Love this post from Steve Schlafman. I was talking about this feeling a couple weeks ago when I was at a conference with about 150 folks. You could just feel that the folks running the event put an enormous amount of care into the whole thing. I just felt (and trusted) i was in good hands.
Looking back, I realize the businesses I’ve loved most all share the same quality: cariño. Apple. Patagonia. Union Square Hospitality. A24. gestalten. You can feel it immediately, and you can feel when it’s missing just as quickly.
Source: The People Want Cariño
Side note: His new blog is a good example of a guy moving off the main platforms (i.e. Substack) for some of his work. His new project “Field Notes” is a less-formal, less transactional way of writing out in the open (let’s just call it what it is: a blog). I love this approach because it is, at it’s core, generous. Instead of seeking mainly to extract value out of the system (through ad revenue, subscriptions, clout, leads) he’s putting value out, first. This was /is the spirit of the open web I originally fell in love with.