1/ Whenever I visit my dad, he spends most of the time lecturing me over meals. It's a hard habit for him to break. Over many years, I've evolved how I respond to my parents through phases.

Recently, I uncovered a 4th phase that’s allowed me to cherish the time we have left. 2/ Phase 1: Rebel phase. High school years when I was an asshole child. My parents would lecture me and I’d get angry and argue back.

1/ Heard many sad stories of co-founder breakups over the years. Makes me realize I take for granted that my co-founder and I were friends for a decade before we started a company together.

Here are a few things we did to protect our co-founder relationship in our first year. 2/ First, I have to admit that the first 3 months were horrible. We'd spent the previous decade working at different companies/industries and we quickly realized we had very different working styles.

We clashed consistently with high egos and often escalated to loud arguments.

1/ Many early stage founders are struggling to raise funding right now. Rough as it is, I’d recommend re-framing funding constraints as a forcing function to get creative with your marketing. We did some fun things in our first year to get to a 35,000+ waitlist before launching: 2/ We found a bot online that scraped all of Reddit, Hacker News, and various forums. It would ping us in a Slack channel anytime it found any mention of the words: low carb ramen, keto ramen, healthy ramen, high protein ramen, plant based ramen, and other derivatives.

1/ A decade ago, one of my best friends took over his family's electrical business and worked 6 days a week to grow the company. He recently achieved a generational wealth level exit.

He told me a story once that helped me understand how his family achieved such success. 2/ When they started the business, they used their family savings to lease warehouse space where they stored electrical supply inventory. They would then go around the city and service small contracts setting up electrical power supply and lighting to small businesses.

1/ When my co-founder and I worked together a decade ago, each PM in the org. was required to send a weekly e-mail update outlining P&L changes, upcoming roadmap initiatives, new feature launches, and weekly experiment results. 2/ Each weekly update was sent to all PMs, cross functional team leads, and the exec team. All questions & comments were reply all. We'd get painful follow-up requests that would blow up our weekends but it was a great opportunity to build and learn in public.

1/ Ran a handful of TikTok creator campaigns recently. Viral view count, incredible CPMs, but attributable purchase ROAS from discount code usage was horrendous.

We're not a huge company that can allocate marketing budget for "awareness." So we almost killed future campaigns. 2/ Then we asked ourselves why attributable conversions felt so low. The creator content was great, engagement metrics looked high, and there was a ton of interest in immi via video comments.

Attributable Shopify data said one thing, but our intuition wanted to believe another.

1/ In my early 20s, I met a young man at a local product management school in SF I had been teaching at on weekends. He approached me after class and told me he snuck into class as an unregistered student. He revealed that he was homeless and slept on a mattress in his car. 2/ It was a Saturday morning and I was eager to get back to my day, but I was concerned for his situation so I sat down with him to learn more. He was 21, and recently college graduated, but wasn't close to his family.

1/ Years before I became a founder, I was just starting out in the venture industry and I reached out to an experienced VC to get some advice on how to differentiate myself from other investors. He asked me, "what's your superpower?" 2/ Up until that point, I'd made a few career switches through finance and product management and I'd bootstrapped a small profitable media company. But when he asked that question, I jumped to the first thing that came to mind: "I think I'm good at storytelling."

1/ Thank you to everyone who expressed support for our immi launch and we're so grateful for all of you. As I think back to the past 18 months of this journey, I want to share one of the hardest parts of being a founder that I struggle with daily. 👇 2/ Most founders start because we believe that we have high standards for what an innovative product can do for customers. But most of the time, sacrifices have to be made to get a first version of a product to market. These sacrifices slowly eat away at our mental health.

1/ Today we announce immi, a food brand we've been working on for 18 months. @kchanthasiri and I spent the past decade in tech and started over by learning the food industry from scratch. Here's why we're doing this, the $42bn food category we're tackling, and where we're going👇 2/ We met close to a decade ago working as product managers at a company called Kabam. We didn't know each other, but during a work trip in Vancouver one morning, we somehow arrived at the same noodle joint. We became the two PMs in our org. who bonded over noodles for breakfast.

Here are a few great habits I've learned from my co-founder that have made me a better performer. Writing these to myself to internalize them:

1/ Almost every meeting can be removed by working asynchronously on a Google Doc and leaving written comments and feedback. 2/ If a meeting is necessary, set up scaffolding beforehand. A Notion page or Google Doc with a clear agenda and a written desired outcome from the meeting will suffice.

1/ I recently started receiving executive coaching. As an early / pre-launch founder, I was critical of the idea that I should spend money on coaching before we've even earned a single cent of revenue.

Shouldn't I just put my head down and work? What would a coach do for me? 2/ In conversations with other founders, many questioned my doubt.

Some of the statements I heard:

"It's by far one of the most important things to invest in."

"It affects all parts of your business, and you need to take care of yourself."

"I wish I started earlier."

1/ Barbara Corcoran is a self made millionaire known for her role on Shark Tank. What you may not know is her rags-to-riches story building NYC's largest residential brokerage that sold for $66mm.

This is a lesson in how finding opportunity is a matter of believing it's there. 2/ Barbara is born in a factory town in New Jersey and shares one room with 9 siblings in her parents' 2 bedroom flat. Her parents sleep on a black vinyl couch in the living room. She's a straight D student and is mis-labeled as a "dumb kid" due to her undiagnosed dyslexia.

1/ Hayao Miyazaki is an animator, filmmaker, and author who has been named as TIME Magazine's 100 World's Most Influential People.

This is a lesson in how one of the most creative minds in animation maintains a child-like curiosity to draw inspiration from everyday life. 2/ Miyazaki is born in Tokyo during WWII. His father is a director in a family business that makes parts for fighter planes in the war. His mother lays sick in bed with spinal tuberculosis for most of his childhood. Growing up in a war-torn city shape his anti-war views.

1/ Humans of New York is a photoblog with 30mm global fans. The creator, Brandon Stanton, has been named by TIME Magazine as one of 30 under 30 People Changing the World.

This is a lesson in how a consistent creative habit changed the landscape of empathy around the world. 2/ Brandon starts his career trading bonds in Chicago for two years and loses his job when the market crashes. He makes a decision that he wants to spend the next period of his life thinking not about money, but about he spends his time.

1/ I was thinking through an interesting startup problem this past week, and I was reminded of a student I once had when I ran a student-led course in college on stock investing. She shocked the hell out of me by thinking outside the box and pulling a "Kobayashi Maru." 2/ To set some context, Kobayashi Maru is a training exercise designed to test new academy students in Star Trek (I admittedly don't watch the show but learned about this test from watching the theater film).

1/ Noma has been named World's Best Restaurant four times. The creative genius behind Noma? René Redzepi - declared a "God of Food" by Time Magazine.

This is a lesson in how applying extreme constraints led to the meteoric rise of one of the world's most influential chefs. 2/ René Redzepi has appeared twice on the cover of Time Magazine and has been named one of Time's 100 Most Influential People in the world. But he wasn't bred for success - he was born as an outsider looking in.

1/ I'm interested in creativity and encouraging others to become creators because my own journey down the creator path changed my life. This is a story of how @shl changed my life and why I'm so happy for him today. 2/ Ironically, my first job out of college was as a technology analyst in investment banking. From society’s standards, I could not have been in a role farther opposite on the creativity spectrum.

1/ Marshmello is the 2nd highest paid DJ in the world and rakes in $40mm per year while wearing a marshmallow helmet. His secret? His brilliant, unknown manager, Moe Shalizi.

This is a lesson in how creative approaches in the music industry built a global phenomenon. 2/ Moe Shalizi grew up in Section Eight low income housing. When he was 17, his dad died and he was forced to do whatever it took to provide for his mom and sister. He bought candy and sold it to other kids. He started fixing cars and flipping them on Craigslist.

1/ Oatly doesn't think like the rest. They've been around for 20 years as a Swedish company fighting for attention. Last week, the oat milk company raised $200mm at a $2bn valuation. This is a lesson on creativity and how @oatly turns disadvantages into massive opportunities. 2/ Before I start, I want to caveat that I'm in no way endorsing Oatly's product as "healthier" than milk. While I enjoy the taste myself as a treat, I'm also aware Oatly has 7g of added sugars and that a 12oz glass has about the same blood sugar impact as a 12oz can of coke.

1/ There's a fascinating story of a normal guy named Allen Hemberger who became obsessed with the Alinea cookbook. He spent 5 years re-creating all 107 recipes.

There's an extremely valuable lesson in this process for anyone thinking about taking the leap to become a creator. 2/ Alinea is a 3 Michelin star restaurant known for molecular gastronomy. This is no easy feat.

Allen not only re-created every recipe, but he straight up even went to metalworking and woodworking classes to create the actual dishware for platings. Talk about dedication.