# Elliot C Smith | Posts about Dev, Startups, and Product
> Posts on product, software development, building companies and other things I find interesting.
Public Ghost content for AI and LLM tooling. Use `/llms-full.txt` for consolidated page and post context.
Append `.md` to any post or page URL to get the content in Markdown (for example, `/example-post.md`).

## Pages
- [About](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/about-me.md) - Hey. I'm Elliot. Right now, I am based in Melbourne, Australia but spent time as a child living in the US, Brazil, Singapore and China. Current, I am at Explorate. A tech company in the freight and logistics space. I was co-founder of Maxwell Plus, where we used AI to improve direct to patient diag…
- [Welcome](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/welcome.md) - Hey. Thanks for signing up. You'll now get new posts via email as soon as they're posted.

## Posts
- [Book Review(s): Ana and Din Mysteries](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/book-review-s-ana-and-din-mysteries.md) - The Ana and Din Mysteries, currently three books starting with The Tainted Cup is a fantasy detective series that managed to tell both interesting detective stories and provide an interesting world in which they happen. I am typically a bit of a sucker for good world building. I love back stories,…
- [Outpacing the Spiral](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/outpacing-the-spiral.md) - Sometimes, especially if you spend a lot of time online, it can feel like everyone is moving faster than you. Folks post dozens of times a day about their main project, their side project and how they’ve automated their life and have more time than ever. Reading those stories it’s easy to feel like…
- [Engineering Theatre](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/engineering-theatre.md) - There's a term I like: 'innovation theatre'. It's used to describe when a business does things that look like innovation but really aren't. Hackathons with no real meaning, giving someone a title like Head of Innovation. It's usually big corporate companies trying to look cutting edge and impress p…
- [Input based pricing vs Output based pricing](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/input-based-pricing-vs-output-based-pricing.md) - Usage based pricing is being talked about a lot lately. Partly due to changing unit economics for software but also because its trendy right now. One discussion I've had several times recently is about the difference in pricing user inputs and pricing user outputs. Both fall into the world of 'usag…
- [Want taste? Eat your slop.](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/want-taste-eat-your-slop.md) - There are a lot of people now making software for the first time. In many ways it's wonderful. We have to admit however, that the raw volume of bad software has gone up. We seem to call that bad software slop these days. Well, we seem to call a lot of things slop. You can probably find someone who…
- [Five styles of 'AI Product Development'](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/five-styles-of-ai-product-development.md) - Me and lots of people I work or interact with are using AI to build things. The kind of things they are building vary a lot so I figured I would write down a few of the archetypes and some brief observations on each. Type 1 : A long running conversation with an agent This one is the most common and…
- [You can just do things.](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/you-can-just-do-things.md) - "You can just do things" or some variation has been the unofficial slogan of startups for a long time. The expression was a reminder that you have permission. You are allowed to do things, nobody but you is stopping you trying something. The caveat that existed was that while you were allowed, ther…
- [Raising the floor, lowering the ceiling](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/raising-the-floor-lowering-the-ceiling.md) - I find that it is now very easy to write a lot of software. In the past, if I was writing this much software I would take that as a strong signal that I was become a better developer. Now, I write more software than ever but the link between output and improvement is broken. There is a feeling I ge…
- [Quick thoughts on AI in Game Dev](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/quick-thoughts-on-ai-in-game-dev.md) - Over the last couple of weeks I've been working on two different small games. Both are ideas that have been kicking around in my head for a while and now felt like a good time to work on them. One is an existing project written long before I had a Claude Code subscription. The other had no code wri…
- [All the other bottlenecks](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/all-the-other-bottlenecks.md) - Writing code is fast now. Most teams are no longer blocked by the speed of turning specs into PRs. What I've noticed is that a lot of people, usually non-code-writing people, assumed that the speed of shipping the code was the only thing determining the speed they could grow. It wasn't. That's noth…
- [Autoresearch, Claude and Constrained Optimization](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/autoresearch-claude-and-constrained-optimization.md) - Introduction You don't need to look far to find claims that folks have been using AI to do the work of dozens of people. I tend to be skeptical of any claim that discusses improvements without evidence. I decided to take that skepticism and put it to work. This had a minor overlap with the whole 'l…
- [Findings, May 2026](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/findings-may-2026.md) - Assorted Links * I finished book eight of Dungeon Crawler Carl. Loved it. I have recommended the series to a lot of different people now with a pretty good hit rate. If you haven't read it yet, you should. * This was a fun read https://tastecooking.com/i-want-to-live-like-costco-people/ * I've been…
- [Momentum is the Safest Moat](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/momentum-is-the-safest-moat.md) - If you are at all worried about AI disrupting your business, learn to build momentum. Your ability to execute more reps that your competition is, and always has been, the best moat. The trigger for this post was hearing that Claude Code was built in a weekend. It's probably mildly exaggerated but i…
- [Don't sell the build effort.](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/dont-sell-the-build-effort.md) - There's a trend I have noticed when folks try sell software, their perception of how hard it was to build the software influences their comfort in setting a price. More difficult to build, more expensive. Easy to build, we can't charge a premium for that! This is tangentially related to cost vs val…
- [Build 'Taste' for the critics but 'Care' for the fans.](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/build-taste-for-the-critics-but-care-for-the-fans.md) - There are a lot of folks out there tell you that what matters now is 'taste'. Some loosely defined term that boils down to "know if the output is slop or not slop". While it is probably a useful skill, I'd argue the thing that will ultimately determine if your AI assisted software is how much you c…
- [Findings, April 2026](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/findings-april-2026.md) - Products, games, books and links * I watched Company Retreat. The bits for the audience are a bit odd but they continue to find the all around nicest folks to star on this show. It felt like it happened a lot faster than the previous show but still overall a good watch. * https://www.aprilcools.clu…
- [I'm long on software engineering](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/im-long-on-software-engineering.md) - Somebody asked me recently if I thought we would need more or less software engineers in the future. If it wasn't obvious form the title my answer was 'more'. They were asking in the context of AI code generation but my feelings on the matter apply fairly broadly to any flavor of "If technology X d…
- [Spreadsheets and Disposable Software](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/spreadsheets-and-disposable-software.md) - A trend I am seeing, and experiencing, is an increase in disposable software. Software that does a little thing, for a little while and then gets deleted. No long term plan for maintenance or support. Like everything, there's positives and negatives to the change. Overall I see more software going…
- [Web Scale has changed.](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/web-scale-has-changed.md) - Writing an application that supports millions of users is much more difficult than writing one that supports hundreds. Historically, B2B SaaS apps aimed to grow big enough to need to worry about supporting that many users. Thousands of companies with thousands of employees. Having done that work ga…
- [Findings, March 2026](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/findings-march-2026.md) - Products, Games, Books and Links * Like many other folks I know, I spent a lot of time in March playing Slay the Spire 2. It's still in early access but already feels like it's improved on the original. A statement I don't make lightly. * I also spent some time playing a bit of the new Pokemon Poko…
- [Some thoughts after shipping a project 95% written by Claude](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/some-thoughts-after-shipping-a-project-95-written-by-claude.md) - I ran this as an experiment. It was a side project I was probably never going to get around to building. I wanted to test the most extreme version of "Let Claude Do the Work" and see where it got to. I avoided plugins and just ran the out of the box Claude Code experience prompting it towards the e…
- [Product Teams vs Feature Teams in an AI world.](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/product-teams-vs-feature-teams-in-an-ai-world.md) - All the way back in 2019, Marty Cagan wrote an article titled "Product vs Feature Teams". If you're building things you should read it in full but right now I want to take a look at how these ideas land as more and more teams are being encouraged to use AI in their daily workflow. Product vs Featur…
- [Build SaaS with Strong Opinions](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/build-saas-with-strong-opinions.md) - The SaaS product of the future is there to force you into best practice, not to let you configure your way there.
- [What do AI based layoffs say about their ability to scale?](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/what-do-ai-based-layoffs-say-about-tam.md) - If AI makes you twice as efficient, shouldn't you do twice as much with your current resources?
- [Are they software companies or do they just have software problems?](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/are-they-software-companies-or-do-they-just-have-software-problems.md) - Many of today's software companies just happen to use software as a distribution mechanism. Others are purely software. Knowing the difference is critical to assessing the long term impacts of AI.
- [Findings, Feb 2026](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/findings-feb-2026.md) - Products, Games, Books and Links Books I finished Harrow the Ninth, book two of locked tomb. I'm enjoying the series so far, especially as the world building expands. A large part of this book was written in the second person which took some getting used to. It relates to the plot but it's certainl…
- [Reflection on revamping our sales process](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/reflection-on-revamping-our-sales-process.md) - Over the last month or so I've been working on updating our sales process. The trigger for this was merging two different sales teams into a single unified team. In this merge I went over our process, our CRM setup and how we were measuring success. Some of that might be useful to you if you're als…
- [The unbound potential of open tabs](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/the-unbound-potential-of-open-tabs.md) - I often go through a loop of visiting sites like hacker news or lobste.rs, opening half a dozen tabs in the background based on their name and then waiting days to read them. They sit in my list of open tabs and trigger a mild pang of guilt when I glance at them. Sometimes I save them to a 'read la…
- [Findings, Jan 2026](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/findings-jan-2026.md) - 💡Bringing back something I tried a while ago. A once a month round up of little things too small for their own post. Products, Games, Books and Music pynb — Python Notebooks Without the FussPython notebooks without the fuss. Fast, local notebooks for data science and machine learning. Privacy-firs…
- [How to, mostly, guarantee success in your career](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/how-to-mostly-guarantee-success-in-your-career.md) - Over my career so far I have done a lot of different things. I've written code, designed PCBs and MRI machines, run Google ads, been out on the road doing sales and managed teams doing all of the above. Overall, regardless of the job at hand, I think I've found a few ways to ensure I do fairly well…
- [Things I changed my mind about in 2025](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/things-i-changed-my-mind-about-in-2025.md) - It's still the tail end of January so I am going to use this time as an excuse to sneak in a '2025 reflection' type post. This could easily be just about things I've changed my mind on recently but I figure I'll use the new year as a framework. LLMs are all hype. My position on this, especially rec…
- [Doing more things just for the hell of it.](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/doing-more-things-just-for-the-hell-of-it.md) - One of my 'not written down' goals for this year is to try to do more things just for the hell of it. I have historically fallen into the trap of trying to optimise, maximise or commercialise just about everything I do. It eventually managed to make a lot of things I enjoy feel like a chore. As a c…
- [Has AI removed the appeal of vertical SaaS?](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/has-ai-removed-the-appeal-of-vertical-saas.md) - Let's put aside for a moment the question of 'is AI bad for humanity' and accept that it is a thing that exists in the world. Particularly in the world of 'tool that writes code'. Right now, for circa $200 a month you can buy a tool that can write you some code. It wont be perfect, but if what you'…
- [Playing around with Google Stitch](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/playing-around-with-google-stitch.md) - This week I spent some time using Google Stitch, an AI chat interface for product mock ups. There are a lot of these kind of products, Figma has one, so does Canva. Stitch is the first one I've used that is filling a real need for me. That need? Producing something I can copy paste into a requireme…
- [Ball x Pit is pretty good.](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/ball-x-pit-is-pretty-good.md) - There's a formula that seems to work pretty well, combine a simple and familiar game mechanic with rouge like/lite elements and you've got a good chance at a winner. Balatro was poker, Rent is a Landlord was slots, Ball x Pit is Breakout. As is the trend, these games are simple to pick up and win b…
- [Some games are a guilty pleasure](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/some-games-are-a-guilty-pleasure.md) - Somehow, without quite meaning to, I have managed to spend around forty hours playing Megabonk. There's a little part of me that's ashamed to admit that. It's full of flashy lights, terrible humor and a fair share of mindless grind. Ultimately though, if its fun, does any of that matter? Megabonk o…
- [Get Good - Is Silksong too hard?](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/get-good-is-silksong-too-hard.md) - I'll admit, I never finished Hollow Knight. It wasn't because it was hard but I reached a point where the fun waned. Despite that I enjoyed it. Enough that I was always destined to play Silksong all these years later. I'm about fourteen hours into Silksong now and I've reached the early parts of Ac…
- [OKR Hierarchy - Detail not Distance](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/okr-hierarchy-detail-not-distance.md) - OKRs are a very popular goal setting technique in startups. Despite this, they seem to either be loved or hated. In theory, they help to ensure every person, team and department is spending their time on things that help move the company towards its goals. In practice, I've seen many companies roll…
- [Sword of the Sea Review](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/sword-of-the-sea-review.md) - Sword of the Sea is a short, well crafted game following in the footsteps of its creator's previous wins. Playing casually you'll probably reach the credits in a few hours but there's enough fun and hidden extras that there's plenty more to do once you've finished your first play through. Similar t…
- [Sunny Days Are Warm: Why LinkedIn Rewards Mediocrity](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/linkedin-toxic-mediocrity.md) - I, like many people, find LinkedIn particularly annoying. I like the premise of it, don’t get me wrong, a resume you don’t need to update all that often seems cool. Unfortunately though, its turned into the worst possible version of itself. It’s a place where people post half baked nonsense all for…
- [Donkey Kong Bananza Review](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/donkey-kong-bananza-review.md) - Donkey Kong Bananza is the best Donkey Kong in a very long time and a strong contender to be one of the best games Nintendo has ever made. The game has been built to provide a pathway to a fun experience for just about anyone. It’s approachable for younger or more casual players while being packed…
- [Duck Detective The Ghost of Glamping Review](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/duck-detective-the-ghost-of-glamping-review.md) - Duck Detective : The Ghost of Glamping is one of the best examples that games don’t have to be long to be great. This is a game you can complete, with all achievements, in under two hours without much effort. It’s length feels right for the game, it packs in enough fun for what it’s offering and do…
- [He is Coming Early Access Review](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/he-is-coming-early-access-review.md) - The last month of my video game playing time has been a lot of small indie games on the steamdeck. He is Coming is the most recent addition to that roster. The game is a rougelike where you move around a map picking up items and fighting enemies. You’ve got a limited number of item spots and after…
- [9 Kings Early Access Review](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/9-kings-early-access-review.md) - 9 Kings is a deck building, city building, synergy building combo that manages to find a sweet spot in a mix of genres. I played hours of the game while traveling in June and while it remains in early access there’s already a lot to like. If you’re looking for a game that leans into synergies and h…
- [Common modes of communication failure](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/common-modes-of-communication-failure.md) - For almost everyone, a big part of your professional life will be communicating ideas to others. Your ability to communicate those ideas to others will be directly correlated with your success. I’ve noticed, over many years of trying to communicate ideas, that there are several common failure modes…
- [Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Review](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/clair-obscur-expedition-33-review.md) - Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 feels like the game I have been waiting for since Final Fantasy X. Maybe since FF12 but in either case, for a long time. It’s takes the turn based formula and makes it feel fresh. Doing so while avoiding all of the strange semi-action turn based changes that so many JRPG…
- [Spinning up SaaS in an service business : Lessons Learned](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/spinning-up-saas-in-an-service-business-lessons-learned.md) - Over the last twelve or so months I’ve been working to spin up a new line of revenue at Explorate. The company has, for most of its history, been focused around growing a freight forwarding services business. Rather than use off the shelf software, we developed our own. Fit for purpose but also as…
- [Things I've Done: Maxwell Plus](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/things-ive-done-maxwell-plus.md) - It’s taken a long time to write this. Not because it was a secret but it has taken me about that long to decide what I wanted to say. The short version is that Maxwell Plus was an AI startup in health that we ran for six years, ending July 2022. We shipped product, helped find 35 cancers and learne…
- [Color TV and Chat GPT](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/color-tv-and-chat-gpt.md) - Sometimes I think technology has hit a bit of a wall. There are lots of every day things that I feel should be solved by now. For some vague definition of solved. The logical part of me, the part that has been building technology products for the last dozen years, knows that there’s a lot of comple…
- [Infinite Avocados](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/infinite-avocados.md) - I saw an article recently about the continued growth in the Avocado market. I don’t know why it showed up but something about it tempted me enough to read it. Most of the article was updates on weather conditions and a surge in production in some part of the world. The part that stuck with me was t…
- [I Very Much Recommend Dungeon Crawler Carl](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/i-very-much-recommend-dungeon-crawler-carl.md) - I am about twenty percent into book seven of the Dungeon Crawler Carl books and it has been a blast. In particular the Audiobook versions read by Jeff Hayes. It’s funny, full of interesting twists and turns and often quite heartwarming. All while remaining very light hearted. If you like fantasy, l…
- [Experiments are Bricks](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/experiments-are-bricks.md) - I was listening to an episode of Lenny’s Podcast with the Head of Growth at Shopify. In it, they talked about how 30% - 40% of all experiments fail to show long term impact. I’m not doubting the numbers, but I think this misses the point. Experiments around growth aren’t meant to last forever. They…
- [Dinner Party Software](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/dinner-party-software.md) - I can’t remember where or when but I once was told an anecdote about economics and human perception that stuck with me. This is paraphrased somewhat so lets hope the original author forgives me. The story goes like this: It’s fairly well known that if you’re lucky enough to be invited to someone’s…
- [Is retention is the only real measure of product market fit?](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/is-retention-is-the-only-real-measure-of-product-market-fit.md) - Your business will live or die based on whether or not you manage to find, and maintain, product market fit (PMF). Product market fit is notoriously hard to measure, especially with leading metrics. In the long run there's only one metric that manages to capture concisely if you’ve nailed PMF. Rete…
- [Xenoblade Chronicles X Definitive Edition Review](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/xenoblade-chronicles-x-definitive-edition-review.md) - Xenoblade Chronicles X Definitive Edition is a visual refresh on a game that can’t help but show it’s age. When the game first came out on the Wii U I played through the main story and a good portion of side content. Revisiting it today it’s a struggle to get through. Starting on a positive note, v…
- [Drafters, Editors and Critics](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/drafters-editors-and-critics.md) - I’ve noticed that, generally speaking, people have one of three modes when it comes to working on ideas. These ideas could be anything but for the sake of clarity, assume I’m talking about some new initiative within a business. The three modes are Drafter, Editor and Critic. Finding the right perso…
- [Blue Prince Review](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/blue-prince-review.md) - Blue Prince is frustratingly good. The combination of rougelite and puzzle make for a game that's simple on the surface but is built on layer after layer of discovery. The game had me reaching for a notebook to jot down the game’s various secrets slowly working through the game’s hidden story. I'll…
- [My very-much-overkill video call setup](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/my-very-much-overkill-video-call-setup.md) - I often get comments on my very much overkill home webcam setup. It stems back to a time where I was experimenting with making YouTube videos and podcasts. Despite not doing much of that any more I’ve kept the setup at my desk for days when I work from home. I wouldn’t necessarily suggest you buy t…
- [Did the Switch 2 paint itself into a corner?](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/did-the-switch-2-paint-itself-into-a-corner.md) - It’s been an odd week for Nintendo. On the one hand, the switch 2 looks like its addressed almost all the complains people had about the aging switch system. On the other hand, there’s the price. Putting aside the whole situation around tariffs, it feels like the switch 2 has fallen victim to itsel…
- [The Accuracy of the Incumbent](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/the-accuracy-of-the-incumbent.md) - Both the company I started, and the one I work for now have been trying to disrupt. That is to say, there’s an incumbent process or system that exists and we’re trying to do better. In both cases doing better means higher accuracy and delivering answers earlier. First it was in healthcare and diagn…
- [Cautions on being 'experiment driven'](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/cautions-on-being-experiment-driven.md) - I hear a lot of people say they want their startup to be more ‘experiment driven’. I’ve encouraged that behaviour a lot myself. Take bets, see how they progress, gather data and use the result to validate, or invalidate some sort of hypothesis. If executed well, this approach can be a path to disco…
- [Make more Solo CRPGs](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/make-more-solo-crpgs.md) - One genre of game that I think is really missing in the market is the Solo, turn based CRPG. Now I don’t necessarily mean no party, I mean you get to level, equip and control just one person. If you have a party, they do their own thing. You need to adapt, just like you would if you were playing a…
- [Game Guides](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/game-guides.md) - I have one of those Inside Out core memories. I was probably thirteen or so and I’m sitting next to a friend watching him play the newly released Final Fantasy 10. He’d come to stay at my house and brought his PlayStation with him just to keep playing. As I’m watching he’s in a battle against a str…
- [Compressed Complexity](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/compressed-complexity.md) - There is a lot of advice out there stating that every product should be as simple as possible. Less clicks, less decisions. There’s even a prominent story about having too many jams to choose from and the overwhelming sadness that can cause. Like most high level advice, this idea started form a goo…
- [Monster Hunter Wilds Review](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/monster-hunter-wilds-review.md) - All the monster hunting parts of Monster Hunter Wilds are the best they’ve ever been. There’s a lot around the edges that borders on feeling pointless but as a long time fan of the series those elements are very easy to ignore. This is one of those games that will steal hours from you if you’re wir…
- [Avowed Review](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/avowed-review.md) - Overall, I liked Avowed. It wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot, but despite that I had a good time with it and would recommend it to other people. It’s a fun, visually polished and easy to pick up first person RPG. It lacks the depth of many other games in the genre and I think that comparison disa…
- [You can’t delete the default](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/you-cant-delete-the-default.md) - Every company has a default. It’s the set of things that happen when nobody is pushing in any particular direction. Usually, its the combined momentum of all the pushing you’ve been doing. There are times in a company where its useful to remove that default. You want to break habits because the sta…
- [If your customers don't talk, NPS is a vanity metric.](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/if-your-customers-dont-talk-nps-is-a-vanity-metric.md) - Word of mouth is a hell of a growth lever, but only when it works. It’s now become almost universal to send your customers an NPS survey and—hopefully—use your scores in the high 80s to show how well you’ll grow organically. Truth is, this only works if your customers actually talk to one another a…
- [Red Bubble, Green Bubble](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/red-bubble-green-bubble.md) - This post was inspired by, but isn’t solely about, the recent market panic set off by the release of DeepSeek. I don’t claim to be able to pick which new technology fads will be winners. Sometimes bubbles deflate a little but ultimately stick around. These I’ll call green bubbles. I do feel pretty…
- [Second Principles](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/second-principles.md) - 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 want to know how al…
- [Heroes of Hammerwatch II](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/heroes-of-hammerwatch-2-review.md) - 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 early zones getting easier as I finish more…
- [Barnacle processes](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/barnacle-processes.md) - 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 keep u…
- [Is Sonic (or at least Shadow) back?](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/sonic-x-shadow-generations.md) - 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 the original without relying on the gimmick…
- [Balatro is a special kind of good](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/balatro-is-a-special-kind-of-good.md) - 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 isn't a game that really has sp…
- [Manage risks, not methods.](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/manage-risks-not-methods-2.md) - 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…
- [Maxwell Plus - Lessons Learned](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/maxwell-plus-lessons-learned.md) - (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 was one of the first investments Main Sequence m…
- [Thoughts on service and tech startups](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/thoughts-on-service-and-tech-startups.md) - 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…
- [Let your users start over](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/let-your-users-start-over.md) - 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 more content is driven by algorithmic recommendations or AI,…
- [The Signal and the Noise Review](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/the-signal-and-the-noise-review.md) - 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 at…
- [Lessons from one too many model spreadsheets](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/lessons-from-one-too-many-model-spreadsheets.md) - Few things can be as helpful and potentially time-wasting as modelling your business with a spreadsheet and setting metrics. A clear model of how you make money is a great tool to help identify bottlenecks or risks. On the other hand, it is very easy for models and the team KPIs or metrics that res…
- [Kingdom Two Crowns: Call of Olympus](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/kingdom-two-crowns-call-of-olympus.md) - Kingdoms Two Crowns Call of Olympus extends the best the series has to offer while adding new and interesting mechanics. The game maintains its complex gameplay tied behind a set of simple mechanics. Overall, the DLC provides an excellent collection of extra content to an already well-made game. Th…
- [The Plucky Squire](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/the-plucky-squire.md) - The Plucky Squire is a short, fun adventure from All Possible Futures that, short of a few launch day bugs, is a great game. I picked this one up via PlayStation Plus, where it was a day-one inclusion. Despite getting it for free, I recommend you pick up a copy. The Plucky Squire is a chapter-based…
- [Nodebuster](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/nodebuster.md) - Nodebuster is a simple game packed with fun. An entry in the ever-growing genre of small, incremental-type games, Nodebuster provides a few hours of fun at a very reasonable price. The game's premise is simple enough: move your cursor on top of the enemies while triggering automatic attacks. Enemie…
- [Know which type of goals you're chasing](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/know-which-type-of-goals-youre-chasing.md) - It’s important that you know what kind of company you are working for. In particular, if your company has reached the stage where things are steady and predictable or if they remain mostly unknown. Some companies, especially bigger ones, tend to move in a fixed direction. Goals and projects are set…
- [Tiny Rogues](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/tiny-rogues.md) - Tiny Rogues is a combination bullet-hell and action-roguelike that captures the best of both genres. The game is a pixel art cousin to Enter the Gungeon or Binding of Isaac bringing a tonne of replay value and fun. The multiple classes, progression system and wide array of gear and perks give the g…
- [Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/pathfinder-wrath-of-the-righteous.md) - Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous is the second cRPG from Owlcat Games. It follows many of the classic cRPG tropes whilst taking on a personality of its own. Like other games in space the basic premise is party management throughout a fixed but branching story. The game currently has the original b…
- [Sea of Stars](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/sea-of-stars.md) - Sea of Stars is a turn-based, fantasy RPG that harks back to many old 16 bit era JRPGs. Originally funded through a kickstarter campaign, the game leans heavily on nostalgia ultimately feeling like a loose copy of times gone by. There is a lot to like in Sea of Stars. The art, music and overall fee…
- [Thronefall](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/thronefall.md) - Thronefall, currently in the late stages of Early Access on steam, is a simple yet deeply enjoyable game. The game sees you, the king, build new structures during the day and fight off waves of enemies during the night. With multiple perks, weapons and challenge settings, Thronefall has high replay…
- [Talk to your users](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/talk-to-your-users.md) - Once, a long time ago, I was at an event where a local 'business leader' came to talk. Their talk was the story of their business, how they grew it and what made it successful. By some metrics their business was a success. It wasn't a tech startup, this is before those really existed where I live.…
- [Outer Wilds](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/outer-wilds.md) - This review avoids spoilers but it does comment on the core gameplay loop of the game. If you know nothing about this game and would rather keep it that way, maybe skip this one. Outer Wilds is an excellent video game. Without mincing words it mixes storytelling, visuals and interesting gameplay wi…
- [Talented](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/talented.md) - I picked up Talented during the Steam summer sale as a $5 addition to some other items in my cart. The game is simple and somewhat mindless but provides a fun pick-up-and-put-down experience. The game appears to be the first and only creation from TurtleFox studios. Game play wise, you're a single…
- [Notes from the four Silicon Valley Product Group Books](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/svpg-notes.md) - Over the last three months I read all four of the currently published SVPG books They cover a large range of topics in what they call ‘the product operating model’. This model spans high level product strategy, day to day product discovery and fields like product marketing. I recently collated note…
- [Against the Storm](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/against-the-storm.md) - Against the Storm is a combo of city building and roguelike elements. While I initially found this pairing odd, I've grown to enjoy the game and its clever take on short live city building. Each round feels just long enough to be rewarding. Short loops reduce time spent at three times speed that be…
- [Chants of Sennaar](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/chants-of-sennaar.md) - Chants of Sennaar is a well rounded game that balances style, pacing and light storytelling. At its core, the game is about decoding language through world based puzzles. See a pottery store with a sign above it, that word is probably pot. Through this core mechanic the game spins together a series…
- [COCOON](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/cocoon.md) - Cocoon was an interesting take one some gameplay elements that sadly felt more like a demo than a complete game. The game is sold as an adventure puzzle game, while some aspects of both of these genres are present, overall it was good but not quite great. Despite a lack of depth the game has its po…
- [Avoiding antipatterns in product discovery](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/avoiding-antipatterns-in-product-discovery.md) - Product discovery works best when you have no favourite ideas. Spending time with real users validating problems and potential solutions is a critical part of good product discovery. Often ideas that sound great around the office white board fall flat when tested with real users. An important part…
- [Book Review: INSPIRED by Marty Cagan of SVPG](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/untitled.md) - I have found myself on somewhat of a SVPG book binge recently. A binge kicked off from an episode of Lenny’s podcast with Marty Cagan on what he calls ‘Product Management Theater’. Product management theater is the idea that many product teams end up doing things that sound like good product manage…
- [The Minimum Marketable Difference](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/the-minimum-marketable-difference.md) - There are lots of reasons that startups don’t make it. Sometimes they build the wrong thing. Sometimes they build the right thing too early. Sometimes, amongst all the others, they build something great but can’t convince the world to use it. That’s what this post is about. There is a concept in th…
- [My path to working in Product](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/my-path-to-working-in-product.md) - There was never a moment where I felt that destiny was pulling me towards a career in product. Though I have come to realize that those moments tend to live mostly in fiction. Despite all that, I currently find myself as Head of Product in a growing technology startup. I get asked every now and the…
- [Products Should Solve Real Problems](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/product-ideas-and-real-problesm.md) - There's an idea that gets thrown around a lot which is to build products (or businesses) to solve problems you have first hand experience with. Solve a problem for yourself. If your career is in tech, especially the 'building tech for tech people' subcategory, it can be very hard to ever face these…
- [Making a living when AI raises the bar.](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/what-to-do-when-ai-raises-the-bar.md) - With the recent release of Sora from Open AI there's once again a flood of online sentiment around the end of all jobs for creatives. The technology is impressive, lets get that out the way early. There's something about video that feels more impressive than text or image generation. Despite that,…
- [Edits and Egos](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/edits-and-egos.md) - Asking for feedback on your work is an important part of improving. Sometimes, receiving that feedback can feel extremely personal. Whether it’s writing, slides, code or anything else we can tie ourselves up in our creations. Learning to separate ourselves from our work is an important step, one I’…
- [Performance vs Diagnostic Metrics](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/performance-vs-diagnostic-metrics.md) - The value of any tracked metric is in the actions it inspires. Numbers on a wall or a slide deck don’t mean anything on their own. They’re signposts and signals to help guide behaviour. Making the metrics go up or down can be very rewarding. Some metrics however, aren’t there to be as big or small…
- [Chat is poor UX for most users.](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/chat-is-poor-ux-for-most-users.md) - Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT have rapidly become commonplace tools. They’re the most transparent AI application I can think of, users know they’re interacting with an AI. Despite that, I see chat as a complex and difficult user experience for most applications. It’s similar to interact…
- [How to avoid picking terrible metrics](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/how-to-avoid-picking-terrible-metrics.md) - The only sure fire way I know to change something, is to start by measuring it. That’s true at a personal level for things like a 5k time as well as in a professional setting for SMART goals, OKRs or whatever variant is currently in fashion. While wanting to measure things is easy, picking what to…
- [Three things that helped my side projects drag on for years.](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/three-things-side-projects.md) - This year alone, I've spent months on a side project that would have once taken me a weekend. I'm glad I did, because for the longest time I waited for that perfect weekend and got nothing done. So after lots of doing nothing, then a long time making progress little by little, here's some thing tha…
- [The hardest part of prioritising product](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/the-hardest-part-of-prioritising-product.md) - The most difficult part of building product with limited features is priortisation. The hardest part of prioritisation is staying consistent. After many years and many 'methods' I can say that sticking to one thing long enough to see results is most of the hard work. These days I am far less attach…
- [Write more crappy blog posts](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/write-more-crappy-blog-posts.md) - If you hold off hitting publish until a great idea comes along, your writing probably wont be ready to capture it. Why it matters: Every now and then you'll have a thought. One you think is novel enough to be worth sharing. If you are at all compelled to write online, you might be tempted to blog a…
- [Just because it's old, doesn't make it tech debt.](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/tech-debt.md) - I spent a very long time incorrectly thinking that obsolete abstractions were tech debt.
- [Zero to Production in Rust - Book Review](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/zero-to-production-in-rust-book-review.md) - This week I finally finished working my way through this book. The very short summary is that its good, if you're new to Rust or want to dive a little deeper into it, check it out. https://www.zero2prod.com/index.html A few more thoughts: * Working with Rust is pretty nice. I've worked with it quit…
- [Population Density](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/population-density.md) - I've spent the last two weeks in Japan. Mostly in big cities like Tokyo. In being here there's something that stands out in stark contrast to my every day experience living in a small to mid sized city in Australia (Brisbane). While no place is perfect I have come to feel a strong appreciation for…
- [Assuming everyone is a gullible moron](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/everyone-is-a-gullible-moron.md) - Somebody lied on the internet. Happens every day. Yet, for some reason there’s a great temptation to engage. A temptation to step in and correct the lie. I’d say this is equally as true when the lie is obvious. I see this most on Twitter but it happens in most places with a comments section. There’…
- [What makes a model a Foundation Model?](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/what-makes-a-model-a-foundation-model.md) - Major tech companies like Google, Meta and OpenAI have spent a large part of this year releasing what they call new foundation models. The world seems to be in a race to be the go to model to build new models and products. Despite all of the hype (or perhaps because of it), foundation models as a c…
- [The Frontiers of Knowledge - Book Review](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/the-frontiers-of-knowledge-book-review.md) - Author: A. C. Grayling Format: Audible Category: Science - General I am currently looking to move house and in preparation I've been trying to read books that have been on my shelf too long. These are books I have been meaning to get to for years. Often gifts or books I thought were interesting las…
- [To Sleep in a Sea  of Stars - Book Review](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/to-sleep-in-a-sea-of-stars-book-review.md) - Format: Audible 32 Hours Author: Christopher Paolini Genre: Science Fiction Christopher Paolini, famous for the Eragon series, has taken a step into science fiction with the novel To Sleep in a Sea of Stars. The story follows a story of humanity expanding beyond the bounds of earth and coming face…
- [Findings #10](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/findings-10.md) - This week has been all about AI sentience. This begs some deeper posts but I will touch on the high-level ideas here. It all started when a Google employee made a call that LaMDA was sentient. LaMDA is an AI that creates chatbots. After several conversations, the employee felt the model had the sam…
- [Findings #9](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/findings-9.md) - From The Web This week, there was an interesting look at how DALLE-2 handles internal representation. This thread from Giannis Daras looked at what he called DALLE-2's secret language. DALLE-2 has a secret language. "Apoploe vesrreaitais" means birds. "Contarra ccetnxniams luryca tanniounons" means…
- [A look back at twenty years of writing code](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/a-look-back-at-twenty-years-of-writing-code.md) - In one way or another, I have been writing code for the last two decades. If I am being honest with you, dear reader, I can't pinpoint the exact time I wrote my first software, but it is close enough to twenty years to take some poetic license with this. If you'll indulge me in this journey, I want…
- [Findings #8](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/findings-8.md) - 🍅 From the Web The world seems to be on a little bit of rocky footing right now, especially when it comes to the economy. That does little to stop some amazing breakthroughs in science. This week I came across this paper from Nature Plants. Biofortified tomatoes provide a new route to vitamin D su…
- [Findings #7](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/findings-7.md) - From the web Some of the bigger news in the AI world this last week has been the release of DeepMind's new Gato model. Borrowing from the original post (linked below): The agent, which we refer to as Gato, works as a multi-modal, multi-task, multi-embodiment generalist policy. The same network with…
- [Findings #6](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/findings-6.md) - Another week, another collection of interesting things from around the internet. This week has been a little wild across stock markets and general sentiment. I hope you're not being hit too hard. If you enjoy this, consider subscribing or sending it to a friend. From Around the Web After an interes…
- [We are linear minds in an exponential world](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/estimators.md) - I remember reading about an experiment long ago. Participants were shown a bar. This bar was supposed to represent the numbers 1 to 1,000,000. The researchers asked each participant to mark where 1,000 would appear on the line. Have a go yourself, gut feeling only. Take a wild guess before reading…
- [Findings #5](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/findings-5.md) - Hello again. Another edition of findings. I hope you're enjoying these. If you are, consider subscribing to get them straight to your inbox. From the Web First, is an article that has been on my to-read list for a while. The recent string of long weekends gave me time to finish it. This article fro…
- [Findings #4](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/findings-4.md) - Welcome back to another week. There was a lot happening this past week, including the much-discussed purchase of Twitter. One of the promises I found particularly interesting was the promise to open source the timeline algorithm. More on that later. -------------------------------------------------…
- [Collaborative AI as a path to AGI](https://www.elliotcsmith.com/collaborative-ai-as-a-path-to-agi.md) - Let's say you made a time machine, and the catch is you can only bring people forward from the past. You turn it on and zap a dozen people into the room from 1800. Given enough time to catch up on the language and the latest in education, are these dozen people likely to be less intelligent than mo…

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