AI workflows are technically impressive, but there’s a deeper reason people are really amped about AI agents. This isn’t just new tech, it’s new psychology.
Until now, very few people have known what it feels like to delegate to total competency.
If you manage great people, or lead great teams, you know how it feels to put someone in charge who will get it done, get it done right, and get it done without drama. That kind of delegation — that depth of trust — is pure joy.
Delegating to competency lets you forget about it completely. That’s real leverage.
And now anyone can experience that. What was rare is now widely distributed. Everyone can feel it. And it feels fucking great. That’s a big reason why the excitement is real, and fully justified.
My folks are in town visiting us for a couple months so we rented them a house nearby.
It’s new construction. No one has lived in it yet. It’s amped up with state of the art systems. You know, the ones with touchscreens of various sizes, IoT appliances, and interfaces that try too hard.
And it’s terrible. What a regression.
The lights are powered by Control4. And require a demo to understand how to use the switches, understand which ones control what, and to be sure not to hit THAT ONE because it’ll turn off all the lights in the house when you didn’t mean to. Worse.
The TV is the latest Samsung which has a baffling UI just to watch CNN. My parents aren’t idiots, but definitely feel like they’re missing something obvious. They aren’t — TVs have simply gotten worse. You don’t turn them on anymore, you boot them up.
The Miele dishwasher is hidden flush with the counters. That part is fine, but here’s what isn’t: It wouldn’t even operate the first time without connecting it with an app. This meant another call to the house manager to have them install an app they didn’t know they needed either. An app to clean some peanut butter off a plate? For serious? Worse.
Thermostats... Nest would have been an upgrade, but these other propriety ones from some other company trying to be nest-like are baffling. Round touchscreens that take you into a dark labyrinth of options just to be sure it’s set at 68. Or is it 68 now? Or is that what we want it at, but it’s at 72? Wait... What? Which number is this? Worse.
The alarm system is essentially a 10” iPad bolted to the wall that has the fucking weather forecast on it. And it’s bright! I’m sure there’s a way to turn that off, but then the screen would be so barren that it would be filled with the news instead. Why can’t the alarm panel just be an alarm panel? Worse.
And the lag. Lag everywhere. Everything feels a beat or two behind. Everything. Lag is the giveaway that the system is working too hard for too little. Real-time must be the hardest problem.
Now look... I’m no luddite. But this experience is close to conversion therapy. Tech can make things better, but I simply can’t see in these cases. I’ve heard the pitches too — you can set up scenes and one button can change EVERYTHING. Not buying it. It actually feels primitive, like we haven’t figured out how to make things easy yet. That some breakthrough will eventually come when you can simply knock a switch up or down and it’ll all makes sense. But we haven’t evolved to that point yet.
It’s really the contrast that makes it alarming. We just got back from a vacation in Montana. Rented a house there. They did have a fancy TV — seems those can’t be avoided these days — but everything else was old school and clear. Physical up/down light switches in the right places. Appliances without the internet. Buttons with depth and physically-confirmed state change rather than surfaces that don’t obviously register your choice. More traditional round rotating Honeywell thermostats that are just clear and obvious. No tours, no instructions, no questions, no fearing you’re going to do something wrong, no wondering how something works. Useful and universally clear. That’s human that’s modern.
Have you noticed that every issue and idea tracking tool you loved slowly morphed into boring, sluggish, corporate bloatware?
Trello put on 40 pounds of cruft. Jira started charging by the migraine. Asana tried to become everything to everyone. GitHub Issues slipped into a steady state of decline. The whole category is a 20 car pileup of complexity.
Time to route around that mess.
Today we’re introducing Fizzy. Kanban as it should be, not as it has been.
Fizzy is a fresh take on cards and columns, with a few twists, human-nature inspired defaults, and a vibrant interface that’s the opposite of the bland and boring software the industry has been flinging at you for years.
Kanban has been around since the 1940s, and Trello brought it into the mainstream in 2011. Since then, some version of column-based kanban-style organization has found its way into any collaboration tool worth its salt.
But most have over salted the dish.
What was simple is now complicated. What was clear is now cluttered. What just worked now takes work.
Fizzy presses reset, reconsiders what really matters, and presents a refreshing way to kanban that just feels right. It’s friendly, colorful, straightforward, and fast as hell.
We still use Basecamp for our big, intensive projects, but lately we’ve been reaching for Fizzy to run the smaller ones. It’s perfect for tracking bugs, issues, and ideas, and it shines for lighter, self-contained workflows like podcasts or video production.
We didn’t expect it, but Fizzy’s so good it might even cannibalize Basecamp on the lighter side of project management. We’d be thrilled.
How much is it? It’s not much for so much.
Everyone gets 1000 cards for free. Beyond that, we’ll host your account for just $20/month for unlimited cards and unlimited users. One price for all and everything. No tiers, no “contact us.” No pricing chart at all — just a price tag, like on a pair of jeans.
And here’s a surprise... Fizzy is open source! If you’d prefer not to pay us, or you want to customize Fizzy for your own use, you can run it yourself for free forever. Have a great idea? Submit a PR to contribute to the code base and improve the product for everyone. It’s the best of all worlds. No excuses.
Every idea comes back around. It’s time for take two on kanban. Fizzy’s our hat in the ring.
Let’s make this platform insanely great, together. Come on in!
Visit fizzy.do to check it out and sign up for free!
There are plenty of opportunities to invite people to your product ahead of the formal launch. Alpha, beta, etc.
My preference is only right at the end. Typically a week or two before we go live. When the product is in the very last throes of beta, barely beta. Essentially v0.99.
At this stage we’re not really looking for deep fundamental feedback, although we’ll get some. We’re going with the version we’re launching, so it doesn’t really help to soak in second guessing.
The main advantage to letting people in a bit ahead of launch is mostly for basic hygiene. It forces you to clean up, tie up loose ends, get some lingering stuff right you’ve been sitting on until now.
It’s like inviting guests to your house for dinner. Hopefully you keep a fairly tidy house, but if you know guests are coming by, there’s just another level of cleaning and tidying and prep you tend to do. All those little messes you could live with become things you just don’t want other people to see, experience, or notice. So you take care of them.
Guests are forcing functions. They help you do those last few things you know you need to do, but didn’t until now.
The Concept2 RowErg is one of the highest quality products I've ever used.
Had one for years now, feels like it'll last another 100.
Simple construction, durable materials, low maintenance. Comically easy to assemble. Tips up for storage, leaving a tiny footprint.
The PM5 display is simple B&W, no touchscreen, just a few easy-to-use-when-sweaty rubberized buttons. Just two D batteries that seem to last forever. No plugs, no charging, no cables needed.
Roll it around on wheels, steady once flat. Perfectly grips the ground, no wobble, no rattle, no movement.
The whole thing is just right. I've rarely encountered a product so well considered. They knew where to stop.
To me, this is a pinnacle product. The model to build towards. No matter what you make, aim to make it as well as the Concept 2 RowErg.
And all that for under $1000. One of the few products I've paid this much for that feels like a steal.
New products don’t need to be revolutionary, life-changing, or disruptive breakthroughs to succeed.
Entire categories can roll downhill, gathering complexity as they go. Each product one-upping the next until more becomes too much. The cycle feeds itself, never satiated. Competitors locked in a loop of mutual destruction through perpetual over-improvement.
When that happens, the door cracks open for something new.
The newcomer doesn’t have to meet the others where they are. It just has to feel right — like someone opened the curtains and let the sun back in. The type of product that lets people exhale and say, “finally!”
Not groundbreaking. Just grounded. Standing where everyone else forgot to.
