My Vision, Current Venture + Peak Lifestyle

Yo!

I’m writing this from the emergency room of the UBC hospital. My throat infection has absolutely killed me, but on the bright side, I get to spend time thinking, writing, condensing my thoughts rather than chasing the to-do list as I do everyday.

Grateful for that.

Anyways, if you have signed up you’re probably one of two people. You’re either someone I look up to or someone who looks up to me.

Either way, Im glad to be writing to you, we probably think alike.

One thing I constantly think about is whether I’m optimizing for the right thing. Whether the goal I’m chasing, the project I’m working on is the best one to be focusing on.

Since I have 2 years left in uni, I want to make the most of it, but I do feel uncomfortable 40% of the time at least, uncomfortable and unsure.

Its like I’m a racing car ready to go full speed but my back 2 wheels are lifted up and i’m trying to point myself in the right direction before I break the speedometer.

Can you ever be sure tho?

Probably not, but you can have some form of certainty to rely on during those hard times when things are not working (at least that’s what I believe at this moment in time).

I’m going to work backwards from the ideal life I want to build, see how my current venture is going to help me get there.

If you think I’m racing in the wrong direction, I would appreciate any advice.

Here it is, my dream lifestyle 👇️ (5-10 years from now, before I have kids and all that lol)

Although I haven’t included money goals, I anticipate this would require me to get to 1-2k MRR with a project (milestone 1) and then scale that to 10k MRR (milestone 2).

I think these milestones will put me on the radar, and be a stepping stone to achieve all of the above.

But, I can’t be achieving them purely through hard work, where I’m involved in the business 24/7 because then I can’t test my other curiosities.

So I need to be smart about the way I achieve this milestones while staying lean and bootstrapped.

I also asked myself this question — If I was making $5 million a year doing literally anything, what would I be doing?

And the answer is creating content about what I’m interested in —> meeting interesting people (nerds) —> more learning —> more content.

However, the medium I would want to gain that $5 mill is probably through a community platform with like-minded individuals.

This newsletter is actually a cool way for me to get the reps in for content creation, practice storytelling as well for when I want to create content at scale.

I also really want to somehow amass 20 years of experience in the next 5 years

A very underrated use of a newsletter or journalling in general is that I’m documenting my thought process at a moment in time.

In the future, my ideologies, hypotheses can change but a lot of people (including me) have this innate desire to be congruent with their older beliefs.

I don’t want that to happen to me. I rather be wrong, learn from the experience, and change my direction.

Okay, so I have the vision, what’s my medium of getting there.

My thought process:

Step 1 - Go all in on a project idea for 3 months to see whether I am making progress, whether I want to continue on it despite not making progress (being aware of this)

Step 2 - Continue writing this newsletter to find the right person at the right time, to reflect and keep myself accountable.

Step 3 - By the end of 2 years, one of my projects/experiments is making $1-2k MRR with the possibility to scale, or the skills and experience I’ve gained allow me to work with someone (one of cold emails work out) where the speed of learning is the fastest

What is the current venture I’m working on now?

It started off as an AI powered CRM for students, then to a relationship infrastructure (still a CRM) for founders to scale. Then I realized, before I build a Software for a service, I should probably do the service first (mind-blowing, I know).

I called it Synctium: Inspired by the macroscopic, multi-nucleated structure of Physarum (microbe used to create japans subway system), representing a harmonious blend of relationships.

But, now we’re building custom CRMs for founders and angel investors. My thinking was that we’re in a relationship-driven economy where a warm-intro could get you to your next deal, next mentor, next co-founder etc. all of which can make or break your success.

But, no other CRM focuses on building relationships (tracking warmness etc) So, that’s what we wanted to build and are using Airtable + no-code to get out a version that proves this concept.

I’m not working alone, I have a co-founder, Rheaa — who’s a childhood friend and someone I look up to in the startup space. We used to be neighbours in Dubai.

Through buildspace we also found 2 founding engineers.

I can’t lie, the difficult part is keeping everyone motivated and aligned, but I’ve learned if I put in the work and show progress, others in the team feel almost bad if they don’t reciprocate that energy. Energy is definitely key.

The angel investor we’re currently working with is someone I met in Seattle last week. I had taken a 5 hour bus to this pitch event with no place to stay.

Anyways that’s a story for another time

Thats pretty much it for this one, thanks a lot for reading if you made it this far.

Most people have the attention span of a goldfish. You > goldfish