Loose Ends
New angles, quieter opportunities, fewer bandwagons
Todays issue is a little late because, well frankly, I was at the gym. Anyway, Lets dive into it and look at the collapse of future proofing and Radical Clarity.
📉 The Collapse of “Future Proofing”
For years, founders were told to future-proof everything.
Build for scale. Hire ahead. Choose tools that’ll still work in five years. Design systems for problems you haven’t met yet. It sounded responsible. It was mostly waste.
That mindset is breaking down fast.
The pace of change hasn’t made future proofing more important — it’s made it less reliable. The farther you plan, the faster assumptions rot.
What’s replacing it isn’t recklessness. It’s reversibility.
Founders are quietly optimising for:
🔁 decisions that are cheap to undo
🧩 systems that can be swapped, not perfected
⏱️ progress measured in weeks, not roadmaps
This is why small, modular tools are winning. Why scrappy stacks outperform “best-in-class.” Why speed now beats elegance.
Future proofing assumes the future is legible. It isn’t.
The strongest teams aren’t betting on the right forecast — they’re building the ability to change direction without collapsing. That’s a different skill entirely.
It also explains why so many once-sensible decisions now look foolish in hindsight. The mistake wasn’t bad execution. It was overconfidence in continuity.
In unstable environments, robustness beats optimisation. Optionality beats planning. And survival beats polish.
The goal isn’t to be ready for everything.
It’s to not be trapped by anything.
That’s what building for 2026 actually looks like.
Tangled Wisdom: Ray Dalio’s Radical Clarity
Ray Dalio built Bridgewater by obsessing over one idea: you can’t fix what you won’t see clearly. His solution was radical transparency—surfacing mistakes, tensions, and weak ideas instead of hiding them.
🔍 Dalio’s core insight:
Progress accelerates when truth is prioritised over comfort.
🧠 Why founders avoid this:
Fear of being wrong publicly
Desire to move fast without reflection
Confusing confidence with correctness
🛠️ How to apply it:
Write down what actually went wrong, not the excuse
Ask for criticism from people who disagree with you
Treat mistakes as systems problems, not personal failures
📈 The payoff:
Clear thinking → better decisions → fewer repeated errors.
In a tangled startup, clarity is leverage. Dalio’s lesson is simple but uncomfortable: the faster you face reality, the faster you improve.
(Insight inspired by Ray Dalio)
A wall-mounted toilet roll holder shaped like a cat’s rear end, designed purely to make guests do a double take. The Cat Butt Toilet Paper Holder dispenses paper straight from the source—tastefully tasteless, yet oddly well made.
🐈 Toilet roll feeds from the “tail”
🚽 Standard wall mount, fits normal rolls
🎁 Consistently ranks as a top gag gift
Functionally identical to a £5 holder. Emotionally unforgettable. Proof that differentiation doesn’t require innovation—just commitment to the bit.
Your weekly haul of tools, links, and discoveries worth stealing.
The quiet collapse of the DTC brand model
YC founders on what actually worked in 2025
AI agents didn’t fail — expectations did
Solo founders are outperforming small teams
Why most SaaS pricing pages are lying to you
The rise of “boring” businesses on the internet
OpenAI competitors are quietly eating market share
How newsletters are replacing landing pages
The return of bootstrapped profitability
What founders regret not doing earlier
That’s All Folks
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Until next time,
Connor / Loose Ends