I recently grabbed coffee with a friend, Shawn, who is running his own fund, who's got a really interesting background– starting as a lawyer, in huge publicly traded corporates, and now operating a VC, working with the small fish (startups.) In between, he worked an operator role at a huge investment firm, helping turn around & grow business.

Quick side note: I’d like to grab coffee with more interesting individuals over the next few weeks. I’ll be in Lisbon, & London, and would love to get in touch with interesting people. Drop an email to joao@minthouse.dev, or message me on twitter / linkedin

It was a really interesting chat, particularly his perspectives on:

1. Why VC is a terrible career starting point, even if you want to become a VC

2. Fund management & investing are entirely different skills → this relates to a broader separation of business/operation skills vs. the ‘art’ of what you do

If you want to be the best coach, you at least have to have been in the position of an athlete at some point, for some significant period of time. This was an analogy I made to his point, about why VC isn’t a place he recommends to start careers.

In junior capacities in VC, second what he told me, you spend most of your time either doing grunt work for new deals, or trying to help grow existing portfolio companies. The thesis of his point, though, was that it’s virtually impossible to help a company grow when you’ve never done anything of that sort yourself– sure, text book theory is great for exams, but when the wheels hit the road, that stuff flies out.

Through my analogy, this is effectively like reading all about how to do push-ups, and exercise, and then trying to be an effective personal trainer from that. Sure, perhaps it’s not impossible, but you certainly aren’t likely to be the best at what you do. It’s hard to be among the best.

TL;DR: If you want to become a personal trainer, then train yourself first.

He suggested that even if you want to do VC, it’s more useful to try act in some kind of operator role, whether as a part of a larger company, or perhaps in a venture of your own, before trying to teach, coach, or talk strategies with portfolio companies. His equivalent to this was helping as an operator at the large investment firm he worked at.

Granted, though, I still think the teacher ultimately learns twice– this is an important note I want to attach to the above thought. If you then start training people, you will very quickly learn much more about how training works, or doesn’t work, on different people. You can extrapolate that analogy to VC work, or other domains.

This is a large part of why I chose to start a business by myself, without investors or co-founders– it’s going to force me to learn how to grow my own business first, run my own team, etc. I have come to learn that’s a very different skillset to development, and not as trivial as I thought from an outsider perspective.

This arcs off into the second point, around how fund management and investing are skills often conflated as being similar, and on a broader basis, how a business skillset is vastly different from the ‘art’ or whatever is being sold.

In the case of VC, Shawn pointed out many young VCs cropped up during the crypto bull market, who later crashed & burned when realising fund management was not what they’d hoped for. He pointed out fund management is really more a mix of knowing legal & accounting structures, and managing teams & stakeholders, much like managing a business. Investing is just the thing you’re selling.

This is something I intellectually recognised for a long time, but have come to internalise it much more, as I’ve realised just how vast the business skillset is. It’s very versatile, but equally, very hard to master.

Note: skip to the callout/quote bits if you want to get the TL;DR.

When I was 13, I have no idea exactly how or when, but I stumbled onto this idea of having nothing to lose, and everything to gain. That philosophy has driven me to jump into a lot of things that have brought me to lots of genuinely incredible opportunities.

I had no money, and therefore couldn’t afford. Realising I had nothing to lose and everything to gain, I set out to build a business, because I couldn’t get a job, and that was the only other way I saw to make money.

Maybe not a month later I was making my first real-earned money. It didn’t quite get me to the US, but it made me keep that mindset. Over time, it drove me to jump into situations where I felt severely unqualified, but tried them anyway, and more often than not, ended up benefitting in ways I could never have imagined.

As a young person, you often have a lot less on the line, and so there is an abundance of these opportunities, where the downside is virtually zero, other than your time and effort, and the upside potential is vast. The truth is, though, these opportunities continue to exist for everybody, regardless of age or stage of life.

I think, however, that most people don’t pay enough attention to them, and just let them slip by. Things like exercising, journalling, producing content are good examples, but there are also often a lot more, which aren’t immediately obvious, but are personal cases in people’s lives. Granted, it’s not easy to do these things, and sometimes you may not necessarily want the rewards they may bring you, but nonetheless, I think it’s an important skill to learn to identify opportunities like these, especially if you’re somebody who’d like to capitalise on them.

Particularly for young people, I feel a lot of friends around my age at the moment operate as if they’ve got a lot to lose. They make heavily risk-averse-weighted decisions, as if they’ve got a lot to lose. Most of them don’t, in fact, have much to lose at all, and I think it’s incredibly worthwhile to spend some of your time investing in some kind of compounding vehicle, like content, or a business, and to spend your money with some freedom when investing in up-skilling yourself.

It’s a situation where the rewards vastly outweigh the relative risks, and if you’re somebody who enjoys getting those rewards, then that decision makes sense. Unfortunately, most people get caught up in their sheep-thinking, and feel uncomfortable making decisions for themselves that might not be what everybody else is doing.

A note to young people:
Have conviction in your thought process. Be radically open minded, to explore new ideas, but have conviction in your decisions, even if they go against conventional wisdom.

Identifying these situations is not exclusive to young people though– I’m not breaking new ground in saying that real risk is typically much lower than it’s perceived (we’re survival-biased, so we naturally overestimate risks, generally.)

If you more critically examine opportunities in front of you, I’d bet there are a handful of situations where rewards healthily outweigh the risks you face. When rewards outweigh risks, those are interesting decisions to explore. This is what the best investors spend their time doing: finding when rewards outweigh risks.

This feeds into a larger thought-process of mine around why and how we make decisions. Since our lives are shaped by our decisions, I think it’s worthwhile to spend time thinking about how you make them, and also why you don’t make certain decisions. This article isn’t going into that, but just looking at one of the main decision-criteria: risk

(side note: I’m starting a podcast at the moment, and recorded my first episode yesterday, and I had a great little conversation about this with my guest. I also want to explore decision-making on that podcast, so this newsletter feeds in nicely. DM me to chat!)

Over-estimating risk is one of the most common reasons to exclude certain decisions from your options, and I personally find it foolish. Assessing risk is a healthy, and important habit, but public opinion should not count toward it. This was really just a reminder to think about that, and critically consider if you the risks you think exist are real or not, and what they’re stopping you from doing.

How to get what you want in 3 steps:
1. Decide to do something
2. Learn from your decision
3. Course-correct to get closer to what you want
4. repeat.

Spoiler: there’s a great poem by chatGPT at the end.

At a talk recently, Ira Van Eelen talked about the idea of “Cathedral Thinking”– the thesis of which, is pretty simple: Cathedrals are magnificent, but they took a long time to build. Often more than a lifetime. That can feel discouraging, but nonetheless, if you ever want to see it through, you have to put brick after brick. This isn’t news: big things take time. It’s like trying to fill the Grand Canyon one brick at a time.

Another idea I’ve recently been toying with in my head, has been how we should learn to love the middle. Everybody likes to celebrate the start of things, and their completion. Yet, rarely do you see crowds around the middle, boring, mundane day-after-day exercises.

The middle is dry, boring, hard, often lonely, and generally not fun– it’s the middle of a marathon, the middle of an exam, the middle of a project, whatever it is. Most people, when they realise people don’t cheer you on all the time, switch to something else, which gets celebrated (since it’s the start of something new.) That feels good for our monkey brains; celebration gives us an instant gratification hit.

But, if you’re somebody who’d like to set out to build something, I wanted to share a philosophy around loving the middle. Often, you won’t build anything if you don’t learn to do so. The sooner you learn it, the sooner you can build what you want.

I suggest spending time making your middle as pleasant as possible, because the bigger the thing you want to build, the longer you’ll spend there. Imagine it’s a house, isolated, and in the middle of nowhere– if you spend some time making yourself comfortable, finding your own pace, and avoid distractions, you can make your life substantially better, and still fulfil your larger goals.

Some people struggle without instant gratification, and find themselves constantly switching, while others may actually be really good at pushing through the middle, but sometimes make themselves miserable in doing so. I suggest, if you learn to love the middle, you can make your journey substantially more rewarding, whether you’re a switcher, or you ram through things.

Adopting this outlook has made it substantially easier for me to turn down opportunities that seem shiny, which was typically my struggle, and re-focused me on making my day-to-day a really ideal situation, where I wouldn’t change anything.

With that said, here’s a poem GPT gracefully put together for me (which I think encompasses this idea pretty well):

In the heart of the journey, unseen, unsung,
The middle's where battles are truly won.
Not in beginnings, nor in ends so neat,
But in middles, where challenge and growth meet.

It's the silent ascent, the unmarked trail,
Where the winds are fierce and the climbers frail.
No fanfare here, no applause rings,
Yet it's the middle that shapes queens and kings.

Honor the start, respect the end,
But adore the middle, it's there you transcend.
The middle's the voyage, the heart, the core,
It's the love for the middle that helps you soar.

I recently met some people innovating (violently), and have been reminded just how resistant society is to systemic change. Some highlights of individuals I’ve met lately:

• A man who’s building a space hotel company (a serial founder, who’s built several satellite-manufacturing companies)

• Leaders of the cultivated meat industry (in plain english, meat from thin air)

• A host of people balls-deep in food tech like you couldn’t imagine

• People heavily disrupting the in-person ad-tech space

Beyond that, I’m also familiar with a number of people innovating on financial infrastructure through web3. Unfortunately, not all with great success.

I wanted to write this short essay, because I’ve been rudely reminded of a harsh truth for individuals trying to make large change by themselves.

You saw web3 crash & burn, to some degree because regulatory is so far behind. Also, it's hard to spot, because most of these companies aren't in large spotlights until the world is ready to embrace the change– that drives a lot of survivorship bias. While silicon value has brought much needed glory to entrepreneurial innovation, I think most of the headlines gloss over just how incredibly hard real innovation is to bring to market– from consumer inertia, to regulatory parties playing catch-up. As much as the hyperactive founders & innovators would like to believe, the world isn't prepared for change.

Also, if you want to help, it’s still quite hard, especially on an individual basis.

Unfortunately, most incentives operate on a much more short term basis, and most people don’t have the resources to ignore those incentives. For example, as a VC, you may be able to help these people, but also you have to operate in a way which continues to benefit your stakeholders (investors), and you need to be able to see returns within a reasonable industry-standard timeline of a few years. Regulatory delays can mean a great product will fail for years before it’s a huge success.

Not to mention, building a business takes business skills. Building a business solving a problem that hasn’t been solved yet, requires deep technical know-how, as well as business skills. If a founder lacks either of those, I doubt they’ll make it alone– and if they bring others on, they’re open to co-founder breakup issues, which are a huge risk (because they’re so common.)

Now, despite this, I don’t mean to write this to discourage individuals working on these problems– by all means, continue to push. However, I think it’s useful to acknowledge that barrier is really much larger than headlines make it seem, and if you’re working on something like this, just hang in, because it’ll probably be a longer ride than you’re prepared for, or expecting.

In the meantime, I’ll cheer you on if you tweet @ me.

Here’s what’s happening today:

1. 🎁 The Wrap-Up

2. ✍️ Writing

3. 🍼 Minthouse Pte. Ltd.

4. 📝 IB is Scary, But Almost Finished

5. 🛫 Summer Going Global

6. 👀 Looking Forward

Principle for the coming month:
”The madman is a dreamer awake” —Sigmund Freud

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🎁 The Wrap-Up

• Things are moving & happening, and it’s exciting. I’m a little fish in a bigger pond than I was before, and that means room for growth.

• There are some big significant turning points coming up, which bring change, and growth — and I’m excited about it. This includes high school drawing to a close, the company reaching a new standard, & more.

• I’ve been enjoying writing more, so check out some of my latest pieces on my blog. Check out the latest article about information diets:

What's Your Information Diet?

• The best part? My world is still on fire, and I’m loving it.

🍼 Minthouse Pte. Ltd.

If you missed the memo, Minthouse.dev is my company :)

Last month, we got incorporated, opened our company bank account, and have started hitting a stride. The team has grown, projects are underway, as well as plans for expansion. I’m hitting up a number of conferences over the summer (more on that later) and trying to get some partnerships going. There’s also a hackerhouse getting organised, which is gonna be absolutely awesome.

📝 IB is Scary, But Almost Finished

So in about 10 days, I’ve got the biggest exams of my life so far, which is simultaneously electrifying & a huge pain in my ass. Once they’re over, I’m done with high school, and have some real free time for a while — that part is awesome and I can’t wait. However, until then, I’ve got to worry about them and make sure they go well, which takes up a lot of time.

🛫 Summer Going Global

Plans for this summer are really exciting — for about a month and a half, I’m set to be in a different city every week, hitting up a bunch of conferences, but also spending time with family & friends in between. Particularly excited for nft.nyc, Iceland, and Barcelona. If you’re in any of those places, totally let me know. Really looking forward to doing some biz dev for Minthouse, but also spending some time exploring, learning, exposing myself to new situations, thinking, & reflecting.

👀 Looking Forward

With the impending end of high school, a packed summer & a startup, needless to say I’m excited about what’s coming. Still trying to work on consistency with content, & experimenting with more forms of content. Also, curious about trying rejection therapy. I’m applying for a couple speaking opportunities, and maybe organising some events in Singapore, which is gonna be awesome.

That’s it for today’s newsletter! Super excited, but also trying to make sure I don’t drop the ball. Stay updated on my twitter, because I post there way more often :)

Feedback, thoughts & questions always welcome! Drop me a line on any of my socials

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Quick summary of this month’s newsletter:

1. 🪅 A November Overview

2. 🗽 New York City: A Stepping Stone

3. ⛓ Web3 & NFTs Deep Dive

4. 💎 Reframing Around Milestones

5. 👀 Looking Forward

6. 💻 Product of the Month

Principle for the coming month:
”Emotion or progress. Choose one because you can’t have both” -Vusi Thembekwayo

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🪅 The November Overview

I’ve also been far more intentional about being grateful for where I live and the opportunities I have, and complaining a lot less - it’s made a tangible difference in my happiness and shifted my thinking around things I don’t enjoy. One of the many things I’ve learnt this month is the huge extent to which we spin stories about the world - we subconsciously choose how we frame things a lot more than we often acknowledge. Realising that, and reframing how you see things, is really powerful.

🗽 New York City: A Stepping Stone

Words fail communicate just how powerful and moving New York was for me. The experiences were crazy, every day was a different movie, and for me it represented so much more beyond just a trip to the states.

👉 Unravelled the world of web3 so much more
👉 Revealed the size of the ecosystem to me
👉 Showed me I can actually get to these events - those I’ve only dreamt of going to.

It has made me really excited about my work & projects, and was hugely refreshing.

⛓ Web3, NFTs & DAOs Deep Dive

Partly as a result of NYC, I have gotten so much deeper into web3 this month, and immersed myself in the huge world of DAOs & smart contracts. I’ve spent hours between twitter & various discord servers connecting and participating in the community, and it’s been great fun. It’s one of the most engaging communities I’ve been a part of, and I’m excited to do more work in the space. It’s also highlighted to me the powerful trajectory of the space - web3 is coming.

👉 Developed & deployed my first smart contract!
👉 Working on a little NFT project of mine
👉 Hoping to go to ETHDenver in February, sponsored by PadawanDAO!

PadawanDAO is a DAO helping fund kids like me to more trips like NFT NYC - definitely consider donating! It’s really exciting because it could open more doors to continue funding trips for young creators in the space like me. As of writing, the fund has around $350,000 USD 🥳

💎 Reframing Around Milestones

I’ve taken a new approach to my week by week organisation, looking at upcoming milestones and counting down weeks until I hit those. For example, when I started this initiative there were 25 weeks until my last high school exam, and at the time of writing this, it’s week 2 of 25. As a result, I’m able to be far more intentional about what I want to get done in my last 25 weeks of high school, and am pushing to be as intentional as I can with every week.

Might put out a blog post on this because this reframing has really made a huge difference!

👀 Looking Forward

In the coming months, I’m set up to be extremely busy, but really excited about moving things forward

• This coming month, I’m working on a new blockchain project 🤫 - more about that soon

• Working with a partner in Canada to setup a platform teaching kids ML - more about that soon too!

• Excited about ETHDenver and more opportunities to involve myself in web3

• This month has been the setup for more projects & initiatives, and I’m excited to see those come to fruition!

💻 Product of the Month

This month I have to recommend Hypernotes (by zenkit). It’s a note-taking software designed to help you create and maintain a ‘second brain’ of sorts, and leverages some simple yet really powerful features. If you’re into productivity and knowledge management like me, this is a super interesting product to check out. They’ve based it on the Zettelkasten note-taking system (go google it) and my favourite feature is the bidirectional linking.

You can link pages to one another, and quickly form links between different ideas and create a relatively coherent digital knowledge base of your own. This can help you come up with content ideas quickly too. Check out what my knowledge graph looks like below:

It’s also worth giving them a shout out for having great response times on twitter and some super clean UI/UX.

That’s November wrapped up! I look forward to talking about the projects once they’ve gotten off the ground in the next month’s newsletter! If you’ve got any awesome products worth a try, or know interesting people in web3, definitely let me know, I’d love to meet/try them!

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