How to Build the Greatest Thing Ever (Or, Why Marketing is Dead)

Founders and CMOs come to me early in their company or before a new launch and ask me, “How do I market my product?” Earnestly, they ask like honest pilgrims seeking salvation, or like fabled adventurers in search of the magic key to unlock their company’s success.

If I’m really being honest, though, this question sounds a little like asking, “How can I get the girl to love me?,” not that I judge. This is, after all, much of my professional wheelhouse: channeling my consumer product entrepreneurial history into marketing, branding, and advertising advising — the arts of seduction usually communicated and executed through catchy copy, slick memos to leadership (that start eerily like this blog post), and the occasional $200/hour brainstorming meeting on color palettes to convey trust or luxury, things that unquestionable do help serve the immediate goal: selling the product at hand.

A thought emerges mid-advising session: If I become burnt out on getting customers to love startups, I could always try relationship counseling.

But the question they’re asking — where I risk alienating 80% of prospective clients, and possibly you — is the exact wrong question, but, paradoxically, perfectly normal. After all, it’s a question as old as competitive commerce, whenever the second baker decided to set up shop across the street from the first baker, or however long ago the first peacock mating season was. It’s half charming performance, half existential dread, rooted in competition and not value. The guy who runs the local deli asks it when it’s time to either pay a TikTok influencer to eat a pastrami sandwich on camera or, instead, invest in a new meat slicer or an industrial bread making equipment. To me, though, the question sounds like, “What is the right combination of feather color, beak length, and cha cha moves to make this customer pick me?,” a question that assumes success lies in winning the race of attention, not in fundamentally making better products.

What founders and CMOs never seem to ask is this: “Should a marketing budget (or giant feather plumage) be needed in the first place?”.

If your goal is to compete on Meta, Google, or billboards, sure you can make a declaration of war in the economy of attention — a game with finite resources of eyeballs and waking hours of potential customers. Otherwise, no. What your goal should be is to a declaration of cooperation with customers, understanding them deeply and exchanging relevant value, which is infinite, in return for economic value and loyalty. Does this sound a lot like being a good friend, or just being a good person more generally?

The reality is that the greatest bird doesn’t dance. It doesn’t cha-cha. It doesn’t even preen. It kills bigger prey. It builds sturdier nests of better materials. The greatest bird gives more than it takes, creating abundance. And while other birds dance, the world comes to it.

Homesick Candles — a bird I helped hatch many years ago — was an instrumental lesson in making a bird (or product) that doesn’t have to dance…at least for a while.

How Homesick Candles Made Its Millions Without Spending A Fortune

When I hear the question “How do I market my product?,” I think about Homesick Candles, the company I co-founded when I was 22, a year after graduating from UVa. The product was almost embarrassingly simple—a candle that smells like your home state. Many visitors to my apartment scoffed —to put it lightly—at the idea when I asked them to stop by to help decide on different fragrances. Pressing on, the team and I launched the web store from a desk on the 5th floor of IAC in NYC — the CollegeHumor office. We didn’t just sell wax, wicks, and eaus de corn dogs, cowboy boots, peaches, the interior of a Wawa. Well, we did, but more importantly, we sold nostalgia, memory, belonging, and home, reflected in a simple tagline “Fill Your House with Home,” a stroke of simplicity from Ricky Van Veen — CollegeHumor co-founder, Homesick Candles co-founder, Facebook exec, renaissance man

Though we did make objects to live in people’s homes, they also lived in people’s heads, conjuring sense memories and longings for the smell of your grandmother’s kitchen, the sugar cone aroma of your favorite childhood ice cream shop, fresh baked Pillsbury biscuits, and whatever kind of detergent your best friend in high school’s mother used to use. Can you remember?

People didn’t just buy the candles, or think about them. They talked about them. They argued over them. They speculated in public: What does New Jersey smell like? Turnpikes? Boardwalk fries? Trash? “Definitely diner grease, but, like, the diner grease at PJ’s on Nassau Street”. (Not once has a Garden Stater ever suggested “garden”.) The candles were a cultural Rorschach test, tiny waxy mirrors. If you loved your state, you loved the candle — or, less often, openly hated your state’s candle, but in a haha suppressing–my-childhood-trauma kind of way. Either way, you talked about it, which was the point.

We made $1M within months of launching and we did it without a massive marketing budget or a slick ad agency on retainer. It was just me and Ricky Van Veen riffing at a small table in the CollegeHumor office thinking of how to spend the $400 in ads credits (shoutout to then Facebook Head of Revenue and momentary Homesick co-creator Sriram Krishnan, for whom Homesick Candles must be a kind of humming bird-sized radar blip if he remembers at all…). Our best-performing ad? A hand holding a candle under Facebook text that read: “OMG, someone made a candle that smells like your home state!,” not much more than an excited description of the product.

That was it; short and to the point. A simple blurry ad, a few hundred bucks, and suddenly there was a small but very real culture fire on Facebook and out in the world about whether Idaho smells like potatoes or regret. Small blogs picked it up. Then BuzzFeed. Then Vogue. The product naturally resonated. People wanted to talk about it — not because we told people to, but because we gave people something tangible to connect with something deeply intangible, the type of thing people were talking about anyway. It wasn’t marketing. It was identity. Neuroscience. Biology.

It took me years of trying (and failing) to recreate Homesick’s early success to realize a great truth: we weren’t genius marketers, even if our small ad budget went a lot farther than it would for a typical company. Well, Ricky might have been a genius, but Homesick took off for another reason. I know now that we just had a really, really good product that spread like a miracle, in perfect harmony with a huge number of customers. That is, until it didn’t, when we suddenly realized we had a surplus of product, which necessitated a growing beaurocracy of photographers, coordinators, and web developers to sell, which seemed to warrant greater purchases of product, more surpluses, and repetition of safe and similar products, instead of focusing on understanding and producing more of the key thing: a feeling of home. Eventually, being really good became the enemy of being truly great.

How could we have sustained our miracle?

Platonic Pizza Palace: Where Good Is The Enemy of Great and Products Don’t Need Marketing

A decade after leaving Homesick Candles, I find myself haunted by a question: What separates good products from truly great ones? Not just “featured in Vogue” great (which we were), but the kind of great that rewrites cultural DNA. What would it have taken to transform a $30 candle into something people would pay $1,000 for? Not through marketing tricks or artificial scarcity, but because it delivered that much genuine value? What if we’d created something so compelling that the world’s best perfumers and materials scientists would have broken down our doors to work with us?

I was too young then, too philosophically naive, and too satisfied with our millions to see our blind spots. Good was working. Good felt great. But good is often the enemy of great, a kind of comfortable prison that keeps us from reaching for something more profound.

I imagine a higher platonic space in which there is a version of any kind of product that has its own gravity in place of marketing budgets — where the perfectly crisp slice of NY pizza, the sturdiest burrito, and the most cozy hoodie you’ll ever own can be found (ideally on the same block). Once you experience them, you can’t imagine life without them. They dominate their markets for obvious reasons. Surely, there’s a version of Homesick Candles that lives up there, too.

In this space, there are no billboards, no hashtags. No drip campaigns, no relentless pop ups asking you to subscribe for 10% off. The companies behind the products here don’t seduce; their products needing nothing than a small introduction, and even that might be a stretch.

This isn’t just philosophical navel-gazing. When we examine any product in light of its platonic ideal, modern marketing reveals itself as what it truly is: a tax we pay for failing to make something people naturally want to talk about. It’s the price of our inability – or unwillingness – to reach up into that platonic space and, like Prometheus with his flame, bring something genuinely transformative down to earth.

This idea leads us to a better question than “How do I market my product?“: Assuming it’s theoretically possible to create the platonic ideal of a great product (or close to it), What would it take to make a product — any product — so great that it doesn’t need marketing at all? Let’s run a thought experiment.

The Manhattan Project Product

Imagine this: A black and white scene, probably directed by Christopher Nolan. The world’s twenty sharpest and most capable minds are seated around a long table littered with notes and pastry crumbs, locked in a room to begin work on a new Manhattan Project. They aren’t literally locked in the room — that would violate all kinds of labor laws — but intellectually and spiritually locked in, bound by a common, audacious dream. These aren’t just any geniuses. They’re once-a-century types, modern-day Albert Einsteins, Richard Feynmans, John Von Neumanns, Claude Shannons, Alan Turings — people who see poetry in fractals, think in adaptive systems, and talk in well-placed metaphors about schools of fish and gate-keeping demons. Together, they are humanity’s best hope for tackling any problem. Their mission? To create not just good product, not even a great one, but the greatest product of all time. The catch? They don’t have Manhattan Project money. Nor any money at all. Yet, they are undeterred.

In this room, anything could happen. Einstein scribbling the equation for the best burrito ever? Maybe. Alan Turing programming an even flappier bird? Perhaps. The stakes? Just the theoretical annihilation of mediocrity itself. And, perhaps, infinite profit. One thing is for sure, though, if anyone can build a platonically ideal, perfect product, it is a group such as this that is committed to understanding and building things fully from first principles.

They start with a definition on the chalkboard.

Product: Not just an object or a service, but a solution designed to solve a human problem.

First item accomplished, they agree on another point: A product is only as significant as the problem it’s solving. A lightbulb solves darkness. An antibiotic solves disease. Democratic government — when it works — solves the chaos of unchecked power. Greatness starts with the problem. And the bigger the problem, the greater the product. So the group zooms out—way out, beyond trends, 10x inflated valuations, and industry “disruption” (a term that now signifies home-brewed matcha lattes and alarm clocks with cameras built into them as much as a new kind of internet). They look for the deepest, most universal challenges.

What are the problems that define what it means to be human, the hardest problems to solve? A list emerges, clean and inevitable:

The Ten Universal Problems

1. Safety
  The basics of survival—food, water, shelter—combined with physical, emotional, and financial security. Humans need reliable structures and social stability to feel protected from harm.
2. Health
  Maintaining physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Good health is the cornerstone of a functional, fulfilling life.
3. Knowledge
  Understanding the world and reducing uncertainty. The pursuit of learning satisfies human curiosity and provides clarity in an unpredictable world.
4. Belonging
  Feeling connected to a community or group. Whether it’s a tight-knit family, a team at work, or a meme-sharing group chat, belonging creates a sense of shared identity and support.
5. Freedom
  The ability to act autonomously while balancing cooperation with others. Humans thrive when they can exercise control over their lives and choices.
6. Trust
  Confidence in people, systems, and institutions. Trust ensures relationships and communities can function effectively and withstand challenges.
7. Growth
  The drive to improve and evolve. Whether learning a skill, overcoming challenges, or achieving goals, growth is a universal motivator.
8. Adaptability
  The ability to pivot and thrive in a changing world. Resilience and flexibility are essential to navigating uncertainty and unexpected shifts.
9. Sustainability
  Balancing today’s needs with tomorrow’s well-being. A sustainable approach ensures resources and opportunities remain available for future generations.
10. Joy
  Experiencing delight, happiness, and fulfillment. Joy provides the emotional spark that makes life’s challenges worthwhile.

The team is content with this foundation. Solving these fundamental, primal, needs won’t just create value, but will ripple outwards, compounding over time with ever-increasing strength, solving so many problems in its path that it effectively unlocks a new future for humanity. The team now thinks about the mirror image of these problems, which are necessarily the qualities of the product that would solve them. Just next to the first list, the group makes another, describing the qualities of the greatest product:

The Ten Qualities of The Greatest Product

NOTE: I might pay attention to how this list may or may not be applicable to relationships as well. Food for thought.

Safety
Dependable, risk-free, and reliable. Great products protect users physically, emotionally, and functionally.
Health
Products that promote or support physical, mental, or emotional well-being, either directly or indirectly.
Knowledge
Tools that empower learning, exploration, and clarity. Great products reduce uncertainty and help users understand the world better.
Belonging
Products that create connection, fostering community or shared experiences.
Freedom
Empowering users with autonomy, enabling them to act, create, and solve problems their way.
Trust
Reliable, honest, and true to their promises. Great products earn user confidence through consistent quality.
Growth
Products that help users improve, whether by learning a skill, overcoming challenges, or accomplishing something meaningful.
Purpose
Products that align with something larger, connecting users to a mission or vision that resonates with them.
Sustainability
Designed with the future in mind, balancing immediate utility with long-term responsibility.
Joy
Products that delight and inspire, making life easier, happier, or more enjoyable. They create a sense of love between people and between people and their environments.

“But hold on,” says one of the engineers, cutting through the self-congratulatory mood. “What happens when these qualities compete?”

The room goes quiet. They realize they’ve stumbled onto something crucial: each principle contains its own paradox. A product laser-focused on utility often becomes joyless and mechanical. Pure simplicity without trust feels like a beautiful trap. Joy without purpose is just dopamine addiction. Even sustainability without deeper meaning becomes its own kind of waste – a solution in search of a problem.

The insight hits them: greatness isn’t about maximizing individual qualities. It’s about their interplay, the way jazz isn’t just notes but the spaces between them.

They sketch some rough ideas:

A home that evolves like a living organism, growing and healing with its inhabitants, connecting to other homes
A knowledge network that thinks and learns in real-time, closing the gap between questions and answers
An energy system that makes its environment richer, not poorer

These aren’t just products – they’re paradigm shifts disguised as products. But then comes the really hard question: Who could build these?

Not even this room full of geniuses could do it alone. They’d need armies of brilliant minds across every field – AI researchers, biologists, psychologists, materials scientists, systems thinkers. And not just employees, but true believers willing to commit their lives to something bigger than themselves, often without immediate reward.

This leads them to their most important insight: before you can build the perfect product, you need to build the perfect organization. They begin sketching the principles of an institution capable of attracting and aligning world-changing talent:

The Ten Principles of The Greatest Organization

Note: This list doubles for Thanksgiving dinner conversations

Safety
A stable environment where employees are protected physically, emotionally, and professionally, allowing them to focus and thrive.
Health
Organizations that support the mental, physical, and emotional well-being of their team members through thoughtful policies and culture.
Knowledge
A commitment to learning, innovation, and clarity. Great organizations empower individuals with the tools and understanding they need to succeed.
Belonging
A culture where everyone feels valued, included, and connected, fostering trust, collaboration, and shared identity.
Freedom
Encouraging autonomy, innovation, and ownership. Great organizations empower people to take initiative and make meaningful contributions.
Trust
Transparency, integrity, and reliability at every level. Trust builds the foundation for long-term relationships and success.
Growth
A commitment to personal and professional development. Great organizations provide opportunities for employees to evolve and reach their potential.
Purpose
A clear and inspiring mission that aligns the efforts of individuals with a larger vision.
Sustainability
Balancing short-term goals with long-term impact. Great organizations consider their legacy and the well-being of future generations.
Joy
Work that inspires creativity, delight, and fulfillment. Joy is what transforms a job into a calling.

The lists are complete – problems, products, principles – stretching across the chalkboard like some peculiar periodic table of value creation. At first glance, they seem distinct: problems address human needs—what we crave, what we lack. Products answer those needs, filling gaps. Principles describe how organizations function—how they create, collaborate, endure.

The physicist sees it first: “They are symmetrical.” The mathematician shakes her head: “No, they are the same. X = X.” The anthropologist starts laughing: “Of course. They’re all just different ways of describing how humans organize to solve problems.”

The revelation hits: a great product doesn’t just solve a problem—it embodies the principles of the organization that made it. Resilient products reflect resilient teams. Joyful products grow from cultures that value delight. The same flaws, strengths, and priorities are encoded in the DNA from creator to creation.

Amen.

If good DNA is the root system, a good product is its flowering. Patagonia’s jackets don’t just keep you warm—they’re a membership to a company committed to a more sustainable future. The iPhone isn’t just glass and metal—it’s Apple’s obsessive precision in physical form. SpaceX rockets aren’t just feats of engineering—they’re artifacts of a team that values ambition over safety nets. Pixar doesn’t just make movies—it makes storytellers. IDEO doesn’t just design objects—it designs designers. The greatest organizations don’t just create solutions. They create the conditions for infinite solutions.

But what about bad DNA?

It doesn’t just produce occasional misfires—it practically guarantees systemic failures. I think about Julie (not her real name), one of countless farmers’ market candle makers who’ve reached out over Instagram. She pours her lavender-vanilla candles with genuine care, but she’s trapped in a loop of incremental improvement – tweaking scents and labels while missing the bigger question: what fundamental human need is she actually serving? When she has a great interaction with a customer, does she see it as a clue to a deeper opportunity for human connection? No – she just makes more candles.

The lists on our theoretical chalkboard aren’t just academic exercises – they’re the genome of excellence. A great product is its maker’s philosophy made physical. A great organization is its products’ potential made infinite. If your company is a dysfunctional rogues’ gallery of unaligned incentives and half-baked ideas, no brand campaign can save you. That’s not cynicism; that’s math.

Which raises an unsettling question: if organizational DNA is destiny, what does it mean that we’ve built a $700 billion global marketing industry, which is very much dedicated to masking mediocrity? To understand this, we need to examine how marketing evolved from a solution to surplus into something far more problematic…

A Brief (and Oddly Hilarious) History of Marketing

Picture the late 1800s: industrialization bursts onto the scene like an overeager subway dance crew, factories churning out more stuff than anyone could possibly need. The obvious question wasn’t “How do we make better things?” but “Who’s going to buy all this stuff?”

Enter Thomas J. Barratt, the self-styled Shakespeare of advertising, who transformed Pears Soap from a humble cleanser into a national obsession by linking it to art, royalty, and moral superiority. Suddenly people weren’t just buying soap; they were purchasing social elevation in bar form.

Then came Edward Bernays, Freud’s nephew and the man who cheerfully described his profession as “propaganda.” His masterstroke? Rebranding cigarettes as “Torches of Freedom” for women. The genius wasn’t in the product but in the insight that identity sells better than utility. People weren’t buying tobacco; they were buying liberation (though it’s hard to square genuine liberation with nicotine addiction). Bernays paved the way for an entire industry dedicated to manufacturing meaning when the product itself was something entirely different.

Post-WWII America took this to its logical extreme. As factories pivoted from tanks to toasters, surplus exploded. Ad agencies flourished, turning commodities into cultural touchstones. De Beers convinced us diamonds were forever (spoiler: they’re just compressed carbon). Rosser Reeves blessed us with the “Unique Selling Proposition” – if you can’t be better, at least sound different. And thus began our modern brand race: not for better products, but for better stories.

Marketing 2025: The Ecosystem of Distraction

Today we spend $700 billion annually on marketing – roughly the GDP of Switzerland – just to tell us what to buy. The rational part of your brain asks, “Is this really necessary?” The short answer is no. The longer answer is that we’ve built an economy addicted to quarter-to-quarter growth like a lab rat hooked on sugar water, focused on quick hits rather than slow, methodical solutions to real problems.

For Nike, it’s easier to run another “Just Do It” campaign than to fundamentally reinvent what footwear could be. If you’re McDonald’s, it’s cheaper to trigger Happy Meal nostalgia than to fix fast food’s health and sustainability issues from the ground up. Facebook would rather pay for emotional TV ads about “connection” while Zuck competes in BJJ tournaments than confront why their platform might be making us collectively miserable.

Could Nike Really Get By on a $0 Ad Budget?

You will naturally wonder how feasible it is for a multi-billion dollar industry-leading brand like Nike to really drop its ad budget to $0. I invite you first to think about what would happen if Nike eliminated their entire advertising budget. Not as a cost-cutting measure, but as a forcing function to create something genuinely revolutionary. What kind of shoes would they need to design to make you—someone who presumably doesn’t care about Nike’s market cap—stop a true stranger on the street and insist they try these shoes? This isn’t just a rhetorical flourish; it’s a precise tool for examining the gap between what companies do and what they’re capable of doing.

The technological and intellectual resources already exist. Nike could assemble a cross-disciplinary dream team: biologists studying human movement, sports scientists mapping performance limits, cognitive researchers understanding mind-body feedback loops, engineers reimagining materials from the molecular level up, psychologists studying organizational freedom and innovation. Not to make incrementally better shoes, but to fundamentally redefine human athletic potential. Imagine a global VO₂ max moonshot that makes their current “Just Do It” campaigns look like (and this is meant quite literally) a marketing exercise. What is the economic value of improving the world’s average VO₂ from, say 30 mL/(kg·min) to 55 mL/(kg·min)? There exists a version of Nike that could make their current profits look like rounding errors.

The same principle applies across industries. Facebook/Meta employs some of the world’s leading network scientists, psychologists, and UX designers. Instead of optimizing for what are essentially slot-machine mechanics wrapped in UI, they could develop tools that measurably increase genuine human connection. The academic literature is filled with proven interventions for reducing isolation and fostering meaningful relationships. Yet here we are, watching Meta perfect… 15-second dopamine hits and product catalogue carousels. Is there anyone at Meta asking what the economic value might be of 10xing the number of deep, intimate human relationships the average person has?

Similarly, McDonald’s could partner with food scientists and regenerative agriculture experts to create what would be, objectively speaking, the most nutritious and delicious burger in human history. The technical knowledge exists. The supply chains could be built. The potential market is, well, everyone who eats food (I’m a vegetarian, and I might even consider this burger).

But they don’t. And understanding why they don’t is crucial: The immediate rewards of traditional marketing (completely within the control of executive leaedership) are too psychologically compelling to resist, even though the long-term returns from solving fundamental human problems would be exponentially greater. This isn’t just corporate short-sightedness—it’s a kind of institutional addiction. The quarterly earnings hit is easier than the deep work of transformation.

Here’s an alternative that reads like a truism: intelligent organizations can sell intelligent futures to intelligent investors. A coherent story about fundamental reinvention and 1000x returns is actually more compelling than another nostalgia-driven campaign bumping profits by 10%. The current marketing arms race isn’t just wasteful—it’s a form of organizational procrastination, a painkiller masking the need for surgery.

The real transformation has to happen at the DNA level. When you run these companies through our earlier framework—clarity of mission, trust, growth, sustainability, joy—the gaps become glaringly obvious. They have the resources to tackle humanity’s greatest challenges but lack the organizational architecture to even see these opportunities clearly.

This makes them far more vulnerable than they appear. A competitor will emerge that embodies these deeper principles. Not through marketing or mission statements, but through a fundamental alignment between organizational structure and human needs. It will rise not because its story is better, but because its products will possess what we might call (and this is meant both metaphorically and almost literally) their own gravity.

The Gravity of Great Products: Dense, Inevitable, No Ads Required

The greatest products in history share a quality that’s more powerful than any marketing campaign: gravity. Not the metaphorical kind, but something almost physically analogous—a force that pulls people toward it through the sheer density of its excellence. Think of the original Tesla Roadster. It didn’t need marketing because it reorganized reality: here was an electric car that could smoke a Porsche while making gas engines feel obsolete. Muscle car enthusiasts couldn’t ignore it, not because of clever ads, but because of what it fundamentally was.

This gravity manifests when a product transcends mere function to become a kind of cultural inevitability. The first iPhone wasn’t just a better phone; it reorganized our relationship with technology. Linux wasn’t just another operating system; it reimagined how software could be created and shared. The Swiss Army Knife wasn’t just a clever tool; it redefined what could fit in a pocket.

What creates this gravity? Not magic, but something more interesting: the convergence of multiple forms of genius. Picture a product conceived with Michelangelo’s eye for form, Einstein’s grasp of fundamental principles, and the empathic insight of a master teacher. Now add a bioluminescence expert, just to make things interesting. You don’t even know what this hypothetical product is, but you can feel its pull already.

This kind of development demands more than a traditional product team. Imagine a cross-disciplinary jam session where designers, engineers, sociologists, and materials scientists aren’t just collaborating but performing a kind of intellectual jazz—each contribution making the others better. The result isn’t just innovation; it’s inevitability.

When we return to our chalkboard thought experiment, something profound emerges: products, problems, and principles aren’t separate categories—they’re expressions of the same underlying DNA. A great product isn’t just a solution; it’s a physical manifestation of its maker’s values, vision, and organizational culture. Bad DNA will express itself as surely as good DNA will. No amount of marketing can mask fundamental flaws forever—just ask Bernays how those “Torches of Freedom” cigarettes worked out once the cancer data came in.

So, How Do You Market Your Product?

You don’t—not at first. Instead, ask:

Does your product solve a universal human need in a way so thorough people can’t help but share it?
Is your organizational DNA strong enough—fair, inspiring, deeply values-aligned—that the product will reflect that naturally?
Have you cross-pollinated your thinking so you’re not just layering features on a commodity but reimagining the problem itself?
Are short-term metrics overshadowing the pursuit of real brilliance?

If you can’t answer these with clarity, marketing is merely a band-aid. To quote Daniel Kahneman: “What You See Is All There Is.” If all you see are vanity metrics, you’ll believe they’re the whole story. Until, one day, you discover you’ve built something people only use out of addiction or inertia or because you happened to catch them just at the right time, but not because of love. By then, your team, your product, your brand—they’re locked in mediocrity, like an ill-kept plant growing sideways toward fluorescent office lights.

Homesick V2: A Personal Reckoning

This is what I missed with Homesick. The candles succeeded because they touched something primal: memory, nostalgia, the fragile architecture of home. But that’s where we stopped. We never asked: How could we make someone’s space — or their existence beyond their homes — feel more fundamentally like them? How could we help people feel at home everywhere? If I could do it again, I wouldn’t just make candles—I’d build a company that felt like home. A place where everything—from our work culture to our products—carried the weight of that idea. IDEO meets Pixar meets that perfect cozy morning in bed meets your favorite coffee shop where everyone knows your name. Except with candles. I was 22 then. At 32, I see the missed opportunity with painful clarity, but I’m glad to have such wisdom today and to be able to share it.

RE: How Do I Market My Product?

Don’t market your product—make it, and the team behind it, so undeniable that people seek it out themselves. Create not just functionality, but inevitability. Build something that doesn’t just work but belongs—something that feels like it has always existed, waiting to be discovered.

Do that, and you’ll learn to ask better, braver questions.

So I leave you with two:

What products and organizations are worth building—not just for now, but forever?
What is the organization that is encoding for all of this mediocrity?