San Francisco

I’m writing this Thursday night en route to LA after spending a couple days in San Francisco. Too short of a flight to pull out the laptop… so it’s just a dropping my thoughts into Apple Notes type of flight.

A few months ago my friend Bryan told me he was helping EO host an event and wanted me to “headline” and speak. Committing to things months into the future is super easy so I said sure why not.

Fast forward a bit and we somehow got Eric Ries, the author of The Lean Startup, to join and tag-team the fireside chat alongside of me. The Lean Startup was one of the first books I ever voluntarily picked up as an adult. It’s more or less the modern startup bible and it sparked a ton of my early entrepreneurial ambition back when I was in college.

I don’t do a ton of speaking gigs. The travel and preparation is a total pain in the ass (granted, we did zero prep for this event). I’d much rather be heads down building right now. Plus, I feel like we’re still so early and I have so much more to learn and prove… I feel like I don’t really deserve it.

And maybe I don’t. But that event was really special.

Over 125 people came out to listen to Eric and I chat about startups. We talked candidly about our journeys, how to build culture as a remote company, the struggles of being a founder, the power of storytelling, our philosophies around building and shipping product…and a ton more.

I met a handful of people at the beginning of the night who told me that they had flown in from New York, Vancouver, Kansas City… just for this event.

Hell, homie even came in a Big Desk Energy crewneck.

We chatted for an hour and not only was it fun, it appeared as if the crowd had hung onto every word. Everywhere I looked people were leaning in and jotting down notes. Jared was in the front row ferociously taking notes, which he later turned into a thread here 👇️ 

A few of the EO organizers told me afterwards that several attendees described the event as a 12/10 and sprinkled words like “inspiring” and “motivating” into the mix.

Anyway, I’m not trying to gas myself up or become Tony Robbins here. I think I’m just trying to reflect and in a way justify why I take the time to even write this newsletter in the first place. Or why I choose to be so open and transparent with our strategies, milestones, and philosophies.

It’s because I think it matters. Even if it helps just a single person to achieve something special or navigate their career or startup in a positive way, that feels worth it to me. And to have over 100 strangers take the time out of their week to travel and attend an event … is a pretty strong signal that it does matter.

That was really fucking awesome.

I’m the furthest thing from an influencer and truly don’t aspire for any fame at all — it genuinely just makes me so happy to know that other people find value in this.

Because let’s be real — I’m not that great of a writer. These posts require a handful of revisions and a whole lot of my time to get them into a good place… plus the design, recommendations, and now sponsors (shoutout Oceans). Not to mention, I’m just constantly dishing feedback to the product and engineering team as I’m using the platform.

Very long winded way of saying — this whole passion project of mine takes a ton of my free time. But it’s nights like tonight that make it all feel worth it.

It was a short 30 hours in SF. On Wednesday I got to host a dinner with some of our team and investors in the Bay Area. This is the first time I got to meet the full Typedream team in person since we joined forces back in June.

Today I spent the day with Brian, scheming up some new growth tactics. Him along with a few other teammates and friends came to the event too which was really awesome to have their support.

Some weeks I share the struggles and loneliness that comes with this journey. Other weeks I share milestones, stories, and strategies.

I think this week I just wanted to appreciate how nice it is to surround yourself with people who care along the way.

Thankful. Motivated. And about to touchdown at LAX ✌️.

If you enjoyed this post or know someone who may find it useful, please share it with them and encourage them to subscribe: mail.bigdeskenergy.com/p/san-francisco

I made a promise to myself — I would only ever run ads in this newsletter for brands I actually use and love. As a founder, it’s hard to love anything more than…

• Expanding bandwidth

• Saving money

Fortunately, with Oceans I’m able to do both at the same time.

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They connected us with Dulara and Udaiyanee about a year ago, and now they handle everything from sales, invoicing, billing, and tons of other admin work.

Best of all — these are full-time hires that we pay $3,000 /mo.

Oceans is a founder’s best friend. Take advantage of $500 OFF your first month because you’re a reader of Big Desk Energy. 

Finally a setup with an acceptable amount of monitors. The view ain’t too bad either.

Shoutout Timur for the reader submission 🫡.

Reply with your own AI generated office and I’ll feature it in an upcoming issue.

Turn on, tune in, drop out. Click on any of the tracks below to get in a groove — each selected from the full Big Desk Energy playlist.

Some of my favorite content I found on the internet this week…

• This writeup on Pavel Durov’s arrest in France was excellent (Pirate Wires)

• Mr. Beast’s leaked (?) onboarding book has been both heavily criticized and praised … which is usually a great signal (Mr. Beast)

• No idea where I found this but here’s a live map of lighthouses around the world (Geodienst)

• I’m a sucker for creative marketing campaigns. I think Manscaped is potentially the worst, most overrated product on the market... but their marketing is great 👇️ 

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Until next Tuesday 🕺🏽

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