just ate a croissant but then realized it was a steak what a stupid mistake

Hey all — been a while.

My last newsletter was 6-months ago.

In it I was telling you all that we were pivotting away from ZipSchool to this random thing called buildspace. Like with any pivot, you don’t really know what it’ll turn into. You don’t know the vision — you just need to pick a starting point and focus on growing some # every single week.

And that’s what we did.

6-months later we’ve — become the worlds largest network of web3 builders, have over 50,000 members, run massive IRL events in places like Nigeria, doubled the team, hit millions in revenue, and managed to make it to billboards in Times Square wtf

What’s wild is almost every week someone will recognize me in public — I’ll literally be at a coffee shop and someone will walk up to me and tell me they’re a big fan + congratulate me on the success.

“Success”.

Interesting haha.

I guess from the outside, buildspace can be perceived as this “success” — a company that’s growing + winning right now (but hey we’re a young company, just b/c we’re on a win streak for a few months doesn’t mean shit). Maintaining this momentum for a few decades is the goal :).

From the inside (regardless of how much they’re winning), every “good” startup is the same — a small team that’s always on fire, aggressively running experiments to continue unlocking new growth and learnings.

Your favorite startup is a chaotic mess that’s constantly trying to figure out the world around it, I promise. They don’t have it figured out.

And that’s okay! In fact, that’s good.

“It’s always Day 1”.

So do I feel “successful” just b/c the company is on a little win streak right now?

Hell no.

Far from it.

I wake up, look at buildspace, and think — “what the fuck is this cringe product — we can be doing 100X better and be 100X bigger”.

I guess what I’m getting at is that I don’t feel any increase in how “successful” I feel or how “happy” I feel because of buildspace’s growth.

But, I definitely feel like my ambition levels have 10X’d-20X’d in the last 6 months — the things that previously felt crazy now seem extremely achievable.

What’s funny is I used to look at people with fast growing companies and thought they were more “happy” because of it and I thought once I was at a company that found a bit of success I would likely be more happy.

Nope. Can confirm — a more successful company doesn’t increase your happiness levels.

In fact, it will likely make you more unhappy because you will constantly be battling with your own ambition. How? Well, the moment you hit some big goal you’ll start wanting to hit the next big goal and you’ll feel like you’re never good enough.

Ambition must be balanced. It’s a force that can be extremely destructive that you need to control. You can’t be all ambition all the time. You’ll burn out.

I still believe that true happiness is found by working towards building deeper relationships with those around you.

One side effect of buildspace’s growth — our team has grown.

I am extremely happy these days. I jump out of bed every morning. Why?

I’m amped as fuck to log on and hang out with my fellow teammates, solve hard problems alongside them, meme around w/ them, make big decisions w/ them, share new music w/ them, run crazy experiments w/ them, etc.

My teammates are the people I spend 50%-60% of my life around and I most definitely feel like I’m building deeper, longer-term relationships with each person that will last for many years — and buildspace is the vehicle that’s really helping foster all this.

So in a way, the company’s growth has brought me happiness — but in a way I totally didn’t expect.

Okay, back to shipping :).