I watched the first ten minutes of the Bill Gurley and Garry Tan interview. I had to turn it off, but what I realized is that the highest-leverage thing you can do is to use LLMs very minimally. If Gurley is saying something like If you don’t use OpenClaw, you’re going to get left behind, and agreeing with Tan; there’s something very wrong going on in the current consensus.

You can’t outsource thinking, and you can only really think through the hard process. The thinking that happens through the details is what determines the winners and losers. This is why startup founders don’t hire a consulting agency to build their product. It’s that process, and the obsession it requires, that makes people think of great ideas. This is why being forced to raise very little money is often a blessing for founders. There’s no such thing as learning to think from first principles. You just work through every little detail as hard as you can while knowing when to zoom out.

There haven’t been any impressive AI features except for the chat interface decision. The entire lines of products and how people choose to integrate LLMs, build on top of them, etc., all show a lack of intention. There’s a lack of obsession and care because people don’t think hard anymore. Linear built a world-class contrarian product at one point, and last week they released a below average blog post about their “new vision”.

You can’t understand the great books by reading books about them, it’s the same with work. I don’t want LLMs to summerize docs, or plan a technical implemention anymore. I want to feel every little detail, work hard for every button, experience the serendipity of every unimportant thing.