Beliefs

obviously some of these beliefs are probably going to change.

This isn’t supposed to be some final list of truths I’ve figured out. It’s just what I currently believe based on what I’ve seen, the things I’ve built, the people I’ve worked with and the situations I’ve gotten myself into so far.

Most things are way less sophisticated than they look

This is probably one of the biggest things I’ve learned.

You look at a big company, an industry, a government process or even just someone who seems insanely successful and assume there must be some incredibly sophisticated machine behind everything.

Then you actually get close to it and realize most of it is just normal people sending messages to each other, using bad software, forgetting things and sometimes having no idea what’s going on.

I don’t mean that everything is easy. Obviously it isn’t.

I just think a lot of things feel impossible because you’re looking at the final result from the outside. Once you understand who actually makes the decisions, how the money flows and what everyone is incentivized to do, it usually becomes a lot less mysterious.

Most people move way too slowly

I genuinely don’t understand why so many things take as long as they do.

Obviously some things actually require time. Legal work takes time. Building something properly can take time. Getting everyone aligned can take time.

But a lot of the time, people are just moving slowly because nobody feels enough pressure to move faster.

They’ll discuss something for three months that could’ve been built and tested in a week.

I would much rather release something, see what happens and then fix it than spend months trying to predict every single problem before anything even exists.

This does sometimes cause me to move before I’ve thought through every detail. I’m aware of that.

But I still think moving too fast is a much better problem to have than never doing anything because you’re waiting for the perfect moment.

Ideas don’t really mean anything until you build them

I’ve had a ridiculous number of ideas.

Most of them obviously went nowhere.

The difference between an idea and an actual business is everything that comes after the idea. Building it, making it understandable, getting people to use it, getting them to pay for it and then continuing when the first version isn’t as good as it was in your head.

I don’t really care when someone says they had an idea for something years ago.

Okay. Did you build it?

A lot of people can identify something that should exist. Very few people can actually make it exist and get it in front of enough people that it matters.

Distribution is as important as what you build

I used to think about products and marketing as two separate things.

You build the product and then afterwards you figure out how to market it.

I don’t really believe that anymore.

What you’re able to distribute should affect what you build in the first place. Who already trusts you? What kind of content can you make? Where can you reach people? What do those people already spend money on? How quickly can they understand what you’re offering?

You can build an insanely good product, but if nobody ever hears about it then it doesn’t really matter.

At the same time, I don’t believe marketing can save something people don’t actually want. It might get people through the door once, but it doesn’t create real demand forever.

The product and the distribution have to work together.

Revenue is probably the most honest feedback

People will tell you something is amazing all day.

They’ll like it, repost it, save it, tell you they would definitely use it and then disappear the second you ask them to pay.

Obviously attention is valuable. I care about views. I care about reach. I care about things going viral because all of that can create opportunities.

But attention on its own can also be completely useless.

Someone paying is different because they’re actually giving something up.

Someone paying again is even more useful because it means the first payment probably wasn’t just curiosity.

I don’t think revenue is the only thing that matters, but it’s very hard to fake compared to people saying something is cool.

A lot of the best businesses are based on problems people already accepted

I constantly see things that are clearly terrible, but everyone using them has somehow accepted that this is just how it works.

National shipping websites are shit. Hiring is weird. Agencies use ten different tools for something that should probably happen in one place. A lot of software feels like nobody who built it has ever actually used it.

These problems are usually not hidden.

Everyone can see them.

The opportunity is realizing that something doesn’t have to stay bad just because people are already used to it being bad.

I think that’s where a lot of good businesses come from. Not necessarily inventing some completely new thing, but looking at an existing system and asking why the fuck it still works like that.

Incentives matter more than what people say

I think I naturally look at everything through incentives now.

When someone is helping you, how are they getting paid?

What happens if they do a good job?

What happens if they do a bad job?

Do they make more money from getting you the best outcome, or do they make more money from getting the easiest outcome?

I’m fine trusting people. I don’t think everyone is secretly trying to fuck everyone else over.

But I also don’t think you should structure important things in a way where the only protection you have is hoping the other person stays nice.

The best setup is usually one where doing the right thing for you is also the best thing for them.

Ownership is extremely important

I’ve become a lot more aware of how different it is to build something and to actually own it.

You can create most of the value and still end up with no control over what happens next.

You can be getting paid well and still be in a terrible position because the thing you’re building belongs entirely to someone else.

Obviously there are situations where it makes sense to work for someone or build something you don’t own. Not everything needs to be your company.

But in general, I want to own the product, the IP, the customer relationship or at least enough of the outcome that I’m not just renting out my ability forever.

The person who owns the thing usually gets to decide what happens when everyone stops agreeing.

Money is mostly about not being controlled

Obviously I like nice things.

I want a nice house, good food, cars I actually like and the ability to travel without having to think about every expense.

But I think the main value of money is that it becomes harder for other people to control you.

You don’t have to accept a terrible deal because you urgently need the money.

You don’t have to stay somewhere you hate.

You can take legal action when someone fucks you over.

You can move when an opportunity appears.

You can help people you care about without it putting you in a bad position.

I don’t think money solves everything. But not having money makes almost everything harder.

Saving money is obviously good, but it isn’t the main game

I’m not saying you should spend everything you make and be financially stupid.

I’ve done enough financially stupid things already.

But I don’t believe I’m going to get where I want by constantly trying to reduce every small expense.

There’s a limit to how much you can save. There isn’t really the same limit on what you can earn or what something you own can become worth.

So I care much more about increasing my income, ownership and access to opportunities than making my entire life revolve around saving another €200 a month.

The actual difficult part is doing that without taking risks that can completely destroy you.

I’m still not perfect at that part.

Someone being successful doesn’t mean they understand everything

I’ve met and worked with enough successful people now to realize that success in one area doesn’t automatically make someone smart about everything else.

Some people are genuinely insanely good.

Some people got into the right thing at the right time.

Some people are good at selling themselves.

Some people have one very specific skill that made them successful and then everyone starts treating every opinion they have like it came from God.

Money is obviously a signal. Results are a signal. Reputation is a signal.

But none of them mean you should stop thinking for yourself.

Credentials don’t impress me that much

I don’t really care how old someone is, where they went to university or what their title is.

Obviously credentials can matter. I would rather have a lawyer who actually studied law than some random guy who watched Suits.

But outside of things where the credential is genuinely required, I care much more about what someone has actually done.

Can they build?

Can they think independently?

Can they notice what everyone else missed?

Can they get something done without needing every step explained to them?

A lot of people sound extremely intelligent until you ask them to produce an actual outcome.

Communication is part of whether someone is competent

I have very little patience for people who constantly disappear, miss deadlines and then act like communication is some separate thing that doesn’t matter.

People get busy. I understand that.

But it takes thirty seconds to send a message saying what’s going on.

Especially when you’ve already promised an update.

I think when a process constantly has unclear ownership, missed deadlines and nobody knowing who is supposed to do what, that tells you something real about the people or the company.

The process isn’t separate from the result.

It is part of the result.

People become much clearer when money or control is involved

It’s easy for someone to be fair when being fair costs them nothing.

It’s easy to be loyal when the relationship is useful.

It’s easy to promise something when you don’t have to deliver it yet.

You learn much more once money is involved, once ownership matters or once the other person has something to gain from changing the story.

I don’t think pressure always changes people.

A lot of the time it just shows you the part of them that wasn’t relevant before.

Loyalty matters a lot to me

I care about people keeping their word.

I care about people remembering who was there before something became valuable.

I care about people not suddenly changing how they treat you because the incentives changed.

At the same time, I don’t think loyalty means allowing someone to repeatedly disrespect you or take advantage of you.

There’s a point where you’re not being loyal anymore. You’re just making it extremely easy for someone to treat you badly.

Being right isn’t enough

This has been a very annoying lesson.

You can be obviously right. You can have the messages, the contracts, the code, the timeline, whatever.

That doesn’t mean anything will happen automatically.

People can ignore you.

Companies can delay things.

Someone can know they’re wrong and still continue because they think dealing with you will be easier than giving you what you’re owed.

So being right matters, obviously. Evidence matters.

But you also need leverage. You need to communicate clearly. You need to document things properly. And sometimes you need to make ignoring the issue more painful than resolving it.

I don’t think the normal path is automatically better

I left school early and started building things.

That worked for me.

I don’t think that means everyone should leave school and start a company. For most people that would probably be a terrible idea.

But I also don’t think the standard path is automatically correct just because it’s standard.

School, university, a normal job, buying a house, staying in one country and doing roughly what everyone around you is doing can be a good life.

It just isn’t automatically the right life for everyone.

I think you should be able to decide what you actually want and then build around that instead of doing something for ten years because you never stopped to question it.

But once you choose your own path, you also have to accept responsibility when it goes wrong.

I think unusual outcomes require unusual decisions

A lot of people want an insane outcome while making completely normal decisions.

They want to become extremely successful, but they don’t want to take risks, look stupid, move somewhere new, work on something uncertain or do anything the people around them don’t immediately understand.

I don’t think you need to be reckless.

But I do think there’s usually a point where you have to act before you have complete certainty.

Once everyone agrees that something is obviously going to work, most of the opportunity is probably already gone.

I’m probably too attracted to things that could become massive

I naturally care about how big something can get.

How much volume could go through it?

How many people could use it?

Could it become infrastructure?

Could it be worth an insane amount?

Could one product turn into something much larger?

I think this is useful because it makes me look for leverage and not just build myself another job.

But it also means I can undervalue things that are already good because they’re not massive enough in my head.

Something can be working and I’ll immediately start thinking about the version that’s ten times bigger.

Sometimes that’s ambition.

Sometimes it’s just an inability to sit still and appreciate anything.

I want control more than I want stability

A predictable salary and a normal life have never been that appealing to me.

I would rather have something less certain where I control what I’m working on, who I work with, where I live and how much upside there is.

Obviously this creates more stress.

When something goes wrong, there isn’t always some company or system underneath you that makes everything okay.

But I would still rather deal with the problems created by my own decisions than spend my life feeling like someone else controls what I can do.

I learn much faster by actually doing something

I can read about something forever, but I usually don’t properly understand it until I’m dealing with the real situation.

I learn by building the product, talking to the customer, negotiating the deal, making the mistake and then realizing why everyone warned me about it.

This is obviously not always the cheapest way to learn.

I’ve paid a lot of money for lessons that were probably available online for free.

But I also think a lot of people hide behind learning because learning feels productive without requiring them to risk anything.

At some point you need to actually do it.

I trust myself a lot, sometimes more than I should

I generally assume I’ll be able to work something out.

That has probably helped me more than almost anything else.

I started doing things before I had the credentials, experience or permission to do them, and a lot of the time it worked.

But this can obviously turn into thinking I can control things that I can’t control.

Sometimes the risk is real.

Sometimes the other person has more leverage.

Sometimes there’s a detail I missed.

Sometimes something is just a bad idea, even if I’m confident enough to make it sound like a good one.

I don’t want to lose the confidence.

I just need to get better at knowing when it’s actually based on something.

Taste matters way more than people think

A product can work and still be bad.

The design can feel random. The copy can sound like AI. The name can feel fake. The whole thing can technically function, but nothing about it feels like someone actually cared.

I think people notice this even when they can’t explain it.

They might not be able to tell you why the product feels cheap or why they don’t trust it, but they feel it.

At the same time, making something minimal doesn’t automatically make it good.

A random shape with a clean font is still a random shape.

Things should actually correlate with what they represent.

AI is making judgment more important, not less important

AI can already do a ridiculous amount of work.

But I think the difference between good and bad work is increasingly going to be the person directing it.

Can they explain what they actually want?

Can they tell when the output technically follows the instructions but completely misses the point?

Can they notice the things the AI missed?

Can they keep iterating instead of accepting the first thing that looks okay?

The ability to produce something is becoming less rare.

Knowing what should be produced and whether it’s actually good is becoming more important.

Small teams are going to build insanely large companies

You can now build, design, market and operate things with a tiny number of people that would’ve needed entire departments before.

I don’t think this means people don’t matter anymore.

It means the right person matters much more.

One person who can think independently, use AI properly and take ownership of an outcome can probably replace a lot of people who are each only responsible for one tiny part of the process.

I think we’re going to see companies doing massive numbers with teams that seem way too small for what they’re operating.

Health matters, even though I’m clearly not perfect at it

I know sleep matters.

I know eating properly matters.

I know moving and training matters.

I know you can’t just treat your body like it’s some permanent machine that will keep working no matter what you do.

I also regularly ignore all of that when I’m focused on something else.

So I believe health matters much more than the way I currently behave would probably suggest.

I’m trying to get better at that.

I don’t want a normal life

This is probably what most of my decisions come back to.

I don’t want to spend my life working on things I don’t care about, living somewhere I don’t want to live and waiting for permission to do things I already know I want to do.

I want to build things that become massive.

I want to own the results.

I want enough money that I can make decisions based on what I actually want instead of what I can currently afford.

I want to take care of the people I care about.

And I want to find out what I’m actually capable of before I die.

Obviously there’s a chance I create an unbelievable amount of unnecessary stress and problems for myself in the process.

That has already started.

But I think I would regret choosing a smaller life just because it was safer much more than I would regret trying and failing.