Dear Sam, Vol. 1–Let’s write

Dear Sam —

We’ve been trying to work out a good format to blog in, and in typical Stacker “meta” style, I think this post is it.

We want to show the world how we think — but we already write down all our best thoughts and ideas, in the form of the “memo” style Notion docs we write. So I propose we start doing these in blog format instead, as letters to each other. I write a post with my freshest thoughts, and you write one back to respond, and give your thoughts. Here’s why I think this is a good idea/format:

We’re already writing our best thoughts anyway

I think one of the best things we did was to shift a lot of our thinking to async-first. I’ve definitely started thinking much more carefully about things when I write up a memo for everyone to read vs. putting a line in an agenda and then rambling for 20 minutes on a Zoom call.

So we’re already doing all of our best thinking in text anyway. Let’s double the value we get from that. And it’s always going to be so much better to put out the fresh stuff than to rehash it.

(Also, I suspect that the idea of it being public might give the impetus to keep the quality high!)

This fits what we believe

We’re already committed to radical transparency. What could be more radical than making our half-finished strategic thoughts public for people to see?

I couldn’t find it on Slack, but I remember that once you said that this level of transparency about your plans doesn’t make you seem indecisive: instead it makes your eventual outcome seem inevitable.

It’ll help me write

I actually find it really hard to write blog-style content. I find striking the right tone difficult, and end up wandering into that vague “don’t know who I’m talking to” voice. Especially when I know nobody’s reading (which they aren’t). Part of this idea came from the early days of the vlogbrothers – the whole point of their channel was them making videos speaking to each other, and that format really made it a lot easier.

I think people will like it

We want to blog mainly so that people will read it. There’s surely nothing cynical in that statement.

I think this is a format that people will enjoy. Hopefully there’s also nothing cynical in that statement.

We’re two remote founders, and this is like a small insight into our strategic thinking. People like to see what’s going on behind the scenes in companies, and people like seeing real humans sharing that, rather than corporate fronts (with some exceptions).

Heck, I’d read a blog like this.

So, this is definitely not an idea without its potential downsides:

• What if a competitor steals our best ideas? If they’re browsing our blog looking for ideas, then they’re not really in a great place to begin with.
• What if we disagree? We can embrace that. You can keep telling me I’m wrong, but now do so publicly.
• What if our old ideas look stupid in year/months/days? That’s basically guaranteed.

Everything we do has potential downsides, and to be honest, I think the bigger risk is that we spend a lot of time writing a stale, faceless blog and nobody reads it.

Plus, we can always delete anything later.

Yours —

Skelly

p.s. Sorry about the unilateral nature of this! If you disagree, then I can just leave this post awkwardly hanging.