Old & New Formidable Signals
There are little cues I like to use to get an idea of what hidden advantage someone might have.
Within technology stacks, I’ve always viewed Rails as the formidable signal of a team that’s aggressive and moving fast. This is true today as much as it was in 2008. Even before Rails came along, PHP was the equivalent before that, and it worked pretty well to launch some very formidable companies.
Paul Graham wrote that he used programming languages as a proxy to determine how formidable a competitor was.
This is not just a theoretical question. Software is a very competitive business, prone to natural monopolies. A company that gets software written faster and better will, all other things being equal, put its competitors out of business. And when you're starting a startup, you feel this very keenly. Startups tend to be an all or nothing proposition. You either get rich, or you get nothing. In a startup, if you bet on the wrong technology, your competitors will crush you.
Robert and I both knew Lisp well, and we couldn't see any reason not to trust our instincts and go with Lisp. We knew that everyone else was writing their software in C++ or Perl. But we also knew that that didn't mean anything. If you chose technology that way, you'd be running Windows. When you choose technology, you have to ignore what other people are doing, and consider only what will work the best.
Within the writing community, Substack is a newer formidable signal. Substack is a place where independent thought is emerging. The writers aren’t just formidable, but the articles challenge the conventional thinking vs other platforms (here’s one example). Twitter and Medium, in comparison, have somehow dropped in the rankings of formidable signals. Today they both feel more like censorship and the oppression of free and independent thought.
When looking at startups, a mission-focused culture seems to be the most formidable signal that’s emerging right now. It’s code for “if you’re looking for a winning and focused team, come work here.”