Elliot C Smith (Page 5)

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Second Principles

Knowing how to do something from first principles is a valuable skill. However, always starting from first principles is a good way to relearn many mistakes. I am the kind of person who likes to really understand things. I love a good spreadsheet or back of the envelope model. I

Heroes of Hammerwatch II

Heroes of Hammerwatch 2 feels like it sums up what a great rougelite should be. It combines a main gameplay loop that's tough with a slow stream of upgrades that keep pace with your skill. I've yet to feel particularly overpowered, but I have noticed the

Barnacle processes

Barnacle processes, invented when growth is lacking, can slow and kill otherwise great startups. Tech startups have a general culture of going fast. When growth is slow in a culture like that, people often still want to move around quickly. When that happens, people need to run in circles to

Is Sonic (or at least Shadow) back?

Sonic Generations was okay, but Sonic X Shadow Generations is excellent. It's the most fun I've had playing a Sonic game since Adventure Battle 2 on the Gamecube. The game picks up all the good parts of the Sonic games released in the ten-plus years since

Balatro is a special kind of good

Balatro is a great game. Reviews, game of the year awards, and general sentiment seem to agree. The question I've been pondering is why. There's something special about the way the mechanics and small details of the game come together that make it so satisfying. This

Manage risks, not methods.

The hardest part of transitioning into management is becoming comfortable with people doing things differently from you. Your job shifts from what you can output to how much output you can generate in others. Many first-time managers make the mistake of thinking their job is to ensure their reports do

Maxwell Plus - Lessons Learned

(This post also appeared over on the MSV blog.) It is easy to announce a new investment in a new company when all we need to talk about is the potential of an opportunity. But we don’t speak enough about the companies that don’t make it. Maxwell Plus

Thoughts on service and tech startups

Some definitions. The rest of this post will only make sense if we’re on the same page about what a technology and service business is. The scenarios I am describing combine human-delivered specialty service and a technology platform enabling that service delivery. In the long term, these companies tend

Let your users start over

I wish that more products had an option to reset to factory settings. Whether I haven’t used a product in a long time or have found a new way to set things up, there are plenty of reasons to return to square one. In a world where more and

The Signal and the Noise Review

Nate Silver’s The Signal and the Noise successfully walks the fine line of communicating a complex set of ideas in enough detail to be both interesting and informative. The book introduces the reader to statistical modelling through examples in sports, politics, finance, and science. It makes no attempt to