Matt Mickiewicz @mattmickiewicz - Tumblr Blog

Canada is Building a Surveillance State

Great read on what Canada is implementing, worth reading: "Between March and June 2026, the Carney government introduced five interlocking digital bills in roughly 100 days. Each one is framed around something hard to argue with: protecting kids, catching criminals, modernizing privacy law.

But taken together, they build the legal architecture for something Canadians have never voted for... a country where you must prove your identity to access ordinary websites, where the government can secretly order companies to build surveillance tools, and where a single Cabinet-appointed body holds sweeping power over what you can say, see, and do online.

No single bill does all of this. That's part of what makes it so hard to see."

Full article: https://x.com/lucyhargreaves4/status/2066903272271544551

Cut a salamander's leg off and it grows back. Cut yours and you get a stump. The two genomes are not that different. So why can one regenerate and the other can't?

This got nearly zero coverage in North America, but the $220 billion EURO scheme in Italy that gave 110% tax credits for home renovations is a super intersting read about one of the biggest fiscal mistakes in world history.

Better Teaching.

You'd think that by 2026 the human species would have figured out how to effectively teach others, and that any efficiency or test scoring gains that could be achieved would be minimal. Turns out this is flat-out wrong, as evidenced by two two pieces of media that dropped this week. 1.) 60 Minutes dropped a segment on the Payam Method for teaching piano. In addition to making the learning process joyful, much faster and much more effective. "We won 13 out of 15 district winners, we won five out of five Washington state first-place winners. And then those five students went on to compete nationally and four of them won four of the 14 national medals that were awarded," Khastkhodaei said.

Turns out that teaching people to read sheet music, while also teaching co-ordination, as has been done traditionally was the wrong approach altogether. 2.) My First Million dropped an energizing interview with Joe Liemandt who started Alpha School to teach kids 10x faster. Again, the results of his new approach have been remarkable: "Alpha District's Fall-to-Winter 2025-26 MAP Growth results are extraordinary by any national benchmark. Across all four subjects tested—Math, Reading, Language Usage, and Science—Alpha students score at the 99th achievement percentile in virtually every grade, while simultaneously producing growth rates that place the district at the 83rd–99th conditional growth percentile across grade levels. This combination of elite achievement and elite growth is statistically rare and places Alpha not merely among the best private schools in America, but in a class essentially by itself."

Amazing results that should have every teacher, curriculum board and Ministry of Education questioning why they've stuck to their old ways for so long... and how we could have possibly missed the huge leaps so readily available.

What other subjects or topics can be taught 10x better?

“In almost any subject, your passion for the subject will save you. If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it. If you wish to be good, you will be good. If you wish to be rich, you will be rich. If you wish to be learned, you will be learned. Only then you must really wish these things and wish them with exclusiveness and not wish one hundred other incompatible things just as strongly.” - Dale Carnegie

From Inventor to CEO

In the lore of entrepreneurship, the technical founder is often cast as a genius, a figure hunched over a keyboard, conjuring something from nothing. The CEO, meanwhile, belongs to a different mythology: corner offices, board meetings, strategic off-sites. Yet in the most successful startups, these two characters are the same person. And that, as it turns out, creates a very particular kind of tension.

Two different games

The technical founder is drawn to problems precisely because they lack obvious answers. They comfortable iterating through dozens of failed attempts, and ultimately motivated by the purity of the solution itself. Running a company as CEO is almost the opposite. Your world becomes one of patterns, systems, routines, and small, unglamorous decisions and tasks done over and over again. Your 15th interview that week asking the questions you can recite in your sleep. Your 101st cultural values discussion with a new hire. Your 37th VC meeting trying to raise funds before you run out of cash.

The confidence paradox

Here is the paradox for first-time founders who are inventors: the very traits that made you successful at invention can quietly undermine your confidence as a leader. You are used to knowing more about the product than anyone else in the room; suddenly, you are the least knowledgeable person about sales, hiring, or finance. You go from being the expert to being the novice, in your own company.

Psychologists sometimes describe confidence as a narrative we tell ourselves about our past. For inventors, that narrative is built on breakthroughs: “I solved problems no one else could.” For first time CEOs, the narrative is built on something more mundane: “I made hundreds of workable decisions, and most of them worked out.”

Stacking small, boring wins

This is where the idea of stacking wins becomes critical. Confidence for a new CEO is not a personality trait; it is an accumulated dataset. Each small success (closing a candidate you wanted, running a meeting that ends with clear decisions, shipping a release on schedule) is a data point that revises your internal story about who you are.

Consider three simple tasks:

Decide on a hiring process and follow it exactly, from job description to final offer. (See: Who Book)

Define, in advance, how you will make certain categories of decisions: what information you need, who is involved, how long you will take. (See: DACI vs. RACI)

Ending every recurring meeting with explicit owners, deadlines, and one written summary.

Individually, none of these actions looks like a breakthrough. Collectively, they form the scaffolding of a new identity: someone who can run an organization, not just ship code.

Changing Your Question

The most successful technical founders don't abandon their inventor identity, they reframe it. Instead of asking "What problem can I solve today?", they ask "What system can I build or whom can I hire that solves this class of problems forever?". If you're successful, you go from being the doer, to the enabler. The test changes from "Can I make this happen?" to "How can this happen without me being the bottleneck?".

The Dirty Secret of Hypergrowth: It’s Mostly Damage Control Everyone loves to believe the same comforting myth: if you just hire faster, spend more on marketing, and “invest ahead of the curve,” buy a 7-figure domain name and get a new logo, growth will show up.

But in the real world, growth usually creates spend, not the other way around.

Compare a soon to be unicorn to a slower-growing company and you’ll notice something that changes how you think about scaling. A slower-growing company spends to try to increase growth. It adds headcount, ramps paid acquisition, expands sales coverage, and builds new features in the hope that these inputs will turn into demand.

A fast-growing company does something different.

It isn’t spending to generate demand. It’s spending because demand is already punching it in the face.

When a company like 99designs or Hired.com truly clicks, it quickly gets overloaded. Signups spike. Inbound explodes. Customers queue up. Support tickets pile up. Infrastructure strains. Sales can’t respond fast enough. Onboarding breaks. Billing gets messy. Customers get angry. Everything starts failing at once, because the business was built for yesterday’s volume.

So the company hires like crazy and spends like crazy, not to “create growth,” but to avoid choking on it. In the case of 99designs, which was founded with only $300K USD of our personal capital, we just kept increasing prices to drive down our growthrate to keep it somewhat manageable.

That’s what hypergrowth actually looks like: scrambling to keep up with reality.

Hyperscalers with true product market fit often have more demand than they can handle. Their product clicked. A distribution channel caught fire. Word of mouth took off. Customers started pulling the product through the market faster than the company can ship, onboard, support, or bill. Growth spikes, and suddenly the business is scrambling to keep up.

So the hiring spree begins. Not because the new hires magically create demand, but because the demand is already there and the company is trying not to drop it on the floor.

This is why hyper scaling can look chaotic from the outside. Teams aren’t calmly “building for the future” or planning 12 month product roadmaps. They’re triaging the present. They are patching onboarding flows, rewriting infrastructure, expanding customer success, fixing support queues, strengthening security, cleaning up analytics, and adding capacity anywhere the system is breaking under load. In each of the three companies I experienced this, I felt like I was holding on for dear life and still dropping the ball 50% of the time while working 7 days a week...

Here’s the mistake that keeps repeating: founders see the hiring spree and the big budget and assume that’s the engine. They think headcount caused the growth. They think marketing spend caused the demand. They think the shiny org chart is why the numbers went vertical.

No. The demand showed up first. The spend came after, as damage control. Spending can amplify a thing that already works. It cannot rescue a thing that doesn’t. If you don’t have pull, all you’re doing is paying people to push.

The test is simple: are customers dragging the product out of your hands, or are you dragging the customer to a demo?

If you’re not feeling demand pull, don’t assume more burn will manufacture it. Find the real source of pull. Nail the product, message, the ICP and channel until customers are chasing you.

Then, and only then, spending becomes rocket fuel instead of a bonfire.

Asking Challenging Sales Questions.

Too many founders avoid asking hard or difficult questions during the sales process, lest they come off as needy, "salesy", or self-serving.

Why these questions matter

Uncomfortable questions surface:

Real priorities (is this a “nice-to-have” or a “drop-everything” problem?).

True decision-makers and internal politics.

Hidden risks that kill deals at the finish line and inflate your probability to close

The trick is simple: keep the spirit of the question, but reframe it around the prospect’s world, not your pipeline.

1. From ROI grilling to personal motivation

Old question: “How much time would this save you?”

Snappy version:

“I know this might sound like a weird question, but I’ve seen other teams live with this problem for a long time and never really make it a priority. Why is this important for you specifically right now?”

Why it works:

Shifts focus from abstract ROI to personal urgency.

Invites a story instead of a number.

Signals that it’s okay if the problem isn’t actually urgent.

2. From “who else?” to strategic inclusion

Old question: “Who else needs to see this?”

Snappy version:

“In my experience, when people like your VP get a chance to ask direct questions early, it prevents misconceptions later. Should we invite them to the next call, or is that a terrible idea?”

Why it works:

Uses social proof (“people like your VP”) without name-dropping.

Frames extra stakeholders as risk reduction, not bureaucracy.

The “terrible idea” line makes it feel low-pressure and collaborative.

3. From authority check to team alignment

Old question: “Are you the one making the call?”

Snappy version:

“To what extent has the team already discussed this as a problem that needs to be solved, or has it mostly been you driving it so far?”

Why it works:

Avoids putting them on the spot about their authority.

Opens the door to talk through the buying committee naturally.

Helps you see whether this is a solo champion or a team mandate.

4. From vague concerns to specific deal killers

Old question: “Any concerns?”

Snappy version:

“If this deal got blocked at the last minute, what’s the most likely reason it would have failed?”

Why it works:

Assumes risk exists, which feels more realistic and safe to admit.

Forces specifics instead of “no, all good”.

Gives you a chance to preempt objections before they go offline.

Put it into practice

Next time you’re in a sales call:

Keep your “old” blunt question in mind.

Reframe it around their incentives, risks, and reality.

Add a bit of humility (“might be a weird question…”, “or is that a terrible idea?”).

You still uncover the truth, but you'll just make it feel like you are on their side instead of interrogating them.

2025 LifeMaxxing Year in Review.

Books:

I read way fewer books than usual, despite having 3 or 4 novels on the go at any given point in time…

Finished books include Rendezvous with Rama (fantastic classic), The Last Expedition, Brunello di Montalcino by Kerin O’Keefe, The Wager, Black Beach, Termination Shock (meh), Genghis Khan and the making of the modern world (excellent), How To Get Rich (better than the title implies), Insane Emperors and Earthquake Machines (meh), Based on a True Story (weird), Starter Villain, Wool (great), The Perfect Couple & Resurrection Walk (two easy poolside holiday reads), and Bitter Honey.

My stack of books for 2026 is high, and I just ordered many more around Christmas, and hope to find more than a handful of gems among them next year that are worth reading cover to cover.

TV and Movies:

On the TV side, I binged Masters of Air (I loved visiting several museums with WWII planes last year) & The Pacific which graphically portrayed the realities of the war. The Diplomat was also a good watch, though never quite reaching the level of West Wing.

On a lighter note, I loved The Studio for its comedy and fast-paced sequencing, and For All Mankind (an alternative history where the US and Russia space race continues and leads to a base on the moon and a race to Mars).

My favourite movies of the year include F1, Memoirs of a Snail, The Gorge, The Substance, Companion, Her (long overdue, super relevant in the current times), Tetris (the best movie on IP rights), Conclave, and The Phoenician Scheme (much better than Asteroid City).

Podcasts

Cocaine Air was a new podcast series I discovered and binged in the span of 2 days while going for my daily walks this summer.

The craziest startup story I heard in the year with Harry Stebbing’s interview with the founder of Airwallex, this is a must-listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-srgTgUgCgw . The interview with Rizwan Virk on simulation theory was also compelling (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hz8jLmCSCaE).

During the year I also loved the epic ~10 hour AcquiredFM series on Google, and a bunch of episodes of Tim Ferris, Dwarkesh and AllTheHacks.

Dining:

Over the course of the year, I tried 10 different Michelin star restaurants across 4 countries. Okay Kyujiro (1* in Vancouver), a 4 hour lunch at Villa Madie in Cassis, Primo in Lecce (excellent), Les Agitateurs where we ate in the wine cellar in Nice, La Table d’Uzes, Vitantonio Lombardo (average), Fradis Minoris (awful), Costes (superb), Stand (amazing) and Borkonyha Winekitchen (good).

Not every great meal was Michelin starred though. In Chile we had amazing food at Francis Mailman’’s Fuego’s de Apalta (https://fuegosdeapalta.com/) and lunch at Restaurant Ruyuela in the Colchagua Valley and more locally at Elem in Vancouver.

I also have to give an honourable mention to Le Bistrot du Paradou, which serves the biggest cheese platter I’ve ever seen (enough to feed 6 people) and El Asador Patagónico which does live-fire whole lamb cooking. Le Mas à Gordes also stood out for its beautiful setting and decor as did the Nayara Alto Atacama hotel restaurant where we ate every night while exploring the high altitude desert of Atacama and where unfortunately I had to skip a meal due to intense altitude sickness. Funeta Alemana in Santiago, Chile was also pretty cool - we were the only tourists there, and I’ve never seen so much mayo put into a sandwich before.

The “Nest of Bread” experience in Sardinia was also really special as well as the multi-course tasting at La Colti. In Puglia I also fell in love with “burnt wheat” pasta which I’ve never had before, and the focaccia with buratta from La Torre di Merlino in Ostuni. We were also fortunate to hang out with Vito on the opening-day of his new “Baby Dicecca” restaurant in the Mercadante forest for an excellent lunch with plenty of good wine.

Wineries & Wine

With almost a month in Chile, we got to visit more than a few great wineries. My favorites include Antiyal, Polkura, Viu Manet, and Neyen. Chilean wines are grossly underrated, though sadly the best boutique and limited production wines rarely make it into Canada. In Italy, I loved the epic tasting and 4-hour lunch at Cantina Manconi with the family, and lunch & tasting at Giuseppe Fedilesu In Sardinia, lunch at the family home of the Winspear family in Depressa who own Castel di Salve winery ( https://casteldisalve.com/en/the-history/ ), a tasting with “Peppino” at Cantina Orgosa, visiting the micro winery ‘Catina Taris Santandi’ and “street tasting” the wines of Sieman (https://www.sieman.it/en/home) in Ostuni.

In France, I visited Chateneuf-du-Pape for the first time, including L'Oratoire du Papes and La Solitude. During the same trip, I also tasted wines in Provence at Domaine de Metifiot (including trying my first ever 100% Marselan wine), Domaine Ott in Provence and Luberon @ Chateau La Canorgue (as seen in “A Good Year” movie) and in Bandol.

Travel:

Over 50 flights in 2025 had me exploring Chile top to bottom, going to Miami for the South Beach Food and Wine Festival, then hunkering down for a few weeks in the Caribbean before heading to New Orleans for St. Patricks Day and some live music.

Summer brought a month throughout Puglia (Ostuni, Lecce, Barri with visits to Monopoli, Gallipoli, Alberobello, Martina Franca, Otranto for its mosaics and more) and touring Sardinia with The Sardinian Guy (including Orgosolo and Mamoiada). Europe finished with my first trip to Budapest for 5 nights, before heading home for Vancouver’s best months (July and August).

September was the perfect time to visit southern France with stays across half a dozen beautiful villages like St. Remy (best market day), Gordes, Cassis, Eze and Uzes and day trips to many more like Roussilion (which was stunningly beautiful), Arles (Roman Ruins), Oppede le Vieux (rainy), Le Castellet (so pretty it hurts), Les Beaux (overrated), St Paul De Vence (fantastic lunch @ Le Tilleul), Aix (busy), Antibes (very nice), Ciotat, Lacoste, and l’isle-sur-la-Sorgue (very cool). Seeing the Pont du Gard was also a highlight.

Stays:

My best estimate is that I stayed at no fewer than 141 nights across 35 different Palazzos, Tents, Villas, Yurts, Chateaus, Hotels and Caves during the course of the year.

Best service: Airelles Gordes, Capella Hanoi, Four Seasons Nam Hai, Shinta Mani Wild

Coolest design: Airelles Gordes, Capella Hanoi and Shinta Mani Wild

Best Food: Nayara Alto Atacama

Most unique stays: Cave (Sextantio Le Grotte della Civita) and a Yurt at Patagonia Camp

Best art: Hotel Negresco (6000 pieces!) and Château de La Chèvre d'Or (outdoor sculptures) and Su Gologone.

Best dramatic view: Château de La Chèvre d'Or

Coolest amenities: Arcade and Dinnertime Magic at Airelles Gordes.

Oldest building: Chateau Chèvre d’Or has restored buildings dating back to the 12th century in the tiny village of Eze which I stayed in…. Runner up was Palazzo Maresgallo in Lecce which dates back to the 16th century & La Maison de Uzes which dates back to the 17th century

Experiences:

I love trying new things and getting hands-on… and I had plenty of opportunity to do so in 2025.

From making Burrata cheese at a family owned Caseificio in Locorontondo (Puglia), learning the art of making Capaletti Pasta (AKA Wizard Hats) with nothing but Semolina Flour and Water, making fans and lanterns in Vietnam, making “wood burning” art in Calgary or crafting my own chef’s knife with Dominique @ https://delolivieraucouteau.com/index.php in Southern France. I even made my own soap in Cambodia which I can start using after a 30 day curing period…

The year was also filled with plenty of adventures, from fishing for lunch in Cambodia, trekking in Torres De Paine in Patagonia for 7 nights, horseback riding through Alpilles Natural Park in France, to going on anti-poaching patrol in Cambodia’s jungles on the back of a motorbike and floating in salt water lagoons in the Atacama desert in northern Chile, visiting the world’s highest altitude geothermal field in the world (El Tatio) at sunrise, as well as a challenging canyon cactus trek in Chile which ended up being more than I thought I had signed up for…. but the sense of accomplishment after completing it without breaking any bones was worth it.

We also loved visiting The Villa Ephrussi de Rothchild in France, the Faggiano Museum, the National Archeology Museum in Cagliari, Gasoline Alley Museum in Calgary, Hospital in the Rock (Nuclear Bunker Museum) and the National WWII Museum in New Orleans. Other stops of note included a multi-generation family run flour mill in Altamura that is still using 50+ year old equipment to process wheat. Needless to say, we had to buy some of their Semolina flour (2 EUR per kilogram!) and use it to make fresh pasta while staying at our villa in Ostuni. Tuto Bene!

I also ended up having dinner with Tim Mondavi in the Phillipines, who has been making wine for 50 years in Napa Valley and had some great stories and knowledge to share.

We get it from self-help books.

Great reality check. Most people don't know you, your circumstances, and have no stake in your success. They give advice to kiss-ass or to show superiority or to help the recipient rationalize a decision they already made - a multi=billion dollar industry known as consulting.

How a Sh*tty Vanity Project Became a Cash Flow Dream

I'm not a big believer in M&A for most startups as a growth strategy, having done 4 or 5 deals only to have them fail to live up to even modest expectations, but this series is great if you're contemplating doing a significant deal . Processes, Systems, Operations and Culture... get one wrong, and you've screwed up the entire thing. The post on working capital is also excellent.

The Danger of Variable Cost Structures

One of the reasons why Hired.com failed was the move to SaaS pricing. Selling "unlimited" hires while bearing the cost of $5000-$7000 in marketing costs per placed candidate, meant our most profitable customers churned, while we retained the loss-leaders.

Today, a new wave of startups are making similar mistakes - and even worse.

Today's “unlimited” AI coding plan? Classic trap. Fixed revenue, variable costs tied to expensive frontier models. Heavy users gorge on the deal, cheap users leave, margins rot. That’s not scaling—it’s selling $200 of value for $10 and calling it growth.

This is the same ditch MoviePass and ClassPass swerved into. The economics invert, and suddenly you’re throwing cash at your most unprofitable customers, while the good ones peace out. This can go on for a while as revenue growth masks declining economics, but the laws of physics cannot be overcome.

Let's be clear; marketing gets you attention while subsidies merely bribe behavior. One’s a growth channel; the other is a mirage. Price at cost, and you’ll see if the heaviest users that you've been subsidizing still love what you're selling. Only then can you truly know whether you have PMF or whether people are only using you for the discount.

How to Make Decisions As A CEO

Let me start off with a quick story that might be helpful --

A few years ago, I was fortunate to spend over 2 hours at dinner with Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix.

The thing that stuck out to me the most from that conversation is this quote: "My goal as CEO is make zero decisions in any given year".

I thought this was a pretty fantastic mental model, given he has been hyperscaling one of the most successful tech companies for over two decades.

While it's obviously aspirational, it's something very worthy to strive for.

Anytime you have to make a decision, try to dig into the root cause of it:

I didn't empower my managers to make this decision

My managers don't have enough context to make an accurate decision, so I have to make it (internal communication)

The team/company isn't responding quickly enough to changes in the market / they are being too conservative (company values problem)

etc.

The book "Good Profit" talks about pushing down decision making authority to people with the most context. As the company gets bigger, each of us will have less and less context to make small decisions, so we need to delegate to the people in the company with the best chance of making the right call.

Once you get to scale as CEO of a $50m+ revenue company, you should be like teflon - tasks and decisions should roll off you like water and be routed to the most appropriate person. It's less about improving your 50/50 business decision ratio, it's about not making most of those decisions in the first place because you've recruited the right people and set the right goals to incentivize the right behaviours.

There's very little actual "work" you should be doing on a day to day basis other than setting pace & expectations, recruiting, communicating externally (press), communicating goals & values internally on a consistent basis, and helping remove roadblocks for your direct reports that would prevent them from achieving their personal OKRs.

2024 Year In Review!

The numbers tell one story: 37 flights, 6 countries, 32 unique places to rest my head.

The year included some in-depth explorations of Greece (7 cities), Bali (5 cities) and Australia (6 cities).

But numbers can't capture the richness of a year spent exploring the world's hidden corners and celebrated landmarks, from the sun-baked streets of Tucson to the ancient stones of Greek monasteries.

January started off with a few nights in Tucson, including a taqueria crawl in search of the best quesabirria tacos & a visit to what is surely one of the most epic aviation museums in the US. Since it was still cold back home, we headed to the sunshine of Palm Springs, a city that I haven’t been to in years (it hasn’t changed much).

By late May, we headed towards Europe starting in what is surely one of the great museum cities of the world: Vienna. Aside from the epic 1441 room Schonbrunn Palace, we spent days in the Kunsthistorisches, Belvedere, Albertina, Hofburg and Natural History Museums. As a fan of Bruegel’s paintings, being able to see the world’s biggest collection in person was a real highlight.

After that, it was off to the islands of Greece, starting off with Corfu where one evening we found ourselves in the old castle almost completely alone after hours thanks to a strategic reservation at the Corfu sailing club for dinner.

The trip included some epic experiences, from creating pottery on Sifnos (and successfully transporting it home to use!), milking a goat and making cheese on a farmstead on Sifnos, to riding through a outdoor restaurant on horseback to take the horse swimming in the Adriatic sea on the island of Hydra (which has stunning sunsets), to visiting Delos (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delos) one evening when it was almost empty to dancing the night away at Scorpios and Alemagou.

I’d also be remiss not to mention visiting the 15th century The Saint Dimitrios Avgou monastery of Didima, which is well off the tourist trail, at an elevation of 850 meters, accessible only via 4x4 or a long hike. A truly special place, with a spectacular view over the valley.

Tasting the highest polyphenol olive oil in the world at The Governor Mill, fishing in Hydra (and eating it right there on the boat - can’t get any fresher!), visiting the ancient theatre of Epidavros, Citadel of Mycene, and a Nafplio area creamery where we had the world’s best tomato (from the owners neighbours garden) along with the tastiest feta cheese.

On another night, after climbing up a treacherous cobbled lane at dusk, we found ourselves at the top of the medieval city of Monemvasia alone. The views and silence where simply stunning,

I wish we could have stayed longer but it was getting dark and the path back was anything but safe at night. The “parting of the tourist crowds” repeated itself again in Nafplio castle, where I was able to snap pictures without another person in sight.

After a few weeks in Europe, sadly it was time to go home but not before a pit-stop in Milan - an Italian city I’ve never visited despite more than a handful of trips to the country. While not my absolute favourite Italian city, seeing the Duomo which took 579 years to build and seeing the largest collection of writings and drawings by Leonardo da Vinci (the Codex Atlanticus at the Pinacoteca Museum) certainly made it worthwhile stop. Before heading home, I stopped in Paris for two nights to meet with the Day One Ventures crew, and stock up on chocolate from Patrick Roger.

After coming home and enjoying the summer, it was time for a week in New York of shopping, eating, before coming home and packing for Bali & Australia. Highlights included the purification ceremony at Tirta Empul temple, making silver jewelry for the first time, hand feeding civets (cuteness overload) and learning to cook Balinese dishes. The ATV trip that we did through the jungles and waterfalls was also absolutely epic - driving through a river in a deep gorge, with a waterfall on on side, overlooked by giant ferns was like stepping back in time a million years.

In Australia, a helicopter took us over the great barrier reef and a visit the 180 million year old Daintree Rainforest & Mossman Gorge where highlights in Port Douglas, in addition to seeing my first ever Cassowary bird. Hartley’s Crocodile Park was also a fun stop over.

Shows

Ludacris rolled into the 604 area code, and put on a show in Vancouver that was super fun.

During the year, we saw Jersey Boys in Vancouver this year, while seeing The Magician (Dan White) in New York perform some impressive tricks with audience participation.

While in NYC, I also stumbled upon the largest immersive theatre experience at Life and Trust and nabbed some last minute tickets. Exploring the for a few hours, and quite a good workout to. I’ll never say no to immersive theatre.

Restaurants

The Carolina’s had no lack of great food, from Bar167 & Sushi167 in Charleston to Fin & Fino in Charlotte.

The always-great Leons & Obstinate Daughter also delivered during our road trip.

I ended up celebrating my birthday at Verso in Milan, but my favourite meals of the year where at local restaurants on Sifnos as well as epic Mexican lunch at Oxomoco in Brooklyn. While in NYC, I also managed to eat a few Omakase’s as well as some terrific Italian at Misi and Lilia in Brooklyn. Francie in NYC, Montalto Winery Restaurant in the Morning Peninsula and the tasting menu at Maha in Melbourne also stood out as meal highlights during the year.

Wine Stuff.

The year's vinous journey spanned continents, each bottle telling its own story of place and time. Greece introduced me to the complexity of Assyrtiko and Xinomavro, with the 2022 Gaia Wild Ferment and 2019 Argyros Evdemon cuvee standing as memorable highlights. These wines, notoriously difficult to find back home, offered a compelling reason to savor each glass.

Australia's Pinot Noirs revealed their cool-climate elegance, particularly in bottles from Tasmania that rarely cross the Pacific. Standouts included the precise 2018 Moorooduc Robinson Vineyard, the elegant 2022 Anim

Wines "Windrush," the sophisticated 2022 By Farr "Farrside," and the compelling 2022 Stargazer Pinot.

Wine exploration took us through Austria's Wachau Valley, where countless Gruner Vetliners accompanied stunning vineyard views. The Austrian concept of wine taverns - simple, affordable, and deeply authentic - offered a fresh perspective on wine culture. Three days spent exploring the wineries of Australia's Mornington Peninsula and Yarra Valley added their own chapters to the story.

The year brought numerous memorable bottles: the powerful 2014 and 2015 Bevan Sugarloaf Mountain, an elegant 2018 Mayer Cabernet, a classic 2005 Duhart-Milon, and the expressive 2016 Long Shadow Pedestal Merlot. The 2010 Attilio Ghisolfi Barolo Bricco Visette showed Piedmont at its finest, while the 2013 Checkmate Merlot "End Game" proved Canadian wine's potential. Other standouts included the 2018 Hickinbotham Trueman Cabernet, the refined 2015 Skipstone Oliver's Blend, a memorable 2019 Tignanello, and the traditional 2015 Camerano Cannubi Lorenzo. The 2019 Madson Winery "Ascona" Pinot, 2019 Brittan Gestalt Block Pinot, and the 2021 Carlisle Zinfandel "Carlisle Vineyard" rounded out a year of exceptional wines.

Movies & TV

2024, marked the last season of Curb Your Enthusiasm a 12 season show that spanned 24 years (!). One of the truly greats, and it was sad to see it end along with the final season of The Grand Tour on Amazon, though I continue to enjoy watching Jeremy’s Farm.

After being told by everybody and their dog that I have to watch “The Wire”, I finally started and promptly finished the first three seasons. Nobody Wants This, Brothers Sun, The Diplomat, The Bear, and The Gentlemen rounded out my favourite TV shows for the year.

On the movie side, Inside, Saltburn, Dune 2, Civil War, Raging Grace, Ministry of Ungentlemently Warfare and The Whale stood out.

Books

I read across the spectrum this year, from food travelogues like “Pasta Pane Vino” and “Grape Olive Pig”, to wine books like Brunello & Montalcino by O’Keefe.

Others included The Gentlemen in Moscow (incredibly well written), The People Smuggler (harrowing) and The Wilderness Family which recounts life in Kruger Park and raising a lion as a family pet.

I also really enjoyed “A Man for All Markets” by Edward Thorp whose stories and achievements are beyond epic, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (highly recommended), and One Second After which realistically portrays life after an EMP. I even managed to find time to re-read Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman.

I’m ending the year with 9 books in my “to read” pile, as well a dozens more on my Amazon wish list.

Investments

Invested in Starpath Robotics, Wordware, Tivara and Lantern during the course of the year, while watching the progress of A.I. go absolutely vertical. I've been becoming increasingly worried about SaaS software as a category given the progress of coding agents like Replit and Loveable, while seeing headcount & SaaS seat growth being replaced with AI tools instead.

I've witnessed the dramatic efficiency gains first-hand, as I now have multiple companies that are profitable off of their seed or pre-seed rounds which is absolutely stunning to see.

My biggest regret in 2024 was overthinking the purchase of Agent.ai (trying to negotiate the price), thus loosing out the valuable domain name to Dharmesh Shah. Sometimes I'm my own worst enemy when it comes to over-optimizing....

There are intangible traits that make startup founders irresistible to VCs. Learn how to sell yourself, not just your company.

This resonated:

"When I was a CEO, during the dark times I personally felt this as the “clenching feeling of death.” deep in my guts.

Read that all again. Think about your life now. Maybe you’re in a post doc program, or have a nice job at Google or OpenAI with a steady salary, a clear trajectory, and instant street cred.

Do you still want to start a company?

Many first time founders start companies without realizing what it actually takes. Jensen Huang recently said he wouldn’t do it again. Most great founders start a company because they have to do it. Not necessarily because they want to do it. It’s a compulsion, rather than a choice."

Leopold Aschenbrenner, June 2024 You can see the future first in San Francisco. Over the past year, the talk of the town has shifted from $1

"AGI by 2027 is strikingly plausible. GPT-2 to GPT-4 took us from ~preschooler to ~smart high-schooler abilities in 4 years. Tracing trendlines in compute (~0.5 orders of magnitude or OOMs/year), algorithmic efficiencies (~0.5 OOMs/year), and “unhobbling” gains (from chatbot to agent), we should expect another preschooler-to-high-schooler-sized qualitative jump by 2027."

The path to $B scale begins at seed. Orienting your company around a key "killer wedge" can help you gain traction, and prepare to grow.

This is a great piece on finding a wedge into a market... - At 99designs we combined a 10X ROI wedge ($300 vs. $10,000 for a logo) with the "underserved needs" wedge (targeting small companies who where afraid or didn't know how to engage with designers or agencies). To top it all off, we offered a 100% money back guarantee allowing people to get hundred's of designs with zero risk. - At Flippa, we applied the repurposed asset wedge to help M&A at price points that were ignored by brokers and investment bankers allowing people to transact templates for a few hundred dollars or micro-businesses in the $50k-$250K range with amazing sell-through rates. - At Hired.com, we utilized the status wedge (only top 5% of developers accepted), with the transparency wedge (get salary information before you interview) with a radical reduction in new customer onboarding friction by utilizing a clickthrough Terms of Service to get agreement to our 15% fee - no sales calls, no demo's, no DocuSign, required in the early days.

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Matt Mickiewicz