There’s something profound about seeing your children navigate real markets, real constraints, real customers. The tools have changed (Square makes commerce beautifully simple), but the fundamentals remain..create value, serve others, iterate relentlessly. Every entrepreneur’s journey starts here, in the uncertain space between vision and reality. The rewards aren’t just in the business metrics. They’re in the growth, the resilience, the transformation from idea to execution. To everyone building something, trust the process. The early challenges are features, not bugs. They’re forging you into someone capable of sustaining what you’re creating.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Gm Nostr

I’d rather be authentic and rejected than fake and accepted.

Does it matter whether the client you’re using is VC funded versus volunteer run or bootstrapped? VC funded clients and volunteer projects are fundamentally different animals with different obligations and survival pressures. One has investors to answer to, growth targets to hit, and a timeline to find a business model or exit. The other doesn’t. Nostr’s whole value proposition is about escaping the incentive structures of corporate platforms. But if you’re using a VC funded client, are you actually escaping those structures, or just encountering them in a different form on top of an open protocol? Not saying one approach is right or wrong. Just curious…do you know which kind of client you’re using? Does it affect your choice? Should it?

Creativity isn’t distributed evenly. Some people are wired to make things. They see a blank space and feel compelled to fill it. They encounter a problem and can’t rest until they’ve built a solution. This isn’t learned behavior. It’s how certain brains work. These people exist on a spectrum. On one end, you have the tinkerers and hobbyists. On the other, the obsessives who will rebuild entire systems just because the existing ones feel wrong. Nostr needs both, but especially the latter.

Secure people welcome questions. They’re curious. They’re willing to be wrong because being wrong means learning something new, and learning is more valuable than protecting ego. The person saying “I could be wrong about this” is usually more trustworthy than the person saying “I’m definitely right.”

Truth is painful because it demands something from you. It strips away the comfortable lies we tell ourselves about who we are, what we’re doing, and why things are the way they are. Most people say they want truth, but they flinch when it arrives. They prefer the numbing comfort of illusion because truth requires change, accountability, and often loss. You have to let go of the version of yourself that wasn’t working. You have to admit where you were wrong. The question isn’t whether truth hurts. It does. The question is whether you’re willing to endure that pain in exchange for clarity, growth, and a life built on something real.

Value is what we’re willing to sacrifice for something. Not what we say matters, but what we actually trade our time, attention, or resources to get. The uncomfortable truth is that our real values are shown through our choices, not our words. We might claim to value health while scrolling at midnight, or say we value relationships while staying late at work again. The gap between stated and revealed preferences is where self deception lives. So ask yourself…what did I actually spend today on? That’s what you truly value right now, whether you like the answer or not.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

What makes content valuable? It’s not agreement or validation. Valuable content does one of three things…it challenges an assumption you didn’t know you had, it connects ideas you hadn’t linked before, or it gives you a framework to think more clearly about something that matters. Most posts do none of these. They confirm what we already believe or distract us momentarily. The test isn’t whether content feels good or gets engagement. The test is whether you’re different after reading it, even slightly. That’s the bar worth aiming for when you hit publish.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Gm ☕️

I write long posts. I know this. Each time I hit “publish” on another essay length note, I’m aware I’m asking for your attention in an age where brevity is currency. Yet you stay. You engage. You respond with thoughtfulness that matches or exceeds what I attempt to offer. This is why I Nostr. Not because the protocol is perfect, but because somehow, against the algorithmic grain of the modern internet, I’ve found a space where depth isn’t penalized. Where showing up daily means encountering ideas that challenge me, humor that catches me off guard, and perspectives that expand rather than narrow my thinking. We’ve built something rare here, a community that encourages without demanding conformity, that laughs without cynicism, and that learns collectively without pretending any of us has it all figured out. Thank you for the patience with my long form thoughts. Thank you for the conversations that make me smarter. Thank you for the encouragement that keeps me coming back. This is why we Nostr.