Discoveries #3 | Speed. Craft. Energy.
Welcome to Edition 03 of Discoveries. Each week, I share inspiration on design, product building, and what's next.
Keeping a Competitive Edge
There are hundreds of things you need to do well to build a successful company. But if I had to bet on just a few—if I had to name the principles we come back to again and again at BoomPop—it’s these three:
Speed. Craft. High-energy culture.
They sound obvious. But in practice, most companies either overlook them or take them for granted.
1. Speed
There’s a quote from Lightspeed VC that I keep framed on my desk:
Speed gets misinterpreted all the time. It’s not about being impatient or reactive.
Speed is strategic. It’s a shared belief that what you’re doing matters, and that if you don’t do it fast, someone else will. It creates urgency, focus, and momentum.
Speed is also magnetic. It builds traction faster. It attracts capital at better valuations. It draws in top talent. It lifts morale. It forces clarity.
In a world where most startups are slow, speed alone can be your edge.
2. Craft
Craft is the care, detail, and pride you put into everything you ship. It’s how you respect your customers. It’s the quiet discipline behind excellence.
Craft shows up everywhere—on screens, in code, in conversations.
It’s how Apple built one of the most revered brands in history. The inside of their computers are designed with as much care as the exterior even though they know 99% of people will never see the inside. It's not for show—it's part of their culture.
Craft can be loud or invisible.
It might look like a perfectly-tuned onboarding flow, or a financial model that makes your investor say “wow.”
Craft is a mindset: treat the things you work on with great care and people will eventually notice.
3. High-Energy Culture
This one’s easy to underestimate. But it might be the most important of all.
In 2014, I visited a friend at Airbnb's office in SF. The thing that stuck with me most wasn’t the office design or the great food.
It was the energy.
People were in it. Debating, sketching, running around with ideas. You could feel it the second you walked in.
I remember going home and thinking:
Someday, I’m going to build a company with this level of energy.
High-energy culture is rare—but magnetic.
Top performers want to be around it. It helps you do hard things. It’s contagious. Your clients feel it. Your hires feel it. Your partners feel it.
And for the record: this isn’t about being extroverted or loud. High energy can be quiet intensity. It’s the voice in your head saying, “I’m not logging off tonight until I solve this.”
Inspiration
I recently discovered this Japanese company, NOT A HOTEL, building a series of wild homes designed by top architects (BIG, Snohetta, Sou Fujimoto).
Each home is sold as fractional ownership, similar to Pacaso. N.A.H. also takes care of all the services, maintenance, and amenities.
This is a really difficult business to build — appreciate the vision it takes to pull this off!
What I'm Reading
🔗 Building What Customers Need
Some takeaways:
- The belief that "more features = better" often leads smart people astray in product design, as seen in many open-source projects.
- The strongest products stem from informed conviction—customer feedback sharpens, but doesn’t define, the vision.
- The most groundbreaking products didn't come from customer requests—no one asked for the iPhone, Airbnb, or Figma. They came from vision and intuition, not demand.
Other Finds
This Apple commercial is art:
Thanks for reading,
Blake
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