Welcome to Edition Nº 02 of Max’s Musings.

Each week I share my learnings building a $100 billion company in public. I’m fortunate to have many fascinating conversations, see a lot, read a lot, and learn a lot — I want to share that with you (in <2 minutes).

Today’s word count: 587

Read time: 1 mins 29 sec.

Musings

Be wary of user testing. Tests only show 5% of the payoff curve

Decisions based on user tests are often flawed. Why? Because tests only show the short-term outcome. For instance, A/B testing might show that more push notifications and emails work better. The only problem? Someone then unsubscribes and you’ve killed the channel.

Don’t just sell a product; sell an ideology

The best companies sell an ideology. Doing so allows companies to own a new category. I like the idea of creating an ‘idea moat’ which is when a category is always mentioned alongside the core company — think OpenAI in LLMs, Google in search, and Uber in mobility. Superpower is next 😉

Be skeptical of the “right way”

I asked Sam how he led teams at Tesla, Apple, and Zoox. His response…

There’s no “right way”. It should ring alarm bells when you hear “that’s how it’s always done” or “that’s how long it usually takes”. Engineers are trained to do things “the right way”, which often is dogmatic and wrong.

The antidote? Assume things will be rebuilt 3 or 4 times. Assume everything will change. In the future, we can hire 20 people and redo everything in a week. But today, we only have finite time to drive step changes in the company trajectory.

Health Protocol Update

I spent hours trying to find the best multivitamin.

Adapt Naturals is it.

They get all the big things right, but notably, even the little things:

• 3k IUs of vitamin D (most dose at 1k)

• High quality forms of B9 and B12 (most use the wrong form)

• Many key minerals, balanced right (most include trivial amounts)

• Both forms of K2 (most only have K1, or at most, one form of K2)

• Understanding how different vitamins & minerals balance each other

I could go on, but suffice to say, I’m impressed.

In today’s nutrient depleted world, I think a bio-available, correctly dosed multivitamin is table stakes for just about everyone.

As always, you can find my full health protocol here.

Top Finds

Brand of the Week

I’m (still) in love with this Dropbox Design site. Click through it. It’s a masterpiece.

The unifying idea of a ‘home page’ that is simultaneously a nav is brilliant.

Every page, every animation, every screen is well-executed. The site is just as beautiful as it is distinctive as it is easy to understand, a rare feat

Space of the Week

What a great way to create a pool in an urban home — excavate underneath the home whilst still allowing natural light to come down from above.

The whole home is masterfully designed. Architecture in Sydney still is some of the best in the world (shoutout back home!)

Article of the Week

My friend Sagan articulates why to build what customers need, not just what they ask for. Big yes! An excerpt:

Quote of the Week

People create way too many requirements in the way of starting. Typically, you can just choose to do the thing rather than waste time prematurely optimizing and ‘setting yourself up’ to do the thing. Screw stepping stones.

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Until next time,

Max

(P.S. Reply to let me know what you think. I read all replies.)