Earlier this week, I got a phone call from my mother. Usually when she calls, I can tell within the first 5 seconds if she’s in a good mood or not.
This time was no different- she was calling to give me a message that comes bi-annually:
Stop screwing up your life, son!
This was one of many phone calls I’ve received in the last six years, which basically is some variation of her venting her frustrations at me not having followed an established career path.
I left a cushy consulting gig very early on in my career- and my Tiger mom, bless her, never fully recovered from that shock.
Talking about Tiger moms- the CEO of cognition labs, a sexy new AI startup that’s pretty much putting software engineers out of a job (see video below)- I heard on a podcast that he’s not told his mom that he dropped out of Harvard to build his company.
If he can’t make his parents happy- what chance do I have?
The younger me would have felt sorry for myself. I might have even convinced myself that I was undergoing grave difficulties that most others couldn’t understand.
It is the human condition, after all, to see your own problems as greater than others’.
Today, though, felt different. In fact, my day went on perfectly fine after that.
Which is why I wanted to write this short essay- because this is a remarkable change, even from last year.
Maybe some of you might find it useful.
Follow Your Curiosity.
I instinctively have followed the maxim “Do projects that satisfy your curiosity” in my career so far.
Early on in my career- it was “can I sell something?”, “can I build a marketing plan?” and so on.
Today it’s- can I build a Go-To-Market function in a startup with very little sales and marketing support?
I have ended up mostly working in stretch roles where I learn tremendously- but where success isn’t guaranteed.
So far- success (or at least what I envisaged it to be when I was younger) hasn’t come. Only learnings.
And that’s what terrifies people around me (and sometimes me too).
I really like a quote by Shaan Puri, who said something on the lines of “An entrepreneur might fail in the short term, but on a decade-long horizon, almost none of the entrepreneurs fail. They almost always have success eventually.”
The key is to remain in the game for ten years.
That’s what I remind myself from time to time.
No pressure, low expectations and focusing on the task at hand.
A lot of my friends are materially ahead in life but don’t have the same amount of satisfaction from the way they spend their time.
I see it as a trade-off. I might have a few less things, but I am excited to wake up on Mondays. That’s my win.
That is what I, at some level, have become really stubborn about- being able to work on projects where I follow my curiosity and learn a disproportionate number of skills.
Projects I’m Working On
Currently, I have 3 projects along my day job:
The first one is called All Bicycle Rider, which is a cycling website that I started a couple of years ago that I’ve worked on off and on, but I really want to make it into a brand, and I will be focusing on building that out this year.
The second is this newsletter.
This is essentially a place where I write about anything and everything that I’m curious about. It is essentially me as a media property.
The third project is Horizon Geopolitics- working on it with my friend Ross who has mastered making short-form videos that pop on social media.
I’ve been working with him for the last couple of months to make it into a real business, to build a product roadmap, to build a content roadmap, and also commercialize it by getting sponsors and by building our own digital products.
Mindset For Year 5 of Entrepreneurship
The best things that have happened to me, happened because I focused on what I could control.
At the end of the day, you are the arbiter of whether or not you lived a meaningful life.
At the end of the day, you are the one you’ll spend the most time in your life with.
We’re all in a single-player game, as Naval says.
Fear and anxiety are friends- to be used as signals. Not by avoiding them- but looking at them directly.
Onwards.