Sarah Guo and Ryan Hoover: Dennis Crowley, "Some final words on Foursquare"

Foursquare cofounder Dennis Crowley (@dens) wrote about the company's final years after it was acquired last month, an outcome he called "disappointing." He wrote it to honor the team and to get "some closure" (essay). @dens

Sarah Guo called it "super important honest advice to founders." Her takeaway: if you're working on a dead end, get out. Founders don't owe it to investors to keep going, because investors "regularly forgive and experience failure" and ideally care more about you doing your life's work than about a subpar outcome. @saranormous She added that being responsible with investors' money is a different thing from trying to make a company you've lost faith in "work." @saranormous Ryan Hoover also shared the piece ("Appreciate the retro"), pulling out Crowley's line "I was heartbroken by this ending." @rrhoover

Tim Ferriss: books from his new Q&A episode

Ferriss recommended several resources in his Q&A episode. Links are in the show notes. @tferriss

• Ramit Sethi's podcast, which Ferriss calls "great." He borrows its question about what it would look like to invest ten times more in the one or two areas that matter most. For him those are health and relationships. Tim Ferriss
• James Clear, Atomic Habits (and BJ Fogg's work), for people stuck overthinking. Both explain how small actions add up. His advice is to start with small daily actions so you rebuild trust in yourself. Tim Ferriss
• Michael Singer, The Surrender Experiment, which Kevin Rose recommended to him as a counterexample to over-planning your life. Ferriss "very much enjoyed it" and found it "very helpful." It did leave him with questions about total versus selective surrender. Tim Ferriss
• Terry Real, Fierce Intimacy (audiobook only). Ferriss calls Real "a beacon of clarity in a world of handwavy relationship advice." If you pick one resource between this and Crucial Conversations, he says to choose this one. Tim Ferriss
• Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler, On Grief and Grieving. It has helped friends after a death, and it is the book on grief recommended most by people he trusts. He notes he hasn't read it in ages. Tim Ferriss

He also repeated a recommendation from the last brief: Drucker's The Effective Executive, as an "old book" that is "very short" and dense with principles. Tim Ferriss

Tobi Lütke: DHH's "AI delirium" speech

At a fireside chat with Guillermo Rauch, Lütke called DHH's recent speech about "AI delirium" "a fantastic one." He gave his own reading, adding that DHH might not agree with it. In that reading, the term describes people who have moved past the p(doom) debate and are focused on bringing into the world the things that "previously were impossible." Lütke says he is at that stage or close to it. Vercel

Delian: Wajahat on Varda and "space drugs"

Delian Asparouhov said it was the "first time I've seen someone understand space drugs on Twitter. Worth a read" (thread). @zebulgar The thread explains that complex cancer drugs such as PROTACs form uneven crystals on Earth. As a result, they dissolve poorly and their bioavailability is hard to predict. Varda's bet is that growing the crystals in microgravity yields purer, more stable drugs. @Wajahat Note that Delian cofounded Varda. @Wajahat

Shorter mentions

• Keith Rabois called a post by @jhong "good." @rabois The post argues that people who haven't run companies underrate how much the team matters compared with "some imagined structural moat." @jhong
• Guillermo Rauch recommended @DilumSanjaya's Arduino explainer app to educators, homeschoolers and learners. His point is that a coding agent can now produce engaging explainers. @rauchg
• Patrick Collison called Ben Thompson "for many years ... the best analyst in tech" when announcing the Stratechery–Stripe partnership. @patrickc
• Sarah Guo pointed again to the No Priors episode with Greg Brockman, citing his view that security spending should "vastly outstrip" software spending. @saranormous The episode's topics include cybersecurity in the AI age. @saranormous