Cathedrals of Today, and If Money Was No Object
"People like you more when you are working towards something, not when you have it." - Drake
If Money Was No Object: Here's a comic strip I often revisit after every couple of years to remind me what really should be driving my decisions in life related to work. Hope it'll resonate in some form with you all too.
https://www.zenpencils.com/comic/98-alan-watts-what-if-money-was-no-object/
How Perplexity Builds Product: Founded less than two years ago, Perplexity has become a many-times-a-day-use product for me, replacing many of my Google searches—and I’m not alone. With fewer than 50 employees, the company has a user base that’s grown to tens of millions. They’re also generating over $20 million ARR and taking on both Google and OpenAI in the battle for the future of search. Their recent fundraise of $63m values the company at more than $1 billion, and their investors include Nvidia, Jeff Bezos, Andrej Karpathy, Garry Tan, Dylan Field, Elad Gil, Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, and Naval Ravikant. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said he uses the product “almost every day.”
The Cathedrals of the 21st Century: In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell explains that in most mythological stories, the most important moment of a story is when the main characters get their key insight, and that usually happens in a cave. Why? His interpretation is that caves are surreal. Your senses betray you. Light disappears; the echo distorts voices; water trickles down the walls; cold and humidity invade your skin; dangers can lurk anywhere. This feeling of otherworldliness heightens attention and makes events memorable.
