1/ I'm thrilled to announce the launch of my new website, a one-stop shop for all the content I'm creating.

There you'll find links to all my podcasts, the TTMYGH newsletter, and other exciting future projects.

1/ The first 18 months of starting a company is often life or death. I must've made 5 different companies that each failed within 9 mo. 😭 Each time the company failed I figured out what I could do better. Eventually startup #6 got to $40K/mo by month 18. Here’s what I learned...

2/ Stay focused! Ignore things that are a waste of time: meetups & conferences, meetings with no clear agenda, fundraising if you're not fundraising, reading lots of tech media articles, etc. Every week should feel like significant progress in the first year.

3/ Your first 5 hires will be the difference between life or death. Choose carefully. Be picky. Many of the things we do at the company still are a result of those early hires' legacy. Have fun as a tight knit team. It will change & evolve as you get bigger so enjoy this moment.

4/ Growth may be flat for the first 9 months. It's gonna be okay. Almost every company has experienced this: Airbnb had to sell cereal in-between, Slack failed as a gaming company first, Tesla sold only 147 cars after 6 years! You probably won't be an overnight success either.

5/ In the beginning, do customer support yourself. You will learn a lot about why your product sucks. I did 5,000+ support tickets when it was the two of us. Delight customers & fix things fast while you learn. It will help you build an amazing intuition about your customers.

1) Core attributes of a promising founder worth following:
- Progress/trajectory over time
- How well they lead a team &
- Make the vision happen
- Most impressed when someone is way ahead of where you thought they would be when you check up/see them a few months later.

2) Indie Makers have such a benefit of being small, fast, nimble workers in comparison to big companies.

We can easily pivot and vastly change a project of ours. We can change as we learn more about our users.

Big companies can take months/years for even the smallest of pivots.

3) Before you find a product market you can pivot your project as many times as necessary until you find something that works.

Then you only have one thing to do: scale, scale, scale.

4) Be obsessed with the little details.
- listen to every single person who uses your product
- reply to every single person who emails you about your product
- ask them what they like and do not like
- iterate your product, make changes, pivot if necessary

5) Paul Graham's (@paulg) name came up with a feeling of great admiration! Naturally! It was Paul who said:

In the early stages of a company just;
- write code
- talk/sell to customers to stress test your idea

Nothing else.

Hello Dear Tweeples!

It’s Siddhars time of the week! Last week I shared story of Guru (Machamuni or Yogi Matsyendranath), this week I bring you information on his Shishya.

#Thread on Gorakanathar Siddhar.

@LostTemple7

His origin story is interesting, though I couldn’t verify it’s authenticity, so not sharing the story here. He’s shishya of Machamuni Siddhar and also learnt from Agasthiya Siddhar.

@HelloNNewman @RajiIndustani @Kishoreciyer1

Unlike other Siddhars, he is depicted as either with a Tiger or seated & wearing Tiger skin. While I couldn’t find any explanation for this. My interpretation is as follows:

Tiger is a predator that lurks around and attacks unexpectedly.

Our 5 indriyas and 5 vikitis also similar to Tiger, they lurk around and attacks our thoughts when we’re least expecting. Gorakkar is said to have mastered these aspects, thus to denote this, he shown with Tiger.

@Itishree001 @VarierSangitha @jananisampath

Gorakanathar or Gorakshnath (as he’s known in the Nath Sampraday) is celebrated Guru in both Northern and Southern part of India. He’s one of the NavNath in Nath Sampraday and also 18 Siddhars of Tamil tradition. During his life, he’s travelled Indian subcontinent extensively +

THREAD

I get asked for writing tips a lot. Of all the ones I’ve given, here are a few of the ones that seem to hold true and remain somewhat universal or at least mostly unobjectionable:

#amwriting #writingtips

1. If you are a fast writer (i.e., if you compose first drafts very quickly) then you absolutely must become a slow editor. Much of what I call “writing” is really, for me, editing.

2. If you don’t read you cannot write a lot or well. Sure, maybe you can read like a maniac for a decade and then read less after that, but without some large volume of intake, there will never be a meaningful output.

2.1 I sometimes say that I feel like writing without reading is like trying to run a marathan on a cracker. And sadly I see many students struggling to write when they have simply never read enough to fuel that demand of the task at hand.

3. All writing is writing if one decides to treat it that way. If one takes some degree of intentional will when sending emails, posting on social media and writing notes and marginalia, then all of that can count as meaningful daily writing.

By popular demand, here is the official Mystery Grove Film Recommendations list. Watch all of these in order if you want to truly understand the world we live in today.