Insurgents are basically insane by society’s standards, anathema to the status quo, and often destructive. But they’re the source of everything new in the world.

From the moment a company is founded, always by insurgents, incentives to short-term survival attract gatekeepers, who naturally fear and try to isolate new radicals, then tirelessly work to grow the team of more gatekeepers. On a long enough time horizon, the gatekeepers always take the company. Then, it dies.

Gmail, a firebomb happily tossed at the status quo, was fundamentally an insurgent product. It could not have been built at Google even ten years later.

https://www.piratewires.com/p/paul-buchheit-interview-mike-solana