What matters more to you—form or function?
A decade in advertising taught me to worship aesthetics. I saw countless wow-ideas get ruined when marketers asked for “small changes”: “Change the font, make the logo bigger, blur the tone.”
Aesthetics is why you can’t confuse eroticism with pornography.
Then I spent twenty years working with entrepreneurs. They rebuilt companies, launched startups, and shipped products—all under the banner of “Good enough is good enough.”
A founder isn’t into masturbation. He wants real sex—with the Unknown.
Look around and you’ll see people split into two tribes: high fashion vs. tactical gear, Michelin dining vs. protein bar, feature film vs. commercial, bodybuilding vs. powerlifting, poodle vs. Malinois, poem vs. checklist, Aikido vs. MMA.
Stick with one too long and you develop tunnel vision. You start to dismiss the other: you worship function and sneer at form. Or the reverse.
But if you look closer, poetry does perform a function. Just not as obvious as a hair dryer manual. And tactical gear does have a style—its own kind of grace.
In alchemy, they believed the vessel and its contents were inseparable. The inner needed a very specific outer for transformation to succeed.
Harmony happens when function dances with form. And they spin so wildly, you forget which is which. And that’s okay. Because life can be taken apart—but it’s always lived as a whole.
Yours sincerely,
-Alexander
About me:
As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.
How can I help you?
If you've long been trying to understand what is limiting you and/or your business and how to finally give important changes a push, then The Catalyst Session is designed specifically for you. Book it here.