Fantastic Boosts and Where to Find Them
The difference between easy and hard is a matter of choices
Progressing from the last instalment - today we have more about the strong forces at play in our lives.
Strong currents can sweep us to foreign shores and circumstances we are aggressively unhappy about.
A good wage can lead to a nice car and a hefty mortgage, chaining you to your stressful job and a career ladder you can’t escape from.
Consider situations like:
A degree you’re not that into
Falling in with the wrong friend group
Having Russia as a neighbour
These can all hurtle you into a life you didn’t ask for.
A great piece of advice I was told by Bryony Thomas.
The more you get known for doing a type of work, the more that work will show up.
If you do a piece of work you’re not into, you’re creating opportunities you don’t want.
Dubious Requests
Here’s an example of this cyclical vortex played out over just 2 years in my career.
Opportunity 1
I began my first (and only) job as a junior developer at the start of 2017. A few months later I somehow won a hackathon building a prototype for a cool medical app (it was for quickly accessing emergency medical care).
I knew a business owner who ran a medical company and asked him for advice.
Instead of getting advice or investment opportunities, I had an offer to build his medical app idea.
Being entrepreneurial and a fan of shortcuts, I quit my low-paying entry-level dev job and started a software dev agency.
It felt cool, even if I wasn’t working on “my ideas”.
Our first "office" was an Airbnb on the climbing island of Kalymnos. I’m not complaining.
Sadly the app they wanted wasn’t that interesting. It was a glorified questionnaire that was in no way an AI replacement for a doctor.
He also had a curious style towards getting anything done. His increasingly delusional feature requests took us in ever longer circles.
His requests carried on from a shopping portal for pharmacy products to many of the features in my original idea which was a little bit of a burn.
After 6 months of the initial 1-month project, we finally shipped something.
He promptly brought 100k fake downloads from India which seemed odd.
Fake users did nothing at all for the app’s real popularity but he wouldn’t stop talking about them.
Based on his beloved fake user numbers he tried to get the NHS to pay him a multi-million pound contract for delivering various healthcare services.
I walked away.
Opportunity 2
Relieved to be free I was in time to help a friend launch an AI startup.
He’d built a really cool code generation project with impressive benchmarks and results.
Mid 2017 I assisted with his AI accelerator application and when he was accepted it seemed worth joining.
He needed cofounders so I signed up to build the future of AI that could code for you (think GitHub copilot).
We had to go to Hong Kong to kick off and then spent a few months working from a remote beach in Thailand.
It turns out all the amazing metrics and code generation he had already proved were just made up.
He now needed someone to build this magical thing for him which I had no idea how to do.
didn’t fancy raising any more money from investors based on a lie.
So again I hot-tailed it out of that and found myself in Singapore at the height of the ICO craze…
Opportunity 3
At this point let’s say I was kind of experienced at working with slightly scammy individuals and their stupid ideas that would never work.
Lo and behold I was approached by a spectacular idiot who wanted me to build a Fiverr clone by using Ethereum as the payment mechanism as a web-3 marketplace.
He’d made a tonne of ETH from dubious ICOs and why not learn some blockchain development skills?
Doesn’t sound that awful.
Until you realise the main premise of the app was that every item should be 1 ETH ($100 when we started - $300 a month later).
As ETH was so volatile any listing would need to be changed every week.
Hell, I already had experience building silly rich people’s stupid ideas so why not?
This was only a few months project and we were paid in ETH.
Great, no problem, happy days.
His master plan we realised was to ICO the project and steal a few million from random losers on the internet by promising them magical internet money.
Eurgh.
Can it get worse?
At this point, my agency (which I had no plan on building in the first place) felt like a hive for mentalists.
The next month a guy who’d stolen 52 Bitcoin asked me to “clean” his stolen Bitcoin for him…
(he also introduced me to a hitman)
At this point, I sensibly shut my accidental agency down and started an adventure company with my mate.
I like adventure more than building apps for nutters and/or jail.
But how does this even happen?
It’s worth noting that I didn’t have a website, let alone a website promoting my ability to solve problems for scammy people.
In fact, I spent the entire time fighting any of the people I worked with in the naive hope they might decide to do something sensible.
Exactly as Bryony had said, when you work on something, more of that kind of work just shows up.
It’s like a law of nature.
The good news is that nature is full of waves that can be awfully hard to fight but incredibly wonderful to surf.
Harnessing Energy
Currents aren’t all bad.
They are the most powerful multiplier available to you in your life.
If you watched the film NYAD, you’ll have seen the 64-year-old Diane NYAD who swam 110 miles from Cuba to Florida.
It’s impossible to swim it in the other direction because the currents simply don’t allow it.
In fact, three of her first 4 attempts failed because of currents.
They were sending her off course so strongly that she was never going to make it to the little tip of Florida that sticks out.
The day she made it the morphing currents along the swim perfectly aligned to propel her to her destination. Instead of preventing her success, they actively helped her achieve an insane feat of human endurance in her 54-hour swim.
It might seem like you need an incredibly specific set of events for a current to work in your favour.
Often it can be more like Finding Nemo, where Marlin (the clownfish) and Dory jump in the East Australian Current like using a motorway.
Good Currents
"Bill Miller of Legg Mason Capital Management – one of the greatest investors of our time – told me he was happy to have invested during a period when tailwinds like falling interest rates and expanding valuation multiples boosted returns.”
Howard Marks - Mastering the Market
Just as there are plenty of bad currents to fall into there are an equally abundant amount of fantastic ones around:
A set of healthy, supportive and ambitious friends
A good relationship with a reliable partner
Joining a high-growth startup in their scale-up days
Researching in a lab with a good professor
Sure these things don’t happen by accident, but you have some say in the matter.
Ultimately, you can’t choose your family, early education, race or home country.
Everything else you can hustle to create for yourself.
Get In a Fast Current
It’s not always easy to choose a guaranteed success story.
My friend joined the marketing department of Transfer-Wise when they had 100 employees. After 4 years with them, he left and joined Square in their early years.
Having stock options in two companies that went public is very lucky, but not an accident.
If you zoom out of company specifics there’s a pretty easy recipe for success.
Get into any fast-growth industry or high-demand skill. Work hard and stay in it for over a decade.
I first dipped my toes into the crypto industry in late 2017. If I’d stayed in the industry for the last 8 years I would be more than set for life.
A great career over the next 10 years would be leaning into any of these high-growth technologies:
Genomics and biotech
Robots and drones
EVs and self-driving
Renewable energy, carbon sequestration and nuclear
Space, rockets and satellites
AI, LLM, data centres, chip manufacturing
Manufacturing in general
(all technologies need factories to build them - if you know how to set up factories you’re valuable)Crypto and blockchain
AR and VR
And of course content creation - Social / YouTube / Podcasting (be careful ey)
So you don’t understand the maths or science behind genomics, robots, or rockets.
These industries still need marketing, logistics, manufacturing, design, sales etc…
Once you’re in an industry and can show up reliably to solve problems you will establish yourself. Opportunities will present themselves.
Online doom and gloom predict that in a few short years, there will be no jobs.
We’ll be eking out our existence on some universal basic income.
No - You are surrounded by potential.
So many people in 5 years will be thinking "Damn, I wish I’d got into the space/renewable/biotech industry when they needed anyone smart who could hustle and solve problems.”
Don’t fear the future.
Fear the fast-moving currents all around you that lead to a bad future.
Jump headfirst into the currents taking you where you want to go.
Absolutely loved this newsletter. Very encouraging and creatively crafted 🥰 Thanks Sam!