farez Profile picture
May 15, 2020 12 tweets 3 min read Read on X
For about 2 weeks, I felt depressed, unmotivated, and grumpy. Consequently, my work started to suffer.

Today all that changed, because I gave some love again to my diet, exercise and sleep...

#startup #health #mentalhealth #solopreneur

Thread👇
For the last 2 years, since I left London, I lived well. I had good quality meals , almost daily exercise (when I was able to go out surfing), and I slept 8 hours regularly. My mornings usually started with a 15 min meditation and I didn't sleep too late.
I was able to focus well and became calmer in the face of difficult decisions. I started working on my startup with clarity of mind and purpose.
But lockdown somehow gave me an excuse to be lazy. My health started getting ignored, because I would spend all waking hours at my desk on "work". Food got faster, sleep hours got shorter, and exercise got ignored.
As a result, my work, that I thought was more important than my health, suffered. Problems seem bigger than they are. I could not focus on important elements of my startup and I started chasing ideas.
I started getting depressed. I discovered that I tried to deal with my depression by doing more coding, i.e. "work", rather than the necessary customer development efforts that were required for an early stage startup. Burying my head in code was easier than talking to people.
Which meant that real progress was stalling, and I could see this. Which led to more frustration. More depression. The vicious circle.
Everything was compounded by having to deal with government red tape while applying for my wife's visa to stay here in Malaysia. And of course, my poor physical and mental health didn't let me deal with this in a calm manner.
Last Monday, I made the conscious decision to get back into eating properly and exercising. Like magic, within just a couple of days, the fog lifted. I felt calmer again, and I'm able to focus. I feel happier. Problems have shrunk in size in my mind.
It's amazing what just a few days of paying attention to your physical and mental health can do. How it can turn things around at a personal level.
I think they key is to be self aware of what's happening in your body and mind and fix it early. And never ignore your health. As someone running your own business/startup, especially as a solo founder, your good health is vital.
Monitor it as closely as you monitor your business's KPIs. If you are going through any of the above, maybe it's time to check on your diet, exercise and sleep. And don't be afraid to talk to someone. Feel free to DM me if you are going through the same and want to chat.

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More from @farez

Mar 2, 2021
So I was wrong.

For a SaaS business, audience != customers.

Let me explain...
Sometime last year, I tweeted this 👇.

I said:
Old way: build product, then find customers.
New way: Build audience, then build product.

The problem with that is, I confused "audience" with "customers".

And I failed to see that the audience-first approach, while highly relevant for content creators, isn't as effective for SaaS builders.

indiehackers.com/@mijustin/dont…
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Hell hath no fury as a food-blogger scorned

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But TIL: food bloggers do that for SEO and ad revenue. Which makes sense!
So Recipeasly is kinda solving a problem (not one I'd pay for though).

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And this website: plainoldrecipe.com
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Power-up your Twitter experience.

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Here are a few made for Twiter, by solo founders or small teams.

Recommendations 👇🏽
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Fantastic UI that lets you preview before you schedule/publish.

This thread was created in @chirrapp.
2. Detailed Twitter analytics with ilo.so by @dr.

10x better than Twitter's own.

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Sep 22, 2020
Popular startup advice

Execution > Idea.

But doesn't explain why I've been executing on shit ideas 💩

I need to answer "What should I work on next?" confidently. So I'm doing some research...
I wanted to synthesise what successful founders said about picking the right idea to work on.

It's been interesting - there is no definitive answer, of course.

But there seem to be a pattern.
And the list of sources is getting long!
Read 6 tweets
Sep 19, 2020
Why do people subscribe to / pay for newsletters?

1. Curation.
2. Insight.
3. Trust.

A.I. will do a better job of the first 2... (thread)
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Software can do a better job: it's quicker, and it can personalise "interesting".

@amazon and @netflix are already doing this.
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Software can do a better job: it can process more data to learn patterns, and arrive at POSSIBLE explanations - pick one.
Read 16 tweets
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One important item I wanted to tick off as early as possible for @markfolder is backups.

Markfolder's users have entrusted me with their data and I want that to be fully respected.
Making sure they never lose their data is the least I can do (followed by security of their data and their privacy, which I'll continually work on).
So now, at 00:00 every night London time, a backup of all code, files and database is made, zipped, and saved to an Amazon S3 server in the UK.
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