In 1795, France ran out of graphite mid-war. What Nicolas-Jacques Conté did next created a process the entire world still uses 230 years later. This episode unpacks the Conté Principle — why the companies that survive supply crises find another source, but the companies that dominate the next era make the source irrelevant. With lessons from TSMC, Toyota, and a pencil.

Every product strategy framework tells you to build for your customer's aspirational self. The Snooze button never got that memo — and became one of the most-used features in human history. In this episode, we trace the surprisingly long history of not wanting to wake up, from medieval monks to Victorian knocker-uppers, and ask what it means for the products you are building right now.

Matt Maloney saw DoorDash coming. He predicted the losses, questioned the subsidies, and called the unit economics broken — years before the market proved him right. So why did Grubhub finish last?

In this episode, we unpack one of the most underappreciated traps in business strategy: the difference between being analytically correct and being competitively correct. Being right about the market and winning the market are not the same thing — and the gap between them has killed more companies than bad strategy ever did.

If you run a business, lead a team, or make decisions under competitive pressure, this one is worth your full attention.