Bryn Boughton

rebranding having kids as high agency would instantly shoot bay area birth rates above 4.0

people who never build anything love to say phrases like "remember clubhouse" and "it's just another wrapper" whenever someone ships something new. pattern matching from past failures is the lowest form of analysis. it requires no skin in the game and no original thought. meanwhile, the builders just keep building.

One of the most under-the-radar contrarian idea Peter Thiel ever articulated was that failures teach you nothing. Just think of how much mythology exists around justifying failures as “oh well I learnt this and that”. It’s practically a PMC shibboleth to “learn from your failures and mistakes” all with rote interview questions surrounding “so tell me about a time you failed” And yet, Thiel makes the claim that you don’t learn anything useful from failures — because failure is always overdetermined. In other words, if something doesn’t work, it could have also *not worked* for 99 other reasons. Over the last year, the more things go right at my startup, the more I realize how true Thiel’s original point was.