Imitate, Then Innovate

“Over time, I have learned that originality is driven by my ego because of some story I have that being original is cool and being cool make people like me. But in an effort to be new, first, or inventive, I prevent myself from building things that put customer…”

“If I look back at my one big career win, Morning Brew, there's really nothing original about it. Business news has existed since the 1700 and email has been around since the 19 seventies. And that is exactly why it worked. We did something that we already knew…”

“I think what allowed us to be different is that we didn't assume any quote-unquote industry truth to actually be true until we verified it for ourselves.”

“What this means to me is that the most original people are never those that are trying to be original, and in fact, I think there's a core formula of attributes that ironically can be imitated that lead to unintentional earned originality.”

“First of all, copying isn't bad, and everyone does copy, but I think the more powerful version of imitation is far imitation, where you can make something unoriginal original and Simply by transporting it across contexts. Foreign imitation can happen cross fie…”

“And of course, the great irony of this whole essay, an essay that is focused on imitation and innovation, is that neither of these things should actually be the focus of the entrepreneur. Rather, the focus should be on finding the truth and building the produc…”