Last week, the online freelance marketplace Fiverr generated a flood of headlines after it announced an effort to reimagine itself as an AI-first” company.
According to a published memo from CEO Micha Kaufman, the new-and-improved Fiverr will be leaner, faster,” with modern AI infrastructure, greater productivity, and “far fewer management layers. The change will also require a painful reset, Kaufman added, that will see 250 people lose their jobs.
Fiverr is just the latest tech company to loudly proclaim its embrace of artificial intelligence this year. It joins Duolingo, Klarna Group, Shopify, and a number of others that have said they are moving at breakneck speed to get ahead of the transformational technology.
In many cases, these companies have employed a similar mix of buzzwords and superlatives to publicly convey the dire urgency with which they believe they must act. Being AI-first, it seems, is an existential rallying cry for an adapt-or-die moment.
But what does it actually mean?
If you find yourself unsure, youre not alone. Despite endless discussions around AI at many workplaces today, close to half of professionals with some knowledge of top company strategies have never even heard the term AI-first, according to a new survey conducted exclusively for Fast Company.
And many who do hear it are likely to be skeptical. Although around a third of the surveys respondents said theyd perceive an AI-first company to be more innovative and efficient, 27% said theyd expect such a company to feel less human, while 25% said being AI-first would probably result in a less enjoyable customer experience.
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Concerns about job losses, privacy, and slop
The new research was led by FutureBrand, a brand strategy and design agency, and involved interviews with more than 3,000 informed professionalsmeaning people who have some degree of awareness about seven or more of the biggest companies ranked by PwC.
The data will be included as part of the forthcoming FutureBrand Index 2025, which launches next month.
The interviews, conducted in June, included a question that defined AI-first in a very specific way: a strategy that mandates the integration of AI tools across the workplace, adopted by companies that only hire employees who do work that AI can’t.
Presented with that definition, respondents further expressed a range of concerns around AI-first strategies, including the potential for job losses, data and privacy risks, and the reduced creativity that inevitably comes with AI-generated contentaka AI slop.
Other respondents viewed AI-first announcements as a signal that companies are prioritizing efficiency over ethics, while still others merely saw them as marketing spin.
The findings indicate that for even the most knowledgeable consumers, AI-first announcements risk causing confusion, misgivings, or even fear, particularly if they are not clearly defined.
Right now, the phrase AI-first is being used by companies with great enthusiasm, but limited clarity, Jon Tipple, FutureBrands chief strategy officer, said in a statement to Fast Company.
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Where do we go from here?
Perhaps no company is more familiar with this tricky new terrain than Duolingo. In May, CEO Luis von Ahn shared a memo in which he proclaimed that the language learning app was going AI-first.
The announcement sparked sustained backlash, particularly von Ahn’s assertion that Duolingo would gradually reduce its reliance on contractors who do the types of work AI can do. For months, the company’s social media posts were flooded by trollish comments, with critics often ribbing Duolingo for what they’d perceived as a betrayal of the app’s human translators.
Investors, by contrast, rewarded the move, with Duolingo’s stock soaring 24% after its August earnings report showed eye-popping profit and user growth, an indication to some observers that its bet was paying off.
Still, von Ahn has sought to distance himself from his memo’s least generous interpretations. Speaking at the Fast Company Innovation Festival just last week, he reminded the audience that Duolingo has “not laid off a single full-time employee.”
FutureBrand’s research, which includes responses from people in North America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia Pacific, suggests that opinions about AI-first companies are still very much divided, to the extent that they have been formed at all.
For companies looking to draft that next AI-first memo, the findings could be seen as an opportunity or a warning.
“For some, it signals progress through modern thinking and streamlined operations,” Tipple said. “But for others, AI-first means something colder: the removal of human connection, empathy and even a job threat.
Nearly a week after Disney “indefinitely” suspended Jimmy Kimmel for comments he’d made regarding the killing of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, Jimmy Kimmel Live! is returning to ABC television tonight. Heres what you need to know about the late-night talk show hosts return and where you can watch it.
Whats happened?
On Friday, ABC owner the Walt Disney Company said it would indefinitely suspend Jimmy Kimmel Live! after Kimmel made comments four nights earlier on his Monday show that many on the right said were insensitive. Two days after the comments, Brendan Carr, chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), threatened ABCs affiliate licenses in response to Kimmels comments.
The reaction to his commentswhich Kimmel was reportedly set to say were grossly mischaracterized by those on the rightthen led to ABC affiliate station owners Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair saying they would pre-empt Kimmels show going forward.
As the controversy surrounding Kimmel intensified, Disney finally announced it would pull Kimmel off the air.
Disneys decision to suspend Kimmel led to swift blowback over the weekend from not just those on the left, but from free speech advocates, actors and comedians, unions, and politicians. Calls quickly grew to boycott Disney Plus, as well as Hulu and ESPN, which the company also owns.
Then yesterday, Disney announced that Jimmy Kimmel Live! and its host would return to the air.
Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country, the entertainment giant said in a statement on Monday. It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive. We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.
However, while Kimmel may be returning to television, he wont be appearing on all screens across the nation.
Sinclair says it wont air Kimmels return
Sinclair, which owns the ABC station in Washington, D.C, as well as over three dozen other ABC stations across the country, said in a statement posted to X that it will not be airing Jimmy Kimmel Live! once the show returns.
Beginning Tuesday night, Sinclair will be preempting Jimmy Kimmel Live! across our ABC affiliate stations and replacing it with news programming, the company said. Discussions with ABC are ongoing as we evaluate the shows potential return.
As for Nexstar, the company has not issued a public statement on the matter. At this time, it is unclear whether Nexstar ABC affiliates will air the return of Jimmy Kimmel Live! Fast Company has reached out to Nexstar for comment.
But that means that a majority of the country will be able to watch the return of Jimmy Kimmel Live! to late-night television tonight.
How to watch Jimmy Kimmel return
Jimmy Kimmel Live! will return to the air tonight, Tuesday, September 23. The show kicks off at its usual time of 11:35 p.m. ET / 10:35 p.m. CT.
Kimmels return is expected to be a highly watched broadcast, and there are several ways for you to watch the show, either live or after its original airing. Heres how:
On television: Jimmy Kimmel Live! will return to most ABC stations tonight. To watch the show, just tune into your ABC affiliate at the shows airtime. Reminder that ABC is a broadcast network and free to watch if you have an over-the-air antenna.
On live-streaming services: If you’ve cut the cable cord and don’t have an antenna, ABC is included as part of a bundle in a number of live-streaming services. Those include YouTube TV, Fubo, Sling TV, and Hulu+Live TV. Just a reminder that ABC may not be available in all areas, so check before signing up.
On Hulu: If you prefer to stream the show, you can watch it on demand on Hulu. Shows are typically available the day after they air.
On ABC.com: ABC is expected to air clips from the show, as it normally does, on its website here.
On YouTube: It is also likely ABC will post clips of tonights show on the official Jimmy Kimmel Live YouTube channel.
And of course, social media is sure to be flooded with clips of Kimmel’s return once the show airs.
A 2024 study of S&P 500 firms found that companies often mandated a return to the office after stock prices fellhoping in-person work would spark productivity and improve financial performance. But is that really working? Experts offer their insights, opinions, and advice here.
Invest in Systems, Not Just Office Space
Return to office mandates are making the rounds again. The reasons most often given are collaboration, innovation, and productivity.
The truth is, if those outcomes are the real goal, they will not happen just by getting people back in the same building. Where people sit matters far less than how they are set up to work. Too often, RTO is rolled out without any meaningful investment in the systems, tools, processes, and environments that make collaboration and innovation possible in the first place.
A recent report from Australia’s Productivity Commission found that hybrid work does not harm productivity. The real drop in performance comes from a lack of investment in technology and systems that would allow people to do their best work. If your infrastructure is outdated or your processes are clunky, getting everyone in the office will not change the result.
The cost of this gap between intent and execution is real. In cities like Atlanta, employees can lose two to three hours a day just commuting. That is time that could be spent on focused work, creative problem-solving, or even rest, all of which directly improve output. Once they arrive, many are still working with the same outdated tools, inefficient workflows, or uninspiring environments, which means productivity does not go up. In some cases, it gets worse.
We know hybrid can work when it is done with intention. Stanford research shows employees who work from home two days a week are just as productive, equally likely to be promoted, and 33% less likely to resign than those who are in the office full time. Other studies have shown remote and hybrid setups reduce sick days, limit distractions, and improve satisfaction, all of which support performance.
The key is to design work intentionally. If you want more collaboration, upgrade your collaboration tools. Redesign meetings so they actually create space for ideas. Use in-person time for high-value activities like mentoring, creative brainstorming, and relationship building.
I am not anti-office. I am pro-employee. That means creating an environmentwhether remote, hybrid, or onsitethat allows people to do their best work and deliver real results. The leaders who focus on removing barriers, upgrading systems, and trusting their people will see gains in productivity no matter where their teams sit.
Lena McDearmid, Founder & CEO, Wryver
Design Intentional Ways of Working
The discussion about workplace flexibility often centers on where people workoffice versus remotebut the “where” matters far less than the “how” and “why.”
When leaders mandate return-to-office without purpose or empathy, they risk damaging culture, breaking trust, and draining engagement. This is because people quickly see the disconnect between stated reasons and lived reality; there are far too many examples of employees dutifully coming in to “collaborate” only to spend the day on video calls. Conversely, there are examples of leaders trying to reach employees only to find that they are not actually working remotely but completely disconnected from their laptop. It has become a battleground of wills.
Offices aren’t the enemy, and neither is remote work. The better approach is to define the goal and maximize the purpose of each: offices for in-person connection and collaboration; remote for focused work and flexible well-being. Aim to maximize the benefits of each mode of work while removing friction that makes intentions and reality misalign. For instance, if in-office days are for collaboration, limit video calls those days and design connection opportunities like meals, live meetings, and in-person training. If remote work raises concerns about availability, set clear expectations for when and how to be accessible. This is what I call designing “ways of working,” which can become both a business advantage and a culture catalyst.
My approach is to turn these “ways of working” into a framework of philosophy statement, much like a compensation philosophy. When I help organizations write this, it articulates the purpose, principles, and expectations for how, when, and why people gather in person versus work remotely as well as what “flexibility” is defined as within that culture. Done well, it becomes a shared compass that is honest about business needs, clear about collaboration goals, and grounded in values. When “ways of working” are defined and designed to honor both organizational and individual needs, rather than making it a zero-sum choice, performance and engagement increase.
Angela Heyroth, Principal, Talent Centric Designs
Hybrid Model Boosts Collaboration and Creativity
The return to office has actually had a really positive impact for us. Being back in the same space has brought a level of energy and focus that’s hard to replicate remotely. We’ve found that casual in-person interactions, those quick hallway chats or spontaneous whiteboard sessions, lead to faster decision-making and more creative problem-solving. There’s just something about being able to look across the room and get instant feedback that helps keep momentum going.
For example, when we were working on a major product update earlier this year, having the team together allowed us to collaborate more fluidly across departments. What might’ve taken a few days of back-and-forth over Slack or Zoom happened in one afternoon. That speed and alignment directly impacted our launch timeline and let us respond to customer feedback much faster.
That said, I don’t think the solution is forcing everyone into the office five days a week. The future is flexibility. What’s worked best for us is a hybrid model where we use office time intentionally, for collaboration, planning, and building team connection, while still giving people the autonomy to focus remotely when it makes sense. It’s not about going back to how things were, but using the office as a tool when it adds real value.
Mark Yeramian, Co-Founder, CEO, Moast.io
Build Trust Through Flexibility and Leadership
The RTO push is the wrong approach to ensure long-term business success. When a large employer makes this decision, it communicates to employees that they can’t be trusted, that they are cogs in a machine, and that work and profit are more important than the people generating it. The RTO push is a surefire way to dramatically decrease psychological safety in your organization.
Psychological safety builds certainty. When we feel safe, certain, and trusted, our brains are better equipped to think critically, properly define problems, and effectively collaborate to create solutions that add real value and rofit to our businesses. Mandating in-person work will both increase stress for loyal, productive employees and motivate your top performers to seek employment elsewhere.
Bringing people in to be babysat is wasting your time and creating a tense environment where great employees cannot do great work. Work with stakeholders to define clear, measurable outcomes with specific deadlines, and collaborate as a team to accomplish the shared goals you’ve chosen to prioritize.
A better approach than RTO is building meaningful relationships with your direct reports, and asking that they do the same. People are what drive our businesses forward. Schedule a weekly team huddle. Hold one-on-ones with the individuals who report to you. Learn what’s going on in their work and in their lives. Give positive, specific feedback regularly so your staff’s confidence grows along with their trust in you.
If you need to see people to believe they’re working, you don’t have a productivity problem; you have a leadership problem.
Kate Vawter, Founder and CEO, Ascent Solutions
Focus on Fixing How Work Gets Done
Forced return-to-office policies often send the message: “We don’t care about accessibility or diversity.” Remote work opened the door for people with disabilities, caregiving duties, or those living far from expensive office hubs. At a global tech company where I worked on the workplace effectiveness team, we found that productivity suffered not because people were remote and distributed, but because meetings were scheduled excessively, poorly planned, and lacked clearly documented outcomes. Meetings are just one of many types of interruptions that happen frequently throughout an average employee’s day. If companies focused on fixing how work gets done, instead of where, it would drive far better results and keep employees feeling productive.
Megan Rees, Head Therapist, Head Coach, Founder, Megan Rees, LPCC and Megan Rees, Coaching & Consulting
Flexible Work Weeks Test Productivity Theories
The Return to Office push would be received much better if it wasn’t coupled with layoffs. Albeit, employees are probably not going to be enthusiastic, but some people would be more receptive if not for their colleagues now being without a job and their duties now being theirs. The quiet firing trend pushes employees to the office, in hopes that some will resign and the company can avoid public layoffs and/or severances, but the damage is exponential and slow to erase.
For the remaining employees, you now have the feelings of employment instability running rampant and forced proximity converging into a negative mantra being shared over and over during their coffee breaks or at the water cooler.
Employers fail to see that when employees are allowed to remain Work From Home or flexible, they mostly communicate on projects or day-to-day collaborations via emails, chats, and video calls. So negative opinions are suppressed naturally because few employees want to have their negative feelings in print or recordings. Instead, with the forced RTO, you’ve successfully shoved employees together, even the ones that don’t communicate day-to-day with every business unit, and they are now free to grumble together. Solidarity amongst employees should be preferable when there are benefits gained, not lost.
Staying flexible with office days is a better way to test those productivity theories. Is it that employees are less productive at home, or is it that goals are unclear and accountability is lacking? In my experience, it’s most often the latter. Flexible work weeks also allow for those employees that do better in a more structured environment, the option of doing so without the need for negative feedback from those employees that do well from home.
Annalee Malone, Benefits & Compensation Manager, Total Safety U.S. Inc
Hidden Costs of Return-to-Office Mandates
Many businesses don’t realize how much money return-to-office mandates will cost them. For most businesses, office space is one of the biggest fixed costs. It usually makes up 10 to 20% of all operating costs. When companies require RTO, they need to make sure they have enough space for their employees, which is usually 150 to 200 square feet per employee when you include common areas, meeting rooms, and collaborative spaces.
The operational infrastructure becomes more complicated and expensive beyond the rent. The cost of utilities increases significantly. For example, electricity for lighting, heating, and cooling commercial spaces can cost two to three times more than for homes. Companies need to spend money on high-speed internet infrastructure that can handle dozens or hundreds of users simultaneously, as well as robust IT security systems for networks that are located on their own property.
The financial impact also includes amenities that modern workers expect in the workplace, such as ergonomic furniture, kitchen facilities, coffee services, cleaning services, security systems, and parking arrangements. For growing companies, these costs of doing business directly compete with revenue-generating investments. Every dollar spent on office overhead is a dollar not spent on activities that truly help a business grow and increase its stock price, such as developing new products, running marketing campaigns, or acquiring new customers.
Ryan McDonald, COO, Resell Calendar
Remote Flexibility Crucial for Global Teams
Requiring people to return to the office as a solution to declining stock prices is a temporary fix that may do more harm than good, particularly in industries where dispersed workforces are the norm. This is the case in blockchain, where I have witnessed projects lose momentum within weeks because remote flexibility was eliminated. This could include teams that used to work effectively together across six or more time zones simply stalling in their workflow as they were pushed into a smaller time window. This transition involved a delay in decision approvals of up to 48 hours, which used to take place on the same day. The fact that the change was considered to be operationally reactive as opposed to being financially strategic undermined trust, which proved to have a direct impact on the quality of output.
It also has a quantifiable cost of talent that most people do not consider. As I have experienced myself in advising high-growth businesses, the potential hiring pool was reduced by almost 40% due to strict in-office requirements. This forced companies to either accept lower-skilled workers or pay employees relocation packages averaging $15,000 to $25,000 each, without a corresponding increase in output and innovation.
Suvrangsou Das, Global PR Strategist & CEO, EasyPR LLC
Commute Time Hinders Productivity and Balance
It should come as no surprise that the RTO (Return to Office) push is backfiring. A commute adds anywhere from 2 to 10 extra hours of time to someone’s work weekoften time that’s completely unproductive. That’s time that could be spent contributing to the workplace or recharging so someone is set up to do their best work during the workday. For working parentsespecially mothersit can pose significant logistical challenges with navigating childcare and finding the flexibility needed to balance work with being a present and engaged parent. Top talent knows they don’t have to give up their flexibility just to access great opportunities anymore when remote work allows them to do it all.
Bonnie Dilber, Sr. Manager, Talent Acquisition, Zapier
Shift Focus to Outcomes, Not Physical Presence
In my experience, the return-to-office initiative often backfires because it’s framed as a productivity solution rather than a cultural or strategic issue. On one team I worked with, leadership assumed that being back in the same physical space would naturally spark collaboration. What actually occurred was the oppositepeople felt drained from commuting, frustrated by the loss of flexibility, and less focused overall. The energy in the office wasn’t creative; it was resentful.
What proved more effective was shifting the focus to outcomes instead of presence. When we established clear goals, gave people ownership, and brought the team together intentionallyfor example, for brainstorming or strategy sessionsthe collaboration was meaningful, not forced. This balance of flexibility and purposeful in-person time maintained high engagement without eroding trust. In my opinion, this is a much more sustainable approach to driving productivity in today’s workplace.
Pyper L. Cali, Senior Product Manager, Generative AI Solutions, TikTok
Womens healthcare is under unprecedented attack. Women across the U.S. are being denied access to basic reproductive healthcare and funding for research into diseases that affect women is being cut.
Theres an urgent need for healthcare providers and, arguably, any brand that plays a role in womens daily lives, to step up and transform women’s health services and spaces through feminist design.
Feminist design taps into womens and under-represented groups needs in order to create tools, services, and environments that combat systemic oppression. Propelled by the inequalities that surfaced over the COVID-19 pandemic, the current feminist movement is more intersectional and self-critical, shifting focus from the individual to large-scale change making. Feminist design champions equity for all.
Feminist design goes beyond adapting things to make them more accessible or friendly to women and girls. The goal with this approach is to make transformational change by questioning design as an entire system, by considering the systemic biases embedded in the design processes and asking ourselves what might be possible if these are challenged.
Designs inherent gender bias
Like almost every industry, design has historically been shaped by patriarchal structures. With everything from smart phones to crash test dummies based on the requirements of the average male, women have been neglected by normative design. The Women in Global Health report found that during the pandemic only 14% of female healthcare workers had properly fitted PPE.
The industry continues to be male dominated; A survey by the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) in 2019 showed that women make up 61% of the design workforce but only 24% are in leadership roles.
The design of healthcare facilities is often rooted in hierarchical, paternalistic doctorpatient dynamics with environmental conditions that disfavor and often endanger women. For example, bright fluorescent lighting typical in hospitals has been found to increase stress levels and hinder the release of birthing hormones in laboring women.
By contrast, feminist design explores how sensorial design can reduce stress and improve overall well-being, and shifts the emphasis to care, listening, and shared decision-making. For example, well-being is integral to the design of the Pearl Tourville Womens Pavilion in Charleston, South Carolina. The space was designed based on feedback from patients and staff, and features calming acoustics and aims to create a more welcoming, homelike atmosphere.Likewise, the design of the Barlo MS Centre in Toronto, responds to the specific challenges experienced by the people it servespatients with multiple sclerosisand includes a customized gymnasium, high-tech lecture spaces, and an Activities of Daily Living Lab, where patients can learn how to modify their homes.
Women drive healthcare spending yet their needs are unmet
As well as the obvious health and societal benefits, there is a major economic case for feminist design. An investment of $350 million in women-focused research could generate an estimated $14 billion in economic returns by increasing productivity, reducing healthcare costs, and lessening the burden of disease, according to a report from Women’s Health Access Matters (WHAM).
Women make 80% of healthcare spending decisions, according to McKinsey & Company research, yet solutions tailored to their specific health needs remain underfunded. This provides a huge opportunity for brands, start-ups, and healthcare providers to deliver new value by transforming women’s health services, tech, and spaces.
Principles of feminist design
Feminist design promotes reciprocal practices in which communities act as consultants, shaping decisions from the outset. There is no one-size-fits-all design solution: Every environment and its community is different. Problem-solving needs to be experimental and, above all, participatory. Ultimately the vision comes from within the community, and designers make the reality happen.
Here are some key ways to embed feminist design into products, services, platforms, buildings, and spaces: 1. Enable people to take ownership of their health and informationEmpower women with knowledge and equip them with tools to improve their health at their own convenience. FOLX Health has done this for the LGBTQ+ community, as the first ever digital healthcare provider designed to meet the medical needs of this community, offering online consultations with medical experts and deliveries of treatments direct to peoples homes.
2. Provide comfortable and safe spacesUnderstand the needs of diverse audiences and design flexible spaces to accommodate them, from family-centric areas with play spaces for children to intimate spaces for those breastfeeding or experiencing loss or trauma. Ensure basic facilities can be adjusted to accommodate different body types and abilities. Bring psychological comfort with soothing colour palettes, natural textures, and adjustable lighting.Nature is vitalbiophilic design principles can aid healing. Prioritize natural light, curved forms, and sensory stimuli. With its beautiful, yet functional, design, the Tokyo Toilet project is an example of how design can transform the most commonplace aspects of everyday life.
3. Build education programs and resourcesHelp women monitor their health, track symptoms, and make informed decisions through user-friendly interfaces and experiences. Inspire curiosity and exploration so people build a connected ecosystem of partners and information thats expansive and accessible. This is showcased by Midi, a health platform for women over 40, where women can access virtual consultations with medical specialists trained in treating menopause symptoms.
4. Provide platforms for community voicesInclusive language, accessibility, and privacy matter. From healthcare workers to patients and architects to policy makers, create a safe space for diverse groups to share their experiences, showing trust in their expertise. Foster a sense of belonging and establish a reciprocal feedback loop to drive strong relationships and open dialogue.
This approach informs womens health research platform the Lowdown, which aims to enable women to review and research their health conditions, symptoms, and medications.
Designers as activists
Designers have the power to make real social impact by centering their work around empathy, care, and collaboration. The most transformative waves will come from those who dare to interrogate internal design processes and challenge convention.
Feminist practitioners, like pioneering architect Phyllis Birkby, have long resisted dominant power structures and imagined alternative futures. Their activism feels ever more urgent against todays political backdrop.
Practices like experimental storytelling, community-building, education, an radical testing offer ways to reimagine how we live, care, and design. When mindsets shift, so too can policy.
In the lobby of the MIT Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, an enormous sculpture made from thousands of feet of plastic twine falls from the ceiling. It’s entrancing. As you look up, your eyes take in how the fibers change color from blue to green to red to orange as it undulates across the space.
While the piece looks abstract, each fiber actually has a precise meaning. The artwork was created by artist Janet Echelman is inspired by climate data guided scientists at MIT. Each strand of fiber represents the temperature of the planet over a period of time and the color signifies how hot it is, with blue and greens reflecting cooler climates than the reds and oranges. The sculpture goes all the way back to the ice age, but the most thought provoking part is our current moment, represented by a single yellow piece of twine. It then spreads out into a broad web that represents future centuries: Based on how we act right now, the future could look shockingly red or a calmer blue.
As you look forward, into the museum, you see a wide range of possible pathways, from a deep red representing the worse outcomes of global warming to a more hopeful future represented by blues and greens. The piece is called Remembering the Future, drawn from the Sren Kierkegaard quote, “The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you’ll never have.”
[Photo: Anna Olivella, Courtesy of MIT Museum]
Echelman insists that the point of this sculpture isn’t data visualization. Instead, it is meant to take in the immensity of climate change without a feeling shock and paralysis. “It’s meant to be contemplative,” she says. “My hope is that it unleashes a sense of agency.”
Echelman was first inspired to use fibers to create art in her twenties, when she saw fishermen casting out large nets on beaches in Asia. She began hand-crafting large sculptures from plastic fibers that have been displayed all over the world. In 2022, one of her works called “Earthtime 1.78” was installed in Milan. It was meant to symbolized interconnectedness, since the fibers are intertwined; the whole structure moved with the mind, reflecting how we are all subject to forces of nature.
[Photo: Anna Olivella, Courtesy of MIT Museum]
Echelman created this piece during her residency at the MIT Center for Art, Science and Technology. For three years, she collaborated with Caitlin Mueller, a professor in MIT’s departments of architecture and civil and environmental engineering, to create software that would translate the data into a digital structure that Echelman could use as the basis of the sculpture.
Raffaele Ferrari, a professor who models climate data, helped guide the research and visual different climate futures. In the lobby, museum visitors have the opportunity to play with a screen that features a digital twin of the sculpture. Using your fingers, you can digitally adjust the ropes of the sculpture, and explore the technical tools used to create it.
Caitlin Mueller, left, and Janet Echelman, right. [Photo: Anna Olivella, Courtesy of MIT Museum]
While the sculpture’s design required involved a lot of technology and software, the piece itself was made by hand. Echelman says that it took her team about a year to weave the pieces together. “Each piece of twine was woven slowly, bit by bit,” she says. “This is very much a handcrafted object.”
Echelman says she was inspired to create the piece because she struggled to take in all the news about the state of the planet. “It’s like we’re getting texts every day in all caps telling us that the planet is on the verge of collapse,” she says. “It’s too much to think about, so I found myself avoiding the topic entirely.”
She wanted to create a sculpture that would be visually intriguingsomething that makes you look at it, rather than away. And importantly, she wanted to visualize the many futures that lie ahead of us, depending on how we choose to behave in our own lifetimes.
Indeed, our moment is represented by a single yellow cord. The tension of each cord is thoughtfully calibrated, but the yellow cord carries the highest tension. “It’s meant meant to reflect how much tension there is in this moment, and how much the choices we make now matter,” she says.
[Photo: Anna Olivella, Courtesy of MIT Museum]
Michael John Gorman, the director of the MIT Museum, says this piece was installed at the lobby of the museum, which is open to the public, so that the entire community could enjoy it. He says that people often come into this area, which has seating, to eat lunch or have a coffee from the museum’s cafe. At night, the sculpture is lit with lights to accentuate the different colors in the sculpture.
“The artwork touches on one of the most important issues of our time,” he says. “We want as many people as possible to take it in.”
It’s the size of a coaster and looks like a toy, but when the needle hits its groove, it’s immediately clear that Tiny Vinyl is exactly what its name suggests: a tiny vinyl record. Measuring just four inches in diameter, it’s a miniaturized version of the familiar 12-inch records that have existed in one form or another for more than 130 years, and just as playable. Shrinking the record down to pocket size is an unexpected evolution for this old technology, but starting later this month this new take on an old concept will be hitting stores nationwide.
Tiny Vinyl, the Nashville-based company behind this concept, has more than half a million small records coming off the presses for an exclusive retail partnership with Target. More than 40 tiny records will be released in the next two months, with a mix of contemporary artists and well-known rereleases. New acts like Doja Cat, Chappell Roan, and Doechii stand alongside throwbacks like 1999-era Britney Spears, early hits from the Rolling Stones, and Christmas singles from Frank Sinatra. Each will retail for $14.99, and, like 45 RPM singles, will include one song on each side.
[Photo: courtesy Tiny Vinyl/Broken Bow Records Music Group]
The idea was born two years ago when toy industry veteran Neil Kohler was thinking of new ways to expand the universe of one of the toys he’d helped bring to market. Toymaker Funko has seen massive global success with its Pop! line of collectible pop culture figurines. Kohler noticed how many of the company’s best-selling figurines were musical acts, and thought it might be fun to create tiny playable records that could accompany the toys. He started socializing the idea with people in his circle in Nashville and got talking with Jesse Mann, who’s had a long career managing bands and putting on music festivals. He thought the tiny record idea could stand on its own.
[Photo: Ethan Lovell/courtesy Tiny Vinyl/Warner Music Group]
The two reached out to Nashville Record Pressing, a vinyl production facility that opened in Nashville in 2022. They found that it was technically possible to create tiny playable records, small enough to fit in a pocket but big enough to hold up to four minutes of audio. That’s more than enough for most artists today. “Thanks to Spotify and other trends in music generally, the average length of a song is getting shorter and shorter,” Kohler says.
And thanks to Spotify and other trends in music, the experience of listening to music has become increasingly digital in recent years. That’s also led to a hunger among some listeners for a more analog or physical connection to music, whether in the form of records or compact discs or even cassette tapes. From a revenue and fan building perspective, there’s also a growing interest among bands and record companies to physically get music into the hands of fans however they can. Tiny Vinyl is a new way to do just that.
[Photo: courtesy Tiny Vinyl/Concord]
After soft launching the format on merchandise tables for a few touring indie artists last year, Kohler and Mann saw enough demand from both artists and fans to start thinking bigger. Last fall they partnered with Urban Outfitters for a limited release by violinist Lindsey Stirling. It sold out within the first day. Kohler reached out to contacts at Target that he had from his toy industry days and the ball got rolling on what would become an even bigger retail launch.
The vinyl resurgence
The partnership comes at an interesting time for vinyl records. Despite the age of the technology and its seeming replacement by tapes, CDs, and streaming, records are surprisingly resilient. More than 55 million vinyl records were sold in the U.S. in 2024, up from about 13 million in 2016.
Oddly, many of those sales are to people who aren’t actually listening to the records. A report from 2023 found that 50% of vinyl record buyers do not have turntables on which to play them. “They never even open the shrink on the vinyl,” says Kohler.
[Photo: Ethan Lovell/courtesy Tiny Vinyl/Universal Music Group]
These collector-fans are not the market Tiny Vinyl is chasing, or at least not the only one. Kohler sees the small records his company is producing as a new music format, less skippable than a streaming service but easier to engage with than a full-length record. “We’re trying to create more of a digestible vinyl experience, and hopefully bring people into the vinyl medium with a couple of songs at a pretty accessible price point,” he says.
Mann, the music industry veteran, says the shrinking of the record has appeal on both sides of the merch table, giving bands another revenue-generating way to engage with fans, and giving fans an affordable takeaway alternative to a tour T-shirt that can cost upwards of $50.
That’s why Tiny Vinyl insisted on making their mini records as similar to existing records as possible. “Being able to play on a regular turntable at the normal turntable speed, which is 33 RPM, was really important to us. If we’d made it some wacky new speed, or even 45 seemed like it was edging more into the exotic space,” Mann says.
Being new while also being familiar led the company to mimic some of the standard elements of the record as we know it. “We number each edition on the spine of the record. We put them in authentic gate-fold mini album jackets, just like a 12-inch vinyl, and it has a mini inner sleeve,” Kohler says. “It’s scaled proportionately to be just like a 12-inch vinyl with a mini label in the center on each side.”
[Photo: Nathan Zucker/courtesy Tiny Vinyl]
A new form factor
One downside of Tiny Vinyl’s tiny size is that some record players, especially old ones, can’t actually play them. The tone arms on these older machines are designed to automatically stop right about where a Tiny Vinyl starts, which is where a conventional 12″ record would have its printed label. Some record players have the option to disable this auto-stop feature, but older and lower-end players are just not compatible.
But for those with record players that can handle them, playing a Tiny Vinyl is remarkably similar to the experience of a standard 12-inch record, from pulling it out of the sleeve to plopping it on the turntable to watching it spin as the needle drops down. Just like vinyl, but tiny.
[Photo: Nathan Zucker/courtesy Tiny Vinyl]
Easy to conceptualize, but as it turns out, not so easy to create. Kohler says he and Mann worked with Nashville Record Pressing for more than year to figure out how to make such a small record play correctly. The closer to the center of a record, the smaller its grooves become to maintain a uniform playback speed. Cramming that into the space of a record just four inches across took some extra effort.
“The physics of playing vinyl at that scale were not trivial to overcome,” says Kohler. “It’s not rocket science, but it’s nontrivial, and we’ve got a patent submission to try and protect that.”
Its main problem solved, the company has its eyes on expansion, accepting orders from big name acts as well as indie groups looking to augment their touring merch. They’re even looking beyond just making tiny records. One obvious next step: tiny record players. Kohler and Mann wouldn’t say when something like that might be available, but tiny record collectors may soon have another item to add to their hi-fi setup. “We are in development on those things now,” Kohler says.
Last week, after the Trump administration pressured ABC to drop Jimmy Kimmel from its late-night television lineup, a Daily Show guest summed up how Americans are reacting as the country slides into authoritarianism: Were like deer in the headlights.
Weve watched masked men surround a PhD student on a Boston street and force her into an unmarked van and prison in response to an article shed written in a student newspaper. Weve watched the government use the military to police citizens in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. Weve watched President Trump grab power from Congress as he enacted tariffs and dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development. He’s threatened his opponents with retribution, accepted a $400 million gift jet from Qatar, and said that the Federal Communications Commission should pull the license of any TV station that criticized him. The list goes on.
The response to all of this has been slow from politicians and citizens alike. Its similar to the attitudes toward climate change: Were witnessing the worsening of the climate, but were still not stopping it.
This is a well understood and disturbing phenomenonthat people do adjust to the circumstances around them, including to greater political repression, and the loss of important freedoms, and the erosion of support for free and fair elections, says Michael Ross, a political science professor at UCLA. People have a hard time living in a state of constant emergency. And for better or worse, humans have learned over the millennia to adjust to their social circumstances. That’s clearly happening now, and very quickly.
In both cases, experts have been warning about the risks for years, but their concerns have either been downplayed or ignored. Climate scientists warned decades ago that a warming planet would lead to the record-breaking disasters were seeing now. Likewise, in the U.S., political scientists have spent years describing the growth of trends that led to authoritarianism in other countries.
It could have been possible to intervene earlierbetter regulating social media, for example, could have helped reduce the extreme polarization that set up the conditions for authoritarianismbut we didn’t. And the majority of people aren’t acting now. As with climate, changes that seem shocking at first get normalized. People focus on their everyday lives; the impacts can seem distant at first. For both climate and the erosion of democracy, some damage has already been done. The question is whether we’ll change direction quickly enough to prevent the worst-case scenario.
The slide toward authoritarianism
Now, like climate change, authoritarianism in the U.S. is accelerating even faster than experts anticipated. I have been kind of shocked by the first nine months of the Trump administration, says John Carey, a government professor at Dartmouth University. But frankly, I was surprised in the first Trump administration too. And now that feels like a simpler, more innocent time.
Carey and colleagues run Bright Line Watch, a project that has been polling political scientists and the public about democracy since 2017. He expected a massive public response then that never came. We were watching what we saw as key democratic transgressions in the 2016 campaigncalling for jailing your opponents, saying publicly that you might or might not accept the outcomes of the election,” he says. “We were watching them happen and thinking, When is the public going to turn?
The bright line the group was looking for was the line that, if crossed, would create a huge backlash. Were frankly still waiting, he says.
As our freedoms erode, new realities can become normalized. If the National Guard is deployed on the streets of D.C., its less shocking when it happens in Memphis. The same thing happens with climate impacts. Until recently, massive wildfires in Canada were unusual, for example. Now theyre beginning to feel expected, along with smoke drifting from the fires to parts of the U.S.
Human psychology makes it hard to tackle this type of social challenge
Like climate, some form of denial is common even when you’re well aware of what’s happening. It’s common to think that you have enough to deal with in your life already, says Per Espen Stoknes, a Norwegian psychologist who has studied why people are slow to act on climate change. In the case of growing authoritarianism, “Folks generally go on with a ‘double life’; on the one hand knowing that it is the unmaking of a century of democratic development, on the other hand just living-life-as-always without making a fuss about it,” he said via email.
The threat can also seem distant, in the same way that climate impacts often feel distant even if you’re living in a flood zone or wildfire zone. Oil companies fought climate action with misinformation; the Trump administration, similarly, insists that it’s doing nothing wrong. As polarization grows, each side believes the problems are the other’s fault and seeks out echo chambers. (In the case of climate change, although the majority of Americans now say the issue is important to them, a small segment of people still don’t think it’s happening or believe it isn’t caused by humans.) “Through confirmation bias, people will listen more to pundits and experts who confirm their view,” Stoknes says.
The scale of the problem, for both issues, can feel so overwhelming that people turn away. Messages of doom don’t help. “Folks adapt, habituate, and feel fatigue to messages and messengers that repeatedly (over)use threats about slow-moving abstract issues,” says Stoknes.
What messages work?
A positive message can be more effective than warnings about the breakdown of democracy. New York state Assemblymember and mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is one example, says UCLAs Ross. “You may or may not agree with him, but he has a positive agenda and people, I think, are really responding to that,” he says. “It’s not just, ‘I’m going to stop this thing from happening’ and ‘I won’t allow this.’ It’s ‘I want to do these new things. I think that’s what missing right now.”
For climate, that could include messages about better solutions, like cheap solar power, rather than focusing on the destruction of the planet. In both cases, Stoknes says it’s useful to keep talking to the people around you to help mobilize them, sharing small wins, and to give people simple things to do, whether that’s supporting local renewable energy or joining a No Kings protest.
It still isn’t too late to act, Ross says. It’s obvious that Americans are worried: By some estimates, the No Kings protest in June might have been the largest single-day protest in U.S. history. But more needs to happen. “The most effective social movements are ones that have an ongoing organization and a clear set of demands,” he says. “They may be regularly mobilizing people for protests, but they have a lot more going on. I think there’s a tendency, maybe because of social media, to think, Hey, if we all just get together and go out for a rally, you know, then we’ve done our work. And in fact, that’s just kind of the tip of the iceberg.”
There’s an extra challenge compared to trying to push for climate action: more personal risk. “If you don’t install solar and insulate your house, it’s bad for the climate and you’re not doing your part, but it’s not necessarily bad for you,” says Archon Fung, director of Harvard University’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. “Whereas if you’re Jimmy Kimmel or the president of Harvard University or a law firm that stands up for democratic reform, then you [risk] being targeted by the government. And that’s an intrinsic part of how authoritarianism works that is different from climate.”
Both problems are intertwined: If democracy doesn’t function, climate action also won’t happen at the speed that it needs to. It doesn’t matter whether the majority of Americans support renewable energy if Trump unilaterally attacks it. Humans clearly aren’t good at tackling problems like this that gradually unfold. And the longer we wait to do something, the fewer tools we’ll have left to fightif anyone can figure out how to do it.
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During the pandemic housing boom, from summer 2020 to spring 2022, the number of active homes for sale in most housing markets plummeted as homebuyer demand quickly absorbed almost everything that came up for sale and home sellers had ultimate power. Fast-forward to the current housing market, and the places where active inventory has rebounded to 2019 levels (due to strained affordability suppressing buyer demand) are now the very places where homebuyers have gained the most power.
At the end of June, national active housing inventory for sale was still -11% below June 2019 levels. However, more and more regional markets are surpassing that threshold.
This list is growing:
January 2025: 41 of the 200 largest metro-area housing markets were back above pre-pandemic 2019 inventory levels.
February 2025: 44 of the 200 largest metro-area housing markets were back above pre-pandemic 2019 inventory levels.
March 2025: 58 of the 200 largest metro-area housing markets were back above pre-pandemic 2019 inventory levels.
April 2025: 69 of the 200 largest metro-area housing markets were back above pre-pandemic 2019 inventory levels.
May 2025: 75 of these 200 major markets were back above pre-pandemic 2019 inventory levels.
June 2025: 78 of these 200 major markets were back above pre-pandemic 2019 inventory levels.
July 2025: 80 of these 200 major markets were back above pre-pandemic 2019 inventory levels.
Now, at the latest reading for the end of August 2025, 80 of the 200 markets are above pre-pandemic 2019 inventory levels.
Click to expand.
While this list of housing markets that are back above pre-pandemic 2019 inventory levels was growing through much of the year, it has stalled a little recently. The reason? Inventory growth has slowed in recent monthsmore than typical seasonality would suggestas some home sellers in soft and weak markets in the Sun Belt have thrown in the towel and delisted. (More on that in another piece.)
This next table helps you see what the inventory picture in these same 80 markets looks like now and what it looked like last year.
Click to expand.
Among these 80 markets, youll find lots in Sun Belt markets like Florida, Texas, Arizona, and Colorado.
Many of the softest housing markets, where homebuyers have gained leverage, are located in Gulf Coast and Mountain West regions. Some of these areas were among the nations top pandemic boomtowns, having experienced significant home price growth during the pandemic housing boom, which stretched housing fundamentals far beyond local income levels.
When pandemic-fueled domestic migration slowed and mortgage rates spiked, markets like Cape Coral, Florida, and San Antonio, Texas, faced challenges as they had to rely on local incomes to sustain frothy home prices. The housing market’s softening in these areas was further accelerated by the abundance of new home supply in the pipeline across the Sun Belt. Builders in these regions are often willing to reduce net effective prices or make other affordability adjustments to maintain sales. These adjustments in the new construction market also create a cooling effect on the resale market, as some buyers who might have opted for an existing home shift their focus to new homes where deals are still available.
In contrast, many Northeast and Midwest markets were less reliant on pandemic migration and have less new home construction in progress. With lower exposure to that demand shock, active inventory in these Midwest and Northeast regions has remained relatively tight, keeping the advantage in the hands of home sellers.
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Generally speaking, housing markets where inventory (i.e., active listings) has returned to pre-pandemic levels have experienced softer/weaker home price growth (or outright declines) over the past 36 months. Conversely, housing markets where inventory remains far below pre-pandemic levels have, generally speaking, experienced more resilient home price growth over the past 36 months.
ResiClub PRO members can find our latest inventory analysis for 800-plus metros and 3,000-plus counties here, and our latest analysis showing why the 2019 inventory comparison remains insightful here.
Damian Kulash, guitarist and lead singer of the rock band OK Go, is also kind of a creative director.
His band has become world famous for its inventive, elaborate, and absurdly complicated music videos, including its breakout dance video made on synchronized treadmills, a stop-motion video shot over the course of 21 hours, and another that was made up of 64 films playing simultaneously on 64 iPhones. By the band’s own tally, its videos have been viewed 11 billion times. It’s achieved this success by approaching the creative process in a unique way.
Kulash was recently on the main stage at Fast Company’s Innovation Festival in New York to talk about the inspiration behind these projects. Speaking to a capacity crowd, Kulash broke down the band’s process into simple terms: “The abstract version is that we look for the things in the world that make us go Ooh.
[Photo: Jonah Rosenberg for Fast Company]
He was being interviewed by Karl Lieberman, global chief creative officer of the advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy. The two spent a lot of time talking about their creative processes, and revealed some surprising ways a rock band can work like an ad agency. Lieberman, whose firm is known for its campaigns for brands like Coca-Cola and Nike, noticed that Kulash uses an analogy for describing OK Go’s creative process that’s almost identical to his own.
“Once you get an idea, you have a sandbox, you called it, and that resonates with me because I often call ideas buckets, Lieberman said. “It’s not an idea that’s fully formed, it’s more of a notion or a direction of an idea in the form of a space that can be filled with even more thinking and . . . hopefully from even more people.”
Kulash says his sandbox concept is one based on play. “It’s all about discovering the thing,” he said. “We don’t start knowing it. It also allows everybody who’s involved to actually make the project better.”
[Photo: Jonah Rosenberg for Fast Company]
An example he shared was the filming of one of OK Go’s most famous music videos, “Upside Down & Inside Out,” which takes place in zero gravity. Aside from knowing the video would have no gravity, the band boarded the gravity-free airplane without any preconceived idea for what they’d actually do.
“It was seven flights of pure play, seven flights of a rehearsal, and then six flights of actually shooting it,” Kulash said. “There is no idea until you’ve played. You have to see the thing and be like, things feel cool in zero gravity or things feel cool in slow motion, or things feel cool in stop motion.”
For Kulash, play is an essential part of OK Go’s creative process, even when the band is working in partnership with a company like Apple or General Motors to help finance the project. But that doesn’t mean there’s no pressure to turn all that sandbox time into something great.
Earlier this year, OK Go gave Fast Company global design editor Mark Wilson an exclusive inside look at the filming of its latest music video, “Love,” which was so technically challenging to film the band was only able to get the shot it needed on the very last try before the daylightand the budgetran out.
“We’ve got a ton of skin in the game ourselves,” Kulash said. “We often pay for [the videos] ourselves, even when we have a sponsor. We can’t afford to fail at them, ever.”
Plus, Kulash told the audience, the band’s got a reputation to uphold. “Can you imagine if the next OK Go video is the one that was really boring?”
Tony Stubblebine moved Medium from losing $2.6 million monthly to achieving its first profitable month in August 2024, after 13 years of losses. The CEO, who previously founded habit-tracking company Coach.me and helped develop early Twitter, has refocused Medium on serving writers more interested in sharing their expertise than profiting from their words. For Stubblebine its about the expert economy, not just the creator economy.
Known for viral productivity techniques like Interstitial Journaling and his 75-minute guide to iPhone optimization, Stubblebine has grown Medium to over one million paid subscribers while maintaining its ad-free, quality-focused approach.
Now the company is launching a new app for notes and writing, called (fittingly enough) TK, in a bet that strong design will distinguish it in a crowded marketplace.
Stubblebine spoke with Fast Company about why he still prefers paper notebooks for meetings, and how Medium differentiates itself from creator platforms like Substack. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Youre launching a new writing app. Why does the world need another writing tool?
I had to make this case to get people inside the company excited. There are four things I want that I don’t see right now.
First, the Medium design ethos matters to me. I want my words to look and feel beautiful. I was already drafting things in Medium’s editor that I never intended to publish just because I like the typography better.
Second, this world of second brain apps exists, but the idea of a second brain is a mainstream concept without mainstream implementation because you have to do so much manual organization. Most people are not that organized. A messy system almost always beats a regimented system. This is a great use case for AIour view is it’s meant to elevate people, not replace them. AI can completely alleviate all the manual organization that would typically go into Roam or Obsidian.
Third, theres a way to use AI as a writing assistantnot to write for you, but to do your bidding. A lot of what I publish needs citations. The other day I was writing about an old Medium program launched by founder Ev Williams. I highlighted the paragraph and said to the AI assistant: Ev wrote about this on the Medium blog in 2017. Find the link and add it. It figured out the core concept, found the link, and added it. Im easily distractedif I had to find that link myself, I would have been lost for an hour.
Fourth, I’ve never seen any note-taking apps attached to a distribution network. My writing is very sensitive to the idea that you could share it and get validation and help someone else. Sometimes youre working on something and realize this could be helpful to other people. We’re excited to attach Medium’s massive network of readers to this genre of software.
Youve taken a strong stance against AI training on creators work. Why?
Were the only social media platform that if we can get money out of the AI companies, is planning to give 100% of it back to the creators themselves. We refused training deals with AI companies worth low single-digit millions because we heard from our writers that they felt it was unfair for companies to make money off training on the Medium network without giving anything in return.
Theres still an ongoing negotiation across the industry about whether these companies will pay creators. We just supported an initiative called the Really Simple Licensing standard. We hope that gives consent and control back to the creators.
How do you compete with Substack when writers can earn more there?
The people who actually make the most money on writing are not charging for the writing itself. We sort of forgot in the rush to the creator economy how lucrative the expert economy is. Some of the best-paid writers on Medium are technical leaders who post twice a year, but those postings are their calling card when they go get jobs that sometimes pay upwards of a million dollars a year.
The creator economy is kind of a content treadmill and doesnt always pay that well. Meanwhile, building yourself up as an expert authentically often opens up really interesting work opportunities. If you’re committed to the creator economy, you should follow a strategy of publish once, syndicate everywhere. Medium folds into that as a place to syndicate, to get additional traffic and subscribers back to your main mailing list.
But if youre not in the creator economy, you’ll build an email following on Medium faster than anywhere else because you have a built-in network of people you don’t already reach. We’re much more built for that group, which is the majority of the internet.
How did you engineer Medium’s turnaround?
The key thing is, even if you turn around the business, you have to end up with a business that you’re proud to be running. A lot of the turnaround was in the product itself, making Medium a place where smart amateurs write regularly.
Until that point, we’d either been a place where professional journalists were writing or where the new wave of content creators would write for small dollar amounts. We looked at that as paying to create more content mill stories that otherwise wouldn’t exist, and that felt bad to us.
Beyond that, its run-of-the-mill business. Every dollar you spend is meant to bring back at least a dollar. If you dont have a theory on spending money, you shouldnt spend it. The startup industry was very lax about how it spent money for a while, and Medium was definitely in that boat. Just getting tighterpeople call it cost cutting, but I think of it as role clarity. Every person needed a role connected to how we work as a business.
What advice do you have for technical founders transitioning to CEO?
The bar for companies has gone up. It used to be build it and they will come, or you only had to be good at one or two things. Now people are so savvy about how to build a company that you really have to plot the whole business model through. Its not just can you build a better mousetrapcan you build a distribution channel? Can you build a business model where you can make money?
The last company I started in 2011 was just like, I hope if I build something cool, people will use it. I came to regret that pretty quickly because I didn’t know how I was going to market it, let alone make revenue.
When people come to me and say they built a better habit tracker, I tell them: I believe you, but how are you going to get people to use it? How are you going to make money? Why is this a business? If you don’t design that into the plan, good products just get abandoned because they don’t work as businesses.
What does your current daily tool kit look like?
I have a pretty simple work life. I’m mostly meeting with people, so I’m spending a lot of time either in Zoom or Google Meet.
I typically have a paper notebook in front of me because my view on note taking during a meeting is that it’s a form of active listening. I have a strong opinion about the ideal paper notebook. We found notebooks that are landscape format, which means they’re wider rather than taller. The thing I lie about wider is that I caught myself thinking deeper about my own notes. It’s like taking the idea of writing in the margin and blowing that up.
I end up with almost always three columns: raw notes as Im trying to follow along, a second column for things I need to come back to or how I want to participate in the meeting later, and this empty third column for total epiphanies. The way that form factor interacts with the way your brain works, I found fascinating.
What’s your current relationship with your iPhone after writing that viral optimization guide?
I still basically believe the premise of that postthat it takes 75 minutes to reconfigure your iPhone for productivity. The meta point was that these software tools are not preconfigured to make your life better.
The worst offender is notifications, which should be called interruptions. If an app asked you, Is it okay for me to interrupt you mid-meeting? you’d think harder about whether thats okay.
I keep basically all my notifications off unless its text messages from certain people or phone calls from my favorites, which is three people. I always try to keep in mind that the iPhone is meant to be a tool for me. My front screen is all Google utilitiesmaps, calendar. The action button is set to photos.
Youve mentioned considering going even further offline. Whats your experience been with that?
I did a four-month camper van trip around the U.S. and drove 9,000 miles. The thing that blows people’s minds is that I didnt listen to anything during the drive, unless I was tired. I tried to have quiet time for thinking and seeing where I was going. That was one of the happiest periods in my entire life because my brain was not buzzing all the time with brain candy that exists on your phone. If I wasnt working, I would probably opt to be nearly fully offline beyond extremely helpful things like Google Maps. Opting out seems like a good way to live for most people.
