Alex Komoroske

Alex Komoroske is a product strategist and founder currently building a startup to reimagine the web for the AI era. Previously: 13 years at Google (Search; DoubleClick; Chrome Open Web Platform lead for 8 years; augmented reality in Google Maps; developed a bottom-up company-wide strategy toolkit); Head of Corporate Strategy at Stripe. Creator of the “Bits and Bobs” weekly public reflection practice and the Compendium tool (17,000+ working notes). Background in Wikipedia community dynamics (undergraduate thesis). Known for highly evocative mental models: slime mold, magical duct tape, kayfabe, adjacent possible.

Key ideas

• Magical duct tape. LLMs are distilled societal intuition; cost structure between human and computing. Undermines “software is expensive to write, cheap to run.” The squishy computer corollary: design for imprecision rather than trying to eliminate it.
• Organisational kayfabe. Systemic compounding divergence from ground truth, caused by the single asymmetry “can’t make your boss look dumb.” Produces zombie organisations. Acknowledgement is the precondition for working around it.
• Slime mold principle. Coordination costs grow with n². Orgs are more like slime molds than machines; embrace emergent structure rather than fighting it.
• Gardener vs. builder. Builder: capped at effort put in. Gardener: farms for miracles via cheap seeds and compounding loops. Cover fire model: 70% legible value work creates trust for 30% seed-planting.
• Adjacent possible + North Star. Adjacent possible is small; take the step that points toward the North Star. Avoid false precision on long-range numbers.
• Strategy salons / nerd clubs. Emergent idea generation groups. Yes-and norms, curated momentum, novelty search through diverse perspectives.

Appearances

See also

• Organisational Kayfabe
• Adjacent Possible
• Product Taste
• Agentic Engineering
• Agency-Control Trade-off