Val K.

I build things: startups & visual arts | movies & design & technology | I follow back interesting individuals

[Val K. @valentinakulaga]

This winter and spring I ran an interesting experiment.
https://t.co/qxb7e0mqlg and other marketplaces where you can buy a startup. I looked at 5 of them. I found 5 strong startups that were for sale, each with a few users, good ideas, or solid technology.
I’ll probably describe the whole process on LinkedIn; how deep I went. The stories are too long for here. But I’ll tell you one thing: I bought none of them. And I did validation before buying, not after.
For example, one was a vertical B2B SaaS. Here’s what I did. I found 4 potential clients and paid them for an interview. I learned that the benefits of the startup were too small for them to switch from their competitor’s well-established software to mine.

The lesson: ALWAYS CHECK BEFORE, not fucking feelings but FACTS will tell you the truth. Feelings need to be checked. Numbers and facts don’t lie, feelings and intuition do!

[Val K. @valentinakulaga]

All the money I’ve earned in my life came from two things:

my small entrepreneurial projects,
and my academic career.

As a student I worked 3 months as a cashier and 3 weeks as a sales assistant.
Never as an office employee. Never as an employee after my BA. Just 3 months as a temp.

I’m 29. I’ve launched and tested a few startups. I’ve had painful lessons, and I’ve learned a lot.

I never had a mentor and never learned inside a company, so my method is simple: reverse-engineer + analyse + improve.

I don’t have idols or role models. I don’t praise or admire successful entrepreneurs, but I do study them. The businesses they’ve built, the way a detective studies a case. To me they’re “humanised playbooks” until I get to know them personally.

Now I’m working on something I’ll turn into a business. God bless.

[Val K. @valentinakulaga]

I’m obsessed with 3 things : music, fashion (a bit) and film 🎥

Such an elegant album, I can’t 🖤

[Val K. @valentinakulaga]

Ok, if there are just two types of people “Taylor Swift” and “Doja Cat” … I’m definitely 2

[Val K. @valentinakulaga]

Balcony Views

[Val K. @valentinakulaga]

What’s I’m listening now:

“Market makers are the wolves. They keep the herd together.
Without wolves, the sheep scatter; one runs to this field, another to that one, and you’ll never round them up again.”

[Val K. @valentinakulaga]

I watch all the interviews of founders, entrepreneurs, and interesting people.
I don’t watch them to admire these people or get inspiration.

I watch to learn from them: every fact, insight, new word, new concept, and strategy. Names, dates, and facts.

Thanks to AI, I can simply insert the video/interview transcript and get a full summary without any non-functional information.

So I don’t need to watch, I outsource it to AI.

[Val K. @valentinakulaga]

KOC/KOS/KOL

Marketing is everywhere in China 🇨🇳

[Val K. @valentinakulaga]

We’ve been sold a myth: introverts are deep and intelligent, extroverts are loud and empty.

I’m an introvert. I’d always pick home over a crowd. But being drained by people isn’t an intellectual virtue.

The real value is communication. Fast replies. Easy connection. Holding clients, students, work chats on a steady pulse, without pauses or arrogance.

Most people are shy introverts who are afraid to reach out first. The ones who are open, who lead, organize, present, those are the rare few. A real luxury.

Replying three days later isn’t status. It’s just bad communication.

Speed, clarity, lightness, that’s real taste.

[Val K. @valentinakulaga]

@Anshuman0769 @X +

[Val K. @valentinakulaga]

@VaniSlaysCode @X +

[Val K. @valentinakulaga]

@Priyannkaaaa +

[Val K. @valentinakulaga]

@HemantDotDev +

[Val K. @valentinakulaga]

@caps_raunak +

[Val K. @valentinakulaga]

@xoaanya +

[Val K. @valentinakulaga]

@Careerbuddha111 @X +

[Val K. @valentinakulaga]

One of my favorite shots in all of cinema: the Grand Budapest Hotel, by Wes Anderson, one of the directors I admire most.

Everything about the frame is deliberate. The hotel sits dead center, perfectly symmetrical, every window and balcony mirrored on either side. The palette is unmistakably his: soft rose pinks against the muted lavender of a snowy forest, the whole image bathed in a faded, almost nostalgic light. It feels less like a photograph and more like a memory.

What few people realize is that the hotel was never real. It exists only as a handcrafted miniature, a scale model filmed to feel monumental. No grand building somewhere in Europe, no towering set. Anderson deliberately chose to build it by hand rather than render it digitally, and that decision is precisely why it feels so alive. There is a warmth to it that no computer has quite learned to imitate.

And that, to me, is the quiet genius of it. The idea of “a film about a hotel” is ordinary; anyone could propose it. But this particular world, its color, its symmetry, its melancholy, is something else entirely. That is vision: the ability to take a modest idea and shepherd it into something people fall in love with.

A small pink model that does not exist in any real place now lives permanently in the memory of millions. That is the whole magic of it.

[Val K. @valentinakulaga]

Looks like Bella Hadid 😃

[Val K. @valentinakulaga]

Ideas VS Vision

“Talking about ideas versus vision for a second, ideas are easy. I can have 10 in 10 seconds. Ideas are just infinite. At least on creative teams, you have no shortage of ideas. What I call vision is the ability to not only take a great idea, but shepherd it into existence, and you’re doing that through inspiration first and foremost. If you need a team to make it, you need a team to believe in the vision of the idea. And then there also has to be a technological plan for the idea. There has to be a design plan. There has to be an art style. There has to be a pragmatic production reality to the plan.”

Jeff Kaplan, legendary Blizzard game designer (World of Warcraft, Overwatch), on the Lex Fridman Podcast.

I’ve been watching this 5-hour interview for the second day now. It is too interesting to play in the background.

These games probably belong more to the millennial generation, or even an older one. But it was fascinating to listen to anyway: about the gaming industry, which I find genuinely interesting. To me it’s one of the most fearless industries when it comes to teams. You can’t just walk into it. Only people who are truly passionate, truly immersed in it, go there and make something truly amazing.

His story is crazy, the intensity of the interest in his domain field of gaming is unbelievable. He went there only through genuine passion, not by accident or after university.

There are so many thoughts in this interview that I underlined for myself. This one is among the most important. Vision is the ability to look far into the future and actually get things done. Not just to have an idea and present it beautifully, but to grow it, see how it will live in the future, and make it real.