Final workweek of 2024 is finished
Antler is finished
Ideas for building new stuff are ubiquitous
But first zoning out now
Against Holidays
Every time I have to stop what I'm doing I detest it. Going on holidays is a hard stop of everything I'm doing. It interrupts what needs to get done.
Everytime I come back, I feel refreshed
Probably it won't by any different by the end next week when our skiing holidays are finished.
Antler Done
Antler* wrapped up Friday. Everyone who got the investment (not me) got a short introduction to what phase II holds for them. Everyone else got a friendly "thank you and goodbye".
Was it fun, yes. Would I do it again? Probably yes. Maybe in another geography though.
What would i do different? Probably be more quick to find people I want to team up with, and be direct with them if I want to team up. A couple of good people were teamed up before I spoke to them. From experience, I know I'm a rather slow relationship builder, so I could have expected this.
Other than that, it probably helps to have a (good) idea and convince myself I want to do that. Conviction and belief starts conversation and sparks enthusiasm.
From everything I've seen, it seems it also helps when pitching for investors: you pretend to have all the answers, and know it all. While everyone knows it's actually very very messy behind the facade.
*The investor who puts 60 people together during 11 weeks in the hope that useful startups come out of it
Next
I wrote a whole newsletter last week, but it seems my thoughts on this weren't finetuned yet.
So I'm writing from scratch again:
(1) Ideally I do agency work: clear-scoped projects with start and end, in software development. This could be a good onramp to do product development.
These projects don't typically fall in my lap, so it requires building a name and a reputation. And hence it's slower.
(2) Easier, but less future oriented, is find a 20-hour per week freelance role. Which pays the bills.
The remaining time I could build products or do agency work.
Alternatively, it would be interesting to build a big buffer of cash with a highly paid full-time freelance role. The keyword here is "highly paid" because I prefer not to be full-time engaged in a role. I had a conversation with a recruiter and I think she had to swallow ("even slikken" in Dutch) when I told her my desired rate.
What helps with this is to have skills on the leading edge of technology: data science, machine learning, generative ai. So I'm upskilling and building there.
A learning there is that I should have recognised this two years ago when Chatgpt came around for the first time. If I acted on realising that Chatgpt was going to change the world, I could have learned data science skills back then, and be on the leading edge right now. Added to my "lessons learned" booklet.
Finally, admittedly, I had a call Friday with a tech company which doesn't live up to any of the above requirements. But they looked like a bunch of cool people to work with, which is also important. So I don't exclude making exceptions on everything I wrote above...
Hence why I write this newsletter, to provide clarity, for myself! I'm surprised you're still reading this :D
Projects
- I'm working on an app which sends you an email before an important date comes up, it takes eternity to finish
- I submitted my first Chrome extension to the Chrome App Store 🎉
- I tried to obtain Tomorrowland tickets by setting up an AWS remote desktop which is physically closer to the tomorrowland server. To get tickets faster. I should know before Monday if it worked.
- A website for my agency
- ai ai ai ai ... many many many ai ideas
As you see, my attention is spread way too thin
That's it for this week, below is a pic of RJ, the head of Antler in the Netherlands. Cool dude. One of the first group sessions he was drinking Vifit drink. I brought him one for the first one on one meeting I had with him, he took a pic and shared, and apparently got swamped in Vifit after that by the other Antler participants.
Despite not getting the investment, it seems I didn't loose my talent to take a funny action here and there!
