don't mistake me for a person, I am a concept
Joined February 2023
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my first time trying "distraction design"
→ saved a product launch
→ cut support tickets
truth - I did it by effing around and finding out
we had this feature, took 8 secs to load.
users hated it. so did I
dev fix would take 2 months
launch was in 2 weeks. total panic mode
some guy dmed me saying "you are the lorem to my ipsum" I am logging out, enough design twitter for today
saumya retweeted
You know what's cool?
You can just ignore the discourse-du-jour around taste, slop, craft, storytelling, and focus on making good things.
And you can do that with whatever medium you choose.
Including AI. 🙃
saumya retweeted
for all you know, this could be your last summer.
as homer wrote, you will never be lovelier than you are right now. so tell her she has a pretty smile. get lean or become a unit. find wonder in boarding the airplane. drink more coffee than you need. walk on the beach until your feet hurt. write your girlfriend a note on a tuesday. waste money because its not all about retirement. pull over at the lookout. ask the uber driver about his life. tell the woman in the elevator you like her shoes and mean it. call your mother. ask the waiter his favorite thing on the menu and order that.
theres so much life in the slow moments, and you sprint past it chasing the next thing. but at any time, in any situation, you can find the good. smile. be happy. recognize it for a one of one life experience. what good is walking around a curmudgeon when tomorrow could be curtains.
for heavens sake, flirt with the world.
the biggest disservice people do to themselves is refusing improvement in small doses - u may feel it's because the microdoses are insultingly small - on the surface - but what it really is fear of the unknown.
life update : decided to follow my calling and got paid today to tell someone to join the gym after a breakup.
there is no better place u can go to than the gym if u r going through a breakup.
saumya retweeted
>be Naval Ravikant
>spawn in New Delhi
>poor immigrant family
>father leaves shortly after they land in Queens, New York
>mother works menial jobs by day, night school after
>age 9, alone in a country you don't understand
>no friends
>no safety net
>no connections
>the library becomes your entire world
>get into Stuyvesant High School
>yes, that Stuyvesant
>the public school that produced four Nobel laureates
>one entrance exam changes the trajectory of your life
>go from blue collar to white collar in a single move
>graduate and land Dartmouth
>double major
>computer science and economics
>pay your way through by washing dishes, delivering newspapers, tutoring, fixing computers
>move to Silicon Valley with nothing but a degree and a bet on yourself
>join @Home Network
>watch a $20 billion company go to zero in the dot-com crash
>work on Intrinsic Graphics
>the thing that eventually becomes Google Earth
>co-found Epinions in 1999
>a consumer review site before Yelp and TripAdvisor existed
>raise $45 million in venture capital
>get screwed by your own co-founder and VCs
>they hide the company's real value during a merger
>the company IPOs at $750 million
>you walk away with $0
>not a typo
>zero
>sue Benchmark Capital and August Capital
>everyone in Silicon Valley calls you radioactive
>one VC tells the press you'll never work in the valley again
>settle the case
>learn the game from the inside out
>instead of quitting, you decide to rewrite the rules
>start Venture Hacks in 2007
>a blog that tears the veil off VC term sheets
>give founders the playbook that VCs never wanted them to have
>launch a $20 million fund called Hit Forge
>back Twitter before anyone cares
>back Uber before anyone believes
>back Stack Overflow, Notion, Postmates, Opendoor, Yammer
>turn Venture Hacks into AngelList in 2010
>50 angel investors
>$80 million committed in year one
>100 new startups signing up per day
>build the Match.com for founders and investors
>do what LinkedIn tried and failed to do
>actually get people to transact
>realize US securities law is blocking everything
>fly to Washington DC
>spend six months lobbying Congress
>rally 5,000 investors and entrepreneurs for an online petition
>call in 100 favors
>get the JOBS Act signed into law by Barack Obama in 2012
>single-handedly open startup investing to ordinary Americans
>the entire equity crowdfunding industry exists because of this
>AngelList hits $4 billion valuation
>over $3.5 billion invested through the platform
>200+ unicorns funded
>spin off Product Hunt, Republic, CoinList
>companies like Neuralink and Rippling get backed through your Spearhead fund
>co-found MetaStable Capital in 2014
>a crypto hedge fund backed by Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia
>bet on Bitcoin and Ethereum before it's fashionable
>earn a penny on every Uber ride taken on the planet
>invest in 200+ companies across your career
>drop a 40-tweet storm on May 31, 2018
>"How to Get Rich (without getting lucky)"
>it goes more viral than most product launches
>turns into a podcast series, then a global movement
>Eric Jorgenson compiles your tweets and interviews into The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
>it becomes a perennial bestseller
>you didn't even write the book
>your ideas were so good someone else did it for you
>go on Joe Rogan, Tim Ferriss, Shane Parrish, Chris Williamson
>every episode becomes a top-10 all-time listen
>millions of people re-read your tweets like scripture
>you become the most quoted man on the internet who isn't dead
>launch Airchat in 2023
>voice-first social media with AI transcription
>because you think text-only platforms made us forget humans can get along
>here is what Naval actually taught the world
>you're not going to get rich renting out your time
>own equity or stay a renter forever
>specific knowledge is the stuff that feels like play to you but looks like work to others
>leverage is a force multiplier for your judgment
>code and media are permissionless leverage
>you don't need anyone's approval
>10,000 iterations is not 10,000 repetitions
>one is mastery, the other is a treadmill
>if you can't decide, the answer is no
>when two choices look equal, pick the harder one short term
>stress is an inability to decide what's important
>desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want
>inspiration is perishable
>act on it immediately
>the three big decisions: what you do, where you live, who you're with
>people spend years optimizing careers but pick partners and cities on autopilot
>not optimizing for wealth
>optimizing for sovereignty
>win the game fast enough that you get to stop playing
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saumya retweeted
Posting great work might get you some inbound. But promoting your services brings in way more.
I track this closely. The weeks where I book the most calls always correlate with weeks I post CTAs and link to my site.
When it goes quiet it's almost always because I haven't mentioned availability in 2-3 weeks.
People forget fast. They need to be reminded that you're available and ready to take on work.
Most designers hold back because they think it's spammy. Who cares.
Promote yourself or worry about what strangers think. Don't overthink it.
I will never understand why would someone ever want to track their sleep.
If the score is low, you just trick yourself into thinking that u feel tired and ruining your day before it even starts.
saumya retweeted
Intellectual obesity is what happens when you consume too much and produce too little.
twitter is not real bro, someone is hated on for trying to earn whattttt
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saumya retweeted
had dinner with an old roommate who's been building his company for a few years.
what became most striking is that he is now in a beautiful flow with his life. his days are devotionally repetitive: jiu jitsu at 7am, coffee, then work until 6pm. Spend time with his wife, read for a bit, then sleep. He tells me that his days are structured and predictable because that is how he does his best work. he says that he is no longer distracted, it is very easy to focus for long periods of time
i felt something profound hearing this, because i have often felt that i need every day to be dynamic and unpredictable to feel satiated. but the person sitting in front of me is pouring all of his attention in the present moment, while my mind is fragmented somewhere between the past and the future, frothing with to-dos and what-ifs
it felt increasingly obvious that while his routine looks boring from the outside, he is deeply interested in his life, and while my life may look interesting, I feel bored and distracted often, because my attention is shallow and thinly spread in comparison
i wish i could drill this in founders.
whatever u do, there will always be haters and enablers.
issues and opinions in features embedded in a launch.
u make something super cool, high-quality, the pro is that u get loyalty, the con is that not everyone can afford it.
