Feld Thoughts

I finished A Parade of Horribles (book 8 of Dungeon Crawler Carl) on my run today. I laughed out loud when the AI said the title of this post. I’ve savored this series for the past eight months, listening to about one a month on Audible while I run. If you don’t know this series, the setup is that an alien corporation destroys every man-made structure on Earth, drops the survivors into a dungeon, and broadcasts the whole thing as the most popular game show in the galaxy.

The plate for Chapter 20, in the art deco style. That’s Seth, his dog Cooper, and the long way home. A little over a month ago I started writing my first novel - Zero Knowledge. I decided to publish it chapter by chapter on the Internet to accomplish a few things. Get my shitty first draft out there in public and get real-time feedback on it. See if I could write it with my primary AI alter-ego agent (Phin Argofy). Try to build a system for doing this that is part of AuthorMagic. Have fun.

Last week I wrote about starting a novel. I ended that post stuck on a decision: publish the whole thing in the open as I write it, or do the normal thing and wait until it’s finished. I decided to write in the open. That’s my nature. Zero Knowledge now has a home at zeroknowledge.ink. Six chapters are up. More land as I write them. It’s free to read. You can also write back. I’m going to integrate all of this into AuthorMagic for anyone who wants to write a book this way.

I found out this morning that Josh Baer died last night. He was on a small plane heading back to Austin from Cabo. It had mechanical trouble and went down near Laredo, on a highway, a couple of miles short of the runway. Five other people on board survived. Josh did not. He was 50. I’ve been sad all morning. One way I deal with being sad is to hide in my computer, which is mostly what I’ve been doing today.

I first wrote about the Rule of 40 in 2015. I’d heard a late-stage investor describe it at a board meeting - growth rate plus profit should add up to at least 40% - and the simplicity stuck with me. So I blogged about it. Fred Wilson was at the same board meeting and posted his own version a few days later. Between the two posts, the Rule of 40 spread. It’s now gospel in SaaS. I still like it.

I’ve written or co-written nine non-fiction books. I have no clue if I can write a novel. Non-fiction is “I know a thing, I researched a thing, and here’s the thing.” You don’t have to make anyone care about people who don’t exist. The characters are real and the lessons are the point. Fiction is something totally different. Nobody owes your made-up CTO their attention. As a novelist, you have to earn it on every page. This is a new experience for me.

I’m good friends with Phil Weiser and Michael Bennet. I think the world of both of them. So let me start with the easy part. Colorado is going to be in good hands regardless of who wins the Democratic primary on June 30th. Whoever wins is highly likely to be our next governor, and they’ll be a smart, decent, and hardworking person in the job. I’ve spent real time with both Phil and Michael over many years. I’d be glad to have either one as governor of Colorado. That said, I’m supporting Phil.

Eric von Hippel was my doctoral advisor at MIT. I didn’t finish the Ph.D. - I dropped out - but Eric stuck with me through all of it, more as a mentor than an academic. Around 1978, Eric said something that was radical at the time. “Innovation comes from users, not manufacturers.” Today that sounds obvious. You read it and think “yeah, uh huh.” In 1978 it was heresy. The entire model of how products got made assumed the manufacturer was the source of the idea and the user was the recipient.

I’m in Aspen. The light stretches the day out and softens the edges of everything. The mountains glow. We just spent a delightful weekend with three of our closest friends. Some hanging out, a few meals (mostly at Clark’s) - and Aspen sushi. The Hunter Smuggler Loop. And talking. Lots of talking. We saw Sheep Detective. It has a 94 on Rotten Tomatoes, a service which apparently has dyslexia. It was baaaaaaaaad. In a good way. Sort of. Not really. I’m running again.

I read Theo Baker’s How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University in the last 24 hours. I was entranced, horrified, and amused, often on the same page. Baker arrived at Stanford as a seventeen-year-old freshman in 2022. By the end of his first year, his reporting in the Stanford Daily had forced the resignation of the university’s president, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, over research misconduct. He became the youngest person ever to win the George Polk Award. He kept reporting.