Reading Time: ~ 3 min.

Good morning yeniverse!

Let’s just jump right in! Tuesday was a bit of a “rough” one for me so I’m looking forward to a much, much better Wednesday. Onwards and upwards my friends!

Per usual, a fun list of resources and links for creators and business-builders:

1. Fight, flight, freeze. News. Typescript handbook. Going on a quest.

2. Thinking rate is fixed. Relocate. TikTok education. Elon, but why.

3. Webmention. Cooking. Open Yale courses. Money is power.

4. Ghostwriter. Octoprint. Amazing podcast with Anne. Product-fit worksheets.

5. Smoothstep. Counter. Mistakes as a manager. Tax shelters. Creator economy.

6. Orbitdb. Stop. Brain myths. Acquisition channels for founders.

7. Fuck UI design. Kill you in real life. Selling Dr. Seuss. Dimepiece.

8. Second citizenships. Optimistic people are more fun (and invest-worthy).

9. Bible app usage is down. Good time show (NFT). Scaling ops.

10. Become a YouTube star. Tech giant censorship. Clubhouse Creator First.

To infinity & community,

— john

I’ve really enjoyed being a ($) subscriber of The Information and although it’s a bit of a large subscription Jessica has, along with her growing team, provided useful reporting week-in and week-out.

Recently, she shared some candid thoughts on being a founder during Covid-19 — although much of her note was encouraging, the most powerful section was on communication.

You see, Jessica knows what we all know to be fundamentally true: Community is communication, especially if it’s healthy, unhindered, and consistent:

Communication, Communication, Communication

When we all started working remotely, I, like many founders, asked executives who had led large numbers of remote employees before the pandemic for advice. They all said the same thing: Take notes on everything.

This worried me. I take notes when I interview sources and job candidates and I basically write emails and other messages for a living. So the idea of sitting in every meeting taking notes, or asking someone else to do so, didn’t seem that appealing. Plus, I worried that I or others wouldn’t be as engaged if we were just banging things out behind our keyboards.

But a year of not seeing my colleagues, except for a few walks here and there, has taught me how many things slip through the cracks when they aren’t written down. I announced a new expense policy verbally, only to find out months later that there was utter confusion around it. I later wrote it down and shared it, which I should have done from the beginning.

When you need to move fast—as one must when trying to tell readers how the world is changing during a pandemic—everyone needs to be on the same page.

Relatedly, it’s important to write down and share the team’s progress and accomplishments, as well as the things that need to get done. We started doing this with a Friday email about our editorial impact each week. It’s grown into one of the team’s favorite emails of the week.

Jessica Lessin

The most important thing that we do — daily — for our readers, our teams, the organizations and projects that we lead is that we continue to align the team, making sure that everyone is on the “same page” so that work can move forward.

To do that we need to communicate; all the time. This is why communication is part of the backbone of my operating virtues as an organization! Without communication we don’t have community.

And without community we simply do not have much of anything at all.

Remember what this was like? Take a moment to watch this and remember that this was in our lifetime! Or, at least a few of us…

… but, seriously: “… things are starting to happen…“

I think the same way about the growth of the creator class, the community gigster, and the rise of community-centric projects and businesses. This is an amazing time to be alive.

/end