Ben Gilbert: belief

Transcript context

…I’m terrible at email and I used to be much better at email because I like to devote time to it, I want to make sure I’ve written everything correctly and whatnot. Slack has been just the most liberating thing for me. We have shared Slack channels with all of our portfolio companies at Wave. All of the most important people in my work life, internally and externally to me are on Slack. It’s like a weight has been lifted. I can communicate instantly, easily. I don't need to worry about structuring the perfect sentence, or whatnot, or crafting the right narrative. I can just communicate much more simply. It’s been great. My email has suffered as a result of it, as Ben knows, but we text, reach out on Slack, it’s better. Listeners, if you want to get in touch with me, hit me up in the Acquired Slack. I’ll also say a thing that David, you do extremely well. Listeners know this about David. A lot of us are kind of on a hamster wheel with communication, where it’s like, “Ooh. Got a new in-thing in. Got to answer it out.” You’ve been very disciplined for years about saying things like, “Should I actually be just like responding to everything that comes in?” and, “Let me be more intentional about what I let hijack my life and what I don’t,” and, “If I don’t answer this thing, what’s the worst thing that can happen? ” I think Slack, in some ways, the antithesis of that very intentional thinking, but you’ve applied it to the fact that you’re going to be very intentional about being on Slack and structuring Slack in a way that works for you. What’s cool is that the cost of that is much lower so it’s much easier on Slack to be like, “Yup. I’ll respond to almost anything,” whereas on email, the cost is so high. Anyway, it’s just super interesting because we talked about the cultural moment that was ready for it. I think this trend is much broader than Slack but capitalized on it.…

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