M&Ms: A Cautionary Tale
A story about why it's now or never for a lot of ideas.
Back in 2019, I came across a guy on Twitter who wrote a book on AWS.
His AWS book was selling well, and I thought to myself, "You could probably write a similar book on Azure."
I'd worked at a startup that was early on Microsoft Azure, a competitor to Amazon AWS. I was on many late-night calls with Microsoft engineers diagnosing incidents & trying to figure out "what the hell is going on with Azure?" My teams worked heavily with Azure, too, and together, we built systems that scaled to millions of customers.
All of this led me to believe that maybe, just maybe, I could write a book on Azure. And so I started and very quickly got to about 80% done.
But then COVID hit, and I got busy at work. My teams got really busy modernizing Walmart Pharmacy Tech, and I put the book to the side for a time. Excuses, excuses, of course. Well, they’re not excuses because they're not true, but if I had just gotten the book done then, I'd now have the book and wouldn't need to tell you the rest of this sad story.
But then, in 2021, after I quit that job to pursue entrepreneurship, I thought to myself, "Wouldn't it be nice if I had that book on Azure out there? After all, it's 80% done, and it may make a few dollars. It's the perfect small bet." So I dusted it up and tried to finish it off.
But as I read through this book I'd written all the way back in 2019, I thought, "This reads like crap; you are a better writer now; you should rewrite this!" So, I tried to rewrite it, but I didn't get very far. Rewriting something you wrote a long time ago turns out to be tedious and un-enjoyable.
Then I took a course on writing books & publishing them through KDP, and I had my new friend Greg Lim, who has published many books, take a look to see if we can salvage this. If I could somehow just package what I've got, I could release it anyway. Greg told me what we had to do if I wanted to get this out, and I still couldn't do it.
But as I reflect on why I couldn't get the Azure book done, I realize that the book somewhat disgusted me now—the way your own old writing might sometimes make you cringe when you read it back. I no longer believed many of the things I was recommending in that book. It was way too flowery about Azure.
My opinion changed. I simply don't think most people even need the complexity of Azure and many of its services anymore. And so, how can I write a book recommending many of its complex services to others? I can't, and I won't.
No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river, and he's not the same man. —Heraclitus
But recently, as I reflected on all this, I got a little sad.
I got a little sad because, sure, I had missed out on some potential money I could've made over the years. I'd missed out on having some customer emails and conversations with real people on this topic.
But I was mostly sad because I'd done some great work with Azure back in the day, and it was never captured or "immortalized" somewhere. Sure, the people who worked with me back then knew, but those people are long gone in other roles & don't have the time to vouch for me in public that I know that stuff.
Those people who know that I know my stuff don't have time to enter a Twitter debate about whether Azure is worth using today and say, "You can trust Louie; he knows his stuff on this!"
But a book that would've been out for a few years, maybe with some sales and some reviews, would've gladly vouched for me, even if my opinion had changed. I got a little sad because I never got the public achievement, the recognition, the credibility, or the accolades that I could've easily had if I had just wrapped up that last damn 20%. And I like to remind myself of this story now to make sure I timebox and get my stuff out so I never have any regrets.
And so this is a cautionary tale for you too, as Naval famously said: Inspiration is perishable.
You never know; it might be now or never for your idea, too.
Two Things: The Value of Attention, Black Swan Demystified
An amazing little tidbit came out recently: the amount of revenue Instagram makes.
And that’s $32+ billion in 2021. Looking at that trend, it is probably a lot higher now.
I think this highlights the value of capturing attention, which does not seem to be going down in any way or anytime soon.
If you’ve got some time, the young scholars at Rational VC (Iman & Cyrus) had one of the best discussions on Nassim Taleb’s ideas from Black Swan I’ve ever heard.
They really geek out on this episode & explain these ideas in a way you may find enjoyable on a long walk.
Three Laughs: “Don’t start a company. Start a religion”, “Yes, But the Ads!", “Earthquakes shaking souls.”
Sam Altman, once quote Qi Lu and said:
"Successful people create companies. More successful people create countries. The most successful people create religions."
Based on the replies to his tweets, Sam might be getting his wish.
There are a few ways to see this: the first way I see it is that we might have ad blockers, but they’re still going to be advertised to us.
The second is that the best brands are simply advertising to us 24/7.
The recent earthquakes really have people rethinking their life choices about marriage and so on.
Thank you for reading!
—Louie
P.S. You can reply directly to this email; it will get to me, and I will read it.
Re: Azure, I worked on GCP at Google, and the first couple years I was "stuck" in Developer Relations. I was supposed to mostly work on client libraries, but I was encouraged and rewarded for doing developer content , something I was reluctant to do since I wanted to do "real" engineering on a core team and constantly looking for the path to transfer to do that. Ironically the opportunity to really hone content skills, while getting paid to do so, was a huge missed opportunity. Now that I'm out of Google years later, now I'm tempted to try to make/monetize GCP content, but I just have no motivation to do so. Turns out no amount of market opportunity or credibility can overcome, "I don't want to do the thing." Maybe eventually I'll do an info product but with a heavy focus on Firebase and SaaS angle, despite the heavy competition in that space, because I'm still passionate about the stuff, to the extent it serves building products I that I am excited to work on.
Re: starting a religion, one belief that I have that I rarely see discussed is the religious nature of crypto. I say its not programmable money, its programmable religion. Sure, there's some financial applications lurking, but a lot of crypto looks a like religion when you squint - the different "sects" around the chains like Bitcoin / Ethereum, the forks/schisms. The "cults" that form around NFTs like Bored Apes. That's not a bear case , since world religions are some of the wealthiest, most powerful organizations in the world. And I think a lot of engineers look purely at the utility aspect of crypto, and miss the religious aspects, and then are bewildered when prices go up despite failure to deliver on the utility. Besides religion, if we think about nationalism, being upset when "your" sports team loses, thinking an old jacket is worth $100k because George Washington wore it - the most irrational thing you can think is that humans are rational creatures.
Such a good read, Louie! The sadness feeling of something that you wish you showed to the world but didn't or couldn't really hits home.