Notes towards becoming a better investor
kaiton and
Notes towards becoming a better investor
Learning to lean into my weirdness has taken many shapes. Mostly it’s looked like embracing what comes to me naturally: I’ve always been much more interested in understanding people than ideas, get immense gratification from building lasting relationships, and consider it a lifelong goal to improve my discernment and refine my taste. This often shows up in how I spend my time: I rarely take pitch meetings (if a founder is fundraising already I probably didn’t get there early enough), always have a creative project I’m actively working on, and spend a significant amount of time striving to understand and translate myself to the page. Cultivating a view of the world that no one else has is an edge I consider critically important to Moth’s success, as well as something that requires continual cultivation and critical refinement.
Deeply getting to know the person you have always been instead of endlessly reinventing yourself is “how” to stop seeking validation from everyone around you. I love the title of David Lipsky’s DFW biography for this reason: “Although of Course You End Up Being Yourself.” Jenny Slate has a great tweet about the feeling at the beginning of this process: “As the image of myself becomes sharper in my brain and more precious, I feel less afraid someone else will erase me by denying me love.”
The idea of research as leisure activity has stayed with me because it seems to describe a kind of intellectual inquiry that comes from idiosyncratic passion and interest. It’s not about the formal credentials. It’s fundamentally about play . It seems to describe a life where it’s just fun to be reading, learning, writing, and collaborating on... See more
Celine Nguyen • research as leisure activity
In some sense, Albini’s contrition was the act of a premier hater realizing that the final frontier of hating is one’s own past. But it was also a welcome way for Albini to show that people can continue to grow at any age—and it set the stage for him to continue to grow as a producer as well.
Steve Albini Was a Hater to His Core. And We’re All Better for It.
I want to end this with a quote by Ivan Illich, who I'm sure many of you have heard of.
He wrote a wonderful book called "Tools for Conviviality" where he talked about the importance of people being able to make tools for themselves.
He says, "People need not only to obtain things; they need above all the freedom to make things among which they can... See more
He wrote a wonderful book called "Tools for Conviviality" where he talked about the importance of people being able to make tools for themselves.
He says, "People need not only to obtain things; they need above all the freedom to make things among which they can... See more
I want to end this with a quote by Ivan Illich, who I'm sure many of you have heard of.
He wrote a wonderful book called "Tools for Conviviality" where he talked about the importance of people being able to make tools for themselves.
He says, "People need not only to obtain things; they need above all the freedom to make things among which they can live, to give shape to them according to their own tastes, and to put them to use in caring for and about others."
Software is no exception to this.