Build something you care about and benefits others

I became a huge fan of Zena Hitz ever since I heard her conversation with Henry Oliver. After listening to her, I immediately bought her book but haven’t read it yet (sorry Zena), but it’s on my reading list for this year. I just finished reading this lovely interview of hers and this stuck with me:

Everyone seems to want “scale” and “impact” and seems to think that means having a massive operation. But doing something right on a small scale breeds imitators—it is like a seed. Great Books institutions were always small, but they have been enormously influential. There’s nothing more “scalable” than wheat or bread, but no one owns all the wheat nor the bread-making recipes. It doesn’t take much thinking to see that this is for the best.

Technology only works for human flourishing if we choose to design it and to use it that way. We need to think about how we want to live—in common as well as individually—and choose accordingly. Likewise, money isn’t the most important thing. To build trust, you need to care about something that recognizably benefits more than just you and your friends.