Design co-founder at https://xitter.cf/t.co/yclsnRddXT. Previously VP Design at Meta. Co-founder Teehan+Lax. Creator of https://xitter.cf/t.co/mUHPfNwGgj & https://xitter.cf/t.co/aqoGgQ5wnc
California, USA
Joined October 2008
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Geoff Teehan retweeted
Every day, 10 to 15 people make their first $20K on @whop. Today, Lightspark powers a new way for them to cash out instantly to their bank accounts.
Of course the Roadster demo was a spectacle. He’s selling cars. He’s going to show the most outrageous things the tech can do.
And it was pretty fucking impressive. Watching it hang upside down, defying gravity, was cool. Watching it fall from the sky and stick the landing was insane.
The prototype isn’t practical in its current form -- don’t care. It’s not hard to imagine practical applications for this tech beyond jumping police barricades and retina detaching acceleration.
That same tech can help a car stop on black ice, avoid a collision, or prevent a rollover. Practical stuff will inevitably make its way into regular production cars.
F1 gave us safer tires, better transmissions, more efficient aerodynamics… all from engineers trying to make cars go faster around a track. The guy who invented the 3-point seatbelt previously worked on ejection seats.
Useful applications aren’t always obvious until later, though I think many are obvious in this case.
The next few demos will be more Evel Knievel than anything you’d actually want to do in a car. Cool. We’ll probably see some practical stuff in there too.
People eventually trusted what seemed like sketchy websites with their credit cards in the early days of e-commerce because the convenience far outweighed the “risk”.
It takes time, maturity, and early adopters to begin to make people feel comfortable with it. As it matures in consumer experiences and more people start using it, others will try it too. When they do, they’ll realize how the convenience and magic of it outweighs the “risk”.
History and behavior are again repeating itself.
When you give access to agents to actually do/buy stuff you understand that you often don't want to interface with a company. You just want the thing with as little friction or involvement as possible.
I hate phone calls with companies for this reason. Friction, involvement, even anxiety. To some degree, I see this like that.
I used an agent to go through a bank acct for something. It found fraudulent charges without me prompting it to do so. It submitted a ticket. I did nothing. It booked me a car, paid and cancelled it when I no longer needed it. Again, I did nothing.
It feels like using your credit card on the internet for the first time in 1997. Scary at first, then it becomes weird not to. Not because the risk of fraud went away, but because it was never as big as we imagined. More importantly, the convenience was worth the risk we felt.
The interface will be there. In some cases humans will use it. In others, agents. In others still, humans and their agents will bypass them altogether.
The goal is for you to do as little as possible. The design job is making you comfortable with that.
My son ported a couple dialed.gg games to iOS a couple of months ago. It's spent more time in review than it took to create the app. This will be the last iOS app we ever do. We did it because a dozen copycats somehow got onto the store with shitty vibe coded versions. the process is insane considering apple's take. It's too slow, too much friction to test and ship, too much inconsistency in what gets through, too expensive.
Geoff Teehan retweeted
"The invention of the boat reduced the importance of swimming, but enabled the discovery of new lands."
Beautiful analogy from @ylecun about the opportunities and changes with AI, in mathematics and in science more broadly.
Deep reflection is healthy. Whether you're pausing work to write about it, or just taking a vacation. It'll all still be there when you're back—with new perspective.
Linear CEO @karrisaarinen: "I took a break this summer from paying attention to AI. I thought that when I came back, I'd feel left behind. But when I came back, I realized that nothing has really changed.
There's new models, there's new techniques, there's new agents. But in the end, making great products, increasing revenue, and building the business—it's still hard.
It's clear the tools are getting better, you can do more, you can do it faster. But I think the more important question is: are we actually making better things with these tools? Are our teams getting better with these tools?
I don't think that answer is clearly yes.
There's a lot of emphasis now on toolmaking and using tools and building systems. But I think in the end, as product people, our job is to make something great."
This is so great and it’s not just for newer folks. Some additions:
+ Be truly open to harsh and direct feedback. The faster you’re comfortable with this, the faster you’ll learn and the better your work will be.
+ Listen, sit with the feedback for longer than you’ll want to—even when you have a good rebuttal.
Nothing kills valuable feedback and growth faster than a strong defense.
How to Ask for Help
If you're a junior designer, I want to share a few things that will help you ask for help more effectively, be it wanting a portfolio review, introductions, advice, or anything really.
1. Be direct.
Most of the people you want help from are busy people. It is *greatly* preferred when you are upfront and direct about what you want. There are only so many hours in the day, and I'd rather know exactly what you want and how I can help.
2. Be specific
There are very few people in the world who ever want to 'catch up' or 'get their brain picked' when you don't know someone and it's ambiguous what they want.
If you want feedback on your portfolio, ask for that. If you want ideas on how to reposition yourself, ask for that.
If you aren't specific, you'll either get no response, or get generic response. My general feedback on every portfolio will always be: show your work upfront; remove half the words then remove more again, and spend 10x the time refining the work shown vs the design of the portfolio itself.
3. Be concise
Everyone is busy, so be respectful of their time and be as concise as possible with your ask.
4. Follow up
If you don't hear back from someone, the most likely answer is they either missed your message or forgot. Platforms like X have, somehow still, terrible DM's that always seem to be buggy, so just follow up respectfully. I don't find it annoying; rather I appreciate the persistence and reminder.
5. Follow through
If someone takes the time to help you, and gives you advice or suggestions, you should follow through on them. I love hearing about how things went or the updates someone made, but I'd guess less than 3% of the time I hear back from someone. Want to know an easy way to start to build a relationship? Follow through. Those who follow up I am more likely to want to continue helping and building into.
So what does this look like in practice?
Instead of "Here's my portfolio, let me know if you have thoughts!" say "I'm updating my portfolio as I look for a full time role at a startup. Would you mind letting me know 1) if this would pass your first 5 second screen, and 2) do you think the work examples I have selected seem credible to an early stage founder?"
Instead of "I'd love to meet if you're ever down", say "I have a few first round interviews coming up in a few weeks. Would you be open to doing a 30m practice portfolio presentation with me? I'll show up at any time that works for you this week or next."
I have generally found our industry is full of people who want to help others, so I hope this is helps you better ask for help!
Money that works like a file.
Drag it into Finder. Send it in a message. Put it on physical media. Pass it between two phones.
We pushed @lightspark's docs and infra to explore what money could do beyond a traditional wallet.
Here's a video of what we made ⬇
The apps showcased here are available to download and try. We wrote up how it works, what’s inside a money file, and the docs we used to build it.
design.lightspark.com/money-…
Small all-cap type is the design equivalent of "it's not X, it's Y."
Related rant, prompted by writing this post: When is X going to convert straight quotes and apostrophes into proper typographic marks?
Bad: ' ' " "
Good: ‘ ’ “ ”
America.gov is awesome. I genuinely love this whole push. Gov't work at this scale is not easy.
This is absolutely a nit, but I cannot unsee the kerning in the logo. Everything else feels so clean and considered, and the type in the mark just gives tension. It's too tight and unbalanced. The A is hanging out on its own. You can see how much better it looks when that font is typeset in the headline with equal default kerning.
Invisible to 99% of people but it makes my eye twitch.
Anyway, stupid nit on an amazing launch. 👏
The time it takes us to open up new corridors now has gotten incredibly short.
Türkiye is now live on Lightspark
US companies imported $16.4 billion in goods from Türkiye last year. Now they can pay those suppliers in lira, in real time
Send money, pay suppliers, and convert stablecoins to lira
docs.lightspark.com
Everything counts. Nothing's neutral. Every hour moves you toward the life you want or away from it.
Love what you work on & who you work with.
For me, that's helping move money anywhere with the team at @lightspark and building games with my son for Dialed.gg.
It’s simple: Spend more time working than fucking around.