What I Have Been Working On And Thinking About

Trying a bunch of stuff and writing about it - ecom, ETA, yoga, Substack

I am currently in a liminal period between my previous job as an analyst at a long-only fund, and whatever comes next. I tweet ~daily stream-of-consciousness reflections about my work and thoughts and then aggregate them here weekly. This helps clarify my thinking and documents my process, while hopefully sparking discussions with others. Sign up to follow along, and feel free to reach out to discuss anything of interest.

4/15/25

I have much to do. Been keeping myself busy and actually felt a little overwhelmed yesterday. But at least it is all stuff that I actually want to do

I tried hot yoga yesterday. And again today. I like it, I think? It is pretty hard. Apparently focusing on the breath and keeping a good tempo with that is more important than the movement itself. I focused a bit more on that today. It is grounding. I am on a two week trial so I want to try to do it as much as I can in that period and see what I think at the end.

Some Christians think it is an activity that believers should not do. I disagree. Take what fits into what you want to get out of it, leave the rest. Like anything. There is nothing inherently sinful about stretching and breathing.

Been looking at some SMB stuff. Trying to find yoga mat suppliers. The admin work doesn't bother me as much when - again - it is stuff i want to do. For me.

I felt some resistance to writing this because I still don't know what I am doing for formatting/distribution. Not sure this is worthy of its own post on the blog. Maybe it is better aggregated weekly? I have no idea. But then if I have something more substantive to say tomorrow do I blog it and then post it again with the aggregation at end of week? Maybe just - try to do ~1-2 one-offs a week or something and then a weekly aggregation of the journal entries.

4/16/25

I don't know what I am doing with the ecom stuff, but I am enjoying trying to figure it out. It's interesting to learn about the product in general, and how to think about product/market fit. Idk what material is right. Dimensions. Idk the right design, or how to test that. Post in a FB group? Tried to post on Christianity subreddit but the mods blocked it. PINS? Use ETSY for inspiration? Should the design skew more feminine due to the yoga participant mix? What does that even mean in practice?

I am looking at a unique SMB/ETA situation. Not sure how to write about this stuff yet. What can and can't be written about, how general I need to be, etc. Would be interesting to write a random kind of "first take" on deals I come across. But do I just keep it very broad? Obv couldn't mention name of biz or anything. Idk. Still thinking this through. I also have a "preliminary thoughts on ETA" post in the works.

I have been very detached from the market. I barely looked at any stock prices this week. Feels good.

I regret that I didn't find out about ETA earlier and/or didn't take it more seriously and think about whether it might make sense for me. I was so in the dark on this stuff. Had no idea SBA loans could cover such a high percentage of purchase price. Idk where my mind was really at on the space to be honest. A couple years ago for example. If you had asked me about ETA, I have no idea what I'd say. Probably "seen a lot of memes, haven't thought about it much". If you'd have tried to convince me, I wonder how I'd have reacted.

I am enjoying the book Living Fearlessly by Jamie Winship. I am trying to change the way I speak. To others. To myself. In prayer. Self-talk/thought. Truth telling. I am trying to be more honest with God. It is easy to be in denial about things you are afraid will never get better, and just say they are fine as is. I am trying to bring EVERYTHING to Him. No leaving anything out.

4/17/25

Topic: revenue per employee KPI, podcast idea

Saw an interesting talk from Mike Randall of Monsoon Venture Fund (early stage VC) at PHX FWD. It was about how startups are leveraging AI both to operate more efficiently and to move at a faster pace. It’s crazy that there are multiple startups doing over $1m in rev/employee now. I think e.g. META’s Year of Efficiency, and the broader 2022 downturn that drove it, coinciding with increased use of AI has dramatically increased both a) people’s drive to figure out how to maximize the value of their AI use, and b) VCs having appropriately high expectations for such.

As I am figuring out my next steps and what I want to do in life, I’ve considered maybe doing some kind of podcast or interview series. One idea I had was people who are in or made it through some sort of liminal space (starting your own thing, quitting or getting let go with nothing lined up, career transition, etc.), with a focus on the actions they took and emotions they experienced through the initial period of uncertainty.

A second idea for a series popped up yesterday during the talk. I think it’s really exceptional what these $1m+ rev/employee companies are doing. There’s a lot we could all learn from them. When you have the ball rolling like that, it takes a unique group of people to avoid raising unnecessary amounts of capital and proceeding to bring on the bloat. I want to know what the culture is like, how they think about growth, how they use AI across engineering, ideation, sales, etc., how they think about life and business in general, etc. Whether it’s founders or engineers and salespeople on the front line, I’d really love to talk to people like this. The only requirement: you work at a company doing > $1m rev/employee. The challenge is that, precisely because of the low employee count that makes these companies so interesting, there are so few people out there to talk to! If this idea is interesting to you, I’d love it if you could comment or DM and let me know what you think.

4/21/25

Topic: Newsletter monetization

I’ve been thinking a lot about what newsletter monetization would look like if I decide to go that route, and how that ties into the product itself.

Over the course of the past few weeks, I have spoken with a few people that offer research services. Some are Substacks, some more institutional. My sense is that the market for Substack is at ~$20-40 a month for 1-2 full length writeups per month.

I wonder if this is the optimal product/price point. I am not sure how to think about it. E.g. what if you really targeted institutions and charged $10k a year? Maybe like a lower tier, boutique equity research shop? Even with relatively lower access/control, if the person is doing good work, they look at things that are relevant to you, and they are producing ideas of value, it doesn’t seem that egregious compared to paying analysts $250k-$1m/year. One good idea per year is worth much more than $10k to a scaled fund.

I am not sure what to make out of this. The current model seems a little “caught in the middle”. But one thing that came to mind is that - well, I don’t know if fund managers are really going to Substack writers to get ideas, per se. No one is going to read a Substack writeup (or a BB equity research initiation report for that matter) and then just go buy the stock (well, I shouldn’t say ‘no one’, but you get what I mean). So I don’t think the service Substack writers are providing is really “get an idea into the portfolio”. And yet, they are doing a similar amount of work (or even greater, depending on the fund) as would be required if they were actually an analyst pitching an idea to the fund. Sure, there is no pitch/debate/follow-up, but this is a relatively small portion of the overall work based on some of these in-depth analyses.

So what’s the service really about? It’s about helping analysts and PMs answer the question, “is this worth spending more time on?” What goes into answering that question? A couple subquestions. Is it in my wheelhouse/mandate/circle of competence? Do I have the resources and knowledge to diligence it? What are the key questions I would need to diligence and do I have interest and ability to do so? Does it fit well with my current portfolio, macro views, or other preferences? And then, beyond that, helping them get an idea of next steps should be if they do decide to spend the time.

So what if, instead of a 10-20 page writeup and a full model, I provided a 3-10 page writeup with some light scenario-based valuation work? I could also provide more of these vs if I was doing a full writeup every time. The goal would be to catch the reader up on the narrative as concisely as possible and help them determine if they want to spend more time on it or not. It would lay out key questions and debates, an aggregated list of resources/recommended reading, what the logical steps for a deeper dive would be, etc.

I think every Substack has (should have?) a sort of aspirational vision of what it could be. E.g. if you’re going to write about big tech, to some extent, your aspirational vision probably looks something like Ben Thompson. I think the aspirational vision here is to become the go-to guy for when someone is looking to get caught up on an idea. It’s about idea velocity. It’s about being able to quickly distill what matters. It’s about the breadth of the network. And yeah, the funds that keep their letters/ideas under lock and key wouldn’t be a part of that network, but there is a large group of talented investors (retail and professional) that could be.

I think another part of what makes this approach interesting to me is an underlying suspicion that the last 20% isn’t quite as valuable as we think. The shape of the risk/reward is often quite visible at the outset, and the final 20% isn’t always so easy to answer. On the other hand, it’s often some of the most fun work (speaking with management, industry experts, visiting sites, etc.). But are those things efficient to do in a newsletter model where you’re charging a few hundred per year?