This was a typical, abnormal week, and I had a lot of meetings, lots of “normal work,” and a board meeting at Bahlsen in Hannover.
As this is a synchronous week, I had a lot of meetings on my calendar. This is nice (as I like to meet people) and quite exhausting.
Change and Keyboards
I have always envied my friends and colleagues who have used their setup, tech stack, and systems for years. A few years ago, I figured that I draw energy from change. So I can and need to make changes to my setup. There are also some elements I do not change in all this change. Some examples:
I have my personal tech stack with layers that I change and layers at the core that I do not need to change.
I take notes in multiple formats and mediums, and I change this as much as I want. The only constant is: Everything important goes into a database with portable formats. And this “core” data is stored and encrypted in multiple databases. For now, it is roamresearch and notion (my second brain). So no matter how I take notes or write down something, I copy it into roamresearch/ notion if I ever want to find it again.
I have a MacBook. For a few years with a qwerty ISO keyboard. (I can type faster on it, but “Umlaute” take a bit longer.) At home, I use external keyboards. As my sons share my love for mechanical keyboards, we have quite a few at home, with different materials, switches, and keycaps. They provide various typing feelings, which I like. I tend to switch every few days. My typing speed is only affected for a few minutes after the switch. It takes me a bit longer to adjust when I change to one of the ergonomic split keyboards that I like to use for a few weeks per year. When mobile, I love to use the MacBooks keyboard. I started writing this newsletter on a heavy keyboard with very tactile switches and classic keycaps and am finishing it now with an Apple keyboard.
When going a bit deeper on why changing the system and tools feels so good for me (and maybe others), I find this post helpful: Dopamine Stacking. I can relate to many of the findings, and the recommendations make a lot of sense to me.
What helps me a lot is to think of my productivity system as a tech stack where I only change specific layers at a time. Usually, I vary the interface layers and the core layers I keep to have access to my data over time. And I have had a digital core to my system for a long time and have only rarely switched it.
Momentum
When you start to turn your idea into reality, there is a stage that I like particularly well: before the idea generates traction, you sometimes can see the first weak signals of momentum. Recognizing, documenting, showing, and driving this momentum is an essential skill in the early stages of an idea. This applies independently of the idea being a startup or any other idea you want to spread. Momentum manifests in multiple ways:
The first time when someone else is selling the idea to someone and is super excited
The first time you get positive feedback on the idea from someone who is maybe even thinking it further for you
The energy you feel when someone you work with wants to turn a product idea into reality.
Or an investor is starting to think about your idea further or more profound.
I think you can develop momentum in multiple dimensions, and your first financing rounds will most likely rather be driven by momentum than by traction.
Often traction is only showing later, and potential supporters and investors are looking for something else they cannot describe. This is most often the momentum of your idea.
Especially in the early days of a company, there is a valley of tears when you start to turn your dreams and plans into reality: you are super convinced that this idea is taking off and that customers are coming in. You can feel the momentum. But you can only show 47 customers a few weeks after launch in your B2B startup. 47 is a significant number when you come from nothing. But when you talk about the big dream you have and a big market you want to go after, 47 is nothing.
Depending on whom you are talking to, you need to make sure that they understand this number: it is the first sign of momentum and the starting point of a growth curve. Maybe you can already show some more of the characteristics of your growth in the future. Or perhaps even some scale or early signs of speeding up growth. That’s for another week.
I think showing where your company is developing momentum and explaining the unit economics. The systemic structure of your company’s business model is the best way to plan for growth and document that it is happening. And all this potentially even before the real traction is there, and it is already showing as momentum. From my experience, early-stage financing rounds work a lot better if you can explain what you want to do and how you already have built some momentum.
What I watched and read
I read a lot of newsletters behind paywalls this week, and this is a development in my information consumption over the past months. A lot of the things I read are paid content. And it isn't easy to share. I do not want to share links that let you bounce off the paywall, but I am happy to do it when you give me signals that you are interested in these kinds of content.
I had to laugh about his tweet:
Also, there was only a little time to watch online videos for me this week. I watched some camera reviews and enjoyed this:
I hope you found something useful. Have a great weekend (ours is three days long) and then a good week.
Cheers
Joerg
Good points Joerg, very true about making small changes with dopamine stacking! and on that note if you like Roam you might also like LogSeq (https://logseq.com/) as I found it to be a close clone with some extra features :)
Joerg, always a weekend pleasure to read your personal while insightful stories. Happy long weekend