Rings Within Rings Within Rings

On turning 43…

While I hinted at it last year, after upending (in a good way!) my personal life by moving the family to London,¹ this past year was all about doing so (in a good way!) on the professional side. Mainly, it was no secret that I had long aspired to get back to writing in a more robust way. I did the best I could keeping the muscle active during a dozen years as a VC, but as a creature of habit, it’s basically impossible to do that when your first (professional) duty is to portfolio companies and partners. And to email.

So. Much. Fucking. Email.

Oh yes, and family. Especially with two young children. There are only so many hours in a day and if 42 was about figuring out where I wanted to spend such time, 43 was about how. And so Spyglass was born and on my exact 11 year anniversary at Google — perhaps just to be able to make the ultimate dad joke that I went “to 11” — I left. At first, it’s very weird leaving behind a job where you’ve spent a significant portion of your adult life. But, as I found out, it quickly feels like you left that world behind years ago.

To be clear, I didn’t fully leave investing behind.² I just felt like I needed some time dedicated to ramping back up on the writing side, getting my sea legs back, as it were. And experimenting with where I want to take Spyglass. And roughly nine months into it, I’m quite close.

To me, writing has always been just as much about helping me to clarify my own thoughts. And after all these months, I truly feel like I have a clarity of thought on various topics that I haven’t had in quite some time. It’s really refreshing, honestly. It’s amazing how your brain awakens when most of your writing time isn’t spent on email.

Well, except, of course, the newsletter. Which I’m back to doing daily on weekdays. But that’s essentially just my real-time notebook for what I’m reading, writing, and thinking about. Again, just the process of taking those notes is beyond useful to me, so I appreciate everyone who is following along in that process.

A few more tweaks to Spyglass are coming, but then, I suspect, it will feel pretty feature complete. Of course, just v1. You always have to be evolving.³ Which feels good at the ripe old age of 43.

Published on November 2, 2024 📆
Sent from Oxford, England 🗺
Written on a 14-inch 2023 M3 Max MacBook Pro 💻
Enjoying a Braybrooke Helles Lager 🍻
Listening to “Things Behind Things Behind Things” by Bon Iver

¹ Not to mention my wife and I welcoming our second child! She’s great, by the way! And she brought good fortune with her: a 15–0 season by the Michigan Wolverines that literally kicked off right after she was born and ended with a national title. Tonight seems decidedly less promising: a visit from the current #1 team in the country to face a clearly rebuilding (after losing roughly half of their team to the NFL, including, of course, their coach, post-championship) Wolverines team in Ann Arbor. Too much to ask for a birthday present, guys? #GoBlue

² And I’m quite happy with my timing given the sheer insanity that is investing in the AI space right now. There’s far too much chaos and noise for my taste. It’s exciting and largely real, but anyone on the investing side who says they’ve cracked any sort of code yet is lying. The code is simply still shifting too quickly. It will slow.

³ Which someone should tell the United States, as I simply cannot believe we’re close to potentially returning to this utter madness. Hope?

Wow, I’ve been writing these for 10 years now…

• The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything
• Fourward
• The Essence of Time
• A November to Remember
• A Quiet Place
• A Different Kind of Ride…
• 36 Years In…
• A Farewell to 18–34
• Millennialism
• 33