Notes towards becoming a better investor
kaiton and
Notes towards becoming a better investor
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.”
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.
What I found though is that making myself understandable all the time diluted the joy that lies instead in specificity — in concisely crafting a life that only needs to make sense to me.
Allowing yourself to be misunderstood teaches you who values you for your personhood alone and how much you actually need from other people to feel sufficiently... See more
Allowing yourself to be misunderstood teaches you who values you for your personhood alone and how much you actually need from other people to feel sufficiently... See more
Molly Mielke • misunderstood
A Look Back at Q1 '24 Public Cloud Software Earnings
cloudedjudgement.substack.com
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.
Being a woman in a male-dominated industry has made me very aware that this culture is sorely lacking something I am naturally able to provide in spades. Not in a way that saps me of energy or makes me feel like a martyr, but in a way that feels fulfilling and grounding in my sense of self.
