April - Engollipao’ in Lisbon, Madrid and Las Palmas.

🏃‍♂️ TL;DR

Put all the effort to practice and became a DJ for a night. Reflected on my future and understood a bit better what’s next. Found my ninja way. Traveled back and forth through timezones. Realised I am in a wonderful moment of my life and I am putting conscious effort into enjoying it. Came across a Panda in the wild. Spent half of April with a bruised eye because of boxing. 

🍋 Thoughts

Patterns followed in the past might inspire, but won’t fix today’s problems. People do not expect more of the same. 

Our reputation is a summary of what we did in the past + our vision for the near future. If we accept this is true, we are undeniably going to follow what we did in the past because if it worked once, it might work again. However, if our goal is innovating, this just leads to a road end. It won’t be a quick, Hollywood-like dead, but a slow downslope to irrelevance. We need to fight against the natural will to believe the context we live in won’t change. 

Sometimes decisions do not require rational arguments to back them up. 

Overthinking emotional decisions will drive you mad. Trying to grab a rational conclusion from a set of emotions that have gathered around a topic is as complicated as trying to spot the correct path when walking in between clouds. However, when the topic comes into your head in the shape of a question you normally have an answer for it already. You just look for rational arguments against it. You already made the decision. You’re fucked, fam.

Access to privacy is a fight we are not aware of, but a game changer for the way protocols and users interact. 

Our digital footprint isn’t ours - it belongs to a set of corporates that speculate with our data-based personas. We love exchanging our data for customised recommendations, just because we don’t know the value of every click we do. Behavioural and financial data is available and we do not own it, we are just generating a trail of decisions from which we are tagged and classified. Privacy preserves its meaning, but has lost its relevance - we allow protocols to act privately, while we are demanded to provide all the data we generate as users. This should be the other way around. Today, we can’t opt in to be private. 

🗳️ What’s going on now

• I can’t remember feeling this good in a while. I’ve managed to understand what I want to do in the near future and I am fighting to steer the boat to the next challenges. I am grateful to the people who have been part of the conversations to make that a reality. 

• I am also unsure and doubtful, taking new leaps is always scary and fills you with uncertainty. However, I am confident that if there is a moment to take those risks is now. 

• Wonderful people have appeared in my life and I am having the greatest time ever. Saving less money than before, enjoying much more and saying “yes” to every single plan. Chasing anecdotes with lovely people. 

• I want to find a cool problem to focus on and fix it properly with a cool idea. I keep switching problems and can’t find one that truly inspires me - aside from finding real use cases for crypto that fellow normies can understand. 

• I want to go faster than my current structure allows me to. That’s a bit frustrating. I feel I could be doing more than I do today.

🥷 Questions in my head

• We complain about Neuralink and having a chip in our heads, but we do have a chip in our hands all day. Wat. 

• Does the search for perfection slow down the creative process?

• Could it be that a big computer is a substitute for very bad data? Funny analogy, but I mean it. 

• When kicking off a new business: is it better to be inflexible about your vision even if the market does not really understand it yet, or provide similar products that the market understand already while you set up your identity? Where is the line between adapting your vision and giving up your purpose?

• What is the true role of a VC? Invest in new products, or help those with ideas create new ones? Or none? 

💎 Inspiration

• Potemkin village: is a construction whose purpose is to provide an external façade to a situation, to make people believe that the situation is better than it is.

• Bitcoin’s purpose isn’t smuggling money in/out your country. Bitcoin’s purpose is taking your country outside its currency. 

• WTF is Aztec - a 101 on privacy and why it is relevant - cheers Cat.

• Raoul Paul being him - We're no longer constrained by resources; Unlimited power through nuclear; Unlimited intelligence through AI; Unlimited productivity through robots → The formula for GDP will therefore be rewritten.

• “We find our voice through experimentation”. Rick Rubin.

• Innovators dilemma: the opportunity to build a new business that may disrupt your core reduces the will to innovate.

• When we work hard for something we don’t believe in, is called stress. When we work hard for something we love, is called passion.

• “Meaning is secondary to intuitive response. Sometimes mindless play can hold more power than meaning”. 

💙 Cheers

Ine, Luchi, Pedrito, Pove, Palma, Stef, Klaus, Mamu, Pilu, Papá, Abu, Julito, Luqui, Manu, Santi, Guardi, James, Lu, Nats, Tommy, los chicos de box, Roge, Luis, Agnes, Sofi, Alex y Diegui, Buri, Sacha, Silvia, Jose María, Juanjo, Alvarito, Cris R, Adri, Eli, Juan, Filipe, Pcbo, Cat, Ash, Joan, Pipi, Lola, Sarah, Fabi, Emi.