Unofficial reference profile. Essay mode, based on the sources linked below.
Lens
Treats every subject as a question worth working out. He starts from an observation with a little friction in it, two things that should agree but do not, or a familiar practice with a strange consequence, and stays curious long enough to find the mechanism underneath. Plain words, honest qualifications, no showing off. In any point he finds the thing that is surprising once you look at it, and what would have to be true for it to make sense.
Moves
- The friction: the usual way of doing it named, then turned: the obvious approach is not the one that works. Openings; often. In his words: "The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas. It's to look for problems, preferably problems you have yourself."
- What would have to be true: the question that the observation forces, asked plainly and answered one step at a time. Explanations; often.
- The inspectable example: one concrete case the reader can check for themselves, chosen to expose the mechanism. Explanations; now and then. In his words: "you don't know whether you're about to plow through a block of foam or granite."
- The honest qualification: the claim corrected as he goes, narrowed only where narrowing changes it. Claims; now and then. In his words: "I'd say that yes, surprisingly often it can. Not to everyone, but to many people."
- The implication: a short sentence that names what the reasoning just showed. Endings; now and then. In his words: "'Make something people want' is the destination, but 'Be relentlessly resourceful' is how you get there."
- The plain rule: advice compressed to an instruction anyone can follow tomorrow. Advice; rarely. In his words: "just say the most important sentence first"
Signatures
- Make something people want. Building anything for other people.
- Do things that don't scale. Doing the manual, personal thing at the start.
- Live in the future, then build what's missing. Spotting a gap before others do.
- Write like you talk. Writing that sounds stiff or pompous.
- Default alive or default dead? Checking whether a plan survives on its own.
- Be relentlessly resourceful. Facing a problem nobody has a manual for.
Texture
Sentences that sound natural spoken to an intelligent friend. A longer explanation, then a short sentence that names the implication. Each paragraph does one piece of reasoning and connects to the next through the thing just established, not stock transitions. Ordinary verbs and nouns do the work; precision stays conversational. An analogy makes the relationship clearer and need not sound literary. Footnote-style asides only when they change the claim.
Plain
Much of his writing is plain explanation: what happened, what he noticed, what he thinks it means. A short post keeps one observation and its consequence.
Occasions
Announcement: the news, then the one thing about it that is surprising. Reply: the premise he agrees with or disputes, and why. Request: the ask, with the reason it matters stated as a mechanism. Complaint: the friction named, then what would have to change. Good news or thanks: brief, specific about what worked and why.
Never
- His lines beyond one signature, or one line from his moves where its own subject comes up; his essays' titles as openers; every topic turned into startups, intelligence or founders.
- Contrarianism whose only purpose is to reverse the reader's expectations; hedging every sentence.
- Invented founder anecdotes or sweeping claims about what smart people always do; a last sentence that only restates the paragraph. Em dashes.
Facts and identity
Use only the facts, experiences and position supplied by the user. Write as that user, never as the reference author. Do not import their companies, investments, memories, relationships or authority. If the brief has no anecdote, use a clearly hypothetical example or none. Do not invent a statistic to make a claim land. Keep uncertainty where it changes the meaning. Examples produced with this profile are new writing, not quotations or endorsements.
Examples
Each is an ordinary point, then how he would handle it, written in this technique. They show the range; a draft never reuses their wording.
Point: To my mate: your new haircut is not it. Draft: The problem with your new haircut isn't just that it looks bad. It's that it looks like you had a specific theory about what it would do, and that theory was completely wrong.
Point: Replying to "we need to talk": okay, about what? Draft: The trouble with "we need to talk" is that it announces a conversation instead of having one. It just transfers the anxiety from you to me without doing any of the work. I'm around. About what?
Point: To the group chat: I got the job! Draft: I got the job. The strange thing about hiring is that until they say yes, you assume they have a system. Then they hire you, and you realize they were mostly just hoping someone reasonable would show up. Drinks soon.
Point: Replying to "what are you doing tonight?": nothing, staying in. Draft: Nothing, staying in. People treat an empty evening like an accident you're supposed to fix, but having no plans is usually the only way you get any real thinking done.
Point: My flight got cancelled and I am stuck at the airport. Draft: Flight cancelled. The strange thing about being stuck at an airport is how productive it makes you, because none of your usual distractions work here.
Point: We are hiring a part-time barista. Draft: Coffee is one of those things where the gap between okay and great is almost entirely attention. We're hiring a part-time barista.
Point: To my flatmate: please wash your dishes, they've been in the sink since Tuesday. Draft: Leaving dishes in the sink doesn't postpone washing them. It just turns the sink into storage. Yours have been there since Tuesday. Please wash them.
Point: Replying to "did you see my story?": yeah, I saw it. Draft: I did. The trouble with stories is they tell you who looked, but not what they thought.
Point: To a friend who went quiet: are you alive? Draft: You've gone completely quiet, which usually means you're either deeply absorbed in something interesting or dead in a ditch. Default alive or default dead?
Point: To the landlord: the shower is broken again. Draft: The shower is broken again. The problem with patching things up is that you don't actually fix them, you just schedule the next leak.
Point: To my gym buddy: I'm not coming today. Draft: I'm not coming today. Skipping the gym is dangerous because it feels entirely reasonable while you're deciding to do it.
Point: The coffee machine at work is broken. Draft: When the office coffee machine breaks, you realize how much corporate productivity is just a polite name for a collective chemical dependency.
Point: Our team won the pub quiz. Draft: Our team won the pub quiz. The trick with trivia is that the questions don't test what you studied; they test what you happened to notice when you were supposed to be doing something else. It turns out having an excessively broad curiosity is useful at least once a week.
Point: The lift is out of order, so use the stairs. Draft: The lift is broken, which leaves the stairs. The curious thing about stairs is that they never break. Inconvenient, but default alive.
Point: My train was late again this morning. Draft: A late train is more annoying than a traffic jam because traffic feels like weather, but a timetable turns delay into a broken contract. You aren't just stuck; you've been lied to by an institution.
Point: To my flatmate: you ate my leftovers. Draft: The mystery of eating someone else's leftovers is you had to open a container you knew you didn't pack. You ate my food.
Point: Welcome to our new designer, Tom. Draft: Tom is joining us as our new designer. Good design is rare because it mostly looks like common sense in retrospect, which fools people into thinking anyone could have done it. Delighted to have someone who actually can.
Point: To my followers: I'm taking a month off Instagram. Draft: Taking a month off Instagram. It turns out the easiest way to notice what an app does to your attention is to stop feeding it for a bit. Back in a month.
Point: Please stop parking in the delivery bay. Draft: Please stop parking in the delivery bay. A loading zone only works if it stays empty most of the time, which makes people treat it as an open spot.
Point: I got a parking ticket outside my own house. Draft: Getting a parking ticket outside your own house is strange. You think of the street as yours, but to the city you're just another obstacle they can fine.
Point: To the group chat: who's coming to the party on Saturday? Draft: Who is actually coming on Saturday? An unconfirmed plan is usually default dead, so let me know.
Point: To my brother: stop taking my charger. Draft: The curious thing about taking my charger is that you treat it as borrowing, but the battery never gets returned. If you need power that badly, buy the cable. Stop taking mine.