The Captain’s Log

Cindy Wu
4 min readJun 7, 2017

The Captain’s log was a form of log entry record-keeping that was used since the first captains sailed Earth’s seas in ancient history. The log was used to inform the captain’s superiors of what was happening on a mission and to record historical facts for future generations. Acting captains could choose to make updates to the Captain’s log directly, as was Spock’s habit, instead of using an acting captain’s log.

I’ve been quietly keeping a Captain’s Log for ten consecutive weeks.

In the case that space pirates attack us, here will be a record of what we are building and why we are building it.

In The Captain’s Log you will find a detailed description of what our product team is building and the intention behind our product decisions. The audience of The Captain’s Log is future Captains. The intention is to write The Captain’s Log to help the future me recall what has happened and to write as if no one is watching.

Here is the 10th log. 🖖🏼 This was reposted from the Experiment Editor.

Our mission translated in Chinese.

I’m the kind of person that will take an idea and run with it. I might not know what direction I am running in, but I will pick a direction and run. The advice I often give to others is “the best way to start is to start.”

Today is Tuesday June 6th, 2017 4:22PM; Stardate 95032.49. I am on the Amtrak Acela Express Train from New York Penn Station to Boston Bay Back Station. I am in Boston for 24 hours for business searching for the truth.

Earlier this year Denny and I sat down to think about our values. One thing we both value is the truth. The truth is different from honesty. Experiment stands for the truth and a very pure truth. I’ve known Denny for a long time, but it wasn’t until recently that I understood what Denny stands for. Denny is the purest person I know. It is unlikely that I would do a deal with the devil, but with Denny it is certain he would never. In the seven years of knowing Denny I’ve never seen him intentionally hurt anyone.

This is important because, I’m the kind of person that will take an idea and run with it. I pick a direction and run because I know that if I run the wrong direction I can always run back. The reality is you can’t always run back and that is why I need Denny. There are mistakes that you cannot take back and Denny is the one that reorients the community and the team towards the north star, Jelly.

Every company needs a hustler and a builder. In this company I am the hustler and Denny is the builder. Denny can also hustle and I can also build, which gives me confidence that if one of us died the company would not only survive, but thrive.

This last week I’ve been running at the speed of light very quietly.

Meanwhile in the lab on the product side, Denny and Jeff released The Editor to the public. You can use it at /write. If you do use it and have feedback we would love to hear from you. Email us directly at support@experiment.com. The discovery of bugs will be generously rewarded with limited edition stickers. You may remember this from a former Captain’s Log, “ in short, we are building the editor .” I’m here to say that we did it, or rather Denny and Jeff did it.

I now have a lab notebook on Experiment which includes all of the labnotes I’ve written since 2012. I hope there isn’t anything in there that I’m not supposed to share. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Jeff is still working on a list of features to complete the project and Denny is moving off of the editor onto something new. I can reveal more next week.

On puttering, I’ve been spending all of my hours not thinking about the day to day devoted to studying blockchain and recently Chinese. Few people know that my first language was Chinese. When I entered Kindergarten I came home upset every day because every other student’s English was better than my English. As a founder it is important to always be acquiring new skills. Both of these skills I believe will be critical to the success of the business, but that is a story for another time.

Until next time,

Cindy

What is the Captain’s Log?

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