Tag: Extremely Online

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Startups

Day 840 and Do You Believe in Magic?

The glory of writing every single day is you start to build m records of your own life. You notice how much your own personal cultural history is syncretic. I’ll always be a fan of blogging because it’s got chronology at its heart. Sometimes it’s good to see how we evolved over time.

Having a written record is hard and often dangerous. You own a lot of work in progress that doesn’t necessarily reflect where you landed. And internet opposition research is fantastic at catching you in a former evolution. We call it getting cancelled. But if you get it right you have the receipts.

But if you are an honest broker of your bets you will admit when you get better and more complete information. The real magic of startups is that markets are often excellent teachers of how we are just dead wrong. And if we listen to what we are told we can adjust. And as the old saying goes the market can be irrational longer than you can be solvent. The reverse is true too.

Consensus reality is a bit magical. I called our fund chaotic because the process of getting people to align is magical but it’s chaotic as fuck. It’s studied but experimental. It relies on rules and the temerity to break them. It’s chaos magic. I wanted people to see a bit of the woo woo in our fund name every day. Technology and magic are just separated by layers of abstraction. Go read Charles Stross.

So I was overcome with delight when I saw Geoff Lewis discuss how startups are magical. An all time delightful addition to the genre of how does venture capital and startup growth even work? Fred Wilson blogged so Geoff Lewis could vlog. And he did it with verve while discussing Dungeons and Dragons stats. Also he’s team maxed charisma like me so I am inclined to like him.

The fun part is that he and I don’t really overlap except on Twitter. We’ve never discussed any of this. But our syncretic workflows had overlapped. It felt like a small ecosystem knitting moment. An alignment of metaphors and aesthetics. It made me feel damned optimistic and yes I do believe in magic. And I hope you do too.

Categories
Community Homesteading

Day 839 and Chatty

I occasionally have the ambition to be less of chatty Cathy. I almost cannot help myself in Montana. I keep meeting folks who are into the same stuff as me and then I’ll just end up talking for an hour.

Introverted Julie somehow always finds the homesteader, science fiction, alternative economy, crypto libertarian aesthetic studies semiotics pirate at the party. Sometimes it’s even the same person (hi Frank). I’ve now found not one but two homestead curious folks at a spa. The same spa! (Hi Kylie & Lorraine!)

I’ve got a general philosophy in life that you should be a beacon. We are responsible for our light and maintaining it. But are we not equally responsible for shining it into the darkness?

I’d like to see my broadcasting into the abyss of the internet as being a sort of existential lighthouse. Perhaps my chatty nature is some form of the same ambition. I want my people to find me.

And wouldn’t you know it but I’m always finding people searching for the same things. I have so many pockets of knowledge. And I want to share what I know with you. I want you to share your knowledge with me too. Your world and your experiences will add to mine just as mine adds to yours. Like the Borg but decentralized.

I’ve got a lot of weirdly specific knowledge. You know, Julie Fredrickson shit. And I want the folks who need the light I’ve cultivated to find me. So I will broadcast.

I know how to be in my body even with illness. I know about inflammation and healing from post viral shit. I know about sovereignty and survival and independence. I know a thing or two about being a doomer and an optimist.

I’ve got weirder more specifics knowledge too. Ask me about corporate governance structures and decentralized autonomous organization. Or the most cost effective luxury unbranded retinols. Or what biometrics to track and on what devices.

The point is that I’m here to be a chatty Cathy. And if you’d like to talk just slide into my DMs on Twitter. Or email me. It’s my first name dot last name at gmail. Consider this your bat signal.

Categories
Aesthetics

Day 837 and Hairless

Many moons ago, I ran an advertising network for independent publishers. Our niche was lifestyle content like fashion & beauty. It was in the early years before social media had gotten beyond blogging and someone like me could be considered an influencer. During these halcyon years, I was loaned a Tria laser hair remover device to review on my own blog.

If you aren’t familiar with the basic concept, you can permanently remove hair by killing the hair follicles with laser light. It works well if you are fair skinned with dark hair. I don’t recall exactly the terms of my original use but my ambition was modest. I wanted to shave my legs less.

I was the kind of woman for whom one cool breeze would make my freshly shaven legs prickly. I needed to shave daily to keep things smooth and I found that to be inconvenient from a cost and time perspective. So I set out with this handheld laser zapping my lower legs every two weeks. I did this for a total of twelve sessions. And fuck it if I wasn’t surprised that it worked.

I went from having daily dark hair growth on my legs to maybe having do a proper shave once a week to get rid of the light fuzzies. I remain astonished it worked. Sure it took a couple months of use and it’s not perfect but I’ve regretted not using it on other areas ever since. It really cut down on shaving. So recently I decided to buy one. Yup, I spent $499 on a laser to remove hair.

It’s my intention to laser off the hair on my armpits and my “undercarriage” if you will. They call it a bikini area but let’s be honest. I want to have a permanent Brazilian wax. I am going to laser my lady bits and my back door. Assuming I can reach it myself.

I’ll happily answer questions about this as I go about the process. Some of what I intend to do is beyond what’s recommended but thanks to Reddit and gossip I’m pretty sure it’s entirely possible. So feel free to ask me. Or not. Up to you.

Categories
Community

Day 835 and Weird

I was very inspired by a Twitter thread from Anna Gat last week on how the weirdos who had dealt with their identities were having an easier time as millennials hit forty. I thought it was so incisive I’ll include it in full here.

I’ve spent much of 2023 meditating on conformism. As old friends are turning 40, I notice a lot of nameless unhappiness brewing. Millennial unhappiness is a taboo. I always thought people chose norminess because there’s more individual contentment involved. I’ve changed my mind. I see: a fear of change, resentment, a feeling of being stuck, no way out. The Great Resignation / nomadism / self-employment trends / monogamy revolutions that we discuss here haven’t touch large swaths of the bourgeoisie. I see 40 year olds, with money, relations, just give up.
This upsets me surprisingly much because? Because I didn’t pay attention to this group, maybe, so I didn’t see it coming. I always thought normies had had it figured it out (while I hadn’t). Plus I know these people’s parents, I can see them morph into them too soon, unnoticed. Please, please, people: rebel.
It is not too late. You do matter. You don’t have to continue doing something that looked like a good idea 12 years ago if you found out you hate it. Change things. Get up. Move. Live.
Life goals: more experience, but not more bitterness. Hard!

If you haven’t figured out who you at some point that lack of work on yourself will catch up to you. I’ve always been a bit of a weirdo. I’m off. My version of reality matches other weirdo’s realities much better than consensus reality. I am alas not fully normie. I can be a normie in some areas but I’ve got too much “off” to fully be mainstream.

And I have to admit I’m happier for it. I’m happy to have a weird life. All my decisions that didn’t quite make sense at the time have yielded a life that is so much bigger than I ever imagined for myself that I’m think the power of being weird must be immense.

We are entering an era where everything is getting much weirder much faster than any one human can keep up with. And isn’t that just so exciting? And it may be a good thing because as the various tech and AI prognosticators will tell you an era of weirdening is upon us. We will all be hurtling into a weird new future and best we can hope for is that maybe some of it rhymes with history. Hang tight and stay flexible.

Categories
Internet Culture

Day 831 and Apocalypse Meow

I’m starting to enjoy the AI doomers. It’s a relief to have someone else be calling chicken little. It’s usual my job to be a Cassandra but for once I am not aligned with an apocalypse. I don’t think we can stop the future from arriving. And I am a fuck around and find out type. It’s just my nature. I think we need to build for optimistic futures. But that doesn’t mean bad shit won’t happen even if we halt all progress. I wish.

When people say “apocalypse” you get the sense that it’s a one time event for most people. That bad things happen all at once and life is in an instant forever changer. Looks like it does in the movies. But I’m not sure the future changes like a bankruptcy. Slowly and then all at once. I think the future is what we make of it and it takes an enormous effort to make things better.

Maybe your people already survived an apocalypse. Maybe your ancestors wiped someone else out. Who knows what apocalypses your people lived through that others didn’t. I’m an American.

I bet if you could talk to your great grandmother you might find that real life is complex and she lived through hell. So why would you assume you’d even know if you were in an apocalypse right this moment.

To assume we can make things better is an ambition humanity shares. It’s kind of a wild leap into the unknown own and yet we have to do it all the time. Maybe it’s not the end of the world.

But what I do know is humanity comes from a long line of survivors and we often figure shit out and leave behind history. And even if this time we don’t well I’m sure some bit of humanity survives in one form or another.

Maybe I’ll be better adapted to this future. Maybe I’ll be dead. Either way I’m ready to get on with living my life even if the apocalypse is right meow.

Categories
Startups

Day 826 and Alignment

I think there is this persistent fantasy in startup life that people will always agree with your bets. We forget the discord of every hype cycle but it’s not always clear who is winning and what outcome is certain. Only hindsight is 20/20.

You do get occasional moments of vindication but it’s rare that they ever clearly overlap with a trend or a moment that everyone is paying attention. Media hype cycles and innovation hype cycles are not the same thing. Trust me I’m a pretty good publicist for a hobby.

Your deals aren’t always going to get attention though and a lot of founders want to keep things quiet so you can’t always talk your commitments.

This is a problem that investing has in common with fashion. I earned my stripes making shit cool for money. It’s actually hard. I call it the The Thursday Styles. The problem with tend forecasting is knowing what’s going to be trendy is a temporal bet as well as a cultural adoption one.

It’s a thing happening over time that is unevenly distributed. I learned that from William Gibson. Some of us live in the future but you can’t be too far out because then it’s just you speculating. You got to be right on the thing and on the timing to make any money.

It’s honestly way harder than it looks and anyone who is any good at taking a bet on what the future looks like has to take some variant of this bet. It’s probably why Dune is such a canonical text for nerds. He predicts the future dimly and is also a messiah time lord? Sign me up that sounds like venture capital to me. The sheer hubris of this comparison is honestly nauseating.

Like fuck all the way off you ain’t Maud’Dib. You’ve got to be very skeptical about the charismatic pull of a messiah my friends. That said I bet you’d believe me if I told you I was a Bene Geserit right? Anyways. My point is you don’t always get it right and you don’t usually get to take credit till the end. And mercenaries can co-opt anything. Your shit might hit the skids.

But sometimes one of your deals looks hot and everyone is paying attention and you get to feel like you were cool. You spotted the band. You saw the runway show. The media is hyped about it at the same time and your friends noticed on Twitter. It’s a nice feeling. And yes I invested in the Chroma seed round. I think Jeff and Anton are cool.

Categories
Internet Culture

Day 821 and No Joke

I’ve never been much of a fan of April Fools. I like pranks and jokes but I’ve always found the idea of forced merriment to be a bit of cultural drudgery. Most holidays have a bit of marketing attached but April Fools feels like all marketing and no meaning attached.

Despite my dislike I was surprised to see April Fool’s come around and see almost no jokes or pranks. The closest I got was seeing a shitposter buddy of mine Alex Cohen declare he was becoming a leadership poaster. Fun and harmless good stuff. But otherwise it felt like crickets.

I hazarded a guess that it might be because everyone is feeling a bit gun shy. Lots is going on and most corners of the internet feel like they could pop off at any moment. Twitter is has the tension of a neighborhood under siege in some corners. Lots of ingroup fighting is happening in particularly contested spaces like crypto and politics. You can tell it’s information warfare out there.

In that environment I guess no one wants to hazard a shot. It’s too embarrassing to consider that your fire dunk might accidentally be regarded as World War 3’s Franz Ferdinand moment. No laughing matter indeed.

Categories
Startups

Day 817 and RIP SVB

I hadn’t expected to grieve the death of a bank. It sounds so preposterous. Who the fuck feels sad about a bank failing? But I am genuinely sad that the Silicon Valley Bank name doesn’t appear be living on with its new owner First Citizens Bank.

I guess I look forward to banking with First Citizen. They seem like nice enough folks. And maybe a bank is just a bank. But as I look back on the firsts that Silicon Valley Bank gave me I realize I will miss it. I’m sad they are gone.

The first check I saw with more than one comma was from Silicon Valley Bank. My very first company was acquired by a startup that banked with them. Ironically, right before the 2008 crisis was beginning to come onto the scene. I had a small window of fleeting security where I enjoyed a steady paycheck every two weeks with payroll done by Silicon Valley Bank. I remember thinking I was so rich. Even though I was super pissed my cofounder had a better salary than me as Silicon Valley culture dictated at the time that engineers make more.

If you are a fan of history then you will enjoy knowing that yes I did get fired during the infamous RIP good times affair. Thanks Sequoia! They were our main investors. Still I appreciated the opportunities as I was so young I wasn’t very good yet. I’ll forever have loyalty to my CEO for having treated me much better than I thought I deserved.

I also I also really loved the steady paychecks from Silicon Valley Bank. Now I think to myself why didn’t I take any pictures of it? Why don’t I have that moment recorded anywhere but my memory? Why am I now recounting this fifteen years later.

I’ll never get another check from Silicon Valley Bank again. I just didn’t have the expectations in life that I’d be the sort of person with a bank account with more than a million dollars. Let alone that I’d be in control of one and entrusted to do something responsible with it. Which has now happened multiple times at Silicon Valley bank over the years for me. Guess no one wants to have more than $250,000 in a bank right now though huh?

So goodbye Silicon Valley Bank. I’m so sad I’ve got nothing to remember you but. I didn’t take a screen shot of the bank app on the day Stowaway’s first round closed but I should have. I spent a lot of time in their banking application over the years running my cosmetics startups P&L. I remember being so proud to be the sort of person that even needed to deal with the bank. And I trusted Silicon Valley Bank with my employees because I’d seen it treat me well when I was an employee.

It seems so silly to mourn not taking a picture of a check or a screen shot of a mobile banking app but I don’t really know how to mourn a bank that failed. We failed them. They failed us. And it’s dead and I’ll never ever get a chance to do it all over again, and even if they are a villain, I remember when they were the hero in my life.

Categories
Startups

Day 816 and S Tier

I fancy myself as someone who enjoys playing games. I mostly play the great game but I enjoy a good stupid grinder. Pokémon Go, Duolingo, and Fitocracy all appeal to my sense of hard work mattering.

But, of course, games have exploits. Some of them are significant. Sometimes leveling up is just a matter of getting lucky. A side quest dropped you an s tier item and the game engine smiled on you. Yay!

Silicon Valley mistakes luck for skill pretty regularly. And we don’t take it that well when other people use the same exploits as us because damn it that’s just not fair!

So rules tend to get rewritten and the hacks get patched and the economy in grinder games reliably defaults back to rewarding repetitive work. It’s not that different from the real economy. Gamers want to know clever game play works but not as much as they want to keep the value of what they have earned. It’s a real tension those sunk costs! Even if starting over benefits you the tendency to cling is understandable.

You’ve got to know when to spot when an activity is worth more than the general perception. You used to have to do this sort of work on your own but thanks to the internet we’ve got cheat codes literally everywhere for everything.

Don’t confuse the fact that cheat codes work for the fact that grinding came be the right approach for the game you are playing. Sometimes putting in the work means being a team player is valuable. Sometimes you are the glass cannon. Sometimes your style of play will offend others. Don’t take it all so seriously that you cannot stomach making a move. What’s the worst thing that happens?

Categories
Internet Culture Media Startups

Day 815 and Kayfabe

Here is a mindfuck for you. Pretending works. The mimicry of the thing occasionally, though not mostly, can lead to having the real thing. Fake it till you make it” works if you’ve got a long enough runway to allow for take off. If you’ve judged the resources correctly is more art than science but you should still be able to do the math.

There are, of course, laws of physics to account for in all of this but your reality is more fungible than you realize. I wouldn’t try manifesting a whole fantasy world, but if you are Brandon Sanderson you might have a shot. That guy rocks.

In discussing whether it is better to fire founders or product managers on Twitter today I got to see a lot of the cargo cult culture of Silicon Valley coming off a high. A lot of people can perform innovation and we’ve maybe even got it down to being well liked by financial markets. But sometimes you actually do have to go and do the thing. And you can’t fake it.

If you aren’t familiar with kayfabe, it’s a term used in wrestling. It means you don’t break character loosely. You keep the secret even if everyone is in on it. You can take things a bit too far and the blending of fiction and reality has now given us a reality tv president.

But what happens when you don’t make the jump? Does reality crash in? Will the market punish you for not delivering on a convincing enough value proposition? Do you have to keep your ambition within some scope that can exist in our agreed upon reality? Yes of course. Fuck you it’s called civilization. But every once in a while someone goes from vapor ware to the Revolution. Don’t be so sure you can spot the difference though. Kayfabe doesn’t just fool rubes.