As an art major, I never thought I’d go into tech, but during my last semester I became obsessed with the idea of building a platform for conversations. The concept was simple: a place for people to have recorded conversations in their field of interest without needing to start a podcast. Luckily my brother had some experience with startups and was compelled by the idea.

I tried to do everything. This was my first inkling that product design might be a good path forward.

I didn’t execute well, as you might imagine – I think of the independent publishing platform Substack as a better execution on the same insight: that information and reputation is flowing out of institutions and into individuals.