• brainstorming is a sacred word for huxley. for a long time I didn’t understand it, but now my understanding is
  • there are two particular orientations you can have to new information: a closed one and an open one
    • closed: jaded, suspicious, tunnel-visioned— “ugh another one of these” or “idk, X aspect may not work”
    • open: excited, optimistic, curious— “ooh and with Y, you can do even more!”, essentially “yes! and you could”
  • brainstorm mode is the second mode. you steelman ideas, suspending disbelief and imagining what could be
    • (on marrige pact, we both put 7 on a scale of 1-7 for the world needs more (1) reality vs (7) imagination). the real world provides sufficient reality, imagination is our superpower.
  • a vivid example: huxley’s friend was pitching him a project to give to the younger brother. it was an app to get your fav celebrity to read you any audiobook using vocal deepfakes. this is a mid idea. (two way market, not much added value). rather than cringing, huxley switched to brainstorm mode, and said, what if instead of just one celebrity, you could build a whole cast of characters? this is a simple extension, and way better. neither person would’ve come up with it on their own.
  • brainstorm mode isn’t just about not shooting down ideas. it’s about building them up, ping-ponging them around.
    • that’s why a zero-shot list where you independently make sticky notes and put them on a board (as in the stock images) doesn’t work. it’s about quality, not quantity. about complementing each other, not parallelism.
    • also why you want to talk to sound amplifiers rather than sound deadeners
  • often, the right person can make an idea 10x better with minimal effort, just because of what else they know/see. value-to-effort ratio is insane.
  • the key insight is that this is a “mode”, a skill, something that you turn on, rather than something that happens to you (as inspiration is often thought to be)
    • which means that you can practice it, and that you have full intentionality/control
    • i find myself habitually “defending” against pitches, because they’re new. just stop! practice entering brainstorm mode as quickly as possible
  • prompts for entering brainstorm mode
    • suspend disbelief for a second, what’s cool about this? what else could you do with it? what direction is the cool stuff in?
    • am i attacking/defending (generally, arguing) with the other person about whether this idea is good? stop. it’s good! what’s so good about it? (you can feel the mindset shift)
    • causally, what’s new and interesting about it? (can that nugget be extended/applied elsewhere)
    • when you see problems with an idea (often), don’t say “so we shouldn’t do it” but rather “how can we fix these”
• radical steelmanning: now imagine if you put yourself in brainstorm mode for every idea that you are pitched
  • you’d be more enthused than the founder about their own company!
  • if ur a vc: not because you think it’ll make them money
    • good founders will be used to people being flat happy. “your company is great, please let me invest”
    • bad founders will be surprised and like you, but you don’t care
  • rather, work with them! not just enthusiastic, but collaborative. brainstorm together, extend the idea, make it way better.
  • recent examples: austinWu, be enthused about deep deep tech; sammy on sac computers? koko’s founder profiles, steven’s ekphrastic
  • but what about evaluating the idea/person?
    • if the idea is better, then just evaluate that (that’s what they’ll work on anyways)
    • as for the person, people prepare to defend their ideas, but brainstorming/discussion is what matters when working w them

 › thoughts