preface As the poet Paul Valéry once wrote: the opening line of a poem is like finding a fruit on the ground, a piece of fallen fruit you have never seen before, and the poet’s task is to create the tree from which such a fruit would fall. Valéry’s description of the poet strikes me as similar to the founder’s journey. The task for the founder is to create an internal and external frame that implicitly stakes a philosophical claim, from which every aspect of the company grows out of. I’ve long been interested in what I call new ontologies of companies. How does a company define a new vocabulary to transmit meaning and purpose? How can a company serve as a doorway into a rich, intellectual world? My hope is to write the story of exceptional founders and “share some of early clay” by discussing the product thoughtfully. This is why my essays would differ from a Colossus founder profile, a Mario Gabriele essay – there is much more emphasis on product. The best way I’d describe it is probably a mix between Packy’s i/Deep Dives and Brie Wolfson’s Inside Cursor. This type of writing requires some combination of product/technical fluency, paired with a desire to tell a founder’s story with craft and beauty. For this reason, I spent multiple hours in person with Sara, the wider Ando team, the product, and Ando customers/investors.

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