Hey there! Thanks for opening this up.
After spending a few days with my family in New Jersey over July 4th weekend, it’s good to be back in action; however, I’d prefer not to have things go from zero to one hundred during these context switches - relaxing and not doing much while off and grinding like crazy while on.
I’m tired of this, and have started to make changes such as managing expectations to favor smaller, incremental bits of progress spread out over a period of time versus days packed with to-do’s. Even an hour a day can go a long way.
There’s so much to do and never a dull moment at work or outside of work. Just have to keep going, progressing across various dimensions: professional, personal, social.
(Image: cocktail at East Village Speakeasy, Angel’s Share)
Essay
Walking with Writers
A survey of writing, examining different publications by people of different backgrounds, honing in on the medium of the email newsletter.
“First, it’s important to note that writers come from all sorts of backgrounds, with Kyle the freelance writer, Ben the research analyst, and David the educator each having started in their own ways and occupying specific niches. The world of writing is so big, and we haven’t even looked into fiction yet!”
Another one of the few observational rather than reflectional posts I’ve written. I’ll be building upon all that I’ve learned from the examples mentioned in this essay as I go deeper into writing and running this newsletter.
Strategy
How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product/Market Fit
Rahul Vohra, founder of email service Superhuman, describes finding product-market-fit using a leading rather than lagging indicator: asking users questions such as “how would you feel if you could no longer use the product?”, measuring the percent who answer “very disappointed”, and building a process to engineer product/market fit.
“By surveying our users, segmenting our supporters, learning what users loved and what held them back, and then dividing a roadmap between the two, we found a methodology to increase product/market fit.”
The above represents a process akin to the scientific method in testing for success indicators prior to launching a product so as to avoid incorrectly applying the “fail fast” mentality, useful at the earliest stages but a major sink of time and money when everything is on the line.
Innovation
On Career Decisioning
With no set path after college, making big decisions such as career moves can be intimidating. These three resources below may be able to help.
Rethinking Education: The author, Nikhil, outlines challenges faced by young people today regarding higher education, such as the growing gap between the skills learned in college versus those used on the job and student debt. He then highlights potential solutions, covering co-ops and apprenticeships, 2 year programs, alternative financing via the likes of income sharing agreements, and education by employer.
As you can see, there’s a lot going on in this space. I’m a fan of co-ops, which look a lot like partnerships between schools and employers over traditional on-campus recruiting. Makes sense to tap into the unique talent pools of the schools.
The Life Figure-Outer: The author, Eric, created and actioned on a system to help him decide what to do after selling his startup. He wrote a list of options to choose and five areas he valued to match the two, creating a quantitative measure of opportunities.
A mathematical approach to optimizing on multiple variables.
Hoppin, the Job Shadowing Marketplace: Like an AirBnB but for job shadowing. Participants pay around $250 to shadow any one of the many hosts on the platform, getting a day-in-the-life view of the host’s job.
This is a fascinating concept, like the various YouTube “day in the life” series but in real life. Note how most of the hosts work for themselves, which make them much easier to shadow (no need to get permission from the higher-ups, no stringent policies). They are the ones with the more interesting-sounding jobs anyways.
On Coding Bootcamps
Coding bootcamps have up-ended traditional technical education, but they are facing their own challenges, namely, a crowded space with many alternatives, including:
Career Karma: a company helping people become software engineers by matching them with the right coding bootcamp and providing them with a network of peers, coaches, and mentors via their mobile app, free coding course, and starter kit.
Various value-adds here - learning something new online and/or making a career transition is tricky. Career Karma helps guide one alone with an established community, directional content demystifying an opaque space, and co-learning; like a guided version of Kaggle.
App Academy (plus a bit more): App Academy, the leading coding bootcamp, has its curriculum online entirely for free. The estimated time to complete is listed at 12-16 months, but there are ways to modify the course, including running a study group, which can comprise of a small group of 5-10 students studying 40-50 hours per week for 5-6 months, with a few hours each weekday and full days on weekends.
To pay over $10k, or not to (and follow this program): that is the question.
Speckbit: a program based in India offering both a free online course teaching basic Python programming and a paid accelerated learning program. Both programs offer blended-learning, a mix of online and in-person sessions.
In addition to the fact that it is based in India, Speckbit seems interesting in the blended learning, which presents a more scalable way of teaching while retaining the in-person sessions, saving on costs and time.
Trending
How to Use Notion to Set, Track, and Hit Your Goals
Nat breaks down his progress tracking system using an online productivity tool, Notion, along the lines of annual, quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily focuses.
My comments:
Having a centralized place to store goals is extremely important for one to refer back to
However, this type of system is better for someone who knows where the end state is - it's a matter of mapping everything backwards to get there. Not so much for discovery, of finding what to do
My system involves "steering the ship" in 90 days, planning only for such period
It's great that Nat included time for annual, quarterly, and monthly reviews. Reflection then helps iterate the next cycle
It might help me feel less overwhelmed if I did take a step back and plan everything, but I’m on a roll here with this momentum, so not going to stop. We’ll see how this goes…
Thoughts
to hustle or not to hustle
This is more for those who are in positions and situations conducive to pursuing what one cares about, for going off the traditional path will mean less standard social interactions (the lone founder working on a laptop in the cafe, anyone?), most likely less monetary compensation, and a need to appreciate the process.
“And here I am, fully aware of the ability to be anything, floating and drowning in this obscurity. By the end of the day, the challenge is practicing radical self-awareness. The fear of self deception and not living a meaningful life hit us a lot earlier than the usual mid-life crisis.”
There’s not much mention of how to find what one truly cares about. What stuck out for me: a distaste for the traditional education system drew me to the concepts of side projects, new forms of education, and online bloggers.
Talk to me about startups!
I’m looking to get exposure to as many business ideas as possible and give feedback from a venture capital perspective - if you or anyone you know are working on something and would like to talk, please get in touch.
Find Me
That’s it for this issue!
Thoughts and feedback? Comment on this post, email me, or dm on Twitter.
Not subscribed yet? Sign up here.
-Leo