The internet is full of quotes (and Tweets) from everyone’s favorite investor-turned-philosopher, Naval Ravikant. One I came across recently speaks to the way people approach living their lives: Life is a single player game. You’re born alone. You’re going to die alone. All of your interpretations are alone. All your memories are alone. You’re gone in three generations and no …
re-thinking risk
I was interviewed on The Video Community podcast recently, and the topic of risk came up. It comes up a lot in interviews with entrepreneurs, because starting your own business or working for yourself is risky. But is it? We’ve all been shown different paths. Growing up, going through college, or talking to a mentor…we are constantly being shown “the …
embracing acute stress
It’s late July, and I have distant memories of an intense month of May. I remember it being intense, but at the time, I probably would have described it as “very stressful.” That’s the benefit of time — as time passes, I don’t truly remember what felt, in the moment, “very stressful” and difficult. I remember it being a highly …
toxic environments
I woke up with a ton of energy and enthusiasm yesterday. I had an open morning, a lot of time to myself to create things, and it looked like it was going to be a B-E-A-UTIFUL day! Fast forward a few blissful, coffee-fueled hours, and I was in a fog. I was recording some podcast material with Eric, and I …
we don’t care what’s behind the scenes
There’s an adage in the startup world that says “everything costs 3x as much and takes 3x as long as you think it will.” It’s one of those things we hear and believe, we intellectualize it, but until you’re in it…you don’t quite understand. Or feel the pain. I am deep into a few projects I can’t wait to share …
your ambition as a domino
I think we all played with dominos as a kid. There’s something satisfying about setting up a perfect design, then knocking over the first piece and seeing a chain reaction take effect. But this week I came across the actual math and physics behind dominos, and it kind of blew my mind. Usually we see a chain of identical dominos falling …
biding or buying your time
A friend of mine shared a conversation he had with a filmmaker for Netflix. The filmmaker said that he focused on spending 40% of his time on paid, commercial work, and 60% of his time on his own creative projects. Ironically, the creative projects were what led to most of his clients anyway. I’ve been thinking about this story more and …
from total bust to #1 on Hacker News in under 24 hours
This past week, Eric and I released the second issue of our digital publication, the update. The update is a quarterly publication of editorials, trends, and stories happening outside of Silicon Valley — following in the same vein as our podcast, upside. It takes quite a bit of work to produce. We source and edit editorials from guest contributors, write …
going out of your depth
I felt really dumb this week. Every now and then, I find my way into an event that makes me feel like a total fraud. And this week that was the first annual Capital Camp. Capital Camp is put on by a couple big names in the finance world — Patrick O’Shaughnessy (host of the Invest Like the Best podcast …
it takes time to become technically good
Last week I wrote about how easy it is to see the exceptional. The example I gave was Evan Spiegel, the then-23-year-old founder of Snapchat, or Mark Zuckerberg…but there is a standard distribution curve for ability in anything you’re interested in. Those at the far right of the distribution curve – people with abnormal results – are very few, but …