Ben Mann Monthly February: sales, Openwater, self-help articles, beatsaber, Portland, Tahoe
Purpose
An index for my memory
An menu of topics for my next conversation with you
A faster way to share what I’m excited about without the barrier of writing a complete blog entry on it
A skimmableway to spread content I found valuable
If there’s anything you want to see more or less of, please let me know!
Experiments and experiences
Portland for a week to visit my brother and mom
Worked on code to generate a 3D printable strandbeest, didn’t finish. Had a lot of great discussions, especially about arrogance and benevolence.
Convinced Max to quit his job earlier than planned.
Published 6 birthday videos
House retreat in Tahoe
Tried cross country skiing for the first time. It was great! unlike normal skiing, the boots are extremely comfortable, the skis are lightweight, and there are tons of places to go with no lines at all. I enjoyed it even more than hiking because if you’re on a groomed course you don’t even have to look down since the ski tracks act as autopilot. Instead you just enjoy the scenery! It can be a bit scary going downhill, especially if you haven’t done much skiing, but you get used to it pretty quickly.
Beatsaber
This game for Vive is the first game I’ve wanted to play more since 2011. You hold two lightsabers and smash blocks along with the music. The songs are choreographed by the community and full of creativity: the sword fighting in the Pirate’s theme; the horse riding in Gangnam Style.
Life updates
Studied cold email tactics for B2B
Applied to openwater.cc for Software Architect position but retracted application after interviewing
Pitched a startup to some VCs and got strong interest. Replacing myself as CTO since everything about it is awesome except I don’t have any emotional resonance with the problem space.
Still working on enterprise sale for planetarium.ai
Reviewed projects I worked on in the last 9 months and constructed an evaluation rubric for future ideas. Medium post forthcoming.
New plan: develop conviction around problem spaces before evaluating ideas
Content
5 point Likert ratings for “I would recommend this content to a friend", sorted
Desperation 5/5
If there’s nothing you’d be desperate to avoid losing in your life, maybe you’re wasting your capacity to care. Find something to be desperate for.
A lot of the millennial generation doesn’t care deeply about any causes except the rare few fighting for social, political and environmental causes; piece struck me as an antidote
Fred was special because he really listened. He treated everyone with respect. He talked about the things that no one talks about.
It wasn’t easy for him, especially when the public noticed and started parodying him and accusing him of ruining a generation
Inspired me to be a better human: be positive, be less cynical even in the face of naysayers, fight for what’s right
“Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company” 4/5 by Sahil Lavingia
VCs require rocket or bust
This is a rare story of failure despite success
Kimo 4/5
“the standard pace is for chumps”: the system is designed so anyone can keep up
If you’re more driven than “just anyone,” you can do so much more than anyone expects.
Dive in 4/5
Similar to Cal Newport’s thesis that you should act before you are motivated because you can’t be passionate about something you’ve never heard of. Motivation comes as you go deeper.
Making a hypothesis and mashing it against reality is the fastest way to test it. The more specific, the better.
Separate the emotion of conviction from calibrated statistical knowledge of their probability for better day to day performance
The appearance of laziness is sometimes due to
Not being able to decompose large tasks
Mental illness
It’s important to try to understand why someone’s struggling before judging them or taking it personally
Creative character design and beautiful animation don’t quite make up for the trite coming of age plot
Technique to quickly onboard in a new organization, esp in management
First hires determine company culture
Don’t hire for functions, hire for diversity (covering weaknesses & opportunities)
Find people outbound
It’s valuable trying to recruit skeptical candidates because they may provide insight into unforeseen problems even if they don’t join
Transhumanist software engineers starting a company to make designer babies
Turns out biology is hard! And Ukranian researchers are cheap ($350/mo?)
Argues you can just work all the time. Sounds bad.