In a World of Rocket Ships, Be a Toyota Corolla
This week, we’re talking:
Reliability: A Practice, Not Just a Trait 🎯⏱️👉
DeepSeek's Mixture-of-Experts Method: Implications for AI's Future 🤖🥣
Silicon Valley's Shift: From National Progress Engine to... What? 💻⚡️🇺🇸
Could Consumers Derail Tesla's Momentum? 🔌🚗📉
DOGE's Data Access: The Largest Breach in History? 🗃️⚠️
Leveraging AI at Work: Trust Wisely 🤖🤔
My Take:
Reflecting on my years in company building, I've come to realize that one of the most crucial soil conditions for success is also the one most frequently overlooked: reliability.
In an industry that celebrates rapid innovation and disruption, reliability sounds... boring. A 2012 Toyota Corolla. Sure, it'll get you where you're going, but it's hardly attention-grabbing in a field that uses a rocket ship emoji as shorthand for success.
I’ve spent my career in a traditionally "nerdy" industry that's only recently become sexy, and I find the newfound glamor both surprising and amusing. Sex, glamor, and rock and roll have their place—I'm in favor of all three—but something fundamental has gotten lost in the wash.
In the rush to chase after whatever’s new and shiny, we’ve neglected the quiet, unsexy foundation that makes everything else possible. Innovation might propel us forward, but reliability keeps us from flying off the rails. Without it, even the most groundbreaking ideas crumble under their own bombast.
And while we might not celebrate reliability, we sure as hell notice when it's lacking.
But reliability isn’t just about showing up or doing what you said you’d do. It points to something deeper. There’s an intellectual immaturity at the heart of being unreliable—not just a lack of discipline or self-regulation, but an inability to control the meaning and implications of your own words.
Philosopher Charles S. Peirce posited that belief is intrinsically linked to action, asserting, "The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit; and different beliefs are distinguished by the different modes of action to which they give rise." As the father of pragmatism, Peirce would have laughed off lofty ideas and shiny pitch decks that never made it past the "vision" slide. To him, an idea was only as good as its real-world execution.
Our biggest and boldest ideas are all just theoretical unless we're willing to reliably execute them.
I can’t tell you the exact moment I realized the importance of reliability, but I can tell you who really embodied it for me.
I had just founded my first company when I got a cold call from an entrepreneurial engineer looking to join an early-stage startup. I invited him to our "office"—which was really just a room behind a tennis court in Potrero Hill. We talked for 45 minutes, and that’s how Vivek Vaidya became the first employee at Rapt. By the time we exited to Microsoft, he was our CTO.
Vivek is a brilliant engineer; that much was always obvious. But more importantly, he says what he means and means what he says. He is the master of his meaning. And in an industry full of hustlers, bullshitters, and vaporware artists, that’s how I knew I’d found the person I wanted to build alongside.
Reliability might sound like a fixed trait—you've got it or you don't. But I don’t think that’s the case. Reliability is a practice, a muscle you have to build by consciously choosing and doing it over and over again. And that’s probably why it’s so damn rare.
So how do you build that muscle? II think reliability centers on the following habits:
Do what you say you’re going to do. Whether it’s following through on a small favor or delivering on a huge deadline, your word is your bond. Keep it.
It’s easy to be reliable when things are good. The real test is when shit gets hard. That’s when you, your coworkers, and loved ones find out what you’re made of. Don't pat yourself on the back for a week's worth of a job well done. Do it for quarters and years, and then maybe give yourself a high five.
Don't make every decision based on you-you-you. A lot of people in Silicon Valley will tell you to optimize for yourself at all costs, in line with a general trend that lionizes narcissists. That’s not just a dick move—it’s bad business. Recognize that other people aaren't just means to your own end. What's in it for them? Show up for them, even when it’s inconvenient or gets you less of what you want in the short term.
Be present. Give your full attention to the person or task at hand. Put your iPhone away while you talk to them or particiapte in a meeting. If you have attentional deficits, work deliberately to counteract them.
Own your mistakes. You will mess up. Admit when you're wrong. Make new mistakes; stop repeating old ones.
Don’t play the blame game. The buck stops with you. Let go of the stories about all the ways you've been wronged, victimized, or left behind. You are the boss of your own words and actions. Like it or not, you're responsible for their effects on people around you.
Communicate. Provide updates, check expectations ("Is this the right outcome?"), and be transparent about progress and setbacks. Deliver bad news early. Let people know if you're running late, struggling with something, or need help.
Reliability is the necessary fuel for any durable human connection or worthy human endeavor. In the end, it's not the flashy innovations that sustain us, but the commitments we uphold and deliver on every day.
Around the Web:
How Did DeepSeek Build Its A.I. With Less Money? by Cade Metz via NYTimes 🤖🥣
With the mixture of experts method, researchers tried to solve this problem by splitting the system into many neural networks: one for poetry, one for computer programming, one for biology, one for physics and so on. There might be 100 of these smaller “expert” systems. Each expert could concentrate on its particular field. Many companies have struggled with this method, but DeepSeek was able to do it well. Its trick was to pair those smaller “expert” systems with a “generalist” system. The experts still needed to trade some information with one another, and the generalist — which had a decent but not detailed understanding of each subject — could help coordinate interactions between the experts. It is a bit like an editor’s overseeing a newsroom filled with specialist reporters.
Why Silicon Valley Lost Its Patriotism by Alexander C. Karp & Nicholas Zamiska via The Atlantic 💻⚡️🇺🇸
The rise of the American software industry in the 20th century was made possible by a partnership between emerging technology companies and the U.S. government. Silicon Valley’s earliest innovations were driven not by technical minds chasing trivial consumer products but by scientists and engineers who aspired to address challenges of industrial and national significance using the most powerful technology of the age. Their pursuit of breakthroughs was intended not to satisfy the passing needs of the moment but rather to drive forward a much grander project, channeling the collective purpose and ambition of a nation… But there is also another essential element of American success. It was a culture, one that cohered around a shared objective, that won the last world war. And it will be a culture that wins, or prevents, the next one.
Americans Are Actually in a Position to Make Elon Musk Feel Our Rage by David Zipper via Slate 🔌 🚗 📉
That rise has masked underlying vulnerability. Given the expectations of searing growth baked into Tesla’s sky-high valuation, even a modest consumer revolt could cause it to plummet. Consider: If Tesla’s price-to-earnings ratio fell from 181 to 50—a figure still at least eight times as high as Toyota’s or Ford’s—its stock price would tumble 70 percent. Things might already be headed in that direction. In Europe, Tesla’s January sales collapsed by at least 40 percent in countries including France, Spain, Norway, and Germany. Musk’s sullied reputation appears to be a factor: A pollster found a double-digit surge in Swedes expressing a negative view of Tesla following Trump’s inauguration, at which Musk was widely condemned for giving a Hitler salute. As the drop in European revenue raised eyebrows last week, Tesla stock shed 6 percent of its value, and it dropped a further 8 percent over the past two days.
“Largest data breach in US history”: Three more lawsuits try to stop DOGE by Jon Brodkin via arsTechnica 🗃️⚠️
The EFF said on its website that the "brazen ransacking of Americans' sensitive data is unheard of in scale. With our co-counsel Lex Lumina, State Democracy Defenders Fund, and the Chandra Law Firm, we represent current and former federal employees whose privacy has been violated. We are asking the court for a temporary restraining order to immediately cease this dangerous and illegal intrusion. This massive trove of information includes private demographic data and work histories of essentially all current and former federal employees and contractors as well as federal job applicants."
Study Finds That People Who Entrust Tasks to AI Are Losing Critical Thinking Skills by Noor Al-Sibai via Futurism 🤖 🤔
The research team surveyed 319 "knowledge workers" — basically, folks who solve problems for work, though definitions vary — about their experiences using generative AI products in the workplace. From social workers to people who write code for a living, the professionals surveyed were all asked to share three real-life examples of when they used AI tools at work and how much critical thinking they did when executing those tasks. In total, more than 900 examples of AI use at work were shared with the researchers. The findings from those examples were striking: overall, those who trusted the accuracy of the AI tools found themselves thinking less critically, while those who trusted the tech less used more critical thought when going back over AI outputs.
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