Own the quote; own the economy
Notes on token pairing as a business model
You can practice thinking
I always thought I couldn’t think in front of a computer. I was wrong. I just started this new practice to write for insights from my friend Rami. It’s called free writing: open a blank page, start a timer, and write about the topic until time’s up. I remember a couple of rules from Farza’s writing (a founder who built a fantastic simple text editor for this purpose):No editingDon’t stop to think or structure; keep writingThe intention is to create a stream of thought. It reminds me of David ...
You can practice thinking
I always thought I couldn’t think in front of a computer. I was wrong. I just started this new practice to write for insights from my friend Rami. It’s called free writing: open a blank page, start a timer, and write about the topic until time’s up. I remember a couple of rules from Farza’s writing (a founder who built a fantastic simple text editor for this purpose):No editingDon’t stop to think or structure; keep writingThe intention is to create a stream of thought. It reminds me of David ...
Hardware without the balance sheet
Crypto excels at creating specialized hardware. I recently spoke with David, a founder who in under three years has influenced the creation of 84 solar farms generating 20MW of energy and about $20M in revenue. Glow, his company, uses crypto incentives to boost nearly profitable solar farms. His token mechanism has created farms that wouldn't exist otherwise. He core point in the conversation centered about the idea that that crypto has PMF for creating specialized hardware that meets arbitra...
Hardware without the balance sheet
Crypto excels at creating specialized hardware. I recently spoke with David, a founder who in under three years has influenced the creation of 84 solar farms generating 20MW of energy and about $20M in revenue. Glow, his company, uses crypto incentives to boost nearly profitable solar farms. His token mechanism has created farms that wouldn't exist otherwise. He core point in the conversation centered about the idea that that crypto has PMF for creating specialized hardware that meets arbitra...
Turning Claude Code into my personal chief of staff
I've been thinking for a while about running Claude code as a general purpose personal assistant agent that has a) memory about me b) access to my main working tools and c) it's own computer and subagents or sub systems do process things on it's own. I've had these notes for a while, and have decided to publish them as a forcing mechanism to actually build this, and to crowdsource answers to some of my open design questions. I already built the MVP version of this for my CRM, but want to expa...
Turning Claude Code into my personal chief of staff
I've been thinking for a while about running Claude code as a general purpose personal assistant agent that has a) memory about me b) access to my main working tools and c) it's own computer and subagents or sub systems do process things on it's own. I've had these notes for a while, and have decided to publish them as a forcing mechanism to actually build this, and to crowdsource answers to some of my open design questions. I already built the MVP version of this for my CRM, but want to expa...
The greatest bridge in crypto
There aren’t many people in crypto. We’re still on the way to 'onboarding billions'. It’s because it is isolated from the daily applications people use. Crypto systems don’t interact with the apps and platforms where most are. It's not surprising. Building a fair and open system is part of the crypto vision, and that's orthogonal to how most tech platforms run. They are for the most part incompatible. The root of this incompatibility is data verifiability. User data in web 2 is not verifiable...
The greatest bridge in crypto
There aren’t many people in crypto. We’re still on the way to 'onboarding billions'. It’s because it is isolated from the daily applications people use. Crypto systems don’t interact with the apps and platforms where most are. It's not surprising. Building a fair and open system is part of the crypto vision, and that's orthogonal to how most tech platforms run. They are for the most part incompatible. The root of this incompatibility is data verifiability. User data in web 2 is not verifiable...
The question that can 10x your thinking and writing
Our instincts are often right. After 15 days of somewhat consecutive publishing, I realized my fears of writing poor essays were well-founded. I thought my essays would be irrelevant, uninsightful, and boring. It turns they are, like most things written online because I failed to ask myself the most important question. So what? The problem with our writing is that it often does not resonate with the people who read it, it often does not offer any insightful take because we did not dig deep en...
The question that can 10x your thinking and writing
Our instincts are often right. After 15 days of somewhat consecutive publishing, I realized my fears of writing poor essays were well-founded. I thought my essays would be irrelevant, uninsightful, and boring. It turns they are, like most things written online because I failed to ask myself the most important question. So what? The problem with our writing is that it often does not resonate with the people who read it, it often does not offer any insightful take because we did not dig deep en...
Three reasons why clusters of books will make you a much more efficient reader
Don't read books, read clusters of books.Clusters transform your reading experience because:They give you an information edge. Reading a single book on a topic will give you an edge over most who don't read. Reading more than one will give you an edge over most of those who read (and don't go much further than one).Clusters let you build a unique worldview. Read-only one book and you've only seen one perspective. You have to see the topic through the author's eyes. Re...
Three reasons why clusters of books will make you a much more efficient reader
Don't read books, read clusters of books.Clusters transform your reading experience because:They give you an information edge. Reading a single book on a topic will give you an edge over most who don't read. Reading more than one will give you an edge over most of those who read (and don't go much further than one).Clusters let you build a unique worldview. Read-only one book and you've only seen one perspective. You have to see the topic through the author's eyes. Re...
How to find outstanding companies as an angel or VC
This piece is part of my intro to VC series. I wrote these short essays as a way to accelerate my learning and make this opaque world more transparent. How you source as an early-stage investor defines the quality of your outcomes. Most VCs build the top of the funnel using one or two of these techniques. Here I want to give a complete overview and point out what’s great about each of these, what’s not, and how to improve.Network drivenThe best companies often come from the edge of your netwo...
How to find outstanding companies as an angel or VC
This piece is part of my intro to VC series. I wrote these short essays as a way to accelerate my learning and make this opaque world more transparent. How you source as an early-stage investor defines the quality of your outcomes. Most VCs build the top of the funnel using one or two of these techniques. Here I want to give a complete overview and point out what’s great about each of these, what’s not, and how to improve.Network drivenThe best companies often come from the edge of your netwo...
This principle from probabilistic thinking will make you a great early-stage investor
The main lesson you can take from the literature on cognitive biases is that our brains evolved in ways that can be harmful to us. The desire to be right, or aversion to loss, is one of these powerful biases that probably originated in situations like hunting in abundant, but also lion-infested regions, which meant painful death. As with most cognitive biases, it ported pretty poorly to situations where being wrong leads to losing some money or not getting retweeted, while being right exposes...
This principle from probabilistic thinking will make you a great early-stage investor
The main lesson you can take from the literature on cognitive biases is that our brains evolved in ways that can be harmful to us. The desire to be right, or aversion to loss, is one of these powerful biases that probably originated in situations like hunting in abundant, but also lion-infested regions, which meant painful death. As with most cognitive biases, it ported pretty poorly to situations where being wrong leads to losing some money or not getting retweeted, while being right exposes...
(re)Building the Modern Finance Stack
Authors: Luc de Leyritz & Sam Cash, originally posted here We believe there’s a meaningful opportunity for large scale businesses to be created in the B2B fintech space by a) streamlining time-consuming workflows which are currently performed manually by the finance team and b) increasing the penetration of these tools in the European SMB market. There are about 23m SMBs in Europe, all of whom have to manage their finances. However, most don’t use specialised software. Accounting software is ...
(re)Building the Modern Finance Stack
Authors: Luc de Leyritz & Sam Cash, originally posted here We believe there’s a meaningful opportunity for large scale businesses to be created in the B2B fintech space by a) streamlining time-consuming workflows which are currently performed manually by the finance team and b) increasing the penetration of these tools in the European SMB market. There are about 23m SMBs in Europe, all of whom have to manage their finances. However, most don’t use specialised software. Accounting software is ...
