Lessons

Each lesson teaches one idea, grounded in the wiki's corpus of 600-plus annotated talks and every claim traceable to its source. Some stand alone. Others are stops on a guided path — a sequence meant to be walked in order, each lesson building on the one before. A path is the teaching counterpart to a theme: where a theme is a reference map you consult, a path is the tour you are led through.

The Road to AGI

A five-lesson arc on the central argument in AI: does scaling — bigger models, more data, more compute — carry all the way to general intelligence, or is something missing that scale cannot supply? Start at the beginning; each lesson assumes the last. Its reference companion is the Road to AGI theme.

1. The Bitter Lesson Why general methods that ride raw compute keep beating clever, hand-built knowledge.
2. Scaling Laws The empirical rule that turned 'bigger is better' from a hunch into a plan you can bank on.
3. Verifiability Why AI surges wherever an answer can be automatically checked — and stays jagged where it can't.
4. The Generalisation Gap The strongest objection: why a model can ace a hard exam yet fail what a five-year-old does easily.
5. Is Scaling Enough? The resolution — separating the settled question (does scaling work) from the open one (does it suffice).

Finding Product-Market Fit

A five-lesson arc on the founder's hardest search: not how to plan product-market fit, but how to recognise, locate, understand, measure and finally qualify it. The stops run in the order a newcomer must learn them — define the state, find real ground to stand on, understand where demand comes from, turn fit into a number, then test whether that number is enough. Its reference companion is the Finding Product-Market Fit theme.

1. What Product-Market Fit Actually Is Why fit is a state you discover — users who return, tell others and resist leaving — not a milestone you plan for.
2. Don't Start in a Tarpit You can't find fit in the wrong territory — the ideas that lure founders with easy validation, and the inflections worth riding instead.
3. The Struggling Moment Demand comes from a customer's struggle, not your launch — the four forces that decide whether anyone switches.
4. The Sean Ellis Score How to turn product-market fit from a feeling into a number — and the one question that measures it.
5. Delta 4 Why a product can clear the survey and still not grow — the efficiency gap that makes fit irreversible.

Standalone lessons

Single explainers, each teaching one idea and complete on its own. No order to follow — read whichever one you came for.

1. Bad Strategy Why a list of goals is not a strategy — and what diagnosis, hard choice and focus put in its place. Grounded in the What Strategy Is theme.
2. Survival Is the Strategy Why an investor's edge is temperament, not brilliance — surviving long enough for compounding to work. Grounded in the What Makes a Great Investor theme.
3. Resulting Why a good decision is not a good outcome — and how to judge the process, not the result. Grounded in the Deciding Under Uncertainty theme.
4. The Reversal of Fortune Why geography is not economic destiny — the test that shows what makes nations rich is institutions, not latitude. Grounded in the What Makes Economies Grow theme.