The Pipette
A newsletter for product builders with links so good their ideas warrant a reply, a forward, or even a discussion in real life.
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With The Pipette, our goal is to share links to the good parts of the internet – offering context for why we chose them that draws from our lives, relevant conversations, and offline sources. The topics will appeal to those working on digital products and be inclusive of what motivates and matters to us as people.
Feedback is strongly encouraged – we want people to âslide into our newsletterâ and reply with their links, suggestions, thoughts as well (credit given if we share!). While a newsletter format is easier for distribution, we do not want to miss the conversation we could be having together. Our hope is that we collectively take our good links, wrapped in real lived context, and âpipetteđ pipette/pipetting/pipetted – (verb) Using a pipette, a tubular laboratory instrument, to transfer or measure liquids. Paraphrased from Oxford Languages definition found on Google. â the knowledge to one another.
Good parts of the internet, eh? What makes them good?
We believe the best stuff on the internet comes often as a link and word-of-mouth via real people that we trust – colleagues, friends, family, podcasters, and experts. From there, the best of these links are not shared to feeds for internet points, but instead the ideas are texted, emailed, or brought up in actual conversation with people that we respect and care about.
Not sending everyone these links. Because âwhat if they find out what I am trying to become?â
This valuable exchange of information is the backbone of virality and explains why so many people try to harness it for profit. As a result, we have become more strict with who gets to be let into our true worlds of intellectual digital pursuit, because it often is how we reach for skills or concepts we donât yet have but plan to foster.
Using these links to level-up and stay connected to helpful peers
This private knowledge-exchange deserves credit for how we stay looped-in or level up within our industry. By fostering these connections to peers, even as jobs and locations change, our respected colleagues are able to help us, often by sharing links and recommendations to tools, processes, and skills.
For example:
- Angela brought in Slack to replace Google Hangouts at a new gig in 2014 because Grey was using it as his new job. Google Hangouts was total garbage – you had to add everyone in the company to your contacts when you were new. It made for some distant and strange connections.
- Weâve used to Notion to organize everything from knowledge bases (Vertico Labs, The Atlas) to dog/house sitting instructions. Our closest connections use it for business and their lives. All of this stems from our friend Jackie sharing it with Grey in 2018.
- Grey heard about The Managerâs Path from a former manager, and has shared and discussed it with direct reports and friends to help grow their careers
- Our âplace to liveâ value has been eagerly adopted by our former colleague David, and was pieced together as a phrase by Angela from reading best practices for learning new codebases.
And yet how strange that the value of these connections were created by a web of links and the thought exchanges they provoked? Packaged and intended for warm debate or “ah ha!” inspiration – for humans, by humans.
The Pipette is a way to keep the process going, a free exchange of thoughts and hand-picked resources; stuff that we canât wait to share. We want it to be a two-way street â not just giving these precious links, but receiving them too. We would love nothing more than to be trusted enough to receive those hard-earned gems from our peers.
Weâve done this before: Real life with real people!
During our time leading engineering at The Atlas, we held weekly âmeetingsâ where anyone in the company could join to discuss technology, casually. They were not for status updates, professional credit, devilâs-advocate-style debate, or stockpiling content for the company Twitter!
Instead, people came to share articles or books they read that they typically heard about through other people they trusted: colleagues, friends, family, podcasters, or experts in their respective industries.
These conversations were often so interesting and thoughtful that they would inspire what we discussed outside of work with our own close people, influenced what we wanted to read later and to more depth, shaped what we wanted to produce next and why. For example, we stumbled upon âDigital Gardensâ, and it inspired at least 4 of us to create some version of digital gardens since! Additionally, we shared this single concept with dozens of people we felt needed to know.
These meetings were the impetus for approaching Vertico Labs as a garden (The Pipette Newsletter & Juice Box Community included) – we want only the most juicy, valuable, interesting, human-trusted good stuff on here. Money be damned! Let there be good quality 100% juice for all.
Get these good, good links in your inbox:
We hope that some of what we share in this newsletter will work its way into your conversations, thoughts, and pursuits.
Likewise, we hope you will do the same for us. Please âslide into our newsletterâ via reply and tell us what you think, what links youâve got – all ramblings encouraged! Remember this is casual, fun and thoughtful stuff – with humans we trust with our links!