# Tight feedback loops 7/14/26 I wasn't satisfied by my analysis in [[Dead players]]. It came from a real gut feeling, but I don't know that I pointed to the thing I meant to. I kept it up because it started circulating more broadly; I didn't want to contribute to link-rot. But with the benefit of time + newer conversations, I'd probably channel that feeling into a different — if still related — conclusion. The fatigue people felt with the excesses of the 2010s — billions poured into visionary-but-empty crypto activity, venture-backed juice machines, take your pick — eventually triggered a reversion into a fetish: for real, tangible, *business*. I participated in this reversion myself, moving from [[Ramp#^6f2a45|crypto]] to _the_ exemplary [[Ramp#^5618f2|B2B SaaS]] of our time. The hallmarks are real & burning customer problems, with immediate time & money to be saved. The people I know who experienced success under this model, have since switched to _newer_ "real & burning" problems. Many of them don't even _leave_ their previous gig, before collecting letters of intent from business customers, booking some amount of ARR on paper, touring Sand Hill Road, and drafting term sheets. This is a de-risking, yes — risk having been a component of my cynicism in Dead players — but honestly, who *cares* if they de-risked it. That isn't the part I really regard with suspicion. **It's the — implicit — veneration of tight feedback loops, that I'm suspicious of.** * Targeting markets that are large _today_ * Product-market-fit — ARR — as *fast* as possible. * A sharp unwillingness to be early to anything, expressed as "timing is everything" and "you want to be the last-mover." * The idea that last-movers emerge from *deferring* something until the model is already proven; and not instead, from making sure that what you're digging is a _moat_ from day one, and from doubling-down on contrarian insights that other people would only follow once it's already too late. * Building low-stakes, scrappy products as "wedges," in hopes that low-stakes buy-in today will magically graduate into high-stakes buy-in "one day." Many of the "highest impact" people you and I personally know, were primed by 1-4 year vesting schedules. They were motivated by having the greatest impact possible, while knowing they only have 1 or 2, _maybe_ 3-4 years to _have_ it before hitting reset. They don't want to have the highest impact possible; they want to have the highest impact possible *within a short window of time*. They'd move on from an idea (their "company" only being a loose scaffold around it), if it couldn't book revenue within its first few months. Actual long-term games have lost a _lot_ of prestige in this era. AI research became high-prestige _after_ it was completely proven and consensus. No one wants to do, nor build, the thing that would take them months instead of weeks. No one wants to defer ARR, in favor of a product that redefines or monopolizes a category over years, decades, centuries. You look either naive or narcissistic for even *trying* to do this. Who do you think you are, to aim at a trillion this early on? What could you _possibly_ know? Have some *humility*! Tech nowadays is less Kanye — extending projects by years, producing a $3M album _after_ your career is presumed dead, spending years on albums everyone instantly _dislikes_, betting on _yourself_. It's more 2016-era Young Thug — new songs constantly, oriented to the market, only a handful of them durable (and only so in piecemeal) over time. Few people want their own best verse to happen on a Kanye album; they'd rather it happen on their own, less-ambitious project. Time corrects all; the returns to passing the marshmallow test will continue to exist. If anything, they'll grow: *everyone*'s agents are fast. They're also good. But how many of them operate with genuinely long time-horizons? How many humans or agents have low time-preference? How many humans or agents are genuinely _selfish_ in what they value, to the point of being unique and irreplaceable? <div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 152px; position: relative;"><iframe src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/track/4NVNapccSX7E5JLiW0uQEy?utm_source=oembed" style="top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; border: 0; border-radius: 12px;" allowfullscreen allow="clipboard-write *; encrypted-media *; fullscreen *; picture-in-picture *;"></iframe></div> > "_Only real music's gonna last_. *All that other bullshit, is here today and gone tomorrow.*" Prestige-hunters — in tech, and everywhere else — are addicted to tight feedback loops, as they always would have been. They need proof, fast, or they'll move on. They're the "loosely held" in strong convictions. Almost by definition, then, all of the alpha is moving into things that you *can*'t see with your eyes when you first start preparing for them. Into operating _without_ definitive proof or certainty in the near term. In *selfishness* rather than so-called *humility* in the face of the customer and competition. Most people are uncomfortable betting on their own capacity to productively envision the currently-invisible. They'd rather deduce from the highly-visible, book the quickest wins possible, and convince themselves that they'll *eventually* pivot to a visionary approach: once they've had their fill of immediate-term validation. A tight feedback loop means a *tight pull* that originates from outside of you — from your customer, from your competition, whoever — that over time *precludes* your capacity for sovereign, creative thought, and atrophies your ability to apply genuinely contrarian — offensive — insight. An *iron chain*, attaching you to your customer, to your competition, to the market. It's a coping mechanism for your inability to see further into the future than the present-day. You just haven't realized it yet. And upon reflection: this "you" was me too, for the longest time. Might still be!  %% ![[Pasted image 20260714121229.png]] %%