The teacher’s job is to teach, not to complain.

It doesn’t matter your audience is ready or not. You have to show up your job every day to teach.

I heard San Francisco was a (maybe still) intellectual city when I was in high school. My other reason was to move to Bay Area other than Tech right after college.

Everyone heard the hippie movement, but I just recently discovered the “Beat movement.” Their leaders are Jack Kerouac, Alan Ginsberg, and many more. These two names were familiar to me. I saw a couple of alleys under Kerouac while living near the SOMA part of San Francisco. A couple of days ago, I went to our local library to check out the Poetry section. Unfortunately, my English poetry knowledge is very limited with my two all-time favorites, Leonard Cohen and Charles Bukowski.

While checking the books on the poetry section, I found Mexico City Blues by Jack Kerouac. As I told you, Kerouac’s name is familiar to me. So I sat down and read a couple of pages of Mexico City Blues which has 242 choruses. I was shocked and speechless. Why nobody didn’t tell me this book before? It is a mind-blowing masterpiece. Most beat and hippie movement members think Mexico City Blues is religion. It’s hard for me to describe it.

The best way for you to listen/watch. Choruses readers include Allen Ginsberg, Carl Solomon, Michael Scholnick, Barbara Barg, Charles Bernstein, Vincent Katz, and many more. (Already checking their works too. I fall down to Mexico City Blue rabbit hole) Everyone stood up and read their favorite parts and shared their connection. (recorded live Dec 1988)

I really admire Marc Lore as an entrepreneur. I had a chance to met and did some app growth brainstorm sessions with him/his team during the early days of Jet.com

His track record speaks itself sold Diapers.com to Amazon ($545M) then started Jet.com as Amazon Killer and sold it to Walmart ($3.3B- yes B stands for Billion easy to write hard to swallow:)

Now, he’s working on a couple of projects and I am super interested in those two of them.

Telosa: Marc is starting a community & foundation to start a world-class city to attract initially 50k residents (goal is 5m). This new is modeling much more a startup analogy to build together and share the benefits after the city got the traction. Technically they are going to buy very cheap land and build from scratch. Their goal is to create more equitable and sustainable future.

Wonder: Let’s say your favorite restaurant is in the NYC Downtown and you are living in the Palo Alto suburbs. There is no way to get them via food delivery apps. Even if they serve on those apps you get your food after 30 minutes cold & not appetizing. Imagine your favorite restaurants come to you via mobile restaurants. They built a platform and infrastructure to know which location has a demand for what kind of food/cuisine. Good for consumers. And great for restaurant owners/chefs who can save lots of money for investing land that might be not ROI+ near soon.

Already interested in both of them as a consumer and thought I or my friends can contribute some ways. Let’s see.

---

Note: Yesterday, I thought why should I write more than one post on my blog daily if I feel to write. (I did already write 2 posts yesterday) My biggest hold is don’t want to send readers more than 1 email. So, I’ll keep sending you only 1 email. But, If you are curious and want to check out from time to time what I published and didn’t send you an email, you can find all of them at aykuts.blog

We are born to act.

We are dying for attention.

They should call us attention suckers instead of humans.

Our acting gets better while we are growing up. We watch/listen,/learn from others. Then we start to act like everybody.

We turn into a full-time actors.

Living others’ lives.

All predicted scenarios. Same cliches.

If we are actors by birth, at least we should act our own movies directed and written by ourselves.

This is a typical founder & inventor dilemma. Why my team doesn’t see what I see?

Because

You see things the rest of them don’t see, which is why you are a founder.

I didn’t say this Dan Pink said that. I agree with him. He is the author of the book ‘The Power of Regret”. A couple of days ago, I shared that book on the list that I’m reading. When I read a book, during that time I also try to listen to a podcast about that book especially if I can find an author of that book is talking. Youtube videos are fine too.

While he was talking with Derek Thompson’s Plain English podcast. (32:30) He was talking about why Americans can’t handle negative emotions that are the reason they don’t want to talk about their regrets or past negative experiences. This is something I have been thinking a pretty a long time. All my friends and family in the USA let’s say most of them somehow remind me of Disney movies. Either they are all in good circumstances and only expecting good things in their life or never heard/experienced bad things in their lives.

Bad experiences and regrets are great teachers. They scream to us to tell don’t do these things in the near future. If we say “No Regret” or don’t want to talk/think about them, there is no chance we can get better.

Yes, it is hard to make a big decision if you are not making those “big” decisions every day. 

Let’s start what’s a big decision? 

It’s hard to conclude a final and ultimate definition for everyone. Because your big is not everyone’s big. 

Buying a house is a big decision? 

-Yes, It is a big decision for someone who saved up money for a pretty long time and finally thinking of time to move on to his/her “dream house” after living so many years leasing places all over the place. That person is considering every single detail of that “dream house” and can’t settle for “a” house. 

-In the same context, buying a house is not a big decision for someone who is just looking for a place to park his savings and be alright any “a” house that fits his budget. For him, just like swiping up on Robinhood and executing a stock buying order. 

So, your big decision can be small for you in a couple of years or might even stay bigger. Who knows? 

Focus on your work.

Your contribution to your future self.

Keep shipping. Keep adding value.

Hypes are temporary. Don’t let them distract you.

I often meet people who ask how to study a topic, what school should they go to, and I say aren’t you old enough to just go learn stuff by yourself? Most researchers are terrible at explaining why their projects offer the world the best progress bang for their effort buck, but I have no problem offering such explanations.

Robin Hanson explained so well after figuring out “the liberty” of learning anything you want, you don’t need any “an” institution to teach you.

Learn at own your pace.