A few months ago, I got lunch with a friend of mine, Cate. We started talking about things, and how broken they are. “Things just feel so broken”, she said. “I wish someone would write a blog post about it.”

We did a quick search, and found that there are a ton of blog posts about things being broken. But none of them stood out, because blog posts about things being broken are broken. For the last 10 years, we in the Hot Takes industry have been stuck doing the exact same things. All over the world, every day, there are thousands of people writing blog posts about how things are broken, following the exact same, broken formula.

That’s when we decided to write a blog post about how blog posts about how things are broken are broken.

We met up again, fired up a shared Roam doc, and started writing. “You have to start the post with an apocryphal anecdote”, Cate said. “It needs to over-simplify the problem, while perfectly teeing up your solution.”

“Cate, first, what does apocryphal mean?!”, I said. “Second, I don’t have a solution. Things are just horribly, terribly broken.”

Then, an idea struck me. “I’m going to start the post with a story about how we met for lunch, and came to the realization that blog posts about things being broken are broken”, I said. “Then, I will think of a solution to it, create a startup, and tie that back to that original story”.

“Great idea”, Cate said, staring at me admiringly. “I’m glad you thought of it.”

How did we get here?

When you go up against the same problem over and over again, you need to step back and analyze the root cause of what you’re dealing with from the 30,000,000 foot level.

So I got together with Jeff, Chad, Mike, Carl, Braden, Brian, and Shriram, and we figured out what was going on: it was about repetition. Repetition was the problem.

In sports, they say that improvement is all about repetitions (or “reps”). Do something enough times, and you’re bound to get good at it, whether that thing is shooting a basketball, writing complex JSON, or even tying your Atoms while standing on one foot. But if you don’t stay conscious about what you’re repeating, it starts to become natural. You sink into a routine. And routines can be good! I do 2 hours of Headspace meditation every morning, and I love it. But some routines are bad. And when you fall into them, it can be hard to get out.

This is exactly what is happening with blog posts about things being broken - everyone is using the same, tired formula, and afraid to re-think things from first principles.

We need a better way.

Announcing Broke’s $25m Seed Round

This rampant brokenness is why I, along with Cait, co-founded Broke - the world’s first, decentralized platform for blog posts about things being broken.