Newsletter 112: A look back on a million views
In the last year alone, my LinkedIn content grew to over 2.5 million views, earning me a “Top Voice” badge.
Every now and then, I dive back into the content that resonated the most to uncover patterns and to see just how much my style has changed.
Here you go a selection of things I wrote which caught my eye.
Enjoy!
Once in your life, live as cheaply as you can
A while ago, I came across a piece of advice from Kevin Kelly (the founder of Wired) that initially gave me pause:
“When you are young, spend at least 6 months to 1 year living as cheaply as you can, owning as little as you possibly can, eating beans and rice in a tiny room or tent. That way, any time you have to risk something in the future, you won't be afraid of the 'worst-case' scenario."
At first, I was skeptical.
But my perspective shifted after moving to Singapore.
I kept meeting people with a way better income than mine, yet perpetually anxious about finances. Always stressing out about money.
That experience helped me understand the value of living as cheaply as you can, owning as little as you possibly can, at least once in your life.
At my lowest, I lived on ~290 USD / month, which covered my rent, food, and drinks in one of Europe’s most expensive countries — Denmark.
As a result, I rarely feel concerned about money the way many people do. Not because I have made it, not at all. Simply because I have developed a resilience that’s not rooted in external factors.
The memory of what it’s like not to have much is fresh.
At the same time, I have come to understand how, even if my income decreases significantly, I will be able to bounce back because I have done it several times.
Thinking through all that is not a pleasant thought experiment, but it gives me a bit of peace of mind.
This chain of thoughts leads me to another quote, this time by Naval: "If you have two choices to make, and they're relatively equal choices, take the path that is more difficult and more painful in the short term.”
It turns out that taking the hard path early in life pays back.
Death by a thousand cuts
Startups do not die because of a lack of resources; most suffer from death by a thousand cuts.
When you are building a startup, you are likely running hundreds of experiments across products, target audiences, markets, messaging, business model, and hiring at the same time.
The vast majority of the experiments fail.
Every tiny failure is a nail in the coffin.
As these setbacks accumulate, they begin to erode your resolve. Morale dips. The team loses its sense of conviction and direction, experiencing what is essentially a death by a thousand-cuts.
The antidote to this downward spiral is to win big every once in a while.
You do not need to get everything right. But achieving substantial success every now and then is crucial — be it a surge in traffic, a newfound channel bearing fruit, a new feature sparking visible excitement among your users, securing a substantial client, an uptick in user engagement, reduction in churn, etc.
Each tiny win serves as a validation that your judgment is right. This means that, on a long horizon, you can navigate the idea maze.
The more wins you get, the closer you are to product market fit (PMF).
Upon reaching PMF, you'll notice a shift.
Things begin to click into place even when many parts of the experience are broken.
The value delivered to users overshadows the minor inconveniences.
Your goal is to reach that stage.
Meeting founders at their third or fourth pivot, it's evident how drained they are. The thousand cuts have taken their toll.
It’s very hard to recover from such a state.
That’s why you must do everything possible to engineer small wins.
- Concentrate your efforts on a few channels with strong conviction.
- Focus on one persona and work intimately closer with them to uncover what they need—then, obsessed with building a great product.
- Study what has worked well for others, and do not be afraid to borrow best practices.
Most importantly, develop a product intuition to guide you toward what is important.
The more wins you accumulate, the better your morale becomes.
Which leads to better output.
Which leads to traction.
Before you know it, you have reached PMF.
Suddenly, you're the talk of the town. Talent finds you on their own. Potential clients are knocking on the door. The media wants to write about you. VCs start reaching out. Things get a bit lighter, and you are ready for even bigger challenges.
You've set in motion a momentum that paves the way for building a great business.
How to play the content creation game?
Every post you create should be designed with three thoughts in mind:
1. Build quality relationships
2. Illustrate how you think
3. Deliver value
The number of followers is secondary to who follows you and who engages with your content.
Topics I like to talk about revolve around what it takes to build a startup from 0 to 1, the challenges of building high-performance teams/overall managing talent, navigating the business landscape of Southeast Asia, and my personal health journey.
I do my best to keep the content short and relatable. That means I intentionally leave a lot of context out but try to compensate by using jargon my target audience understands and appreciates.
This is how I envision the ideal journey for my content:
1. Someone resonates with my latest post.
2. They click on my profile and see we have common connections, aka we hang out in similar circles.
3. That pushes them to explore some of my older content.
4. This leads to a higher degree of trust.
5. They share my content in their sub-communities/circles.
If the person is thoughtful and like-minded, I follow back and engage with their content. That means I show up daily and write thoughtful comments to help them with unique perspectives and engagement.
Do that long enough, and you start seeing opportunities. People give you access to invest in startups, speak at events, co-write content, advice, fractional roles, etc.
What to avoid?
- Negative opinions — while constructive criticism is valuable, at times, that would be a waste of your time; when that happens, I simply unfollow/block people. It's a lot more fun to play positive-sum games.
- Showing off — the more you do it, the less people trust you get.
- Sharing content without showing your unique thinking/perspective — that’s a barrier to building quality relationships with great people.
Your ultimate goal should be to expand your "surface area of luck."
Play the game long enough, and the benefits will inevitably reach you.
Random thoughts I found on the internet
1. Growth emerges from discomfort. Real learning takes place when you step outside of your comfort zone.
2. Trust and communication are opposites. The more you trust someone, the less you need to coordinate.
3. Delegation is over-rated, micromanagement is under-rated. Great founders reinforce a high bar of quality by continuously solving problems at the frontlines.
4. Acting on imperfect information has absurd compounding power. Perhaps that’s the one most important skill required to navigate the idea maze.
5. Positioning yourself as an “expert” has the opposite effect. True understanding is demonstrated by distilling complexity into simplicity, not by securing several degrees. Making complex things simple is really hard.
6. Making money isn’t about extracting value from others. It’s about adding so much value to other people's lives that there is value left over for you when you're done.
7. Writing is how you find good ideas, not just a good way to express what you are already thinking.
8. People call you crazy when you take an unconventional path until you prove them wrong. Then, you will be deemed lucky. Either way, people will like you more when you work towards something, not when you have it.
9. Big co-employees are domesticated animals; startup people are wild animals.
10. Being an optimist is a competitive advantage.
Be someone’s first check
Often, when you meet exceptional people, it is natural to expect that they will eventually start a company.
It’s just the natural way of things.
Smart people are aware that they are positioned to do great things and will inevitably pursue their dreams someday.
One of the easiest ways to bond with such people is to simply offer to be their first check when the time comes.
Offering to write the first check not only cements the bond but also conveys a powerful message:
You recognize their potential.
You are ready to back them, regardless of what they decide to work on.
Every single person who has made such an offer has left an indelible mark on my memory, and I find myself wanting to help them with whatever I can.
I cannot think of a better way to start a professional relationship.
Some thoughts on AI as a product
There is no doubt that ChatGPT crushed it using one of the simplest interfaces possible — text-based chat.
Yet, the more time I spend talking to people outside tech, the more I realize how intimidated they are by that interface.
The average person cannot fathom what questions to ask, what is possible, whether the information is credible, and how to integrate AI into their workflows.
That’s not surprising because if you do not have a tech background, you don’t have any basic idea of how those models work and what you can do with them.
The better your understanding of the fundamentals, the more use cases you are able to unlock.
But the average person looks at the empty chat and does not know where to start. Even after some experimentation, they end up being impressed but still unsure how to use that in their day-to-day lives.
When I travel across Southeast Asia, I meet many people who are either skeptical about AI or simply confused about how to use it.
In such conversations, I find myself thinking about what will unlock more value for the general population.
The question seems to transition from how AI works to how to use it in a productive and intuitive way.
What will help us unlock the next wave of value for the average, non-technical user?
Now, this is not an easy question. But I do have a hypothesis.
While initial use cases centered around generic chat, we're now witnessing first attempts in interfaces tailored to address specific problems.
Consider Perplexity's ability to answer any question with credibility. In many instances better than what Google can do for you.
Or how Consensus distills research studies, highlighting key data points critical for evaluating a paper.
The interface design adapts to my requirements.
The benefit of this approach is that the time to value is shorter, the solution is more intuitive, and most importantly, trustworthy.
However, transitioning between different experiences presents its own set of challenges.
The next wave of AIs will be more fluid and span out different use cases that look and feel quite differently from one another.
This could simplify complexity and foster wider adoption.
The top layer would morph to meet specific needs, while the underlying LLM might be the same.
This allows hyper-personalization and contextualization, paving the way for breakthrough applications in sectors traditionally less tech-oriented, such as healthcare, construction, and logistics.
Play positive-sum games
I once heard about a billionaire who would always request the other party to draft the first version of any potential agreement.
His logic was simple: if the initial proposal was excessively one-sided, he would avoid doing business with them.
The rationale is that if a potential partner aims to claim most of the value for themselves, leaving you with less, collaboration would never make sense.
The earlier you kill it, the better.
This approach contrasts two mindsets:
1. Zero-sum thinking: extracting maximum value from others, striving for the upper hand in every deal.
2. Positive-sum thinking is about adding so much value to everyone you work with that there is value left over for you when you're done.
I wish more people played a positive-sum game.
Ambition comes with two options
Every ambitious person I know wrestles with two opposing dreams:
1. Build a boring business. Something that’s proven and makes money. Retire early, build beautiful memories with your family, travel the world, and enjoy life to the fullest.
2. Build the biggest building in town. Pick the hardest problem you can think of. Pour everything you have for years. Give up on status and money, but make the world a tiny bit better place in the process, and if you get lucky, you might make a lot of money, too.
Both paths have their pros and cons.
What they share is the immense difficulty in achieving success in either.
We are fortunate to even have the option to choose.
The challenge lies not just in reaching the goal but in committing to one thing and then giving 200% effort for years to come.