The main value of major celebrations (NY/birthdays/you name it), for me, is the pause — those non-negotiable extra moments to stop and reflect in the big rush that is life. As someone who grew up in Eastern Europe, I’m sure I’m not the only one who tends to underappreciate the good things happening to me.

I used to follow a simple rule: each new birthday has to feel better than the last. That “better” is subjective — a blend of happiness, energy, work, and personal wins, plus a healthy dose of randomness and serendipity.

This year blew past every expectation:

🌟 A few personal updates (keeping those off the internet for now) that massively changed and improved, hopefully, my life

🚀 Launching No Cap and watching it go so viral (2M impressions and counting) that we've been told multiple times half the venture industry saw her demo

✈️ Abundance of mindful travel and living between places: weeks- and months-long coworking trips as well as the deep self-reflection through my first 10-day Vipassana (will drop a link to my full guide post in the comments)

🎤 A bunch of amazing events I threw and/or participated in, including speaking at the biggest European startup conf (Slush) in front of hundreds of ppl

🤝 All in all, I probably met 3x more new people than in any other year of my life

And just to be clear — many times things went wrong and shit hit the fan. But today is not about focusing on these.

Every day, I feel hopeful and excited about the future, increasingly accelerated by AI — sometimes even limited by how much of what I want to do fits into 24 hours. I’m incredibly lucky and grateful to have so many ideas and things I could be working on — and, more importantly, the resources to build and fund them.

If you’re still reading this, thanks for following along. I appreciate you. And happy birthday to me.

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The founder (Artem from Wonder Family) went from pitch to signed SAFE from No Cap (she/her lol) in just a few days. On the closing call, No Cap didn’t fool around: in 3-min she signed the SAFE, wired the $100k, intro’d him to five new investors and gave him a lead for a potential hire on a 3-min call.

The full video (and the broader announcement) is going viral on my LinkedIn as you’re reading this.

I truly believe this is the future of venture: finally putting an end to the fundraising dread of 1,000s of emails, 100s of calls, and only a few wired checks.

But we’re just getting started — we want No Cap to be hands-down the best investor on any founder’s cap table, which is why we’re training her by the best founders — a community we call the No Cap Mafia. Our founder training will ensure she’s always there for coaching/advising and, most importantly, the “dirty work” like intros for fundraising, biz dev, hiring, PR, and more.

Comment ‘No Cap” under the announcement if you want to get her email and chat with her 👇

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If you’re new here: I’m Alexander Nevedovsky, repeat AI entrepreneur. This is my personal blog/newsletter about navigating life as it is — I don’t post often/regularly but if I do, usually it’s about something interesting/important. If someone forwarded this to you, subscribe as I’m nearing the 500 subscribers milestone.

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A few days ago, I came out of my 1st Vipassana course. I felt (and still feel) very light, calm, and empowered. There are a lot of wonderful things about this movement and in the spirit of serving (sharing love & compassion with y’all — more on that later), I want to share my experience — the good and the bad, the things I loved, and the things I wished were different.

But before we cut deep, a lot of you might be wondering — what the hell is this Vipassana even about?

Some people have never heard about this word, some have practiced it or are practicing it regularly, and some have heard but probably have a skewed perspective (slow down for a sec and ask yourself this question — remember your thoughts and compare them to what you’re about to read below — would be amusing to see what you’ve got).

I’m going to spare you with the generics — and instead try to answer using my own accumulated perspective/experience plus provide a few links you can study further.

• First, about 2500 years ago (as I understood scholars fight over the exact years he was actively doing stuff) a pal that would later be called “The Buddha” or Siddhartha Gautama was born. At 35, he proclaimed himself “the liberated and the enlightened” thus becoming the Buddha (which is not a name but the translation of these terms as there were multiple Buddhas in history). Gautama was the founder of Buddhism (which originated from Ancient India’s Vedic traditions alongside Hinduism which was and is technically a competing religion in these parts of the world). Buddhism itself is a religion and to be honest, my knowledge of it is quite limited and by no means do I want to waste your time pondering over that (would appreciate interesting sources to learn more about it though — this whole experience sparked my curiosity about it like nothing before — and I’ve been to the Buddhist cultures like Sri Lanka).

• Second, it appears that Buddha originated the so-called Dhamma movement (some call it a science, but I prefer a movement/set of techniques) which is, in simple words, “seeing the world as it is by observing it and liberating oneself from all miseries). Dhamma (of Buddhism/Vipassana-related — because as I understood Hinduism coins its own meaning of this word) technically consists of 3 parts (visualized like a pyramid):

• Third, Vipassana is actually nothing more than a meditation technique — crucial to this whole path/movement and the 2nd/3rd parts mentioned above.

• Fourth, Buddha practiced Dhamma/Vipassana for over 40 years after he became the Buddha and has apparently turned it into a super massive movement in Northern India. He has served people day and night by teaching them how to “walk on that path”. When he died, this original set of practices was slowly lost/diluted/polluted and went out of the mainstream. Luckily, when it was still up and running (and pure) missionaries were sent all over the world. Some, who got to the neighboring region that is currently Myanmar (prev Burma) have somehow managed to keep the original stuff safe and passing from generation to generation until at around the beginning of the 20th century some folks (mainly Sayagyi U Ba Khin) have started popularizing it within the country of Burma.

• Fifth, enter the most popular movement guy of our times, S.N. Goenka — born into a wealthy family, and businessman until his 30s, he learned the technique (he claims that he wanted to get rid of migraine and accidentally stumbled upon it) from Sayagyi, was practicing with him for 10+ years and then in the 70s began his own teaching (based off the same original principles that The Buddha has created), starting in India.

• Sixth, since then (I’m assuming largely because of Goenka) this movement (called Vipassana meditation courses) has penetrated millions of people worldwide and continues to be alive, well, and growing. The most interesting part — it’s all a non-profit (a collection of non-profits in each country) and is run/managed by volunteers. Here are some more numbers/facts:

  • ~400 locations around the world with ~250 permanent centers

  • 100k+ ppl (might be more) attend these courses every year

  • Goenka trained ~1350 assistant teachers who actually currently run these courses with his videotapes/instructions etc (these teachers are like bosses at courses — although for just the duration of the course)

Goenka’s vipassana movement is not the only movement, of course — but is by far the most popular. Based on some of the research I did, Goenka’s movement is largely about sitting Vipassana (more on that later) while some others have a wider variety of practices.

Why did I decide to attend my first Vipassana course?

Naturally, I’m a very curious person and love all things exploring myself.

I’ve been into meditation and other awareness-related practices for over 7 years now and tried some things, most notably the Shaolin/breath-focused meditation techniques and a variety of focus meditations (with both closed/open eyes, but mostly sitting). I noticed that over the last few years, I haven’t really actively practiced — and instead relied on “trying to be aware in the daily life moments” which is cool but hard to control/observe as a pattern and you tend to naturally forget about it during the periods of high stress and when life stuff happens.

On the other hand, I recently went through a period of high stress/low energy level and felt like a recharge like the Vipassana course offers would certainly be of benefit. I wrote about it and how I dealt with that at length in this article:

It’s fair to say that I’m always on the hunt for techniques/practices that allow you to be:

• Calmer and more relaxed as unconscious tension in the body brings nothing but bad things

• More aware in the moment and quicker to realize negative reactions to what happens

• More focused (or rather better focused) — which is tightly connected to the previous point

With all that in mind, I was really to invest that time into myself, after thinking about it for over a year following the conversations with 3-4 of my friends who have attended these courses in the past and they have really changed them (in their opinion — for the better).

How to register for the course?

Quite easy but one needs to be very quick in applying a few minutes after a specific course opens admissions and they close in literally minutes (shows how big the demand is)!

Go here and see which locations are closest to you: https://www.dhamma.org/en-US/locations/directory

I went to the main Polish location called Dhamma Pallava and absolutely loved it (some say it’s one of the best centers out there for a few reasons I’m going to mention later): https://www.dhamma.org/en/schedules/schpallava

This location is about a 2.5h drive from Warsaw and is also very close to Berlin/Prague so there were folks from there too.

Usually, you need to apply 2-3 months before the specific course begins (if you’re a new student) so keep that in mind. For older students late applications in general are much easier (a ton of people return to do more courses)!

And bear in mind that new students can only register for a 10-day course. Unless you can’t carve this time out, you would not be able to make it — it’s strict. And it’s more like 11 days you need to spare.

What does the course look like?

A few things that make or break it:

1. You need to accept and follow the precepts (if you remember the sila part above — this is it)

2. There are additional rules specific to the course in order to help you get the best possible experience (not chilling, but actively working on and with your own mind)

   1. You need to maintain a noble silence (speech/contact etc) in relation to other students — speaking only once every often with the assistant teacher and the manager (who is actually another volunteer just for the course)

      1. By default, this means not interacting with friends etc

   2. You need to give out your phone when checking in and be completely cut out from the outside world

   3. You should not:

      1. Read

      2. Write

      3. Practice sports (it was said that in general but with the explanation that it may disturb others so if you have your own room — you can practice there as it’s not against Vipassana itself)

3. Men and women are completely separated (usually left/right side of the physical center location). You’re only in the same room when you’re in the big meditation hall and even then you’re physically separated and obviously, everyone maintains silence.

4. You should diligently observe the timetable (which is very strict and unusual)

5. You should always be present at the mandatory meditation sessions in the main meditation hall (3+ times a day on average counting in about ~5 hours — not all at once of course, but mostly in 1h chunks with small or big breaks)

   If you look at the timetable, though, you would see that there are an additional ~5 hours of meditation daily which is technically “not mandatory” as you can do it in your own rooms (especially if you’re living alone).

6. You can not leave/cross the designated course area (not big) — basically the buildings area and the surrounding forest (again, separate for men/women).

That doesn’t sound chill, right? Because it actually isn’t.

What is the benefit/approach of such a Vipassana course in my own post-course overview (exactly how I explained it to my own curious and questionable mind)?

Simplifying things A LOT, Vipassana teaches you about the impermanence of all things based on your body and its sensations, allowing you to practice “observe, don’t react” when applied to any (positive or negative) things — mainly cravings or aversions. This means things that are actively poisoning your mind because you waste a ton of mind resources on dealing with them.

These are the things that add to your miseries and Vipassana (and Dhamma) helps you to purify your mind and get rid of all of your miseries. Not during the 10-day course, of course, but if you actively practice it.

And you practice it by basically scanning your entire body over and over again during the 30-60m time period from head to feet and in reverse. Doing nothing but observing sensations and not reacting to them.

Just to avoid any confusion of terms, let me try to paint the whole picture of how practice is structured throughout the course

First, you have the Dhamma way which is taught in this 10-day course

For the first 3.5 days of the course, you practice Anapana meditation (observing your breath — more below).

Then for 5.5 days, you practice Vipassana meditation — the main technique and the name of the course

Then for <1 day before the course ends you practice Metta meditation (sharing love and compassion with the world)

How did it go for me?

Despite working hard and having tough times, I loved it. I wouldn’t be writing this post like that otherwise.

I feel like I had a very good rest (it’s interesting how different “rests” can be — prompting you to rethink the whole concept of people living inside the hamster wheel and taking only the classical “travel vacations”).

I came back to life and work with many fresh ideas and perspectives, and, most importantly, a fresh look at how to change some of the patterns I didn’t particularly enjoy in my life.

I learned (and lived through) a couple of very useful and transformative experiences and realizations:

1. I’m now much more aware of the the changing nature of all things (they call this Anicca)

I feel way lighter when it comes to dealing with reactions: good or bad. In practice this usually results in the following:

When something bad happens or when you start craving something, how quickly will you realize that you don’t want this to influence you in a really bad way and add to the miseries you have

2. I’m now better at not reacting to pain — observing it and feeling less anxious about it.

During the 3rd day, I had moments when I actively contemplated leaving the course because I started feeling pain in the area of one of my sinuses as well as the nerve-connected tooth. Sometimes very avid, pulsating pain. And the worst was that it was during the meditation hours when you were asked to exclusively practice Anapana, meditation oriented at observing sensations in the triangular area of your nose (meaning that my pain was right near this triangle)!

And you know what — meditation helped me to push through and I adopted the mentality of “I’ll take this pain to the max and if that happens, fine, I’ll just take the pain-reducing pill and see the next day”. So basically that “let’s see how it goes moment by moment” mentality.

This worked — coincidentally, the next day we started Vipassana (although I continued the meditation practice of Anapana for over 24 hours before that happened) and the pain started going away.

I thought I had the inflammation but as it happens I probably didn’t. Regardless, I’ll go and see both the ENT and the dentist but this was extremely interesting and I currently associate that with some kind of muscular memory:

I placed SO MUCH attention to this area of my body for over 3 days that my brain was naturally “You’re a fucking moron — stop that or I will make you stop this” then producing this. Curious as to whether there are better explanations.

3. I’m not way more comfortable with nothing but my own thoughts.

At lunch, there was this veeeeery long (as it felt) time window where basically zero dopamine was produced. You finish lunch, there will not be more food (like one apple and banana is not really super registering by the brain) and all you’re left with is rest time to spare on one with your own brain (again, a reminder that you can’t read/write etc and you basically only think/do sports/walk in the forest) as well as 4 hours of continuous meditation (I’ll be honest, I was actively meditating for usually about 2.5h in this period and doing things mentioned above in the remainder of the 1.5h).

This is probably the only way to REALLY realize how dependent you are on dopamine and only after a few days I started to feel calm about simply lying down/sitting, drinking tea out of my bottle, and thinking/looking at the wall/trees out of my window.

4. I miss the quiet. I miss the nature.

It was awesome meeting sunrise every day, and doing my 10k steps by walking in the small designated forest area.

The city is so fricking loud and busy. We forget that we need more nature/silence moments.

Maybe we need to move.

5. I feel like I have a new back.

Sitting for 5-7 hours daily with the straight spine has really made me much more aware of it all the time and I actually feel like I strengthened it a lot (along with my knees because this was basically my go-to meditation pose — with two variations — legs inside and legs outside):

6. I’m obviously now much calmer/more aware of what I do.

I don’t multitask without a good reason. I eat slowly. I think twice before I do things.

7. I did the longest reset of my neural pathways related to phone/laptop/internet consumption so far (before it was max 10 days).

And still am very careful as to designing how I want to change them. Example: I decided to only check news/info groups/hobby stuff once a day in the evening.

Here’s my prev article on doing 7-day digital detox trips which is way easier than vipassana if you’re looking for a similar pathways reset technique:

There is much more but I don’t want to bore you plus I would rather write another post overviewing the results of some of the habit/approach changes I’ve decided to encompass after coming back. If you want to see my previous productivity tips, I also wrote about them here:

What else did I love/enjoy?

The first thing that comes to mind is this almost unbelievable realization of how cool people attending are.

1. Only 3 people out of the 50+ males in our course have dropped out. I honestly somehow expected at least 2-3x more.

2. I have not heard even a trace of anyone breaking the Noble Silence

3. Some of the silent meditations in the hall were purely magical (100s of ppl sitting, not moving and not making any sounds)

I was also amazed by the organization — both the underlying non-profit as well as the volunteers present for this particular course

1. As I mentioned above, no one is getting paid. Not a dime. Assistant teacher (the boss), Male/Female managers (one for each), and about 10 servers from each side — all were old students (the teacher being the “super-student”) who came to also practice vipassana this way. And you can certainly feel their energy/compassion/willingness to make your practice great.

2. Just to reiterate again, no one pays for the course. The approach is that your participation has been already paid for by previous students and you can do the same by donating if you want. I was happy to and will likely donate again/recurringly.

3. The non-profit itself (PL branch) was super transparent with its financials and horizontal management style and this immediately makes you very compassionate to help the cause. They built this beautiful center in 2017 by using some of the donated money (30%-ish) and borrowing the rest from older students (wealthy ppl attend Vipassana, yes!) in order to purchase land and build this center. Most of the money per student is still spent on repaying the loans.

The center was beautiful and the ability to stay in your own room alone was spectacular — it’s really rare across the world.

Pro tip — optimize for this when you search for your first Vipassana location, it’s worth it. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to practice yoga/exercise, etc.

The food was vegetarian but actually very tasty. Servers are always cooking based on instructions but adding their own fling to it.

Lastly, there was almost no control at all and I was amazed at how ppl were diligently following what was put out. No one has ever entered my room or checked my luggage — I could have easily brought a laptop with Starlink (there wasn’t much cell coverage on the site) but I didn’t and will not because this would not be the spirit of the movement/I would break one of the precepts.

What I was confused about/didn’t accept/didn’t like

Some parts of the teaching/movement felt a bit superficial, e.g. in the traditional approach, the concept of changing the neural pathways is explained by you “releasing samskaras” which are these trapped reactions in the body — and by doing that, you’re freeing yourself from the impurities of the mind. I feel like this is the part that needs a complete revamp within the course.

It’s good though that you not taking something specific from the theory is not impacting your overall experience and Goenka explicitly states that in his discourses.

Sometimes Goenka’s instructions were too full of his singing — and it’s not for everyone, let me tell you. Someone pointed out to me that this is probably because of the specifics of how the language (Pali) was communicated (vowels pronounced etc) but still. I’d drastically cut the singing and perhaps make someone female with a great voice redo what’s left — purely to have the singing as the extra part before/after meditation.

I felt like overall the whole course is a bit too strict and tied to these original Goenka’s instructions — you could see that with many things, e.g. “not meditating outside”, “limiting standing meditations”, “not meditating lying down” and the assistant teacher sometimes being hesitant to give a straightforward, simple answer or help with the request (e.g. improving sitting posture).

The course area was also a bit too limiting for my liking.

Adding to the point above, some of the rules and the timetable were not good for me, specifically:

• Not being able to practice sports (luckily I had my room and could do stuff there but still) — I’d love to have daily guided 1h yoga sessions with other folks — don’t see any difference with joint meditation, to be honest

• Going to bed at 9-9.30 and waking up at 4-4.30 was a bit too stretched for me. Initially, I tried doing 9-4.30 but later on shifted to 9-5 while not being able to fall asleep until 9.30-9.45. Honestly came back feeling a bit sleep-deprived

• Breakfast/lunch times were way too early — and I don’t understand why they can’t shift it by 2 hours (making it 8.30 and 13) while not losing the overall concept of fasting + meditating in the evening on an empty stomach

• I followed the rule of not writing anything but have doubts that it gave me more benefits vs allowing me to think in writing and perhaps noting down some things. There’s the counterargument though that your mind will remember the things which are really important and that’s already good enough

Lastly, there were things that I think would have benefited the practice but they just weren’t there which is ok — I would love to help design/create a place where they would be a part. And yes, I know that they would significantly dilute the original teaching — but so what if they ACTUALLY seem to have a clear benefit to the practice itself? Surely the official movement would not incorporate many of them but unofficial ones/branches could.

• Sauna (body temp changes are great for sensing)

• Some kind of swimming body of water nearby (river/lake/ocean/sea) — similar to a sauna plus refreshing and gives you something sporty to do without disturbing others

• Mountains with the views — this was the specific thing that the Polish site was lacking — it was flat as hell and I had 0 floors climbed on my Garmin for the whole course

• Daily yoga (mentioned before)

• Possibly — massages? Anything that helps you to release body tension in a way yoga/pilates/other things can’t

• Some kind of sound therapy — I felt like the whole audial apparatus was underserved in some ways

Do I recommend Vipassana?

Absolutely and wholeheartedly, otherwise, the tone/connotation of this post would have been different. It has given me a lot and in the spirit of serving, this is one of the things I serve with.

I especially recommend trying this for entrepreneurs/founders/investors — folks with a lot of context switching and a very very stressful environment. I know it’s not easy to carve out 10(11) days out of your schedule and “get lost” — but if folks like Jack Dorsey can do that, can’t you figure it out too? Think of it like a mix of your vacation days + actual work investment — because it WILL make you more productive because of the better focus, less agitation, and calmer mind.

We’re recording a video podcast tailored to founders/startups/tech with another founder from the community who just happened to have completed a similar 10-day course at the SAME location 3 days before me (basically the previous shift) — and I’ll share it in a separate post.

Would I go again?

I think that I would. Not sure about going straight for another 10-day course like that but most likely:

• Either the 3-day course

• Or the 10-day course as the server. Being the server is not as demanding (fewer restrictions etc) plus I love cooking and could see myself enjoying doing this kind of service while actively practicing Vipassana and getting the same detox benefits (servers still meditate 3-4 hours a day in the hall and more if wanted on their own)

Aaand, that’s a wrap. Hope that it was an interesting read and wish you peace + being able to get rid of your own miseries, whether through Vipassana or any other methods.

As for me — I’m going back to raw-dogging life (I might rename my blog to that) and feel super pumped about the new Socap.ai initiatives we’ve planned for the next few months. Stay tuned!

• You have everything you’ve ever needed to live comfortably — enough savings, a support system, a loving partner, a family, a safe home

• You’re also working on stuff you’re actively choosing to work on — 100% aligned with your goals/motivations and areas of growth — you’re not working for money. You can even easily stop working for a while if you would choose to

• Yet you’re constantly finding yourself overwhelmed in the pursuit of lost energy because of responsibilities overload and the sheer amount of things you’re expecting from yourself

Welcome to being an entrepreneur:

This is obviously not a secret to anyone reading this (most of you are or have been entrepreneurs at some point — startup founders, investors, etc).

In the last month or so, I’ve found myself getting down on energy — and that’s not a coincidence as it corresponded with me starting a new work project (Socap.ai — which we socially launched about a month ago) while having a bunch of other things I wanted to do.

I started digging into that, resuming the regular therapy sessions I’ve stopped for a while, and have made interesting discoveries, sharing my observations in this post and hoping that it would be useful for some of you. This isn’t one of these “I’m so fucking cool” posts — because in reality life isn’t and I have made the decision to start embracing vulnerability more vs mindless grind.

What’s weighing you down?

The first step to changing anything is being aware of what you want to change. I’m the guy who has always felt these things with a bit of a delay.

In fact, I know the following things about myself:

• I’m very likely to get A LOT MORE on my plate than I can actually effectively handle in the long term. I can do a very good job on these in the short term, but whenever this catches up, it’s a tough time

• Following the last point, once my energy level/ability to execute decreases, I start accumulating more and more to-dos I’m not able to deal with at the moment. When there aren’t many of these, it’s fine, but…

• …whenever the accumulation reaches a solid amount, I find it very hard to deal with it in parts/chunks, instead trying to “do everything at once” — constantly procrastinating these things because they’re almost always related to some negative feelings/fears and of course, I don’t want to deal with all of that multiple times — how on earth my gentle ego will be handling that?!

• A good example of the above is “comms” tasks — e.g. before today my LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook were completely wrecked with a ton of unsorted requests/unanswered DMs and, most importantly, were blocking me from continuing to actively post there (or anywhere else, actually, because I have this stupid ass perfectionism where posting is a whole system across the board)

What do these things tell you about yourself?

Dissecting this context a little bit deeper and reflecting upon it, I’ve decided to summarize it in the following way:

1. I’m very bad at saying no to things/politely refusing — and prefer to “ignore” something instead of “dealing with it at the moment”

2. Once I accumulate a certain amount of things to do (paired with negative feelings) — I spend a lot of energy on forcing myself to deal with that and feeling guilty in the process

3. I love creating “images” of how people see me/react to me in my own head — instead of focusing on facing the reality

4. I have very high expectations of myself (and am comparing myself to others subconsciously) — and absolutely love critiquing myself in the background (not actively, I’m visualizing this poor guy as the Kreacher elf from Harry Potter)

5. How I see myself from the emotional point of view is not always how others see me — mostly projecting the “I have it figured out” image which has both pluses and minuses and it not very flexible

At this point I would make a bold assumption — for a lot of you, the internal bulb inside your brain must already be going crazy, reacting to a lot (or at least some) of this stuff. I know I’m not alone in this and in fact have talked to dozens of entrepreneurs who were/are going through something similar, no matter how senior/successful they are.

All I wanna say now — that’s alright and I empathize with you. I don’t like using the word “normal” because for me it’s about the word “norm” — and I don’t want these things to be the norm! In fact, I want to find a way to have less than 10% of the impact in a few years time.

How to turn the tables and start dealing with that

Whenever things start to get challenging, you start doubting yourself — am I as good as these guys I’m constantly seeing/hearing about? How do I deal with that?

The only way out is through — you need to go into these thoughts and look at what’s bringing you the anxiety.

Here’s my current approach:

1. You need to start by making it very clear to yourself that you’re working on the things/towards things you really WANT TO. Stuff breaks when you actually don’t — and if your goals are external/not really true to yourself etc.

Simply sit down and think through this question for at least 30 minutes. Don’t give in to the usual “yeah yeah of course what I’m currently working on is a good fit” — it actually might be not and it’s tough to admit but crucial before you do anything else.

I’ll give you a glimpse into how I think about that for myself:

2. Once you’ve reflected on the things that are weighing you down, you gotta adopt the mentality of “cleansing” — just reserving the time (half-a-day/day, more if needed) to go through everything and:

1. Deal with first-priority things

2. Schedule second-priority things

3. Refuse/remove the action items from third-priority things (this is key!)

The key here is to basically default all of the accumulation you did before. And the only way to do this is to acknowledge that this is what you need to do, really feel these fears, and dig through them.

Once you do this, you’ll feel that much lighter. Believe me.

3. What can you change in how you do stuff in order not to allow yourself to accumulate stuff like that? What can you change in what brings you more weight overall?

How can you change the approach to judging yourself?

This is very subjective but for me, it’s all about focus/awareness at any given morning. I’ve already written at length about my productivity practices so feel free to look there if you want to.

4. Normalize feeling down every once in a while.

It’s not only you. As I mentioned before, Twitter/LinkedIn is always about the good stuff — launches, demos, etc. No one posts when they’re down, but they are. The key here is to focus on building a great support system — and not being afraid to show vulnerability to your friends/family/coworkers. What I have learned is that sometimes people are much more eager to help you when you’re asking for help vs when they see that you’re “a rock that is 100% in control of everything”.

I’m a big believer that we always have time. But the truth is — not always have the energy. Sometimes it’s ok to say that you don’t have the energy to do these 5 calls and instead, you need a refresher in the form of a football match/sauna (as it is in my case). It’s healthy to take breaks when needed and focus on your personal stuff — there’s absolutely no need to grind 24/7.

What’s next?

I know you’ve got it — feel free to reach out to me if you need support. I don’t promise to be quick to respond/help, but I will surely come back and stop accumulating things like that.

Some of you know that I’ve been working on my fundraising community initiative, Fundraising Hackers, for the last year or so. It has been amazing — 1000 of founders have participated in my offline/online events and I’ve completed 6 bootcamp cohorts for pre-seed and seed companies. But it was always more like a hobby.

Over the last months or so we've decided to fully join forces together with my partner Slava Solonitsyn and we are now working together on building the future of networking, powered by ML, LLMs, and agentic workflows.

As experienced founders and investors (Slava is an ex-VC with 2 unicorns from a seed portfolio and a top YC founder who has raised $180M over his entrepreneurial career; I am a repeat AI founder with an exit and have helped dozens of founders to raise early-stage funding), we've already helped hundreds of founders to raise their rounds.

We're currently in beta and onboarding users through various community initiatives (ours or our VC/accelerator partners).

Dozens of top founders have already joined Socap.ai as community ambassadors and will be sharing their connections during bootcamp events and social capital sharing days.

I know I haven’t been active on here recently — isn’t it weird how hard it is for us to keep sharing stuff? Obviously, a lot is happening on my end, but it’s tough to find the time to consistently be present.

How are you dealing with this if you have your own blog/are actively creating content?

Anyways, one more 🌎 turn around the ☀️ for me today.

Here are the 10-ish things I learned this year, straight from this morning’s journaling/reflection:

1. Small things inevitably lead to big things if they’re applied in the same direction. Might sound obvious but y’all know that the hardest part is to keep going. Starting Fundraising Hackers a year ago I couldn’t have imagined the turn of events (will announce soon, stay tuned!)

2. When in doubt about what to work on, prioritize your natural curiosity, stay lean, and experiment. The things you’ll be curious about aren’t always easy, no, and oftentimes you face a lot of fears. But this curiosity allows you to eventually push through

3. All good things and opportunities in life come through network or, in other words, social capital. If you don’t actively try to maintain and grow it, you’re already losing on a lot. I’m not talking only about direct connections (1st-degree connections), I’m also talking about 2nd and 3rd-degree connections or weaker ties.

4. Even though everyone has heard of ChatGPT, the real effect of the drastic evolution of all things GenAI is still very much underhyped. VC money inflow increased to 35% of the total pool (staggering $70B) and most of the results are still underwater, not counting the R&D race to develop models with bigger context window and better reasoning capabilities.

5. Notifications and being online and available all the time is extremely overrated and flat out harmful. Remove your notifications and get online only when it’s really needed to maximize focused work. Use this guide if you want.

6. Accountability in pairs/groups/communities is a powerful driving force to get things done (or get more things done/do them better). If I need to do something, I find people who can built an accountability system for that. Recently I joined a health hacking group and an investing group, not counting the 1-1 accountability coaching I’m doing myself.

7. The seeming feeling of world order is just an illusion. It doesn’t mean that everything is bad — on the contrary, data shows that almost all things have improved drastically over the last century or so. It just means that you personally and your own context (family, projects, etc) are more important than any concept of countries, nations, or any other artificial things pushed from above — because it’s nothing but a weird attempt to control chaos by random people. Here’s an example — Belarusians have lost the ability to use ANY consulate services abroad — a complete and utter violation of their citizen rights, if you ask me. Yet no one cares.

8. True (and deep) friendships need the occasional proactive involvement of both parties. When one of the parties doesn’t do this anymore, the friendship turns into an acquaintance-ship.

9. The best way to test an idea is to sell the description of what you’re gonna provide, receive the money, and use this money to actually help (build a solution/provide service, etc). I called it the pre-product sales sprint.

10. Allergy is not that bad when you’re prepared for it — starting to use tablets and nose sprays at least a couple of weeks before the active season (in my case, grass pollen, it’s May).

BONUS — things I’m contemplating about

1. I realized that I struggle with identifying the right moment for taking a break/saying no to things and find myself with too many things to be done but too little energy to handle them at the same time. This applies especially to comms (seeing the numbers of unread messages go brrr). This is certainly an area for growth — let me know if you have ideas on how to tackle this.

2. I feel like I could do much better (and more consistent) in being aware of what I focus on each given day, hour, and minute. Usually, for me this requires a non-negotiable planning routine — if I miss it and don’t have any other anchors (calls, etc) it’s easy to fall into the trap of feeling like you have “too much” to do. I’m currently experimenting with the variation of a daily Marc Andreesen’s routine but open to suggestions!

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A few years ago I noticed that whenever I’m diligently tracking my personal progress week after week, I’m feeling better/more accomplished and the time flies slower.

When my friend Vasili (kudos to him, feel free to subscribe to his blog —) introduced me to the idea of doing this with someone else (in that case, him), and I was intrigued. We tried doing this for a while and I liked it, but we stopped because it felt too one-sided (mainly him doing the coaching, not me).

Since then I went on to do this with a bunch of folks — for myself, using my buddies, for my startups/projects/businesses, using my partners/co-founders, and for others, coaching the founders I’m advising (and bringing this whole accountability coaching thingy as part of the added value).

What prompted me to write this post?

Recently, I came across this post from Alex Lieberman asking for accountability coach recommendations:

I quickly shared my experience and was surprised to see a bunch of people DMing me for the template:

So here we are — I decided to share the template with you guys and explain it in detail.

This is what the “accountability coaching” template looks like

A link to grab it for yourself is here.

How does it usually work in practice? What’s your process?

I’ve been asked a few follow-up questions before:

1. What’s your process for driving great results through accountability?

2. How is retention of people who use you for goals and accountability?

The way I do accountability coaching is context-specific: if I’m doing that with a buddy, then we have a scheduled 1-1 weekly meeting and each has their own 30 mins to walk through the updates/listen to feedback, etc. The goal then is to pre-fill everything ahead of time otherwise there wouldn’t be time left.

If I’m doing that with someone I’m helping (coaching), we still have an hour but we sometimes fill this on the call. I do the filling work, and the other person does the “talking” work. What I noticed is that sometimes it is way easier for some people to think out loud and “brainstorm” along the way.

If I’m doing this alone, I treat it as the weekly journaling and have another template for that.

Regardless, what I noticed is that this process is beneficial for all people. They suddenly become more aware of everything that’s happening week after week and it’s WAY easier to spotlight any trends, such as “Why am I fucking up this task for 4 weeks straight — must be another reason for this”.

The main benefit though, of course, is in the accountability part. Committing to something while the other person is there makes you work twice as hard on achieving it (and also reporting back). Some people notice that this fact is their main driver for positive change.

It’s crucial to do this only with the people you can be authentic and honest with. Hiding something (or making things seem better than they are) wouldn’t lead to great outcomes — the results would be mediocre at best.

As for retention, I only believe that accountability coaching works over a longer period of time, when you get this a new habit PLUS you get all of the data you’re tracking which helps you to be more objective about spending your time and dedicating your energy.

It’s also healthy to stop and reassess every once in a while. Change the counterpart, if needed. Most of my accountability partnerships last anytime from 3 months to a year.

Here’s my personal breakdown of all of the columns in the template (link above)

• Week number

  • I love keeping track of week numbers!

• Week dates

  • Same with dates.

• Grade (0 to 10)

  • Tracking this WoW is where the real power is — it’s all about seeing the trend which is impossible (or really really hard) if you’re not doing this.

• Grade-Expl

  • Another good question to be asking yourself is — how’s your week going so far? If it’s not an 8 or 9 (let’s face it — you’ll probably never put 10), how can you make one 8+? What are you not doing while you could?

• What have you done this week?

  • Kudos to Elon Musk for inspiring me with this question.

    

• What could you have done better?

  • Don’t dwell on the past, think about improving the future.

  • There’s another pretty straightforward re-writing of these 2 questions — “Did we achieve what we set out to do last week, if not, why not?”

• What obstacles are you currently facing?

  • What’s dragging you back? What are you avoiding?

• How can you move 10x faster?

  • Skip 1.5-2x answers. This question is for thinking outside of the box.

• What are the driving factors?

  • What is something that you are optimizing for? The systems, you may call them.

• What's your plan/fact for them

  • How are you approaching these systems and putting them into reality?

• What will you DO next week?

  • What are your plans for next week? Not that WHEN you’re doing the accountability reflects on how to answer this. If you’re doing it on Monday, it’s for THIS week. If on Friday, then for the NEXT one.

• What are the 90/10 power-law actions?

  • What can you do to drive the most value as per Pareto? Or to rephrase — if you could only do one thing, what would that be?

  • Another re-writing of this question — “What is the highest leverage action you can take? Why are you avoiding it? How can you convert it into something that can compound?”

• Strategic direction

  • Where are you moving in general, and in what specific strategic direction/focus?

• Comments

  • Any misc things which didn’t fit.

Also, if you are to do this with your partners/co-founders around a common project, you might need some more specific/context-tailored questions

Here are a couple I’ve also tested:

• How do we feel about last week?

  • Bringing a bit of emotion/empathy into the mix

• What’s our A+ problem this week?

  • Reframing the “what will you do” in a particular way

• What do we wanna measure this week? What numbers are we obsessed with?

  • Adding the metrics/numbers touch

• What do we wanna learn this week to improve + evolve our idea?

  • Adding the learning touch

• What are we looking forward to this week?

  • Adding something you can get excited for

• Is there anything else happening this week that takes away time/energy?

  • Asking/answering the uncomfortable question.

Instead of the TLDR

1. Do the weekly tracking/coaching — either yourself or with someone. You’ll say thank you later.

2. Grab this free template, call a buddy, and try this with them for a month. Then decide if you want to continue or not.

3. DM/email me if you want me to become your accountability coach.

Look, chances are you (the person reading this) are from tech. Most people in my bubble are.

I noticed one thing that’s common among us — we oftentimes dream about starting physical/offline businesses. A cafe, a restaurant, a tea place, a shop — you name it. Whenever I’m in a tech circle, the discussion always comes to this.

Well, I’m here to tell you that you don’t need to dream about it forever (or even decades — until you quit your tech job and retire). And no, I don’t mean committing to and opening a proper restaurant. I mean launching a PoC (clearly a tech term) by doing a test collaboration/launch to see how it goes and if you (and your customers) even like it or not!

Here’s a story of how we (me and my fiancée Kate) did it.

Hopefully, you’ll be able to learn something from our experience — and maybe I’ll inspire some of you to do something similar!

In this post, I cover:

• What was (and still is!) our dream like?

• How did we approach testing this idea?

• What we did step-by-step?

• How did it go? What did we learn?

• Now that we tested this idea, what’s next?

What was (and still is!) our dream like? Skip this part if you’re interested in the actual test.

I’m a big breakfast foodie. As a matter of fact, I cooked thousands of breakfasts over the last few years, and based on the feedback of those who ate them, I’m very good at that. Like 9/10 good.

And here’s where I need to confess — some years ago (3, maybe?) we invented a recipe for the best breakfast ever.

I’m talking cottage cheese waffles. Here’s what they look like.

There are 2 main differences between them from any other waffles you’ve tried over the years:

1. They’re much healthier because they’re mostly protein. The main ingredient is actually not flour, but cottage cheese.

2. They’re not sweet (although they can be) and are a proper meal, not an indulgence. You top them with quality ingredients that make you full (and feel good about yourself).

We’ve been making them for years now for ourselves as well as for our friends/family when they came to our brunches, but have never shown them to others up until May 2023.

I’ve had the idea that these waffles are perfect for some kind of takeaway concept. They’re easy to make, they’re fast to make, they can be eaten by hand, and there can be endless topping potential. You don’t need much to set everything up — it can be as easy as a food truck.

How did we approach testing this idea?

You know me, I’m a tech entrepreneur, but I’ve never done any offline business and don’t plan on being involved operationally in one any time soon. This is a perfect combo for never ever trying this idea and talking about it while hanging with people.

But when you have it on your mind, things happen. It’s called serendipity.

In our case, it was the following:

1. We visited the “Breakfast Fair” that happens in Warsaw almost every weekend during the summertime — and thought about potentially finding a way to book a stand there for a day. But that felt complicated — we probably would have needed to deal with all kinds of permits and legal stuff, not to mention the place prep.

2. Friends of ours Igor and Alina have opened their own dessert place in Warsaw (Soulmates, previously Soul Kitchen) — and we’re loyal customers, visiting them every other week.

3. Once we saw that they hosted a collab with another cook — offering sour quiches as a complimentary thing along with their desserts. We tried them, they were great, and they inspired us.

That’s when the idea was born — we can partner with Soulmates and test open our cafe for a day using their premises. My birthday was coming up (30th of May) and I felt like that was a fun date to organize this around. Kind of like a party, but more casual — open for everybody, and with no rules or expectations. Just come, say his, order a waffle, and continue your business.

The rest was, well… History.

Here’s what we did step-by-step:

1. We confirmed the collab with Soulmates. Fixed the conditions (they are taking care of everything business-wise, after all), the date, and the plan. Guys were super supportive and we’re very thankful for that! That was somewhere around a few weeks prior?

   1. There were a bunch of questions we terrorized them with, trying to estimate how much people would want a waffle (we chose Saturday) and how much of the ingredients we needed to prep. We estimated to have around 50-75 orders (waffles, of course) throughout the day.

2. We needed to prepare.

   1. First — to create a brand and social media posters. We floated with a number of names and branding choices and eventually settled on Waffle Collective. Slick, modern, with Berlin vibes.

      

   2. Second — to plan our menu. Up until this point we’ve cooked hundreds of variations and we needed to choose what we’d offer and do a very precise calculation of what we need to buy and how we need to cook.

      

   3. Third — to procure the ingredients. We decided to go to the store where all of the businesses shop (you need an open firm to shop there).

   4. Fourth — to gather the tools. We had a waffle maker, but we needed more. Luckily, our friend Liza agreed to help, and not only gave us her waffle maker (making it two!) but also came to help us on D-day (kudos to her — she did a brilliant job!)

      

How did it go? What did we learn?

“We came, we saw, we conquered” — on the D-day (May 27th, 2023), we were there 15 minutes before Soulmates opening. Prepped our ingredients, workplace, and good mood.

It was tiring, but an amazing experience.

We ended up selling 69 waffles, which was slightly more than we expected, and the majority of them weren’t our friends!

What was important is that we intentionally didn’t want to profit from this collab, so the surplus (minus the cost of ingredients) went to charity.

People really loved them. There wasn’t one person who didn’t finish their portion. A bunch of them shared this on their social media.

The experience was super fun — from planning out the event (the recipes, the food to buy, the trip to the store, the creative brainstorming — everything) to actually cooking.

We’ve had 2 surges — one around 11 (I think) and the second around lunch (13), where we were thinking we wouldn’t make it, but the rest of the time was fine.

At one point there were like 8 simultaneous orders and we really felt like these guys from “The Bear”! Clearly, to be cooking all day in conditions like these you need to love what you’re doing.

What was unexpected was that we didn’t get to casually chat with people most of the time — because we needed to cook! So it’s not like you can cook and socialize simultaneously — it’s either or.

Worth noting that the Soulmate folks loved how it went too.

Now that we tested this idea, what’s next?

I think we should actually consider turning this concept into a real takeaway spot, first testing the demand and unit economics in one place (let’s say here in Warsaw — or elsewhere), and then, potentially, aiming for the franchise. Why not? There are so many unhealthy and objectively bad places, that a healthy and cool place would certainly be a good fit.

We eat these waffles probably weekly, and I can easily see someone getting as hooked up on them as we are.

However, as I already mentioned, I’m not the type of guy who has the experience or desire to oversee this operationally, but rather to finance this as an investor along with a few of my friends.

So if you know someone who might be interested in collaborating on this, please let me know or reach out. I’d love to chat! Especially if they have experience in the food business or are willing to do the operational part of running such a place.

Hopefully, this was a helpful walkthrough of how we opened a cafe a day. Anyone can do this, really. So if you have a similar dream — go ahead and plan a test/PoC of yours. You can do this, I know.

Also, I think by this point a lot of you are hungry and/or want the recipe. Happy to share it — please follow Waffle Collective on Instagram and slide into DMs — I’ll send everyone a copy.

Catch up on some of my highly-shared posts

👋 Hey, it’s Alex (or @ednevsky, which has been my handle pretty much for a decade now).

I initially started this Substack in Feb 2023 as a catalyst to overcome my procrastination on creating the "perfect blog" and to simply publish more of my thoughts, beginning with some stories that people were genuinely curious about (such as this pet-sitting revelation).

Since then, I've published 8 posts that garnered around 7k views!

The highest spike you see is when one of my posts gained traction (even if slightly) on HackerNews — which demonstrates that gaining visibility there can result in a substantial traffic boost.

I also attracted 74 followers. Admittedly, I haven't actively sought to optimize my follower count. In fact, I haven't even announced my blog anywhere — merely started posting and casually sharing links here and there.

If you're reading this, could you spare 30 seconds to let me know why you subscribed? Your feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Feel free to either:

• Reply to this email (I read all replies!)

• DM me on Telegram/LinkedIn: @ednevsky

And if you really liked it, why not share the link with your friends?

Share Ednevsky Blog

So, what’s changing?

Moving forward, I aim to not only publish content but to do so consistently and with a distinct theme/audience in mind. Thus, the purpose of this reintroduction post.

In case you don't recall who I am, here's some background info about me (after all, you've subscribed to my content, so you deserve a fair warning about what lies ahead) and the latest pic of mine:

• I’m an experienced founder with a background in Bizdev/Product/Operations/Fundraising. My journey has been tumultuous (but aren't they all?) — encompassing both successes and failures, which I've thoroughly enjoyed (kidding). My proudest accomplishment is being part of the founding team at WANNA, an AR Try-On startup that Farfetch acquired (one of the first clients I landed, by the way!) in 2022, marking my first exit. Overall, I've worked in both B2C and B2B, building and growing mobile apps, web apps, and SaaS products.

• I'm particularly passionate about how machine learning (AI) is increasingly integrated into various JTBD (jobs to be done). I began working on ML projects well before the current hype (in 2018) and am thrilled by how the new GenAI wave is accelerating progress.

• For the past year or so, I've been in what entrepreneurs call the "in-between stage" — relishing life, continually experimenting with various partners, and assisting other founders with my expertise. Recently, I founded a community called FundraisingHackers.com, through which I help early-stage founders with their fundraising efforts. Thus far, it's been a gratifying experience, so expect more developments in this area.

You should also absolutely connect with me on LinkedIn and X/Twitter, I’m very approachable and would happily give you a back follow.

With that icky social proofing addressed, let's get down to business.

Who am I writing for?

• Entrepreneurs in general, with a focus on early-stage startup founders (and their team members!)

  • As a founder myself, I understand the challenges of launching and working in startups (early employees often face similar struggles). Capturing lightning in a bottle, chewing glass, and continually hearing "No" are all part of the journey. Moreover, the pursuit of work-life balance and productivity seems never-ending, and here’s how we get to this:

    

• Knowledge workers (engineers, product managers, etc.), researchers, and virtually anyone considering embarking on the entrepreneurial journey

• Angels or VCs interested in obtaining higher-quality, pertinent startup knowledge

What can you expect in the coming months and years?

Regular (weekly or bi-weekly) posts arriving in your inbox.

Deep dives

Stories about product building, fundraising, healthy productivity, and all things startups/tech-related:

• Launching Waffle Collective (for fun!) and selling 69 waffles in a day

• How do the best creators promote their blogs/newsletters?

• Why I allocate 2 hours every Monday for Reflection/Planning and how you can do it too + template

• What I learned from conversing with 50+ founders about their fundraising obstacles

• The importance of founders investing time (or money) in online content creation and effective strategies for doing so

Stuff I'm digging

• Podcasts

  • Sam Corcos

  • Matt Mochary

• Tools

  • Ideogram

  • Playground

  • Amie

• Books

  • The Three-Body Problem

  • Exhalation

• Links, memes, and many more!

What topics are YOU personally interested in?

If you'd like to hear from me more frequently, consider following my LinkedIn/Twitter accounts, where I share content at least once or twice a week. I'd be more than happy to follow back!

Catch up on some of my highly shared posts

So, hear me out — today (it’s 2023 where I’m at) we’re so flooded with information that our brains are literally drowning in the sea of external stimuli. The first thing most people do after they wake up is check their phones. For messages. For news. For posts.

I’ve done countless empirical experiments (meaning — on myself). Whenever I don’t rush for these stimuli for at least a few hours after waking up and take it easy by focusing on the physical reality (exercising, meditating, going out for a walk, cooking breakfast) — I always feel more productive and ready to tackle complicated things compared to times when I succumb to this dopamine rush and get online to read/see new stuff.

Granted, I’m a little crazy about this and have written at length about my ways of managing day-to-day focus: https://ednevsky.substack.com/p/4-simple-hacks-that-help-me-stay.

But this post is not about the day-to-day hacks, it’s more about the few-times-a-year hacks. It’s about weakening the neural pathways so that it becomes easier to understand where you actually are (metaphysically) as well as spot the potential places of improvement.

How it all started (1st trip)

Well, I bet that at some point in life (after the Internet was widely adopted), almost everyone has gone offline for a while in one way or another. Sometimes without even aiming for it — we’re talking long hikes, camping trips, staying in the village without internet access, etc.

Roughly 8 months ago was the first time I tried to do this DELIBERATELY, and not just by accident. That is, specifically plan my life around the fact that I can go offline for a week and don’t give a damn. See how it goes and if it actually helps me feel less stressed and more grounded.

At the time I really felt like I wanted to do the reset. The more unpredictable and challenging your life (and job) is, the more frequently you realize that. And as an entrepreneur in between things, I felt that really dearly.

So I figured that the best way to do that would be while traveling because I would have something that would keep me naturally busy most of the time.

Together with my fiancée Kate (girlfriend back then) we flew to Barcelona, rented a car, and went to explore the Basque country for a week. We drove all the way from Barcelona to Bilbao and spent around 5 days driving around the coast (from Santander to San Sebastian). Oh, and we also got engaged at the top of Gaztelugatxe.

I really really enjoyed this break from the other, online, reality. Focusing on the real one. However, as that was my first time taking such a retreat, I didn’t focus enough on using this opportunity to work on certain things, patterns, and behaviors.

Continuing the journey (2nd trip)

Winter in Warsaw is no joke, and we like to take every opportunity to escape to better weather, so, naturally, 4 months later we’ve had another trip lined up—this time, to Madeira.

I realized that I really enjoyed being fully present the last time we traveled — it allowed me to be 100% immersed in the experience of driving or walking around, checking out places, talking to people, eating food, etc. I knew that I wanted to go offline again — and, coincidentally, we had the back tickets in exactly one week. Perfect.

So we flew to Madeira, once again rented a car, and had a lot of fun driving all around the island. Hiking, walking, swimming, and eating good food.

When we came back I was ready to tackle the things I really wanted to — but ultimately ended up doing maybe 20% of what I wanted to because we somehow caught Covid. And even though it was a mild one, it still made it so much harder to use the change of context to my own advantage.

Preparing in a better way (3rd trip)

Another 4 months in, and as we were going on our little and fun annual Italian pet-sit tradition (more on the pet-sitting here: https://ednevsky.substack.com/p/pet-sitting-as-a-free-and-fun-alternative), I realized that I can do another week of shutting down. I just finished the first cohort of my newly-created bootcamp FundraisingHackers.com and started to feel like I want to dig deeper in terms of which directions or things I want to be focused on in the long run, so I went in with all of these thoughts on the background (after the time spent on prepping these)!

And now, here I am, sitting in the cozy bedroom in an old, 17-century stone house in a small Italian village called Montabone (read it as the Italians would say it!), and writing this article. Soon I’ll get back online but right now it’s so much easier to spot the things I’ve been putting off for all the wrong reasons.

Why do such offline retreats work in the first place?

What I realized along the way is that there is tremendous power in going offline for all the brain-related reasons, allowing it to rest and recover from the constant stimulation that we typically experience from technology and social media:

1. Neural pathways weaken: when you form a habit, your brain creates neural pathways that become stronger the more you repeat the behavior. By taking a break, you are interrupting those neural pathways, which can weaken them and make it easier to break the habit.

2. Dopamine levels rebalance: online things can be addictive because they trigger the release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that is associated with pleasure and reward. Over time, this can lead to an imbalance in dopamine levels, which can make it harder to resist the urge to check stuff. Taking a break can allow your brain to rebalance dopamine levels and reduce the craving.

3. Brain waves slow down: constant exposure to screens and technology can keep the brain in a state of high arousal, with fast brain waves (beta waves) dominating. Taking a break can allow the brain to slow down and enter a more relaxed state, with slower brain waves (alpha and theta waves) becoming more dominant. This can contribute to a feeling of calm and relaxation.

Here’s a link to Perplexity’s query with proof-checking these claims.

“I also want to do this, any advice?”

Of course, here is what I’ve done and recommend you to try too:

1. Clearly separate the “allowed” online resources, and the ones that you ban for this period.

   1. For me, the “green list” is the following:

      1. One messenger which I use to communicate with the hosts or any other travel-related contacts (hotel staff, pet owners). Choose the one where you don’t have stimuli and where you don’t communicate a lot (for me it’s WhatsApp).

      2. Google Maps and everything navigation-related (god bless the internet for this).

      3. Wikipedia and travel-related googling.

      4. Netflix to watch a few saved series while on a train/airplane.

   2. The “red” list, on the opposite, is:

      1. All other messengers (including work-related)

      2. All social media

      3. Email

      4. Youtube

   3. Basically, you want to have these days help you rewire the way you use your devices from the “pull” to “push”, being intentional about every phone opening. Here are a few Screen Time screenshots from my latest trip:

2. Pro-tip before the trip — list all of the ongoing “problems” you have. It can be a work task, something you’ve been putting off and you don’t know why, a desire to choose an idea for the pet project or a question of “What’s the meaning of life”. Anything does. Listing it somewhere where you’re able to take a look at that if needed during the trip will allow your brain to work on these “problems” in the diffused state, hopefully providing you with the clues to answers by the end of the trip.

3. Make sure to close all of the ongoing operational things before you leave so that you don’t worry about them. Nothing will crash if you prepare and let those who might need you know that they have a way to reach you if absolutely necessary.

4. Doing this on trips works best because you can shift your context 100%. Renting a car (or using trains) and exploring new places as much as possible (walking 15-30km per day) is perfect — you gotta maximize real-life experiences in order to fully get the value.

   • The alternative to the above is vipassana, a silent meditation retreat — I’m going to try this in the next few years and let you know how it compares.

5. Make sure you journal what/how you feel, note your thoughts, etc — all of it might be very valuable at the end of the trip. Also, do the reflection.

6. Use the “free will” at the end of the retreat to your advantage — plan the things you’ve been postponing, rearrange your calendar, get rid of the things you don’t want to do anymore, etc. It’s the best time to change something before you get sucked in again.

   • I suggest starting by listing the things that are on your mind or you’ve been thinking the most about and then going from there.

Good luck on your journey to your true self, friends.

Quick links to other posts:

• 30+ free resources to help you raise pre-seed/seed funding in 2023

• 4 simple hacks that help me stay more focused throughout the day

• 25 things I’ve learned about life the hard way before turning 25

• Pet sitting as a free and fun alternative to hotels/Airbnb

1. Down-playing the team and leaving this slide till the very end of the pitch. I argued (and will continue arguing) that the team is the #1 thing investors care about at pre-seed. Then goes the market and traction, of course, but if the team is bad (maybe not literally — they can very well not be well-suited for the idea experience-wise). Consider selling yourselves like the Americans do: adding social proof (companies/clients you worked for and their logos), clearly communicating your unfair advantage, experience, and founding story. Why not put it in the second place?

2. Not having a clearly defined beachhead market, and, basically, focus. Beachhead translates to something you’re starting with and will probably be fixated on for the first year (at the very least). It can relate to both specific customer niches/verticals/personas, as well as the functionality you’re thinking about. Saying that you’re gonna do 5 things at once (or target 5 personas at once) will only get you a skeptical look from the investor.

3. Not showing traction clearly. If there is cool traction, but the pitch is very bad, the startup is still interesting! And there’s no way around it — you gotta be specific and show at least something from this list: a). User growth (signups, DAU/WAU/MAU/installs); b). User engagement (time spent, retention, churn); c). Revenue (MRR/ARR, booked revenue); d). Pre-product traction: LOIs, wait-list. And remember, show the line, not the dot. Progress is always better than a simple snapshot.

4. Fucking up the competitors’ comparison (and the overall market landscape). Here are a few examples (try to avoid them): a). “We don’t have competitors” — is there a market then; b). “We’re better than all of our competitors (big companies BTW) because we have A+B+C+D, and the competitors don’t have that” — wishful thinking and a lie; c). “All of our competitors are basically shit” — probably not true and looks a bit like the show-off; d). “We don’t know half the players in our market” — you gotta do the research. Overall, respect for the players in the market you’re after is a good sign of an experienced founder.

5. Using random numbers to show the possible upside through the market size. Sticking big numbers (as TAM/SAM/SOM) from questionable consulting companies is not a solution if someone starts digging. Try to calculate your true market size using the bottom-up approach: how many possible customers you can have times what you earn from these customers.

6. Not communicating clearly enough the sense of “magic” related to your startup. To me, this is one of the things that make up for the FOMO factor, and it’s really really important when trying to fundraise. One can get this (magic!) in a myriad of ways: having a rock-star team with an impeccable expert, showing amazing traction, discovering something very specific that no one else in the market found, and having a proprietary tech that’s simply magical. What is your magic? You should at least be able to answer this for yourself.

7. Selling the “why now” as part of your pitch. Very few pitches nailed this and I often was left thinking if now is the right time for this startup, or if it is too early/late. Examples of what you can include in this slide are: a). Tech shifts; b). Governmental changes/laws/policies; c). Complex numbers or data, charts. The more obvious the change is, the better — don’t invent stuff.

Since I don't personally enjoy lengthy lists without any order, I've decided to break this down into a few categories:

• Boring, but very important basics

• Productivity

• Health

• Startups/entrepreneurship

• Random

Here we go, enjoy:

Boring but very important basics

1. Taking it easy. Life only makes sense if you're trying to enjoy it: pursuing curiosity, having fun, feeling happy, and spending time with people you have a special connection with, etc. We don't really know whether life is real or just a simulation/one of infinite multiverses. I try to remind myself of this every day because there is a choice.

2. You don't need much money to live comfortably, especially if you're not alone (have a partner) and don't have kids. Working in tech, you're likely able to save >50% of your earnings. Money is a resource, and you need it to be freer with what you want to do. Setting up "money goals" can make sense in the short term, but might not make life meaningful in the long run.

3. No one, except for maybe your family and a couple of friends/colleagues, really cares about you (as long as you don't cross societal norms). This is both bad (you're not special) and good (you're free to do whatever you want and make as many mistakes as you want). But mostly good because, when you break out of your mind, you break free from limitations.

4. Transferring thoughts from your mind/brain into reality. As a thinker, I have always struggled with holding a world of unrealized ideas in my head. Recently, I've started embodying the principle of taking action as much as possible, as trial and error is the fastest way to learn and grow.

5. Cultivating "present-moment awareness," or as some may call it, mindfulness. I've noticed that I feel best when I maximize this sensation throughout the days/weeks, whether through practicing deliberate meditation or other means of being intentional about what's going on within and around me (breathing exercises, sports, etc.).

6. Working with a psychotherapist. For most of my life, I was curious about therapy but felt like I didn't have an issue to address, so I never tried. When I did try, I discovered a hidden array of topics I was unaware of, mostly due to a lack of emotional sensitivity. Since then, I've learned a lot more about how I operate.

Productivity

7. Everyone always has time, even if they say otherwise. It's just a matter of priorities. If someone tells you they don't have time to do X, they likely just don't want to do it or feel guilty about neglecting something else. The same applies to your own reasoning.

8. My notifications are always turned off (except for critical ones, like calls). I check things on my own terms, and it helps me with focus and concentration. More on this here.

9. Weekly reflection/planning with a set of predefined questions is a powerful way to track where your life is going. This is true both for yourself and for your business/startup if you have one. I usually do this first thing on Monday in a coffee shop, where I go right after waking up.

10. Every once in a while, go fully offline for a few days or better a week. It will help rewire your brain from "unconscious" addictions. I usually practice this during vacations and will write a separate post about it.

Health

11. Sleep is your number one priority, and you shouldn't neglect it in favor of anything else. If you do, you'll be cognitively impaired and will actually produce less with more time. I try to spend a minimum of 8.5 hours per day in bed, cooling my room and removing any light. Overall, I'm a huge geek and track my sleep using Oura/Garmin.

12. You only need to eat twice per day — and say no to any kind of snacking. Not only is this a proven fasting technique (I eat breakfast around 9 am and lunch/dinner around 4 pm, leaving me with at least 16 hours of no food intake), but it's also easier on the brain (fewer decisions to make) and saves time.

13. Learning how to breathe through my nose most of the time (instead of using my mouth). If you open your mouth during the night, consider using mouth tapes. If you have a deviated septum, undergo septoplasty. Being able to breathe normally through the nose has been a significant factor in my day-to-day life enjoyment.

Startups/entrepreneurship

14. Solo-founding is a very challenging and bumpy road. If you can find one or multiple partners in crime, absolutely do it. Be intentional and cautious when choosing your co-founders. I usually suggest completing the "Co-founder questionnaire" and comparing answers side-by-side, discussing any points that stand out. I also favor doing trial projects together, as it's usually the best way to determine compatibility.

15. Raise funding only when you absolutely need it. It will be easier, on better terms, and you'll know precisely how to spend the money. If you're raising funds, make sure to seek help from founders in your network. More on this here.

16. Avoid over-hiring. Stay as lean as possible for as long as possible (at least before achieving product-market fit). Pivots become more complicated with more people involved.

17. AI will be the single most significant driving factor of change in the world. If we solve AGI (or achieve intelligence close to AGI), we'll likely solve most of the world's problems.

Random

18. If you live in a large city, owning a car is a liability. I realized that I passionately dislike car-centric societies (like, for example, most of the US) and prefer the European "car-free" lifestyle. I still enjoy driving and mostly do so through car-sharing and rentals.

19. The notion of "owning your place in the world" is so old. I optimize for freedom of movement and lifestyle optimization rather than saving up for a long-term investment.

20. I love science fiction because of all the fantasizing about the future. Books like "Project Hail Mary" or "The Three-Body Problem" are among my favorites.

21. Since discovering pet sitting, I realized that it's an amazing alternative to Airbnb/hotels when traveling. Not only do you save on accommodation, but you also get a more nuanced local experience (and get to spend fun time with animals). More on this here.

22. A good breakfast is the foundation for a great day; it should be something you look forward to. Don't settle for a subpar breakfast—learn how to cook a proper one and experiment. Make breakfast a sacred time for spending time with your family.

23. Fashion is mostly made up. No one cares what you wear as long as you're a cool person. I strive for minimalism—having a diverse yet small wardrobe that allows me to comfortably dress for any occasion. Uniqlo is the best fashion brand, period.

24. The traditional educational system is already outdated. No one cares about your diploma (I have never shown it to anyone since finishing my bachelor's degree and don't even know where it is). Focus on learning, trying things, and making connections rather than striving for grades.

25. Don't be afraid to lose people as you grow and your paths diverge. You'll always find new friends if you're curious and willing to be proactive about connecting with others.

I’ve been a productivity geek for a long time — due to my nature, I enjoy “life optimization” and like to try out new stuff and experiment with it, trying to keep the rational empirical approach.

I’ve also tried most of the hacks that GPT-4 suggests (see screenshots below) when you ask for productivity advice. But what are some of the other, non-obvious ones, that are aimed at improving your focus and eliminating distractions?

But you’re here not for the GPT-4 output, right? Here is my list of hacks:

1. I don’t check my phone (nor laptop) for 1-1.5h since waking up

Morning time to yourself is really important and underrated. I see so many people getting into the rabbit hole of opening messaging apps, social media, or other things first thing in the morning. I wonder how hard must it all be on their mental health in the mid to long run.

For me, this routine is simple:

• I spend the first 30-60 (depending on the day) minutes after waking up doing various physical things: warming up (a combo of stretching, yoga moves, and power exercises), running, meditating, showering (with the cold exposure, of course). Usually, I don’t check the phone at all, but sometimes I do want to check the weather (using a widget on my home screen) or my Oura/Garmin stats for the night to compare them with how I feel subjectively and determine the degree of toughness I need to apply. I keep these interactions quick and mindful and don’t count them at all.

• I then try to have at least 30 mins (sometimes up to 1.5-2h, for example on Mondays when I’m doing the reflection/planning for the week) of free time devoted to thinking or writing. I’m not a huge fan of physical notebooks so I frequently open my personal Notion and start a new empty note with something like “Today’s date journal”. If I only use Notion as the “input device” and don’t get distracted by anything else, I don’t count this as well.

• What helps (both with the phone and the laptop) is if you close all of your apps in the evening so that they don’t hang “open” when you’re about to do the mindful stuff you need your devices for. See the next hack as it solves that for the iPhone, at least.

• Thinking about doing this? Start with the “challenge” at first. Find a person to be your buddy and you both do this (e.g. 1 hour with no phone) for a month.

2. I have no notifications enabled with very few exceptions

I only have notifications for banking apps, calls (I see when someone is calling me), or the Messages app (I don’t use it for chatting with anyone — and need notifications mainly for the “confirmation codes”). Yes, I’m that kind of person — there are no other notifications.

The same goes for the laptop, where there aren’t even any exceptions.

Getting rid of notifications is the easiest way to eliminate distractions. How often do you really need to see that message or that email and reply immediately, and not in an hour when you decide to open a specific app yourself?

And you know what? Never had this ever been a problem. If something is really-really urgent, a person calls me. But usually, that happens very rarely (can maybe only recall a couple of such events in the last year).

Try this. It will seriously change your perspective on “being active and online” all the time.

3. I put 24h time limit on every single non-productivity app

The biggest problem with undesired consumption is not enough limits to prevent us from mindlessly starting the consumption loop. It’s just too easy to open a specific app on your phone when you’re bored, tired, or want to distract yourself. Solution? Create an additional limit that can possibly make you think twice before opening an app.

I have set a perpetual 24h time limit on all non-productivity apps, meaning apps with the potential for undesired consumption: messenger apps, social media apps, email apps, video apps, community apps, games, etc. Every single one of them.

Here’s how it works on the iPhone, but I’m pretty sure you can figure out something similar on Android:

1. You go to “Screen time”, then “Downtime” and set a scheduled downtime every day from for example 5 am till 4.59 am, which means that it will be active for almost the entire 24h window.

2. You go to “Always allowed” and delete all the apps that have the potential to be consumed abnormally. I suggest that you include all messengers, social media, and leisure apps.

3. The “limited” apps will look like this on your screen:

4. And whenever you try to open one of them, you’ll see this:

5. Of course, you can still choose “Ignore limit for today” and keep using the app, but I suggest you don’t click on it and use “15-min” instead. Usually, that’s enough to make sure you don’t get dragged into endless scrolling/consumption because you get kicked out.

4. I try to do 2 no-distractions 1.5h focused blocks a day

I first heard about the “Focused” time blocks from Cal Newport’s “Deep Work” book (go read it or at least watch one of his podcasts, like this one with Lex Fridman).

The second fitting piece was Andrew Huberman with his scientific explanation of why 1.5 hours is the best block for a focused session.

Since then I’ve adopted the practice of having 1-2 (not always you get to have 2, sadly — if there are just way too many meetings/calls or smaller tasks) 1.5h focused time blocks. I reserve them on my calendar (this technique is called time blocking), usually at the same times to optimize for the circadian rhythms:

Before I begin the block, I click edit and add what I want to work on/accomplish directly into the description of the event. Sometimes I make the blocks longer if I feel like it.

It’s okay for me to move these blocks to various times of the day depending on the context. The goal is to make sure you do at least 1 (ideally 2) and do it intentionally and without distractions.

How do you avoid distractions? Just tell yourself to only do what you’ve set up for and avoid everything else. Close all apps and focus on the task you’ve described in the event.

Did anything resonate with you? I’m super curious to hear about your own hacks and will happily publish another post with these. DM me on Telegram, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

I can also be your accountability buddy if you reach out to me and ask for it ;)

Just like with past crises like the Dot-com bubble, the 2008 financial crisis, or the recent pandemic, a lot of the barriers are now being dropped and even more opportunities arise. I wouldn’t go into too many details on what happened back then (just ask ChatGPT), but companies like Google, Amazon, Stripe, and many others are a direct result of these crises.

First, what are the community observations behind the current tectonic shifts in the startup land?

1. Dragged recession and “fundraising winter” created a lot of new hungry wannabe founders and then made them focus on building and bootstrapping vs raising capital right away.

• With more than 2000 people being laid off in tech every day, this created a lot of smart and talented engineers, marketers, and overall wannabe founders who probably have saved a bit of money and are thinking about starting a startup.

  

• Sam Altman, arguably one of the most influential founders and investors of our time thinks that 2023 is the best time to do so, but now it’s really hard to raise funding and so a lot of these wannabe founders and getting disappointed with the status quo and turning to bootstrapping.

2. Foundation models like LLMs (large language models — GPT-3/4, LLaMA) or diffusion models (Midjourney/Stable Diffusion/DALL-E) have gone through the AI community and taken the world by storm. But we’re still in the infancy era of seeing the aftermath, regardless of whether the research will continue to pop out something jaw-dropping every fucking week.

• Business creation is already being drastically democratized: via both the speed and resources needed to execute the idea:

  • Engineers are using ChatGPT and Copilot to code up to 55% faster, and GPT-4 is already capable of not only generating the code using natural language as the input but also understanding errors and correcting them on the fly.

  • Designers are using diffusion models (and soon-to-be-released ChatGPT image input functionality) to do more and better designs.

  • If you don’t know how to code or design, you may actually do without anyone’s help if you know how to prompt models in the right way. And as time goes by, models improve and the UI/UX of interacting with them improves too — everyone will start using them. Just imagine an SMB owner casually creating a fully functioning website without anyone’s help.

• All of this will lead to more people pursuing their ideas and starting their businesses in general (not necessarily aiming to be a startup, raise funding, and all that jazz).

• But what’s most important, AI will enable founders and lean startup teams to execute 5-10x faster, maximizing their only advantage in front of incumbents.

Now, what are the main theses that will probably reshape the future ecosystem?

1. Given the ever-fastest speed of innovation, a lot of the builders struggle with finding great ideas

• Most engineers have a common background and not enough deep vertical expertise so they default to building “tarpit ideas” (a term that was popularized by YC) or, simpler put, ideas that are on the surface (a good example would be “generic video summarizer powered by OpenAI API”).

• With so much happening in AI, there is also a constant FOMO or fear of becoming obsolete by someone’s progress (OpenAI, we’re talking about you).

2. There has never been so much research output (the number of AI papers on arXiv per month grows exponentially with a doubling rate of 24 months) — but the problem is that all of this is very disconnected from the productization. If you’re a builder/engineer, you don’t really follow all of this research progress, you just act on some things that break the from the hype.

• Here’s an illustrated timeline of the recent well-known “AI avatars” hype. For context — most of the AI avatar features have been built using the open-source Stable Diffusion model plus the Dreambooth method of fine-tuning this model.

  • Aug 26: Dreambooth is announced.

  • Sep 7: Stable Diffusion Dreambooth port is released on GitHub.

  • Sep 25: Corridor Crew creates a video exploring the combo (SD+Dreambooth) potential for creating personalized avatars. Crazy how they discovered it so early.

  • Oct 28: Pieter Levels releases Avatarai.me as one of the first viral AI avatar apps and makes some waves on Twitter. More than 2 months have passed since the announcement!

  • November/December: App Stores got flooded with such apps, most of them being inspired by Pieter and other indie-hackers who were the first to ride the wave. Lensa got most of the attention by carefully crafting the marketing/influencer launch.

• BTW, let me give a shout-out to a great newsletter that summarizes the best Arxiv submissions each week called “David Summarizes Papers”

3. There are so many great opportunities at the intersection of ML(Machine Learning)/CV(Computer Vision) and hard domains/verticals/niches, but going after them requires having 2 things: access to experts and access to data.

• Both are really hard to get if you’re an engineer or if you’re bootstrapping because that basically requires having well-developed business development skills.

• Sometimes you don’t even know where to start (referring to the first thesis of how wannabe founders struggle with finding great ideas).

• Usually, this is somewhat covered in the “venture/startup studio” format. Great examples would be AI Fund, Palta (where I worked), and Expa. However, startup studios usually take a VERY BIG stake in the company, sometimes making it all the way up to 50%, and that is a lot of the time a deal-breaker for founders because it leads to less motivation and a lower sense of ownership.

Okay, so what’s next? My current bet is that the “residence” format will be on the rise as the alternative to bootstrapping/accelerators/venture studios

Residencies are not new, but they do surely feel like a very appropriate format for the current conditions. They are:

• Super-early stage, usually pre-idea or at least pre-committed-idea.

• Don’t take the company ownership from the founder compared to venture/startup studios.

• Give founders what they need the most: speed of iterations and resources (experts, guidance, community engagement).

• Backers (LPs) are highly engaged and supportive of the projects because it’s not only about the money for them, it’s also about the fun and being able to participate in the earlier stages, again.

Some of the recently-launched residencies I’m following closely are:

1. HF0 (their website sucks so it’s better to take a look at this Twitter thread).

2. VC’s founder residencies like the Afore Capital’s one.

3. Buildspace (love their unique comms style — how many of you have ever emailed something like this?).

   

4. Entrepreneur First is one of the most (at least in Europe) well-known founder residencies. Their minus, as I feel it, is the scale.

5. Pioneer has always been a great inspiration however they do seem to lack the “tight-knit closed group” approach.

6. Ever heard of the Launch House? Very interesting premise, but poor execution. Lot’s to learn here but shows the demand once again.

7. If you’re also following along the YC's recent transformation under the leadership of Garry Tan, it feels a lot like they’re moving closer to the residence format too. Closer to their roots, to the earliest stages, to fewer companies in the cohort, and to the founders living in close-knit offline communities (I saw that ~85% of the batch moved to California during the batch).

Perhaps you know of more interesting examples? In that case, please let me know.

Finally, here’s a request for a residence I wish existed:

A super selective (like YC) hybrid (offline<>online) residence for builders (both hackers and hustlers with proven track records) with a focus on productizing the recent AI research breakthroughs in overlooked or hard domains.

The plan is to catch builders before they are committed to an idea and help them find a great idea at the intersection of AI and specific domains. This seems to be a very overlooked step as most of the accelerators are only accepting ideas.

Some of the money (or perhaps even most of it) will be raised through operators as LPs (current/ex-founders or executives at startups/big tech who actually want to participate in the program because it’s a great way for them to feel fun and excited once again without the need to start over).

The residence team will take up the following things on themselves:

• Launching domain-specific cohorts and finding/engaging experts (either interested in advising or co-founding), partners, and data (for example, using the “give-to-get” approach)

• Providing builders with the opportunity to iterate/ship quickly and not worry about anything else — via the stipend as well as the straightforward investment deal (likely uncapped SAFE with MFNs or perhaps some other founder-friendly format)

• Providing builders with the opportunity to live/hang out together for some time during the program

• Helping builders match together in teams

• Connecting builders and residence backers in a vibrant community

• Helping formed startups with biz dev and seed/series A funding

What are some of the domains that can be launched as cohorts?

• Climate Tech

• Healthcare

• Construction

• Financial Tech

• Transportation

• Logistics

• Architecture

• And many others, with a focus on the “shlep” (see more here) domains

During the last couple of years, a lot of people have opened their Delaware C-corps for startups or not. I doubt that at least 50% of them are still working on the things that got them to start these entities in the first place.

We all know it — startups are not only about “starting them” or “succeeding”, they are also about “failing” and “shutting down”. Sometimes before you’ve even properly begun. And that’s okay.

But what should you do with the open C-corp when you don’t need one anymore?

Earlier this year I needed to find the answer to this question, and so I did, sharing my findings with the broader community.

Disclaimer

Obviously, all of this should not be taken as legal advice and blah-blah-blah. I’m also not an expert on the topic and didn’t triple-check all of the numbers and stuff. Take this information with the grain of salt and be sure to do your own background check (with lawyers or friendly founders).

Alright, back to it. When you don’t need your C-corp anymore, what do you do?

Some googling (and founders’ forum posting) can tell you the following info:

1. You can continue upkeeping the company and maybe buy out the shares of the unwanted partner in case you’d want to start a new startup in the future using the same entity (also, changing its name). The upkeep of the company is around at least $1k/year, since you need to pay the Franchise tax (usually $450 for most startups, and the deadline is the 1st of March) as well as the Income tax, which you are not able to declare yourself, so you’ll pay at least an extra of $500 per year for a CPA (the deadline is the 15th of April).

2. You can try to sell your company to someone, but most likely no one will be interested, because truth be told, opening a company is easier than doing anything related to selling one.

3. Or you can liquidate the company. The liquidation itself is $500+, but probably better not to do this yourself, and in total, you’ll spend some extra on taxes, liquidation, and lawyers.

What isn’t immediately visible, is that there is a 4th option. It’s not exactly “public” so it’s hard to find a lot of information about it.

What’s the 4th option?

You can stop using the company or any associated bank accounts as well as stop paying taxes.

Yes, do nothing.

How it works in Delaware (other states might have other rules) — after 2 years the state moves your company into the “non-active” or “void” state, which is technically almost the same as a “liquidated” company, but not quite. It’s still there, but no one cares about it more than about the records of the database.

If you need the company at some point in the future, there will be an opportunity to revive it (with some penalty, of course, but it should cost no more than ~$1-1.5k).

I’ve validated this via Quora (posts like this, see screenshots below) and a couple of forums.

But also, most importantly, with a few legal/accounting firms, including the well-respected Silicon Valley legal firm Grayver Law with more than 300 startups currently being serviced.

According to Leonard Grayver, the firm’s partner, there are no extra risks of just “forgetting” about your company unless you have a super active history/creditors associated with it. Meaning if the company is clean or “almost” clean, you would be fine.

If you used your company extensively, then you probably have an extra couple of thousand in your pocket to spend on lawyers and liquidation fees and this post is not for you.

Leonard also shared with me that he personally knows of at least 50 such cases of “forgotten” companies, which should give you a perspective on the commonality of this option.

After completing my personal research, I have also found a few such cases among my acquaintances.

Well, now you know — and can now make a more informed decision on what to do with your C-corp if your startup failed.

Sam Altman, arguably one of the most influential founders and investors of our time thinks that 2023 is the best time to start a startup:

“The only thing that is easy in the mega-bubble — capital. It was a great time to raise funding for a startup from about 2015 till the end of 2021, but everything else was pretty hard: hiring people, rising above the noise, and doing something that matters without thousands of competitors. Now, raising funding is tough, but all the other stuff is much easier.”

He is not alone, because the recession is great for building. And sure, you can bootstrap for a while, but at some point, you will need to raise your first check, which is usually “the hardest to get”.

In this post, I’d like to share some of the free fundraising resources with you. ChatGPT did not write this! Years of the collection went into this, so feel free to spread the word and share this with others :)

Y Combinator (YC) learning resources

The most famous (deservedly so?) accelerator produced a ton of useful content over the years, and fundraising is not an exception. Here’s a summary of the best resources from them:

• Three “intro to raising capital” videos from the various years of YC Startup School. IMO all of them are good and are worth watching:

  1. 50-min video by Geoff Ralston (former YC president) from 2019

  2. 45-min video by Aaron Harris (former YC partner) from 2018

  3. Super fresh (Mar 2023) 30-min video by one of the newest YC partners, Brad Flora

• An old (from 2014) but gold 50-min Q&A with Marc Andreessen, Ron Conway, and Parker Conrad

• Paul Harris also did a more casual 40-min podcast in 2020, worth listening to

• And if you want to dive into the legal fundamentals (SAFEs, priced equity rounds, etc) — watch this video from Kirsty Nathoo (YC CFO)

• Wanna see their FULL library? Look here

• And don’t forget to read Paul Graham’s (the father of YC) essays: one, two

• Garry Tan (current YC CEO) also has had a great startup channel for years. There are no specific videos to highlight, but def check out the list

Other learning resources (from VCs and founders)

• NFX (one of the best early-stage VC funds) has a huge library of materials around fundraising. They also gave a great free resource for deck sharing called Brieflink

• A text (and Twitter) guide from Elizabeth Yin, a former founder who’s reviewed over 30,000 pitches as a General Partner at Hustle Fund and Partner at 500 Startups

• An honest and no-bullshit guide from Steph Mui, founder of PIN and former VC. You’ll also find a bunch of people you can subscribe on Twitter to

• 25-min video on how to raise your first $500k George Levin, founder of Hints and GetIntent

• A “how to seed” video from John S. Kim, CEO of SendBird (Y Combinator W16), raised more than $120M

• Brett Adcock, founder at Figure, Archer ($2.7B IPO) and Vettery ($100M exit) shares a lot of useful stuff on Twitter

Pitch/presentation examples and templates

• A list of selected videos from 12 YC demo day pitches

• What does the stat tell us? DocSend shared a bunch of useful insights with TechCrunch

• TechCrunch has a bunch of posts on the topic, here’s their overview (on the flipside a lot of them are walled, so consider using something like archive.is)

• Good deck template from Haje Kamps, TC reporter, and a former VC

• What should you put on your deck? Slidebean has a nice overview of various schools of thought

Investor lists/databases

• Mercury has prepped one of the best investor databases, period. Downside — can’t easily scrape, need to use with caution :)

• Signal (from NFX) is also not bad, but more limited than the Mercury’s one (no emails, for example)

• 110 funds that lead seed rounds from Outset Capital. Use with caution

• Shai’s <$200M recently raised fund list

• No-warm-intro required list of investors

• Taskable’s pre-seed investors’ list

Bonus: a clip from the Silicon Valley series (go watch it if you haven’t yet) on how NOT to raise

Other posts:

• The rise of LLMs, dragged recession and layoffs are all prompting us (pun intended) to rethink the way startups are created and funded. But what will the next “summer” look like?

• 4 simple hacks that help me stay more focused throughout the day

• 25 things I’ve learned about life the hard way before turning 25

• Pet sitting as a free and fun alternative to hotels/Airbnb

Last year, my fiancée Kate and I discovered pet sitting, which has become a great alternative for our travel accommodation planning. I’ve already told so many people about it! Have I mentioned how tired I am of Airbnb and hotels? Maybe next time.

But first, let me give you a bit of context:

I was never much of an "animals" person. While I did have a hamster at some point in my childhood, I got bored with it pretty quickly. Although I always wanted a dog, it never happened.

Kate, on the other hand, had a cat (RIP) and enjoyed spending time with him while growing up.

For years now, we've been pondering the idea of getting a dog together — but the freedom of movement and travel was always winning, and we were only able to smirkingly pet animals (mostly dogs) at parties.

Until around the same time last year, Kate saw a random TikTok video — someone shared their fun experience of pet sitting as an alternative to Airbnbs/hotels. They used the TrustedHousesitters app and seemed to enjoy it (this is not sponsored BTW — even after deliberate googling, I haven't found any viable alternatives, so I guess we're lucky there is at least one).

Since at the time we were planning to "nomad" for a few months, we decided to give it a shot and see what options are available — we didn't really care where to go unless it's in the EU. And that's how it began.

Last year, we went on a total of 3 pet sits and can now safely say that they are so much more fun than Airbnb/hotels! 🙂

I know you want pics and cool stories, here they are:

1. Tuscany rural house for ~3 weeks with 3 domesticated street (yet very sweet) dogs

We would have never ever found such an interesting Airbnb in the middle of nowhere. Turns out the house is from the 19th century, and the villagers are actually of communist views (what 🤨).

Fun story: the orange doggie was very shy and loved to jump out the fence when she saw the deer (yes, there were plenty walking around). One day we returned home from the Rome trip, found out that she escaped and needed to search for her with flashlights - in the middle of the field at night. For 2 hours. And using a special trick - taking two other dogs on a walk to make her jealous.

2. Barcelona's apartment for ~3 weeks with 3 funny cats (my first time around a cat for more than an hour!)

We escaped the grey Warsaw and had so much sun! We lived right at the footsteps of the Barcelona's mountain grid, and I went for a hike (200 meters up and down) as the daily routine.

3. Berlin's apartment for ~5 days with 1 Bernese puppy (he was just the perfect size at the time)

Super fun dog, and we walked all over Berlin with him (I think we've visited more places than he's ever been in his prior entire life).

These are all very unique experiences, and pet sitting made them possible.

And if you're curious, here are my brief thoughts on how the platform works:

• Usually, there are a bunch of applicants for each sit, and you need to write nice personalized messages to get approved. Kate has a distinct "sales" pitch draft. Ping me in the comments if you'd like her to share it! One of her friends has already secured and completed her first sit in Copenhagen and has thoroughly enjoyed it.

• What I like about the platform is that they take verifications pretty seriously. We haven't had or heard of an unpleasant experience around the platform — but I guess this is all about the scale. Airbnb is famous for having a few public scandals on the topic as well as the “Alpha team”.

• BTW, this is to give you a perspective about how your profile would look like.

  

• There's only one catch: since the platform needs to make money to stay afloat, it charges both sides of the marketplace. Owners are charged around $190, and sitters around $130. However, considering the savings compared to hotel or Airbnb alternatives, this is a small amount. We've probably saved over $4,800 after just three trips (assuming an average of $100 per night in the cities we've stayed in, which is likely even on the low end).

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