Investing in early stage hardware startups at Julian.capital. Telling stories at Julian.com. Creator of Deep Checks.
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THREAD: 10 significant lies you're told about the world.
On startups, writing, and your career:
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A rare find for my fellow movie nerds.
This is Christopher Nolan’s hand drawn plot map for his film Inception.
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People don't have short attention spans:
• They finish 3 hour Joe Rogan episodes.
• They binge 14 hour shows.
They have short *consideration spans:* they must be hooked quickly.
Point: Don't fear making great, in-depth content. But, ensure your first minute is incredible.
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Most friends aren't friends. They're acquaintances.
Friends phone you out-of-the-blue because they want to hear your voice. Friends would drive you to the emergency room at 3 AM.
Friends are the family you choose, and they're key to happiness in old age.
Invest in good people.
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Success isn't an end state. Success is having the freedom to focus on the grind you actually enjoy.
Most people should spend way less energy trying to get rich and way more energy building a tight-knit friend group that will be with them until old age.
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i finally did it! i eliminated all mosquitos. haven't seen one in ages
the technique:
- fill buckets with water, dirt, grass
- place buckets in shade, spread 50ft apart
- put a "mosquito dunk" ($0.50 each) in each
- wait 6 weeks
that's it!
it works because...
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I'm finally done. I automated my home with 30+ smart home gadgets.
Sensors are everywhere—all across the farm. I feel like a crazy person.
My most clever home automations so far:
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The most interesting thing I learned last year is this mental model for generating world-class writing.
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Reading many books is the most socially accepted vanity metric for adults.
You get zero kudos for reading 100 books a year.
You get massive kudos for learning efficiently and making interesting things.
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Bloggers who post frequently (2x/wk) are rarely worth reading consistently.
I read for insights. And no writer can generate profound insights on a fixed schedule.
I aggregate writers who publish sporadically. When they post, they truly have something to say.
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In observing friends who’ve sold startups and made millions:
After a year, they’re back to toying with their old side projects.
They used their money to buy a nice home and eat well.
That’s it. They’re otherwise back to who they were.
Point: Aim to be fulfilled, not rich.
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The world is not run by exceptional people.
This is the hidden reason for imposter syndrome.
We mistakenly think imposter syndrome is due to low confidence/anxiety.
No, it’s caused by not accepting that your new, world-class peers aren’t that special. It’s mostly discipline.
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Bi-annual public service announcement:
If you want to avoid 95% of promotional spam in your inbox, just set up a Gmail filter that moves any email with the word "Unsubscribe" into a separate folder.
Welcome to a clean inbox.
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My day job is growing startups.
I've worked with a few hundred by now.
Here's how to grow your podcast, newsletter, blog, YouTube, and Twitter.
Hope this helps! A thread:
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One of the most important images I've seen.
The difference between happiness, meaning, and true psychological richness.
From research by @ErinWestgate
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If you construct your identity on what you’re a fan of (sports, media, brands), you’re a vessel. You’re lending out ownership over your identity.
Instead, if you construct your identity on the things you create, you’re a craftsperson—someone who keeps refining who they are.
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"You should work your butt off in your 20s."
This misses the point.
Your primary goal isn't to work hard. Your goal is to build leverage.
How? Start with delegation:
"Find someone who can do what you do at 70% the success. Teach them the extra 10% and be okay with 80%."
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People don't have short attention spans:
• They finish 3 hour Joe Rogan episodes.
• They binge 14 hour shows.
They have short *consideration spans:* they must be hooked quickly.
Point: Don't fear making great, in-depth content. But, ensure your first minute is incredible.
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Younger people need to stop waiting around thinking that older folks—especially politicians—are going to fix the world.
The average age of the moon landing control room was 28.
The average age of the Manhattan Project scientist was 25.
US Founding Fathers were only...
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Call your parents via Zoom and record it ❤️
Ask them to recount their childhood, major life events, and their passions.
Essentially, record a podcast interview of their life.
You’ll be so glad you have this when they’re no longer here.
It really beats just having photos.
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This thread helps explain how Taylor Swift, Frank Ocean, and Christopher Nolan consistently generate great work:
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Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift, and Drake generate non-stop hits for years.
What are they doing differently?
Thread: How to generate way more ideas
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A funny lie of adult life is pretending we'll act on advice we collect:
I don't revisit bookmarks.
I rarely re-open Google docs.
I don’t re-read Kindle highlights.
Until today, my friends. I finally realized how to turn notes into action:
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This is my 5 year story about becoming a far better storyteller.
Goal: Tell a story as well as Neil deGrasse Tyson.
It started with me podcasting to share stories with friends. Every time I spoke, however, I sounded lifeless like a stressed-out amateur.
Why?
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Most friends aren't friends. They're acquaintances.
Friends phone you out-of-the-blue because they want to hear your voice. Friends would drive you to the emergency room at 3am.
Friends are the family you choose, and they're key to happiness in old age. Invest in good people.
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Beware signing up for tools that can read your email. This includes inbox apps and Chrome extensions.
You're giving a team of 20-year-olds access to the equivalent of your ID, bank vault, and diary combined.
Online privacy is an illusion.
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I saw a famous YouTuber crying his eyes out in a thumbnail
I clicked
He's notorious for calling out fake sales claims
Here, he tests $4K headphones said to play music so intensely they make you involuntarily cry. He roasts 'em.
Then 11min later, he cries. Why do they work? 🧵
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For aspiring writers:
Your ultimate goal isn't building a writing habit. It's falling so in love with interesting ideas that you can’t help but tell the world about them. Writing is the medium—not the objective.
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It's done! I read 3,000 startup pitch decks.
I wanted to find what the incredible pitches had in common.
Was there a "secret ingredient" unifying them?
YES. The 4 best (that VCs wanted intros to) had the same talking point:
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I spent 300 hours writing a guide on how to write well.
Enjoy!
julian.com/guide/write/intro
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I want to explain why venture capitalists give 21 year olds $30,000,000 to pursue startup ideas.
What's going through their heads?
What specifically are investors looking for today?
Here's how I've seen VCs' minds work after 4 years:
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What’s the most beautiful piece of writing you’ve ever come across?
Bonus points if you can screenshot a paragraph and share it below. I’ll consider including it in my writing guide.
Props to anyone who takes the time ❤️
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I don't treat my calendar as a blank surface to pile events onto. I think of it as a ledger of how many times I've traded my time away.
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This is my 5 year story about becoming a far better storyteller.
Goal: Hold the audience's attention as well as Neil deGrasse Tyson.
I started with podcasting. But, every time I spoke, I sounded like a buffoon.
Why?
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People don't have short attention spans:
• They binge 14 hour Netflix seasons
• They listen to 3 hour Joe Rogan episodes
They have short *consideration spans:* they must be hooked quickly.
Point: Don't fear making in-depth content, but ensure your beginning is incredible.
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Working hard for a long time without asking what are the better things to be working on is a hidden form of laziness.
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The smartest people I’ve met:
They retrain their minds to enjoy being wrong.
They get a dopamine hit when proven wrong because they’re excited to be closer to the truth. The truth is addictive.
In contrast, if you refuse to lose a debate, your brain keeps running old firmware.
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Working hard for a long time without asking "what are the better things to be working on" is a hidden form of laziness.
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I don't care if this makes me look like a loser: I spent $2500 testing every top-rated sauce, spice, and snack on Amazon.
Then I had dozens of people compare them.
I wanted to find the best of the best for when I BBQ.
Behold the winners after 3 years (!) of testing:
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Awesome visual of what people mean when they describe the likelihood of something:
Source: github.com/zonination/percep…
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You’re on your deathbed surrounded by family.
You’re old and you’ve lived a wonderful life.
Your grandson hands you a smartphone and asks you to Tweet a final time.
What do you tweet? 😂
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Most people still don't know how to hire. I've messed up enough times to feel strongly about one thing now:
The best employees I've worked with are all very, very curious.
1/ Now I know how to find curious people and hire them:
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1/ An intro to startup growth.
Most fast-growing startups have something in common:
Product-led growth (PLG)
I define it as when existing users drive your growth.*
PLG only works for these startups:
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People don't have short attention spans:
• They finish 3 hour Joe Rogan episodes
• They binge 14 hour shows
They have short *consideration spans:* they must be hooked quickly.
Point: Don't fear making great, in-depth content. But, ensure your first minute is incredible.
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I spent 300 hours writing a guide on how to write well.
Enjoy! As always, it's free.
julian.com/guide/write/intro
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Writing technique 1: Don't always be direct
Instead of saying "the day was hot," you could write "even the bugs were looking for air conditioning."
That's what I call a second-order description: describe the *impact* caused by the hot day—instead of saying it's a hot day.
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You can't imagine how effective China's weather modification program is.
They now control their weather.
My little investigation into how they do it across 50% of their land:
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One startup figured out how to make the sun shine AT NIGHT.
They're putting mirrors in space to direct sunlight toward the Earth at nighttime 😂
Here's a video of it, plus a thread on why the science is so interesting:
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After years of thinking about it, I finally launched a podcast! Sat down with:
• James Clear
• Alexandra Botez
• Wait But Why
• Everyday Astronaut
• Shaan Puri
• Mark Manson
• Liv Boeree
• Sam Parr
BrainsPodcast.com
Podcasting AMA for 30min! I'm not an expert 😂
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Next, I have a robot lawn mower that covers 1 acre. It pays for itself in 6 mo given the cost of lawn mowing here.
It's dead quiet. No more lawnmower noise.
It uses GPS, then drives itself back to its charging station when done, and recharges itself.
The Husqvarna Automower.
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For aspiring writers:
Your ultimate goal isn't building a writing habit.
It's falling so in love with interesting ideas that you can’t help but tell the world about them.
Writing is the medium—not the objective.
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18, 20, 21, 25, 33, 40, 41, 44.
The founders of big startups like Dropbox, Airbnb, Instacart... quite young.
You get the idea.
The point is that history *expects* young folks to solve their own problems.
Now, this doesn't mean that older folks aren't critical.
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It just means that young folks are indeed part of the solution.
Most 20-somethings don't realize that, and think "getting the word out" is all they can do.
No, the lesson of history:
Don't expect the people before you to save your world for you.
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Anyway, onto home automations.
Speaking of bugs, I stopped them from coming inside with this automation:
When a door opens, a sensor turns on an overhead fan that creates a downward current mosquitos can't get past.
Sensor = Eve Door
Device that turns fan on = Kasa Smart Plug
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How to grow a YouTube channel:
• Describe the video's value in the first five seconds
• Ask a question you don't resolve until the last five seconds
• With YT algo, 1 amazing video > 10 good videos
• Quick cuts don't give people time to ask if they're bored
—Mr. Beast
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By the way, these are my notes on style taken from my writing handbook. It's free—there's nothing to sell you.
julian.com/guide/write/intro
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It'll broadcast wifi in only a 90 degree pattern. So if you want long-range wifi in 360 degrees, you'll need to buy 4.
I mesh-connect it to my main wifi. Now I can roam far away from my home and my phone auto-switches between routers.
Router: TP-Link EAP610-Outdoor
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Recap:
• It's difficult to finish a project if you're not convinced it's among the best uses of your time.
• Research enough to get started. Don't procrastinate by over-preparing.
• A sync session—where you pair with a friend—can rally you into action.
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How to grow a podcast:
• Be YouTube-first; do video
• Split eps into 8min YouTube clips with SEO’d titles
• Get guests that are searched for on YouTube
• Consider not publishing bad eps
• Exchange eps with other shows
• Niche is fine, but be widely accessible
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First, another breakthrough on preventing bugs: In addition to solving mosquitos (see the last tweet on my profile), I've solved flies too.
Buy this product, trust me:
"RESCUE! Outdoor Disposable Hanging Fly Trap"
The most effective fly trap on Amazon.
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after a couple generations of breeding into buckets, with no offspring to show, the population dies out.
the reason this works is news to me:
i thought mosquitos were migratory—like birds. but they're not.
they stay near the area they were born! that's the key. check this:
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And now for principles from me:
• Luck is a function of surface area.
• In your career, prioritize what compounds.
• You escape your local maximum by remaining curious.
• Success isn't an end state. Success is having the freedom to pursue the continual grind you most enjoy.
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Growth marketing, a timeline:
2015: "We need to go viral."
2017: "Well, we raised $25m of VC. Let's dump it on Facebook ads."
2021: "Wow. We should have been focusing on content and building a great product."
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A craftsperson is someone who makes work the best it can be.
Counterintuitively, it’s not output that matters most to the craftsperson.
It’s honing a process that generates increasingly good output over time.
You cannot be a craftsperson unless the process is the reward.
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make sure you put the buckets in the shade so the sun doesn't evaporate the water. replace dunks monthly.
the larger your property, the more buckets you'll want.
i adapted this technique from a youtube video. i was skeptical. i am now a happy man.
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Getting Twitter followers:
• Learn copywriting—punch + clarity
• Respond to big accounts quickly w/ insights
• Write for retweets: focus on insights + stories
• People retweet novelty, inspiration, tribal affiliation
• Bio should say why ppl should follow. See mine: @julian
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Respond with the weirdest photo in your camera roll.
Don’t add any context. It's more fun that way.
For example, don’t ask why this was in my phone 🤠
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You can be a person telling a story OR you can be a storyteller.
Storytellers know something non-storytellers don’t: storytelling is the art of strategically withholding details.
Before starting, decide which points to withhold until the end—to maximize suspense along the way.
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#1. Start with bad then iterate to great
Making something bad then iterating until it’s good is way faster than making something good upfront.
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“To suffer before it is necessary is to suffer more than necessary.” —Seneca
“Half doing something is an expensive way of not doing it.” —Angela Jiang
“Setting incentives is a superpower.” —Sam Altman
(There's a bigger list on my website.)
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Some tips for growing newsletters:
• Plug it at the end of a tweet thread.
• Swap plugs with other newsletters.
• Send a sample issue upon signup to excite people for future issues.
• Consider twice-monthly over weekly. My poll revealed people are fatigued with newsletters.
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"In a year from now, you will regret not having started today." —Karen Lamb
"You can be twice as rich by deciding you need half as much." —Sahil Lavingia
"What would this look like if it were easy?" —Tim Ferriss
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Getting content ideas:
• Buzzsumo shows competitors' big content. Write about those topics
• Google Trends shows breakout topics in your industry. Cover them
• Search Reddit for good content that didn't go big. *Credit* (!) your source, remix the insights, and push it broader
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Once you've generated enough bad output, your mind begins to reflexively identify which elements caused the badness.
Then it begins to avoid them. You start pattern-matching novel ideas with greater intuition.
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In an era of content overload, I’ve seen no evidence you must stay top-of-mind on a weekly cadence.
People love novelty, and no writer generates profound insights on a fixed schedule.
I look for writers who publish sporadically. When they post, they truly have something to say.
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They're not worrying whether clear water will eventually arrive. It always does:
• Your work starts as a weak imitation.
• You identify what makes the imitation weak.
• You iterate on the imitation until it's original.
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Readers infer that the day was therefore hot.
As C.S. Lewis said:
"Instead of telling us a thing was 'terrible,' describe it so that we’ll BE terrified."
Let's go deeper now:
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For fellow BBQ lovers:
The propane tank monitor below alerts you when you're low on propane. It's helpful for avoiding running out of gas halfway through a cook and ruining cook/smoker timings.
It uses ultrasound to detect how much is left then pings your phone.
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To see how competitors are running acquisition:
• View their Google Ads via Ahrefs
• View their popular blog posts via Buzzsumo
• View their Facebook ads via the Facebook Ads Library
• All of these also reveal which landing pages they're using
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This philosophy also explains happiness:
Happiness isn't an end state. It’s having the freedom to pursue the continual grind you enjoy.
So, what is a process exactly?
It’s a craftsperson’s flow state wherein they exercise creativity, solve challenges, and chase perfection:
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...is what approach you use to *acquire customers at scale.*
Meaning, what's your *distribution* insight?
Not just your product insight.
Because if you build something good, often they will not simply come.
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my baby mini cow is a tiny boi
he's good on a leash now (halter) and follows you wherever you go
his name is oat. cutest part of the ranch
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Let's apply this to creativity:
At the beginning of a writing session, write out every bad idea that reflexively comes to mind.
Instead of being self-critical and resisting these bad ideas, accept them.
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They intuit a few principles for creating better writing, music, and art.
These principles also *eliminate the fear and procrastination preventing you from starting.*
The principles arise from first seeing yourself as a "craftsperson:"
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Age-old principles:
• Compete with yourself, not with others. There will always be someone with more.
• Honor your word. People remember.
• There is no value in winning when the game doesn’t matter to you.
• We create our own stress due to our perception of what we must do.
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“If your eyes hurt while eating coffee, take the spoon out of the cup.” —@gregisenberg
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Here’s the full version of this thread, including example videos add additional thoughts on overcoming procrastination:
julian.com/blog/craftspeople
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• Raising questions but not giving the full answer.
• Sharing the stakes of a story but not giving away the conclusion.
• Sharing a shocking truth but not yet explaining how it’s possible.
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Two major SEO factors I look for:
1. The click-through rate of your page title.
2. Searchers not needing to return to Google after clicking your page. How?
• Write for depth
• Link to more topics they might want instead
• Start w/ a summary to show they're at the right place
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Most creators never get past their wastewater. They resist their bad ideas.
If you've opened a blank document, scribbled a few thoughts, then walked away because you weren't struck with gold, then you too didn't get past it.
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When you factor in the need for both process and high-volume experimentation, you notice something:
A craftsperson’s process is 90% routine followed by 10% controlled chaos.
The sparks that occur between the two create the magic.
At least, that's my take ✌️
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