4x founder, designer, engineer. sold my first company at age 25. now: building the AI layer for chronic illness. angel investing.
San Francisco, CA 🇺🇸
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a few years ago i got covid and never recovered.
i went from exercising every day to completely bedbound.
lost 40lbs. in and out of hospitals for over 2 years.
saw 20+ doctors. bloodwork came back normal.
"you're probably just stressed from being a founder."
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Austin Walker 🛴 retweeted
The only way to fix healthcare is to make the customer the most powerful participant in the system. Period. End of story.
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this is fantastic advice
How to Ask for Help
If you're a junior designer, I want to share a few things that will help you ask for help more effectively, be it wanting a portfolio review, introductions, advice, or anything really.
1. Be direct.
Most of the people you want help from are busy people. It is *greatly* preferred when you are upfront and direct about what you want. There are only so many hours in the day, and I'd rather know exactly what you want and how I can help.
2. Be specific
There are very few people in the world who ever want to 'catch up' or 'get their brain picked' when you don't know someone and it's ambiguous what they want.
If you want feedback on your portfolio, ask for that. If you want ideas on how to reposition yourself, ask for that.
If you aren't specific, you'll either get no response, or get generic response. My general feedback on every portfolio will always be: show your work upfront; remove half the words then remove more again, and spend 10x the time refining the work shown vs the design of the portfolio itself.
3. Be concise
Everyone is busy, so be respectful of their time and be as concise as possible with your ask.
4. Follow up
If you don't hear back from someone, the most likely answer is they either missed your message or forgot. Platforms like X have, somehow still, terrible DM's that always seem to be buggy, so just follow up respectfully. I don't find it annoying; rather I appreciate the persistence and reminder.
5. Follow through
If someone takes the time to help you, and gives you advice or suggestions, you should follow through on them. I love hearing about how things went or the updates someone made, but I'd guess less than 3% of the time I hear back from someone. Want to know an easy way to start to build a relationship? Follow through. Those who follow up I am more likely to want to continue helping and building into.
So what does this look like in practice?
Instead of "Here's my portfolio, let me know if you have thoughts!" say "I'm updating my portfolio as I look for a full time role at a startup. Would you mind letting me know 1) if this would pass your first 5 second screen, and 2) do you think the work examples I have selected seem credible to an early stage founder?"
Instead of "I'd love to meet if you're ever down", say "I have a few first round interviews coming up in a few weeks. Would you be open to doing a 30m practice portfolio presentation with me? I'll show up at any time that works for you this week or next."
I have generally found our industry is full of people who want to help others, so I hope this is helps you better ask for help!
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great founders are extremely clear about what “great” looks like.
high standards aren’t useful if they only exist in your head. people can’t hit a bar they can’t see.
your job is to make the standards painfully clear, then give people the ownership to exceed it.
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Austin Walker 🛴 retweeted
ive noticed that founders who come from privileged backgrounds seem to experience stress differently.
they can be just as ambitious and work just as hard.
but when things get hard, they don't feel the deep painful levels of stress.
maybe because somewhere in the back of their mind, they know that if everything falls apart, theyll still be okay.
whereas when you come from nothing, failure can feel existential.
theres no safety net. no one coming to bail you out.
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i used to think most startup events were a distraction.
lately, a lot of my time has gone into recruiting, meeting people, and building community.
you can spend months deep in a hole trying to brute force progress, but sometimes one person completely changes the trajectory of your company.
there’s a lot of noise in “networking”, but the upside can be very asymmetric.
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you know you've made a great hire when you stop thinking about an entire part of the company.
not because it matters less, but because someone else owns it now.
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every piece of startup advice is biased.
a hammer will always look for a nail.
ask a salesperson about your problem and they’ll tell you how to sell your way out of it.
everyone sees your company through the lens they know best.
the mistake is assuming that because someone has a good solution, they’ve correctly diagnosed the problem.
e.g. “i need to hire a PM"
well, do you really need a PM? why?
is prioritization bad? are engineers not taking enough ownership? are you the bottleneck?
the real skill is figuring out which problem you actually have.
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being sedentary is probably one of my biggest weaknesses as a founder.
when i’m walking outdoors, i think way more clearly, and get better ideas.
movement seems to unlock a completely different part of my brain.
the problem is that building a company still means spending most of the day sitting in front of a laptop.
curious if anyone has built an advanced workflow to solve this?
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an inexperienced founder asks investors to invest in their company.
an experienced founder gives investors the opportunity to invest in their company.
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the fastest way for a VC to permanently lose my respect is to ghost a founder.
during my seed raise last year, one relatively large fund invited me to their office four times and spent hours diligencing the company.
then they disappeared.
no pass. no follow up. never heard from them again.
the round closed without them, but there’s zero chance i’d recommend any founder takes money from them.
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solo founding isn’t just doing the work of two people.
it changes the physics of the company.
your energy becomes company energy.
your blind spots become company blind spots.
your indecision becomes company indecision.
your conviction becomes company conviction.
but with a cofounder, there’s another person constantly absorbing some of that variance, making things feel less volatile.
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the advantage of being a second time founder is that you know the shape of the game you're playing.
you’ve seen the levels before. you can usually anticipate what’s coming next.
the advantage of being a first time founder is the blind confidence that comes from having no idea how hard its going to get.
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if you want to build better friendships, be helpful.
never show up empty handed.
offer to help your friends move.
pick them up from the airport.
remember what they’re going through and check in on them.
be someone's friend before they even realize they need one.
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moved to SF and now i have to ask whether “partner” means romantic, business, or venture
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i feel significantly more trust connecting all my accounts to Muse vs Instinct
Meta is already highly scrutinized from a data privacy standpoint and im sure they are taking security more seriously
i’m a fan! just wish it was on imessage
1/ today we're rolling out Muse, our new personal ai assistant. Muse is always-on, wicked fast, can use a browser, connect to your apps, and is designed to be secure.
try it now: muse.ai.
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