Hello!

Today I'm thinking about a line from Elon Musk that people are buying Full Self-Driving with a car attached, not the other way around. People buying the outcome (it drives me places) instead of the tool (a car) is going to impact a lot more products, especially software. At a high level, this is how AI upends existing companies. Why does this matter so much for software? Because software teams spent decades making tools people use to get the outcomes they want. Photoshop is a good example. It has thirty-plus years of interface built around manipulating pixels, but when you want to edit a photo you're thinking "make her hair flow to the left," not "select these pixels and apply a transform." The tool sits between you and what you actually want. I've been chasing this idea for a while. Back in 2024, I wrote about how the continuous march of "more features, more UI" leaves people with more functions they don't know about and don't use, and how AI lets you control software with hundreds of features by just telling it what you want to do. Last month I pushed it further: start from the outcome ("here's the news you asked for") and let people engage with the tools later if they want to. Outcome first, tool second. The car example just makes it really concrete. Nobody wants a steering wheel, they want to get somewhere. As we've said for years, we don't call carpenters "hammer users." So if you're building software today, ask yourself: what's the "it drives me places" version of your product? Because if you don't ship that, someone else will, with your tool attached as an afterthought.

What kinds of trails do you like?


I'm into the gravity side of things: downhill and other riding where traction really matters when you try to brake, not road riding where that stuff doesn't come into play.

In fact, over the last several years I've been gradually building a series of downhill mountain biking trails in my backyard, complete with gap jumps, table tops, wooden ladders, drops, big berms and more. It's been a passion project for a long time, and it's now at the point where I can get in some laps before work, which is amazing.

The trail conditions I love most are sticky and grippy with good traction. That doesn't come when everything's super dry and loose, and it doesn't come when everything's slippery and muddy either. Here in California it's mostly warm and dry-ish, so when we finally get some rain, it usually means good to go.

Basically, give me a bit of moisture, some berms, and a jump or two, and I'm happy.