Gritty Versus Grifty Founders and Code as Craft

Happy Sunday! And happy Mother’s Day in the U.S. For those of you who have given birth to babies, we hope you get flowers. To those who have given birth to startups, we hope for high equity markups. 

Now, on to everything we published this week, along with our take on the latest tech and business news.

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Our stories

"The Death of Code as Craft" by Jon Christensen: Coding is fun because you feel like an artist, constructing objects out of digital bits. Will AI make coders irrelevant factory-line labor? Read Jon's piece to see if coding is changing from an art form to something weirder, maybe easier, and more strategic. 

"The Right Kind of Asshole" by Evan Armstrong/Napkin Math: Our tech ecosystem is overrun with grifters who take capital from worthy founders. The challenge is that the signals of greatness are similar to those of being terrible. Read this for the five signs of grit and five signs of grift in founders.

"Patreon Should Buy Substack to Save Creators" by Evan Armstrong/Napkin Math: Every media company you know is panicking—traffic is declining, ad revenue is sagging, and creators are stuck in the middle. The solution? Patreon should raise a bunch of cash and buy Substack. Read this if you want to see how a combined "Patrestack" could reshape the creator economy, deliver better economics to creators, and maybe even make the internet a bit less awful for all of us. 

"ChatGPT and the Future of the Human Mind" by Dan Shipper/Chain of Thought: As AI encroaches on what we've long considered uniquely human—our intellect—it's normal to feel both excited and threatened. But by understanding what AI tools like ChatGPT actually do (like summarize information), we can redefine what makes us human and find a new sense of purpose in the creative process. Read this to learn how technology has been changing our brains for generations, and how we can use AI to create more richness and beauty in the world. 🖥 Watch it as a video essay on YouTube or Spotify, or listen to it on Apple Podcasts.