sunday night thinking about how kiwis got weird hairs on the outside wtf

Hey all, quick and dirty newsletter for you.

Like the old days.

just wanna give you an update on whats up, and new learnings.

I know a lot of people are wondering how I’m navigating starting from zero so maybe this helps someone.

Sorry if typos I’m one shotting this shit.

Last 21 days have been good, but fucking difficult.

I don’t have any rules.

If I wake up and wanna make a VR game I’ll do that. If I wanna keep working on a previous thing I was building (ideally!) I’ll do that.

But I am insanely, stupidly disciplined about two things:

• Show up everyday.

• Make something, show one person.

Most days I got no clue what I’m working on.

I’m not that guy that has like 1000 ideas on an Apple Note.

I start at a blank page most days.

Showing up at the laptop everyday, not knowing what I’m gonna do is already hard. And on top of that, knowing that by the end of each day I gotta make something, and show at least one person — yea, that makes it harder.

Still I’ll always trust in my process.

And so far so good.

Week 1 sucked.

Day 1 was so full of anxiety.

I literally thought everything I did was stupid for the first 5 hours.

Around hour 8 I started working on a stupid text editor for myself.

Questioning my existence as I did it.

Still. I showed up. And I had to follow my two rules.

Made the first version in 4-hours.

And texted a shitty Xcode build ZIP to my boy Julian:

By the end of Week 1 I thought this editor was kinda cool.

Still was embarrassed at how simple, small, and niche it was.

But, just decided I don’t give a fuck what people say let’s ship it. I asked Josh if he could cook up a little video in two hours for it and he was down:

I chose to do a video not because I wanted to to go viral, or because I wanted it to look cool. It didn’t make sense. It’s a fucking text editor lol.

There was no rationale.

I just did it because it seemed fun.

And 95% because I like working with Josh.

And I missed making stuff with him.

And, bam, shipped it.

I woulda been happy with 10 downloads.

Ended up getting 1.8M views, thousands of downloads, and a now an amazing community of die-hard Freewrite fans. The feedback has been truly heart warming.

Along with that, shipped that YT video with Aiden I mentioned last week. I hit him up like a day before:

Literally made end-to-end in 1-day. Script, shooting, editing, thumbnail, everything.

0 expectations.

If I got even 100 views I woulda been happy.

I just wanted to get off 0 on YT.

Everyone thinks I got this master plan for my “personal brand” or something and sure I got goals — but… I wanted to make the video because it seemed fun.

And I felt like it’d be fun to work with Aiden on something again.

Anyways, it also did super well. Almost half a 500,000 views across platform (X/LN/YT)

I was very, very happy with the 25,000 views on YT. 75% of YT views coming from algo which I was super happy with.

Bam + >999% haha.

Tryna make 1 video a month for YT.

—

So, last week was officially “Week 3” for me

I started building a voice agent to help me talk through my day. It’s based on my learnings from people using Freewrite. Folks really seemed to love the AI feature I added last minute.

(Btw, adding your users to a single GC is always a good idea. I always learn so much from just seeing how ppl talk about the product. Freewrite GC now has 1k ppl and it gives me an insane amount of new ideas).

So, I thought — huh, what if that was one entire product.

I thought it was a stupid fucking idea.

But I didn’t have any other ideas that day on Tuesday lol.

And I had to ship SOMETHING.

I learned iOS/Expo, made it in like 3-hours, made the initial UI, added real-time voice with elevenlabs, and conversation w/ Gemini Flash, and had a simple demo of a grandpa giving advice.

i literally ripped off this blog post and changed the background 😂.

And I just walked around the office with my phone with this shit demo showing like 20 people.

I was surprised at how some ppl spoke to it.

Was so interesting.

It greatly inspired me.

And for the next 2 days I’d come in, make it just a little bit better and show like 10-20 people the update.

That’s how my brain gets its best ideas.

When I show someone something, and they start telling me their thoughts, and then that triggers a new idea in my head, and all of a sudden it’s that feeling I know super well — like you’re on to something.

And my main goal these last 3-weeks has just been to flex that muscle as much as possible.

So yea. Now I have like a ton of actually really cool ideas for this voice agent I thought was initially stupid.

Life is weird.

Just gotta ship.

Just gotta show people.

Two learnings:

One — I should build with other people even if it’s only like for 30m and even if I have barely any idea what I’m building.

Working with Josh/Aiden on a video, with Dante on a YT thumbnail, with Stavan on some tweet copy, with Jack on random voice agent implementation — all these little things gave me so much energy. And made me feel less alone. And made my ideas better. You can work with your friends in small ways and have fun, it doesn’t have to be all-in or nothing.

Two — Building a new mental, and spending time doing so was worth it.

In the last 8-months I’ve purposely built up a brand new mental. I have updated internal rules, new internal motivations to guide me, and a lot of new strategies to deal with my mind.

(This is all something I’m now realizing I have told literally no one about).

I never wanted my mental to fail me again.

Many of you reading this likely have never met me. But, I’m emotional as hell.

I smile easily. I laugh easily. I cry easily. I get easily anxious.

I wanted to continue to feel all the emotions. Emotions are what make me feel alive. They lead me to do my best work.

It’s hard to be creative without being deeply in touch with your emotions.

But, as I felt these emotions in my work — I no longer wanted them to change my state of mind. This was an important goal of mine these last 8-mo.

Anyways, all this zen bullshit sounds good on paper.

But to me, these first 3-weeks were where I could put my new mental to the test.

And I was extremely happy with the result.

Sure, I had down days. Sure I had anxious days. But, a majority of my days were happy as hell. I rarely felt like my emotions were controlling me. And, if I was down, I knew how to get myself to rebound. It was beautiful.

I couldn’t even remember the last time I had such good days building stuff.

Felt like a real personal breakthrough.

Anyways, just gotta maintain it as things get bigger and better. always the tough part/fun part >:)

—

Anyways, this was a really quick letter guys.

Nothing special. Just wanted to write this.

So. Now. Week 4? Shitttttt, let’s see lol. I have some ideas.

I got no rules right now and am purposely being loose as hell but I also know I have a really good level of base focus and my brain will keep trying to build on top of what I do each day vs blank slate each day (ex. like this voice agent being directly inspired by freewrite user learnings).

But if I gotta start from a blank slate each day — so be it.

I’ll keep doing it.

Anyways.

Took a day off. Went 3-hours north. Stayed in a cabin.

Saw the most beautiful wildflowers, mountains, and rivers. It was amazing.

(At one point a bird landed next to me a bro i teared up it was beautiful).

btw raised two small checks from my friends — shoutout furqan/hubert at founders inc + ryan at weekend fund.

kept it extremely low key.

See you!