My fav joy in life is meeting ambitious crazy unconventional people and think together wiring and rewiring each others brain eventually getting future as an output.
Otherwise you risk ending up bubbling*
*bubbling -- talking to yourself about same matter again and again emulating progress
Last year, in Aug I decided that I in the next 356 I will immerse myself into many different and diverse environment driven by different takes, objectives and goals to stimulate my thinking process and battle test my beliefs.
Several things I learnt through this year:
Most of them time, to be a part of something genuinely cool, you have to kick it off and make it cool.
Some experiences teach us that we didn’t really need these experiences. And this is meaningful learning too. It allows to better allocate energies.
If you vibe you vibe, if you don’t – don’t force it. It won’t work out well for you
Below are brief summaries and some anecdotes that had the largest impact:
I didn’t know much about it. A friend of mine Chris has been there and sent me a link, I opened it and it just looked like something unconventional and fun.
It’s a lab of art, science, social experiments, and entrepreneurship. Around twenty folks from Europe and UK (plus a couple of those flying over from the US) and three days to exchange ideas, build experiments, share passions, and play with each other’s prototypes. Three days is a short window, it’s something like several long deep conversations with several people and a bunch of short ones. All of that in the Alps and maximally affordable.
Pure intellectual joy – if I needed a one liner for it. Waffles from Adrian as a bonus =)
Looking forward to coming for another one, maybe in 2027. Huge respect to Adrian and Betsy for running it. The project is a piece of art on its own.
Midburn is Israeli chapter of Burning Man. A long time dream turned a huge personal project on its own. Finding a camp, getting a tent, running a trial of sleeping in a tent (have never done it before), not showering five days, and many other things.
This experience should be a blog post on its own. But the one liner is – pure vibing.
Expectations were set very high, based on stories of other people calling it a life-changing experience. I would describe it as a ‘five day long nice party’. True burners hate when people call it ‘party’ but I do not mean anything bad. It’s mostly beautiful clothes, nice music, a lot of fun things to explore, art, people, gifts, spaces, etc
Aside of that, it’s a very unusual social dynamic of getting very close with people you didn’t know before (your camp) for a very short period of time. Some camps last years some camps are seasonal. I didn’t stay in touch with anyone I met there, and probably would not get in the same camp with 80% of those people. But with a couple of them, I’d blindly go for a 356 trip around the world. I hope one day we get together and create something cool together.
I’d really want to get back rather sooner than later, but not this year, as I am all in on the startup.
Another interesting seed that Midburn put into my mind is that even in ‘unconventional’ places most people think really conventionally. It gave me an impulse to put my beliefs and philosophies out in the open more freely.
There are not many pics from Midburn, but this is Samantha, one of the coolest people I’ve met there. She is an artist
This thing targeted me on the instagram. It was something creative in a beautiful space in the desert. It also was an expensive one (2.5 ursprungs) and the most disappointing one.
Tl’dr I didn’t vibe and suffered most of the sessions. Though a couple of them were really fantastic, but also the program was unreasonably packed and felt exhausted most of the time. The place was nevertheless really beautiful. And people were mostly nice. I believe that 90% of participants got a lot of value out of it.
I’ve learnt that I am already creative enough and do not need a creativity retreat.
The space was truly magical tho
https://womem.women-in-mobility.com/
This is a heavy one – a half year program for women who want to become CEO. Offline, biweekly the whole day. I started it in January, together with kicking off my own venture as a solopreneur which felt like a good platform.
There are many things to unpack there. The community was absolutely astonishing. If you tell me for the next 10 years I need to come back once per months to meet everyone (literally everyone) from the cohort – I’d be so down. Everyone was very ambitious, very impressive, and with fantastic vibes.
The learning sessions… well let’s say I am not done for studies. Once I fell asleep at a session and people thought I blacked out. It feels very comforting to go and learn something before doing. But in case of startups, instead of a 1.5h session you can learn by doing. And actually experience things written on the slide. It didn’t end up being a platform for me to build my own venture, but it gave me great community and contributed to my understanding of myself (to large extent through Lumina). For example, I recalled that by nature I am actually very competitive and going for a competitive market is a good thing for me as it works as a gamification.
A picture from graduation I didn’t show up for because of being at the next accelerator :D But ChatGPT added me (thanks Orlie!)
All technical all female accelerator, I got into with a cyber startup I’ve solo-founded earlier this year.
Two days before flying, I strained my leg heavily which made my whole experience quite physically challenging. But didn’t question showing up even for a second.
Completely different from everything and anything I’ve ever experienced. Two weeks experience of coliving. Interesting social dynamics. Not a competition, but also not a group of allies. An environment that can’t be easily labelled. It made me think a lot. This accelerator contributed a ton to my answer for “what type of entrepreneur are you?”
The Tech Bros is a new accelerator and imo quite an unconventional one. We’ve been the second cohort. But my instinct is that its story will be a very long and fundamental one.
The founder of The Tech Bros – Milette. One of the most unique and impressive people I’ve ever met
https://www.join-thebridge.com/
Too early to tell anything, as we are only six weeks through. But as for now, the one liner is – the opportunity I’ve been waiting for my whole life and a solid platform to build the company.
To tell a couple of words about this experience..
I’ve never learnt so much at such a short period of time
I’ve never worked with such a talented, smart and hard-working cofounder
I’ve never been in an environment that is so dense in outstanding (non conventional) talent
I’ve never had so much support and resources to make things work
Add on top, that coming to SF changes your life forever. Living in a house with 60 young founders feels like a Netflix reality show. And the experience is very very intense and diverse. There are good things happening, bad things happening, a lot of learning through pain, many things to figure out on the go, many bets, hypotheses, and mistakes. At the same time, a lot of joy, fun, and feeling soooo lucky to get this opportunity.
The most valuable skill I am mastering here is to focus on the most important and ruthlessly put aside everything else + communicate clearly. This is very easy in theory, it takes hundreds of iteration in practice to make it a part of your DNA.
We will see where The Bridge will eventually take me. More to come ..
This is me and Golden Gate bridge :D
You might be wondering why am I reflecting on a year in the middle of September, but it’s actually Jewish New Year, so Shana Tova =) I do not know what the next year prepared for me, but whatever it is – I will make all out of it. The one liner of this year – just do it.
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Thanks for reading. Hope you are having a great Saturday ❤️ This is my weekend song I was listening to while writing this piece: Awake my soul