One Finds Limits By Pushing Them

Welcome to The Art of The Impossible, the weekly newsletter where I unearth five pieces of content which I hope will both inspire and embolden you.

When I was in the depths of working in startups, I always wished I could find some respite and inspiration on my weekends, and this newsletter is the thing I wish existed so I do hope you enjoy it.

A quick word from this week’s sponsor…

New Report: How Startups Hit $1M ARR Faster with OKRs

New data from 200 early-stage teams shows OKRs aren’t just a framework - they’re a growth accelerator. The 2025 Startup OKR Report reveals how small teams are using OKRs to stay focused, align faster, and hit major milestones - often in under 90 days.

Read the full report here.

PODCAST

Stripe has started a podcast and the first episode is full of great takeaways. Susan Li of Meta—the youngest chief financial officer of a Fortune 100 company—joins Stripe co-founder John Collison to talk about capital allocation, managing investors, and how Mark Zuckerberg has evolved over the 17 years of working together.

Watch/listen here.

QUOTE

“One finds limits by pushing them.”

Herbert A Simon

INTERVIEW

Melinda French Gates

Bloomberg host Emily Chang meets Melinda French Gates in Seattle to discuss Melinda’s life and career history from her childhood to now.

A maths nerd and the daughter of an aerospace engineer who worked on the Apollo program, Melinda was encouraged early to learn to code. She then joined Microsoft in 1987 and in this interview, she discusses some of her work there which although it may have been deemed a failed experiment at the time, perhaps she was just too early?

They also discuss her philanthropy work including founding The Giving Pledge, the importance of female empowerment and how to overcome imposter syndrome.

Watch the full interview here.

READ

Herbert Simon: The Polymath Who Taught Us How to Think

To mark what would have been Herbert A Simon’s birthday on 16th June, I wrote a piece about him.

A computer scientist, an economist, a psychologist, political scientist and Nobel Laureate - his life’s work redefined how we understand decision-making, learning, and intelligence itself, and his extensive work influenced the fields of computer science, economics, and cognitive psychology.

Read more for free here and learn how his life and work touched so many important fields today.

Also, worth checking out this on Simon too.

WATCH

This Andrej Karpathy talk at YC Combinator’s AI Startup School this week is getting a lot of attention and there’s a good reason why. Drawing on his work at Stanford, Tesla and OpenAI, Andrej sees a shift underway as software is changing… again.

We’ve entered the era of “Software 3.0,” where natural language becomes the new programming interface and models do the rest. He explores what this shift means for developers, users, and the design of software itself—arguing that we're not just using new tools, but building a new kind of computer.

Watch the full talk here. Slides here.

As always, thank you so much for reading this newsletter and for listening to the podcast. If you have a minute spare, I would so appreciate a review of the pod or a heart on this newsletter - both help others to find it and my goal is to inspire as many people as possible with the stories I share.

Thank you and I hope you have a lovely weekend.

Danielle