Good Work—Edition Nº 14

🎶 The Weekend by Dave Rawlings Machine

brevity is a by-product of vigor.William Strunk Jr.*

Good Work is the second newsletter I’ve been a part of creating. Before this, I worked with Danielle and Kevin Morrill to create The Mattermark Daily, which would go on to have more than 100K subscribers. It began as a weekly newsletter, with a 1,000+ word feature going out every Sunday or Monday (and occasionally on a Tuesday). However, as Mattermark grew, we tried shortening our editorial contribution and focused on sharing the best links we came across each day. For the next few weekly editions of Good Work, we’re going to focus on sharing less of our own opinions and put more emphasis on surfacing great reads about how to do good work. Let us know what you think at goodwork@holloway.com.

This Week

On Remote Work

Andreas Klinger, Head of Remote at AngelList, has been tweeting up a storm about remote work this week.

• First, he asks if it would be better to use the term “colocated work.”
• Second, he asked for tips on running off-sites for remote teams, and there were quite a few responses. See the thread here. That thread inspired Amir Salihefendić to pen a tweetstorm in response.

On Changing Consumer Behavior

• [12m] In “Taylor Swift, iOS, and the Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution is Vanishing,” Alex Danco shares a thought-provoking take on the markets’ shift away from normal distribution curves and toward a bifurcated land of “good enough” and luxury.
• “Waldenponding,” as coined by Venkatesh Rao refers to when people hang up their phones and technology and claim it as bravery. His latest tweetstorm against waldenponding and in favor of staying connective should get you thinking.

Startup Stuff

• [13m] Whenever I come across a resource with immense practical value, I save it. So I figured I’d share this one with anyone interested in SaaS sales: “Direct Sales for Bootstrapped SaaS Startups: from $1,300 to $725,000 MRR,” by Nathan Barry.
• [11m] Data has long been hailed a “competitive moat” or advantage in a market increasingly being defined by or at least marketed via the promise of “AI,” “big data,” or choose your buzzword. “The Empty Promise of Data Moats,” by Martin Casado and Peter Lauten is a well-thought through piece on how data moats often are no moat at all.

Long-Term Thinking

• [1m] For some time now, I’ve been excited about Eric Ries’s “Long Term Stock Exchange.” This week, The Long-Term Stock Exchange received approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission to operate a national securities exchange.

Privacy

I’m increasingly becoming more negative toward Facebook and Google. ​audio​This podcast with Sam Harris and Roger McNamee made me begin changing my behavior. This week, two pieces stood out to me on the subject, and I think it’s important all of us think about the work we do and how we, directly and indirectly, support companies that market their products to us as if they’re here to help but then turn around and sell our data without our permission.

• “What Apple, Facebook and Google each mean by "privacy",” by Scott Rosenberg
• “Google’s New Privacy Features Put the Responsibility on Users, ” by Lauren Goode

That’s Good Work for this week. Looking forward to what’s next.

Andy and the Holloway Team

Good Work is written and curated by Andy Sparks, Courtney Nash, Dmitriy Kharchenko, Hope Hackett, Joshua Levy, and Rachel Jepsen.