Memes & Motivation 38: Lucky
Hey team,
It happened again this week.
I thought it would take another decade to go viral, but it took a week for another thread to go big.
Here is the crazy lesson about how the internet works.
It took me nine months of actively trying hard to get my first thousand followers on Twitter. Then this week, in 9 hours while I was sleeping, I got a thousand from this thread.
A valuable lesson I needed to apply to many things in my life.
We need a certain amount of stubbornness to get lucky; some call that grit. We need enough time and enough iterations.
Most people stop too soon, and they don't give themselves enough chance. The other thing about luck is that those who get lucky somehow seem to keep getting lucky? Coincidence?
Maybe it's all survivorship bias, but I am convinced it's a lesson.
For me, it means stay in the game long enough to get lucky, take enough shots, and then getting luckier is easy. So many of my SaaS projects have failed, and all of them have a similar theme; I shut them down too soon. I didn't try more approaches while keeping the previous ones alive.
This luck I am talking about here is not like winning the lotto luck; it's a different kind of luck where the odds improve with each try. It's unclear by what amount they improve, but they improve, but there is still a ton of randomness to it.
Let's get into a few good Ideas and Memes I ran into that I think youll enjoy.
This is a great thread by Michael Seibel, whos a partner at YC and who I've learned a ton from about Startups.
You should read the whole thread but I think hes spot on that Google is in trouble and disruption is coming. But I also think the reasons why are not so obvious.
It's not just the Ads and junk results, they have junk results because the web is no longer an open garden. Amazon overtook them as the leading place to search for products, largely because the best reviews and results are on Amazon.
But more and more of that is happening.
A great thread by David Perell summarizing many of his ideas about the Internet. I picked number 10 because an immigrant from a former communist country this one resonates.
A few fun Memes
A fun meme by my friend Avthar that anyone that's worked with SQL should enjoy.
That does look like a really good book. With two little girls that wake me up nearly every night, I could really use that book.
Two exciting things from this week:
The first thing, Chris Wong and I officially got in the Maven Accelerator this week to do our Newsletter Launchpad course. (We were in the final stage of the application, but we got in since there was enough interest to learn from us)
Thank you to the people from this newsletter that expressed interest, we will share more soon.
In short, it will be a live course powered by Maven in April, to help those that want to start a newsletter. It's going to be great because all of this stuff about overcoming the psychology and fears of publishing online are fresh in our minds. We will teach it all.
The second thing, on Twitter I asked:
"Thinking about making a video course.
About everything I learned in my decade-plus career climbing as an engineer in big tech.
Timeless principles for engineering careers, how to get ahead. Basically, give all my secrets away, and tweet it all too.
Would anyone want it?"
The response on Twitter was great but I would love to hear your thoughts too. Respond to this email if you think it's worth doing.
Thank you for reading!
Louie