Dear reader,

Another year around the sun! This new year’s eve, I felt the need to reflect, so I sat at my desk for a while and wrote down some key learnings.

This is not an essay of life advice - I don’t think I’d ever feel qualified to give them. But rather some experiences and realisations that has changed my life in a significant way, for better and for worse. I hope that they can serve as a few extra data points if you are facing something that resembles.

We write the stories, then the stories write us.

I still remember my first few weeks in San Francisco, it was magical and overwhelming at the same time. One thing that very quickly stood out to me is that, somehow, everyone at a house party is some sort of founder, speaking with so much conviction, working on their life mission… I mean, that statistically just can’t be true, right?

As time went on, it became clear to me how much people attach their identity to work in SF - it’s a by-product of a centre for innovation. People are always asking about what you’re working on, your work is oftentimes a primary driver of your friend groups and broader social activities. If you’re in tech/startups, it’s pretty hard not to talk about work all.

There are too many problems in the world, life is too short to be spent working on the ones you don’t truly care about.

Close relationships matters.

It’s a running joke that VCs love to say “Let me know how I can be helpful”, and in fact do nothing to actually help. Because why wouldn’t they just say it, it costs almost nothing - nobody really holds people accountable on the help they offered.

It's much more productive to find the optimal path to attract people that will say yes, versus trying to convert a no to a yes.

Even when someone actually likes you and tries to help you but turns you down for funding etc. Bottom line is if they gave you capital or not - They know it's the most important resource to you at least in the short term. No matter how nice they are to you that’s basic game theory optimisation.

Close relationships matters.

I grew up pretty aloof, I’ve always had a couple of friends but was never part of many friend groups or necessarily super sociable. I was never the person that was particular thoughtful about “building a network” or orient my calendar to be social and attend things. We don’t really spend any time in our formal education on how to choose and develop close relationships, yet these are the people that we spend the majority of our times with, whether its parents, a significant other, close friend, or colleague.

Closure from things that no one apologised for.

Sometimes, people hurt us, and they never apologise for it. It sucks, but there’s no point dwelling over it. I believe that very few people are ill intentioned, and a lot of times people don’t know they have hurt someone else and rather caught up in their own life.