Snippets

Stock and Flow

Flow is the feed. It’s the posts and the tweets. It’s the stream of daily and sub-daily updates that remind peo­ple that you exist. 

Stock is the durable stuff. It’s the con­tent you pro­duce that’s as inter­est­ing in two months (or two years) as it is today. It’s what peo­ple dis­cover via search. It’s what spreads slowly but surely, build­ing fans over time.

…flow is ascen­dant these days, for obvi­ous reasons—but we neglect stock at our own peril.

Flow is a tread­mill, and you can’t spend all of your time run­ning on the tread­mill. Well, you can. But then one day you’ll get off and look around and go: Oh man. I’ve got noth­ing here.

…we all got really good at flow, really fast. But flow is ephemeral. Stock sticks around. Stock is cap­i­tal. Stock is protein.

- Robin Sloan