance rightthe centralized exchange nobody has anyinsight into their database but it has alot of reputation at stake um so youjust trust it to you know perform allthe other updates correctly pretty muchand on the other extremeyou have something like bitcoin andethereum where they say oh we throttlethe network um really hard to sort ofkeep umthis verification cost this cost forpeople to actually do the accountingthemselves to to to to walk throughevery step that was done and say oh ican i can verifywithout making any trust assumptionsthat all of this computation was donecorrectlyright and in the middle between thesetwo extremes centralized exchange andthe completely decentralized blockchainyou have a pretty wide trade of spaceright and um that's where you find bscthat's where you find avalanche andsolana at some points across thesespectrums rightbutsort of what i'm wondering isi meanare these other chains really gonna youknowdevelop in in in any other way i meanthan ethereum and bitcoin so theirdatabases are always so yeahi guess my answer would be they alreadyhave and they will continuebecause they are attracting all the newusers i think this is the just thereality of the space right and i thinkyou know when i told you that half ofmetamask users are bsc users and itunder shocked youit's because a lot ofyou know a lot of ether ogs and biblicalenergies they don't usechains because they don't need thatmoney right like you don't need to makea thousand dollars you don't need tomake ten thousand dollars right you'retoo wealthy to carebut that says more about you than itsays about other people right soit's kind of my point which is that um ii find that a lot of ethiopians they'rein the mindset now where they're likei'm already rich and you have tounderstand why what i've done is so goodand also what i why what i'm preservingis so valuable and valuableas it mayum you have given very few outlets fornew users to come and participatein what you've done

Listen to the Changelog: https://changelog.com/podcast/467Essays:https://www.swyx.io/LIPhttps://www.swyx.io/api-economyhttps://www.swyx.io/cloudflare-goTranscriptJerod Santo: So swyx, we have been tracking your work for years; well, you've been Learning in Public for years, so I've been (I guess) watching you learn, but we've never had you on the show, so welcome to The Changelog.Shawn Wang: Thank you. Long-time listener, first-time guest, I guess... [laughs]Adam Stacoviak: Yeah.Jerod Santo: Happy to have you here.Adam Stacoviak: Very excited to have you here.Jerod Santo: So tell us a little bit of your story, because I think it informs the rest of our conversation. We're gonna go somewhat deep into some of your ideas, some of the dots you've been connecting as you participate and watch the tech industry... But I think for this conversation it's probably useful to get to know you, and how you got to be where you are. Not the long, detailed story, but maybe the elevator pitch of your recent history. Do you wanna hook us up?Shawn Wang: For sure. For those who want the long history, I did a 2,5-hour podcast with Quincy Larson from FreeCodeCamp, so you can go check that out if you want. The short version is I'm born and raised in Singapore, came to the States for college, and was totally focused on finance. I thought people who were in the finance industry rules the world, they were masters of the universe... And I graduated just in time for the financial crisis, so not a great place to be in. But I worked my way up and did about 6-7 years of investment banking and hedge funds, primarily trading derivatives and tech stocks. And the more I covered tech stocks, the more I realized "Oh, actually a) the technology is taking over the world, b) all the value is being created pre-IPO, so I was investing in public stocks, after they were basically done growing... And you're kind of just like picking over the public remains. That's not exactly true, but...Jerod Santo: Yeah, tell that to Shopify...Shawn Wang: I know, exactly, right?Adam Stacoviak: And GitLab.Shawn Wang: People do IPO and have significant growth after, but that's much more of a risk than at the early stage, where there's a playbook... And I realized that I'd much rather be value-creating than investing. So I changed careers at age 30, I did six months of FreeCodeCamp, and after six months of FreeCodeCamp - you know, I finished it, and that's record time for FreeCodeCamp... But I finished it and felt not ready, so I enrolled myself in a paid code camp, Full Stack Academy in New York, and came out of it working for Two Sigma as a frontend developer. I did that for a year, until Netlify came along and offered me a dev rel job. I took that, and that's kind of been my claim to fame; it's what most people know me for, which is essentially being a speaker and a writer from my Netlify days, from speaking about React quite a bit.[04:13] I joined AWS in early 2020, lasted a year... I actually was very keen on just learning the entire AWS ecosystem. You know, a frontend developer approaching AWS is a very intimidating task... But Temporal came along, and now I'm head of developer experience at Temporal.Adam Stacoviak: It's an interesting path. I love the -- we're obviously huge fans of FreeCodeCamp, and Quincy, and all the work he's done, and the rest of the team has done to make FreeCodeCamp literally free, globally... So I love to see -- it makes you super-happy inside just to know how that work impacts real people.Like, you see things happen out there, and you think "Oh, that's impacting", but then you really meet somebody, and 1) you said you're a long-time listener, and now you're on the show, so it just really -- like, having been in the trenches so long, and just see all this over-time pay off just makes me really believe in that whole "Slow and steady, keep showing up, do what needs done", and eventually things happen. I just love that.Shawn Wang: Yeah. There's an infinite game mentality to this. But I don't want to diminish the concept of free, so... It bothers me a little, because Quincy actually struggles a lot with the financial side of things. He supports millions of people on like a 300k budget. 300k. If every single one of us who graduated at FreeCodeCamp and went on to a successful tech career actually paid for our FreeCodeCamp education - which is what I did; we started the hashtag. It hasn't really taken off, but I started a hashtag called #payitbackwards. Like, just go back, once you're done -- once you can afford it, just go back and pay what you thought it was worth. For me, I've paid 20k, and I hope that everyone who graduates FreeCodeCamp does that, to keep it going.Adam Stacoviak: Well, I mean, why not...?Shawn Wang: I'd also say one thing... The important part of being free is that I can do it on nights and weekends and take my time to decide if I want to change careers. So it's not just a free replacement to bootcamps, it actually is an asy

Listen to the full concerto: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cg_0jepxowPaganini while Hula Hooping with TwoSet Violin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOjO4ekcJQAHilary on Wikipedia and Documentary and NPR Tiny Desk

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ0cG47msEk&list=PLNG_1j3cPCaZZ7etkzWA7JfdmKWT0pMsaRead: https://reactnative.dev/blog/2021/08/26/many-platform-vision