Max Levchin

are architectural decisions you can decide to invest a year into rebuilding your systems in some new fashion and if that's a bad decision you're going to look back and say well we're too far in it was a terrible call but you know it's just you know it's so far and like we can't just uproot this so many people will be upset or you agree to a deal that is economically non-viable and you have you're staring at a giant black hole and you want to get out of it but you signed a contract and

you can't. And maybe it's like not that much money and so you don't care, but sometimes it can be a lot. So I believe in one-way doors. And part of the postmortem culture is all about identifying one-way doors that you thought were two-way doors and saying, we shouldn't have done that because that turned out to be not a thing we could easily come back from.

you can't. And maybe it's like not that much money and so you don't care, but sometimes it can be a lot. So I believe in one-way doors. And part of the postmortem culture is all about identifying one-way doors that you thought were two-way doors and saying, we shouldn't have done that because that turned out to be not a thing we could easily come back from.

you can't. And maybe it's like not that much money and so you don't care, but sometimes it can be a lot. So I believe in one-way doors. And part of the postmortem culture is all about identifying one-way doors that you thought were two-way doors and saying, we shouldn't have done that because that turned out to be not a thing we could easily come back from.

I agree that a lot of decisions that seem like one-way doors are not. That's probably a very fair statement.

I agree that a lot of decisions that seem like one-way doors are not. That's probably a very fair statement.

I agree that a lot of decisions that seem like one-way doors are not. That's probably a very fair statement.

I think for every 10 of the ones that I thought were not reversible, only one, maybe two were irreversible.

I think for every 10 of the ones that I thought were not reversible, only one, maybe two were irreversible.

I think for every 10 of the ones that I thought were not reversible, only one, maybe two were irreversible.

Yeah, that's another reference to Steve Jobs. He's obviously such a brilliant product guy, and I aspire to be a good product guy myself. I think the notion of, so it's an oft repeated story where they signed the insides of the motherboard on, I think the first Mac or something like that.

Yeah, that's another reference to Steve Jobs. He's obviously such a brilliant product guy, and I aspire to be a good product guy myself. I think the notion of, so it's an oft repeated story where they signed the insides of the motherboard on, I think the first Mac or something like that.

Yeah, that's another reference to Steve Jobs. He's obviously such a brilliant product guy, and I aspire to be a good product guy myself. I think the notion of, so it's an oft repeated story where they signed the insides of the motherboard on, I think the first Mac or something like that.

And so the team put their signature on it and the narrative around it was, if you built something beautiful and amazing, you don't mind. In fact, you take pride in signing the insides because if anyone ever looks, they will be blown away by just how beautifully the whole thing is designed. And so that's where you want your artist's signature.

And so the team put their signature on it and the narrative around it was, if you built something beautiful and amazing, you don't mind. In fact, you take pride in signing the insides because if anyone ever looks, they will be blown away by just how beautifully the whole thing is designed. And so that's where you want your artist's signature.

And so the team put their signature on it and the narrative around it was, if you built something beautiful and amazing, you don't mind. In fact, you take pride in signing the insides because if anyone ever looks, they will be blown away by just how beautifully the whole thing is designed. And so that's where you want your artist's signature.

There's definitely a natural and very healthy tension between shipping fast and building things beautifully. And building things beautifully requires design and time and consideration of what the next version would look like so you don't have to rebuild from scratch. There's not a hard and fast rule to know what matters so much that you want to do a great job.

There's definitely a natural and very healthy tension between shipping fast and building things beautifully. And building things beautifully requires design and time and consideration of what the next version would look like so you don't have to rebuild from scratch. There's not a hard and fast rule to know what matters so much that you want to do a great job.

There's definitely a natural and very healthy tension between shipping fast and building things beautifully. And building things beautifully requires design and time and consideration of what the next version would look like so you don't have to rebuild from scratch. There's not a hard and fast rule to know what matters so much that you want to do a great job.

And therefore, you will always have a team cleaning up or refactoring code or dealing with tech debt like that. That's a property of every startup that's been a startup for a decade.