What kind of jerk would YOU be?

In Zero to One, Paul Thiel claims that people with outlier personalities -- jerks, to you and me -- are the ones to become entrepreneurs. Really?

Consider the abrasive Steve Jobs, the ego-inflated Larry Ellison, and Google's "I don't want to grow up" pair, Brin and Page.

Maybe. But if at age 25 YOU got lucky and experienced tremendous success based on something you'd done, don't you think you'd end up indulging your childish side? Pop stars do it. Actors who find early success do it. Even George Armstrong Custer, a general at 23, did it (and see where it got him!).

So, it might be that a personality that (over)exercises the id leads to entrepreneurial success. Then again, it could be the other way around.

Simplicity

“It’s easy to throw out bad ideas, but to throw out really good ones is hard.”

— Anthony Casalena

Simplicity is increasingly difficult to come by, especially in the technology world. Microsoft, the "continent" of technology I've navigated for the past decade and a half, continues to complexify. It's in their DNA. 

It comes as a breath of fresh air to discover the conscious simplicity of system design engendered in Squarespace. In a CreativeMornings talk, Squarespace founder Anthony Casalena articulates his philosophy of minimalism.  And in a techie-oriented interview, he describes the thought process behind his technical design of Squarespace.

Casalena follows a process of continual refinement in which he relentlessly removes all but the most important ideas. Applied to technology, his approach hearkens back to the simple, elegant nature of the Unix operating system, which consciously favored the simple over the complex. ("Unix" was a counterpoint to "Multics", an operating system that tried to do everything.) Kudos to Casalena.