Yes, this writing is infuriatingly light on actually saying what the hell he means. I spent the entire thing trying to determine if "don't emotionally bootstrap" mean you should bootstrap, but don't be emotional about it, or if it meant you shouldn't bootstrap your emotions or ... what. I think this phrase must have popped into his head as a stunningly insightful concept that made a great blog post title so he just barfed it out and patted himself on the back for being so clever.

And in the only spot he actually even uses the phrase "emotionally bootstrap", it appears to be a one-time thing that might be the same thing as "inner bootstrapping," which he talks about a bunch and contrasts to "outer bootstrapping," all while defining neither. I closed the page somewhat angrily and then was delighted to come back to the HN comments and see a chorus of WTF.

Long time since I've wasted time on an article so complex and full of jargon without actually getting to any point. There's no structure, with a lot of assumptions of prior knowledge, personal anecdotes, metaphors and ambiguity, like, wow.. ironic for someone that wrote a book about "designing conversations that matter".

I appreciate your sacrifice and thank you for the review. I won't waste my time.

Agree totally, and I’ll go further, this writing quality and lack of meaning is literally poorer quality than I’d expect from Bard, let alone GPT-4.

We’re getting to the point that the best tell it’s written by an average human is that it’s below the quality of a machine.

seriously ! everything in life is cost / result equations .... it might be easier for some than others to start a company (network, location, background, experince, timing, team, intelligence ...) but everyone pays something in exchange for a result.

your emotional labor as a founder is clearly a huge one, you should be aware of it, but the article is foundementally ignoring that fact that there is a price for everything.

we all so the "pasty" elon musk ... it's not that it's the only way to build amazing things and so many people look that way playing video games ....

my point is, anyone wants to build something and not pay for it (emotionally, financially, reputation ....) is just unaware what the word build means.