How does one become an innovator;
the renaissance man trapped within refuses to be silenced. So I combined everything - chaos, loss, reinvention; into a true, undeniable body of art.
> scholarship to USA for basketball at Top 5 CA High School
> Graduated HS at 16yo
> Broke my leg (thought I’d never walk again)
> Applied to Cambridge, got in, declined the offer
> recovered from injury and went to go play pro overseas
> 5 offers from D1 colleges, NCAA ruled ineligible due to pro status lol
> left sports behind
> traded crypto, made a fortune then lost it all
> Enrolled in top 10 London university for neuroscience
> dropped out after a few months
> made another fortune in crypto, lost it again
> wrote a book (1 copy exists)
> went back to go play pro in Asia
> back to Europe, back to university
> got my bachelors in 14 months !! (didn’t tell anyone)
> made another fortune trading crypto, lost it all
> hit the lowest place in my life
> fast forward 6 months and I’m a 2x founder
> innovating sports tech and AI infra for modern firms
Oh yea. I’m only 23. And I’m just getting started.
the backdoor deal is a surefire way to accelerate any desired outcome.
but people will usually accept a situation, and take their ticket and wait at the back of the line like a normie.
last summer, im headed from SF back to europe for something important.
its almost midnight, we fly into Charlotte NC (2 hr layover), and the flight to London is cancelled due to extreme weather. next flight in 48 hours. and the line for help desk is out the airport (5 hour wait).
remember: I need to be in London tomorrow. need.
it was just instinct and conviction to walk right to the front of the line and speak to the next available assistant.
they tried to send me back but i’d struck up conversation with some ladies at the front and they vouched for me. let me slide right in.
(side note: be friendly to people).
turns out there was a flight out of New York the next afternon, so i payed a ridiculous amount to get the reroute out of NC first thing in the morning.
2 key points here:
A/ pure audacity pulled me to do something bold due to my circumstances (needed to be back in London asap). but otherwise I would’ve stood in that line all night and missed that flight to NY.
B/ people will just take their digit like an animal and wait 5 hours in a “simulated”/suboptimal situation.
people will accept their shitty situations, with no urgency/agency to act. so if you can muster up even 2% of courage, you will run laps around the general pop.
premise: a bias for backdoor deals should be non-negotiable in your thoughts and actions. everything is recoverable. except time.
godspeed.
current lifemaxxing stack:
vertical at 5am
lift and run until failure
draw parallels between renaissance & 21st century
build the future of intelligence
long walks
1 ingredient foods only
salt in water
be disagreeable
My current lifemaxxing stack:
- 4:30am wake up
- Read classic books
- 3 hours creative work before 8am
- Lift/run 6x/week
- Eat single ingredient foods
- Present time with fam/friends
- 20-min evening sauna
- Wild Roman skincare routine
- 8:30pm bedtime
Wouldn't change a thing.
there’s something exhilarating about working insane hours to build the future.
every aspect of your being folds continuously into the craft and then back into you. weirdly, you become the craft. where you are both the painter and the canvas, simultaneously sculpting the other.
that commitment catapults you into the future by proxy.
the pure act of pouring all that you are into creation, and it being reciprocated almost instantly is an addictive experiment, that becomes a self improving closed loop, where every brush stroke becomes 10x better, and you (the canvas) evolve into a finer artwork.
it doesn’t seem clear or obvious while you paint or sculpt, but one day, you step back, years have whizzed past, and the thing you’ve crafted has changed the world.
insane hours are abnormal to the layman, but they also do not understand what it takes to shape the future. insane hours almost always produce insane results.
godspeed.
Back in 2008, I was a fresh-faced kid, really just happy to finally get a job in software, when the founders of @jfrog took a bet on me.
Too young and inexperienced to have any opinions of my own, I helped build one of the seminal companies in the CI/CD/DevOps movement. CI wasn't my idea, I got it secondhand from the visionary founders. Borrowed conviction that wasn't mine until it was.
But here's one that is mine: the software and its entire state machine will rebuild itself per person. No matter how much we try to convince ourselves, the way we built software until today was driven by technological and budget constraints, not by the best experience. rather than taste.
We now finally have the opportunity to move from the least-worst version for everyone to the best version for anyone.
When I pitched this to @gdibner , he immediately knew that this wasn't going to be easy, but he batted for us in the firm. With support from @betaworks , @RafaelCorrales , Rule 30, and angels, @AngularVentures has led a $2M pre-seed round for Sky Valley Ambient Computing to build Adaptive Software, starting with @getdiffer.
In 5 years, shipping single-version software will feel like shipping without CI.
@haider1 It’s really sad to say that I was literally able to do a task in a few hours with codex that took opus 4.7 2 weeks and tons of extra usage.
I’m not even the biggest fan of openai lol.
@kylekuzma whats happening Kuz. we're building something super interesting for hoopers. shoot me a DM or email: [email protected]
we're about to open an investment round. already partnered with a WNBA team. hit me!
there's something deeply potent about our modern renaissance that jolted my thinking while reading machiavelli:
our ancestors are thoroughly jealous because we live in a first world country during an AI renaissance, where one could literally materialize a thought in 5 mins and charge someone $$$$$$$$$.
even 100 years ago, if you lost everything, it’d take at least a few years, perhaps a decade to get back on the horse.
yet we live in a time where you can deploy platoons and re-erect an entire dynasty overnight. and still, it seems non-obvious -- which is bizarre, at least for the ones that are AI-fluent and somewhat near the bleeding edge of this renaissance, which apparently is a small slice of the population.
but if we desire to venture into these matters more thoroughly, we should consider the ones erecting empires "overnight", and if they are to use prayers or can they use force?
in the first instance its quite clear that they always succeed poorly, but when they that rely on themselves and use force, then they are seldom in danger.
ergo "it is that all armed prophets have conquered, and the unarmed ones have been destroyed"; machiavelli writes.
godspeed.
the ones in the arena experience suffering in motion that the philosopher can never communicate.
the endless scroll is littered with characters presenting discomfort and resilience as idea when it is indeed a virtue.
pro basketball, or shall i say the glorified spectacle of gladiators in the colosseum, teaches the nervous system to store voluntary toil, and this isn’t acquired via delving into texts and pondering on axioms.
when you’re in the arena, you offer yourself as a living sacrifice to the game, and the body either understands how to operate in pain or it doesn’t.
the philosopher masturbates in thought and arrives at suffering, a fickle understanding that is, as impermanence isn’t a mere ideal to hold, but a hollowness you must endure with no knowledge of its departure.
the infinite hole calls you to think your way to resilience, which is zero sum game where you lose every single time.
unless you seek it in action, inside the arena, and offer yourself, as a living sacrifice.
if you wait, it will hunt you down. so go toward it, with joy even.
godspeed.
@BonesawMD way worse. almost to the point it becomes disgustingly unbearable. and then there is no choice but to radically walk in the opposite direction.