Design

Bauhaus said "form follows function". Meaning: whether something looks good isn't about what you add—it's about what you take away. What works well looks good on its own.

Apple pushed that logic to its extreme. Under Steve Jobs, every pixel had a reason to exist. The iPhone 4 is still the best product I've ever held—not because of the specs, but because every one of its details is deliberate.

But Apple today is increasingly profit-driven. Product tiers are more and more obvious; some low-end products are clearly built to grab market share, not to be "the best product". Apple is already restrained—look at Samsung's low-end phones, those are the real compromise.

What this teaches: once you start compromising for market share, your design philosophy is dead.

Nintendo's Satoru Iwata once said a line I've never forgotten: "Think about outdated technology in a new way."

While everyone else raced to build the most powerful hardware, Nintendo asked: can we make a new experience out of an old technology? The Wii motion controller used tech from years earlier, but it changed how you play games. The Switch runs on an older-generation chip, yet it lets you play the same game at home and on the road.

The question isn't what technology you use—it's how you think. That mindset is precious in business: most people chase the newest thing, and few ask: can I use what I already have in a different way?

Unix philosophy says "silence is gold" and "one module does one thing". Many read these as coding principles—but I read them as principles for living.

If something can say one thing clearly, don't ask it to do a second. Code works that way; copy works that way; product features work that way. If you can't explain what a feature does, don't add it.

Unix philosophy also says "Do One Thing Well". Whether I'm doing marketing strategy, writing code, or doing investment research—I always ask first: what's the core of this? Get the core right, and skip whatever else can be skipped.

Silence is gold—don't say what doesn't need saying. Don't write code that isn't needed. Don't build features that aren't needed.