A Matter Of Clarity

Clarity is leverage. Writing is how I earn it.

Last week I tried to explain a knotty idea to a friend and watched it fall apart mid-sentence. In my head it was obvious; out loud it wasn’t. That’s why I write. On the page there’s nowhere to hide behind tone or momentum. It is just the idea and whether it stands.

Jeff Bezos understood this when he replaced slides with six-page memos at Amazon. A narrative forces you to decide what matters, connect the logic, and own the trade-offs. Bullet points can skate past the hard parts; prose cannot.

As the line often attributed to Richard Feynman goes, “If you can’t explain something simply, you don’t understand it.” Writing applies that test in public. When I truly grasp a thing, sentences link cleanly and the argument carries itself. When I don’t, the draft exposes it. That honesty stings, then helps.

So I write daily, even if no one else reads it. It forces the questions I might otherwise dodge: What am I really saying? Why do I believe it? Often the “idea” turns out to be a vague impression that dissolves once pinned down. Humbling. Useful. Necessary.

A small hat-tip to Jay-Z’s Moment of Clarity: different context, same mission. I live between worlds - 5 Hertford Street dinners and hoodie-and-laptop deal flow. Banker training made me process-driven; venture keeps me comfortable with ambiguity. Writing is the bridge. It lets rigour meet creativity without one cancelling the other.

As a angel I required a one-page note before any call: the problem, why now, the mechanism of value, and the single riskiest assumption. If it couldn’t fit on a page, the conversation rarely fixed it. Writing first saved everyone time and surfaced the real work.

I don’t write because I have the answers. I write to find them. In a noisy world, clarity compounds.

Founders, write things down. You’ll be surprised how much momentum simple, written clarity gives your mission.