It’s been over three years since I moved to San Francisco—a city that I dreamed of being in one day. This place is beautiful, despite all its flaws. It’s a tiny city, really. You’re never less than three degrees of separation from anyone, especially if they’re wealthy or successful. It’s a strange place where the nerds rule, and it’s a city built with the expectation of abundance. I plan to write other more thoughtful pieces of my time here, especially at my previous job. But for now, here’s a quick dump of my current thoughts and opinions I formed through living here.
San Francisco is a very special bubble.
Traveling outside of it every once in a while makes you really see that. SF has a very particular hustle culture with brilliant people that can easily inspire you to work hard. It’s very easy to walk up to a random person at a party who’s building supersonic airplanes, trying to terraform Mars, or cure age-related disease. It’s naturally very inspiring. But it’s easy to forget how special that really is. If you’re lucky enough to live here, travel as much and as far as you can. It’ll help you appreciate why SF is so special and keeps you from getting too caught up in it.
You live your own life’s blooper reel while you watch everyone else’s highlight reel.
Social media isn’t real life. Even the people who seem to have it all together often carry struggles you’ll never see. Even if you read about it hundreds of times, failures always hurt, and you feel worse than you actually do. But everyone’s been there, just like you. The happy moments that people share with you often came with lots of struggle and failure. The pain and struggle comes with the success, and embracing that will bring you another step closer to it.
Writing is cool. You should do it too.
Some things are worth being said multiple times. Your ideas are valid and the thoughts you have can help inspire other people that might have never heard it before. Writing helps you think of what you really have to say and expands your surface area of luck. There’s almost no downside to it.
Don’t start a company early.
Maybe the spiciest take of them all—not all 18-22ish year olds should start a company. Say you dropped out of college at 18 on a fellowship. Working at a great, well-organized company with inspiring and brilliant people for even just 6-18 months could have an enormous impact on self-discipline, work etiquette, and just general life skills and experiences that you won’t get until you’re exposed to it. Even PG said something similar. Well, verbatim, he says “don’t start a startup at 20”. Take your time. Because you have so much time. You just don’t know it yet.
Ideas are currency
Ideas get you through some doors that looks and smarts can’t. There’s countless fellowships and grants for people with ideas that don’t even make it last a few months. But they get you on the map and builds your reputation. You don’t have to be smart or good looking to have a good idea either. Talk to a bunch of your friends, read a lot, and believe in yourself.
Not all founders are Founders
Founder culture is big in SF. Everyone’s starting some startup and “ideating”. But not all founders and startups are “real”. Many “founders” you meet at random parties may not have onboarded a single advisor, team member, nor raised a single dollar of capital. Everyone wants the persona of a founder, but not all of them are brave enough to try and potentially fail.
It’s hard to make friends
The constant hustle and bustle around startup culture makes it easy for many of your interactions to feel transactional. Who’s going to intro you to them, will he invest in your startup, etc. At some level, friends take time. But there’s certainly ways to hack it. If you don’t know how to open up or ask deep questions, circling is a pretty good primer. Volunteer—after working for a while it’s hard to give up your time for free for other people. But a volunteer group is essentially a pre-filtered group of people that share your same passions and interests. It’s the best place to find people like you.
You’re only a fully formed human after, like, 28, maybe.
Between 0-13ish, you barely contribute to society as a human. Between 13-18ish, you get a little better. And from 18-28ish you have to figure out who you’re actually going to be. So if you’re 30 now, you basically have only been your fully formed self for 2-5yrs max. There’s always time to pivot, change careers, and change. In some contrarian way, every year you get older the more capable & experienced you become to do something completely new.
Family’s important, but only as important as you make it.
They’ll always be there, whether you like it or not. Growing up, I wasn’t the closest with my family. But with a recent death in the family in late 2024, embracing my family’s imperfections and realizing my place in it has been one of the more transformative experiences for my life. There’s some quote I remember hearing that goes something like:
“Every family has a crazy. If you don’t think yours is, you might be the crazy.”
The apple falls straight down the tree.
I’ve been recently asking myself a lot of questions around who I am and why I am the way I am. And more often than not, it goes back up to my family and even my family’s family. Your childhood and your family have had an enormous impact on you that for some people take an entire lifetime to understand. If you also have questions and doubts of who you are, where you come from, and where you might be going, systemically looking at your family might help you find the answer.
The more work you do, the more you get done.
The hardest part is to figure out what you want to do. For better or for worse, the more time you spend working on something, the better and further you get. Working hard is easy if you like what you do. So, the most important (yet also difficult) thing is figuring out what you want to do. That is, of course, until you change your mind again sometime later.
Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t make pitstops along the way, you just might miss it.
The notion of “I’ll do that (thing I’ve been putting off) once I get there (promotion, new job, when I’m 27, etc.)” is a good mental delayed gratification strategy that might help you grind through tough moments. But if you make a habit it, you may end up getting to your destination and notice you missed out on too much along the way. Sure, the drive was fun, but the pitstops are what’s sometimes really fun. If you want to do that thing you’ve been putting off, do it now. Go to that pastry shop. Try some durian. Ask that barista out on a date. Travel to Mexico. Because if you say you want something but not putting the time into it, you probably don’t actually want it that bad. If that’s not true, then do it now. Before it’s too late.
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