Brain Dump n. 5

1. Obviously, remote-first with distributed offices and function-specific policies is the best setup to attract the best talents.Startups are a people game and everybody has the same tools to stay relevant: salary, purpose, individual impact, and flexibility. Yet, many founders don’t realize their startup is just another startup:Therefore, ceteris paribus, maximizing flexibility is not only the best way to attract the best talents, but the best way to avoid being filtered out in the first place.Maximizing flexibility means maximizing optionality. I had it with Habyt. We grew from 9 to 300 people remote-first, whilst still having offices in Berlin, Milan, Madrid, Lisbon, New York, and Singapore. Some would never go to the office, some only two days a week, others never in the summer but always in autumn. Yes, some tweaks are necessary (ie. mandatory in-person time, result-driven controls, etc.) but they are far easier than maximizing other variables (ie. unless you are truly improving the world and can pay investment banking salaries).

   1. salary is very likely to be average, if not on the lower end;

   2. purpose is very likely to be not relevant (no, you can’t package “helping businesses improve their margins” as improving the world);

   3. individual impact can be maximized by engineering responsibilities.

2. Miscellaneous thoughts:

   1. With some, it’s easier to speak about positive things, with others to complain about stuff. I avoid the latter and engage more with the former.

   2. I allocate a percentage of my time to learning random stuff without over-optimizing the topic. Maximizing horizontality is a waste of time, but a decent net of transferable knowledge always comes in handy.

   3. The startup tech-bro is the only species that shit on others for not following their work routine. It’s easy to hear from them “Finish work at 5?! He will never go anywhere”, but hard to hear “I wonder why they don’t engage in creative tasks” from artists or “These dudes will die if they don’t run at least 2 hours a day” from athletes.

   4. Individual personal data has one of the widest deltas between how it is conceptually elevated and its real-world importance. Why does the average Joe care so much? Practically speaking, his data alone is worth zero.

   5. Healthcare is the last pillar of everyday life where the customer experience still systematically sucks. Finance was the second last one before it was solved by neobanks.

Thanks for reading and see you next week. :)

Brando