Luke Kanies

Bluesky’s Atmosphere Protocol has the chance to become the base for a whole generation of applications.

I decided to finally give vibe coding a try.

They’re built for people who hate meetings, not for those who need to be great at them.

Of course not.

Most industries are dominated by monopolies.

Privacy expectations are changing.

Why and how my team built board reports instead of PowerPoint decks.

How I got here, how it went, and what happened along the way.

A single drink perfectly captures the weirdness of raising money for the first time.

The drive for social status created the worst, most important part of the Iliad.

Science has a problem.

Automation is not to blame for all the job destruction and wage stagnation.

The Market Is Wrong About Your Problems What Voltaire and the Flaw at the Heart of Economics Have to Teach Us About Software That Doesn’t Exist.

The Automator’s Dilemma Automation is not to blame for all the job destruction and wage stagnation.

Blockchain without Blockchain There is powerful technology hidden in the blockchain.

I’ve hated enterprise sales since long before I started Puppet.

My biggest articles, lessons learned, and plans for this year.

There are many upsides to the era of the smartphone and the cloud.

To really win, you have to seem strange to your true peers, not just the world at large.

The sideways logo gets hidden, rather than fixed.

Work is not a zero-sum game Image courtesy of Clem Onojeghuo Remember those stories from a few decades ago, about how improvements in productivity and automation would mean that we’d only be working 5 hours a week by now?

Giving answers is easy, and usually worthless Photo by Blake Cheek Being an advisor to other founders is a contradictory affair: Be helpful, but do not give advice.

Founders need to retain their own mission while they build out the company’s.

I know what it means to own my code contributions Github, but what does it mean to own my rides on Strava?

Is that a compliment, or an insult?

Filesystems, version control, and the blockchain Image courtesy of Adarsh Kummur This is the fourth, and possibly final, article in my series on the blockchain without blockchain.

Vendor success should be about customer needs, not its own.

I have plenty to share.

What does owning your data even mean, and can the Blockchain help?

Society is built on trust, and improves or weakens with it.

There is powerful technology hidden in the blockchain.

There is a solution to wage and productivity stagnation.

What Voltaire and the Flaw at the Heart of Economics Have to Teach Us About Software That Doesn’t Exist Voltaire’s Candide juxtaposes an optimistic philosophy with unbelievable tragedy.

It’s the message, not the medium I did more writing in 2017 than I ever have before, probably more than I had done in my entire life.

Modern capitalism raises the flag of the free market while pitting centrally planned organizations against each other It’s quite a journey from being born on a commune to raising more than $87m in funding at a software company.

On the value of change and focus I have been a passionate advocate of Trello almost since the day it came out.

The arrival of the smartphone has convinced the world of the value of great software design, but it’s not all good news The smartphone has reached more people and delivered more value faster than any technology ever seen.

The true story of trying to put Google’s planning system into use When Google was less than a year old, they began using a planning system presented by legendary venture capitalist John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins.

Most of our software is confused about what job we’ve hired it for I’ve really enjoyed playing Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but my life has been changed more by one of its reviews than by the game itself.

It’s only safe to learn from true stories Every startup has its founding myth, the story that it uses to help draw in and motivate employees, customers, and investors.

But it’s not what you think The iPad has made great strides in the last few years toward being a full-time computing platform.

Software’s focus on world-dominance has crossed with my incessant tinkering to result in a computing environment that is failing me utterly.

Software should be for the people who do the work I’m not a technologist.

How you work determines your destiny Peter Drucker famously said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”.

In an industry built around investing large sums in uncertain ventures, the best companies seek out the best investors, and gains accumulate at the top.

It’s time to develop new sources of capital for founders, to help them generate wealth through solving their customer problems without the massive failure rate.

Software has the potential to increase productivity as much as electrification or steam power did, but its impact is stunted by its reliance on random interactions.

Venture capital’s reliance on unicorns provides cover for the huge failure rate of startups, and investors make no effort to reduce it.

The success of companies and founders in modern venture-backed startups is highly reliant on peer validation of investor decisions.

To understand VC, you must understand the consequences of how they make money for their investors.