Baseten textbook proves high bar beats speed-quality tradeoff
A new team member produced a reviewed, hand-edited textbook, then added European printing, custom metal bookmarks, Fortnum & Mason tea, and a museum event with hand-delivered boxes. The takeaway is that value and visible human effort matter more than velocity, and the same standard applies when nobody is watching. For your side projects and agent workflows, this is a reminder that intentional choices compound faster than shipping slop.
https://x.com/anaskar/status/2060373850185982231
On quality:
My first day at @baseten, the very first person I met was @philipkiely on the AI Education team. He told me he's working on a textbook. An absurd thing to say on the surface. I asked for an early pdf version that I started to read on the plane ride home. It was reviewed for accuracy, comprehensiveness, and clarity by dozens of people across multiple disciplines and hand-edited. The book became a useful reference for me and deeply accessible to someone new to the space and something I still return to often.
A few months later, the book was complete. Printed by an old school shop in Europe, the cover, charts, and diagrams meticulously crafted pixel-by-pixel with @lucas_dehaas's hands. Sourcing the printer and getting the proofs just right added many weeks to the launch beyond the original deadline.
Then, it was time for the launch. The team wanted to get the books in the hands of ML researchers and the broader tech community. Instead of shipping it via USPS, a gift box was custom printed and hand-delivered. @ad0rnai, who was mere days into her first week at Baseten, sourced a custom metal bookmark, tea from Fortnum & Mason, and created an art deco experience that culminated in an event at The American Bookbinders Museum (planned end-to-end down to the last custom gobo detail for lighting the sidewalks by Ashley).
None of this needed to be done. But it was an ambitious idea executed with an extremely high quality bar under a reasonable timeframe and budget. Execution wins across the board. And a no-brainer for leadership to sign off on.
People assume the market prizes speed and therefore marketers have to make a tradeoff between speed and quality. It often degenerates to slop to keep up with the Joneses. I believe this is a false dichotomy.
I think the market actually prizes value received and human effort. And it's worth taking the big swings. You don't have to make a tradeoff, you just have to be intentional with your choices.
But it's important to keep the quality bar extremely high, both when the world is watching your effort and, more importantly, when nobody is watching what you're doing.
By the way, none of the above-mentioned people had ever done a project like this. They just kept standards high and figured it out together, thinking how to deliver maximal value to the reader. And the results spoke for themselves.
📷: @katedeyneka
May 29, 2026 View on X →