Discussing Steve Yegge's insightful rant on Google's platform failures and his experiences at Amazon working for Jeff Bezos. Exploring the differences in company cultures, operations, and leadership styles between Google and Amazon. Delving into the significance of platforms and accessibility in tech, highlighting the challenges and transformations faced by Amazon in transitioning to a service-driven company under Bezos' leadership.

In order to drive growth, you need to be data-driven and relentlessly creative. The difficult part of implementing growth in your company is finding someone who is good at both. Growth expert and thought leader Sean Ellis (Dropbox, Eventbrite, GrowthHackers, LogMeIn) sits down with NFX General Partner James Currier to share his thoughts and insights around: - The current stage of growth hacking - The digital growth evolution - The balance of data and creativity - Understanding the physics of growth - Importance of word of mouth Be sure to check out Sean’s latest project GoPractice! as well as his famous book ‘Hacking Growth’.

null This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. "Design is all of the conversations between designers and PMs about what to build. Building for this entire process doesn’t take away the importance of designers—it gives them a seat at the table for the core decisions a company makes. Companies that are successful in the long term are the ones that can repeatedly find the next loop." This is the audio version of Kevin Kwok's essay, 'Why Figma Wins'.  His analysis of the trajectory of Figma reflects the incremental product thinking & execution required to build this type of bottoms-up giant.  Kevin was formerly worked at Greylock Partners investing in marketplaces, autonomous vehicles, bottoms up productivity tools, and more. He is particularly interested in understanding the underlying structures that shape industries and the core loops that drive companies and writes on his popular site www.kwokchain.com. Read the full article here - https://kwokchain.com/2020/06/19/why-figma-wins/

null Status can be a volatile, powerful driver of engagement. Status and one of its underlying mechanisms, scarcity must be considered by product designers in every category, as early on as possible. But it can also be a double-edged sword, as managing a network and the status dynamics within it is constantly recirculating, always shifting. For this reason, status that is more entertainment-based than utility-based can over time become precarious, as well as too restrictive for continued user growth. NFX partner James Currier sits down with Eugene Wei (Product Lead at Amazon, Hulu, Erly, Flipboard, Oculus) to draw from his original Status-as-a-Service article and expand to discuss status in entertainment, frameworks for emotional product design, video games as world leaders in defining scarcity, the future of virtual goods, and the underlying status games that drive us all -- in technology and in life.

null "What's happening in general on the internet is an evolution to visual storytelling. The image is more powerful than ever, but it's also much harder to be seen than ever due to saturation. What's happening is the exchange is in social capital - the exchange is in being seen." NFX partner James Currier sits down and chats with Mikael Cho (CEO & Co-founder) and Luke Chesser (Head of Product & Co-founder) about their Founder journey to creating Unsplash, solving the chicken and egg problem within their marketplace, the psychology of their users, and what the future of digital advertising will look like.

null This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. Surfaced during the prolonged Justice Department antitrust action against Microsoft from 1998 to 2001, Bill Gates outlines a strategy internally for Microsoft to not only enter the internet, but to dominate it in his famous ‘Internet Tidal Wave’ memo. Read the full memo here - https://sriramk.com/memos/billgates-tidalwave.pdf

null This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. "Conflating what makes a platform work versus e.g. an infrastructure product can backfire and cause a team to have the wrong strategy for building a product or getting customers. These startups tend to fail." This is the audio version of Elad Gil's popular essay on The 3 Types of Platforms. Elad was the former Co-Founder/CEO of Color Genomics, Entrepreneur, Operating Executive at Twitter, and investor/advisor to companies like Airbnb, Stripe, Square, and Pinterest. Read the full article here - http://blog.eladgil.com/2015/01/the-3-types-of-platform-companies.html

null "I think that everybody is getting attuned to strategic communication in a way that was not happening before social media. NFX partner James Currier talks with Sarah Frier, who reports on social media companies for Bloomberg News from San Francisco. Her stories have earned her a reputation as an expert on how Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter make business decisions that affect their future and our society as well as being the author of 'NO FILTER: The Inside Story of Instagram.' Sarah and James touch on a variety of subjects including the role and effect social media has on society and how to think about navigating your potential influence as an early-stage Founder.

null This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. "Superpowers cut both ways. They may spur meteoric growth, but without enough self-awareness, they can just as easily lead to a startup’s undoing." As a founder, it's important to be your startup’s biggest advocate, but it’s also important to create strong self-awareness and rise above your own ego. Listen as Pete Flint explains how to detect your own B.S. and allow your company to succeed. Pete is a general partner at NFX. Read the full article here - https://www.nfx.com/post/reality-distortion-field/

null All early-stage companies are in search of traction. It’s notable that the opposite of traction is distraction and top Founders have an inverse response to distraction. As the world around them gets more distracting, what they see is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to break out from their competitors and win. NFX partner James Currier talks with Nir Eyal, former instructor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and author of the bestseller, “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products.” 2013 His latest book, “Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life,” 2019 is out now. Nir walks us through his frameworks for product building, focus, traction, and building a culture centered around speed and growth. We’ve organized some of Nir’s insights from our podcast conversation for the benefit of focused Founders everywhere. Visit nirandfar.com for more.