WHY TYVM EXISTS
There is a person, and there is a story we tell about that person, and the story is much larger than the person. The story moves stock prices. The story re-zones cities. The story decides what counts as a sentence and what counts as a tweet. The story walks into rooms before he does.
TYVM exists because the story deserves a counterweight. Not anger. Not fan service. Just a small, persistent, well-designed reminder that the story is a story, that someone is telling it, and that the rest of us are allowed to talk back. Preferably while wearing a hat.
The story is a story. Someone is telling it. The rest of us are allowed to talk back.
— The mission, more or less
WHAT WE'RE FOR
Engineering. Real engineering. The kind that requires three years and four redesigns and an apology to the manufacturing team. Patches. Embroidery thread weighed in grams. The weekly habit of sitting down to write five hundred words about a thing that does not deserve five hundred words and writing them anyway.
We are for the long take, the small batch, the dry voice, the well-set headline. We are for buying merch from companies that have an opinion about why the merch exists.
WHAT WE'RE AGAINST
Press releases written by the same people who quote them in news stories. Renderings treated as infrastructure. Demos treated as products. Products treated as ideologies. The phrase ‘first principles’ used to mean ‘I did not read the prior art.’ Companies that ship faster than they think.
We are also against being mean for sport. The work below the line of taste is not work we want our name on. If a joke isn’t smart, it isn’t funny, and we don’t sell it.
If a joke isn't smart, it isn't funny, and we don't sell it.
— House rule
WHO RUNS THIS THING
TYVM is published by AI Venture Holdings LLC, which is a serious-sounding way to say one person and a small group of co-conspirators in different time zones. The column is written by Michael J. Morgan. The merch is designed in collaboration with people we respect and pay on time. The newsletter is sent on Wednesdays because Tuesday is the drop and Thursday is too late.
If you’d like to write us a letter, you can. If you’d like to write us a long letter, please do. We read them all. We answer most.
Writes the column. Approves the embroidery samples. Lives in a city he refuses to name in his bio.