Tangential Tuesday #47

Creativity is not sexy, Not rich on 200k/yr, What is a tech company?

Hey 👋 - sorry for all the typos in last week’s newsletter. No excuses 🙃. It’s been an exciting week, let’s get into it.

I just came from a David Perell in-person writing workshop. It was outstanding. Feeling super lucky that it worked out for me to go 😃.

There were a few things that stuck out to me from ~2.5-hour session:

  1. There’s nothing sexy about creativity. You can make creating original content as structured as an assembly line. First, you gather (take notes in Evernote/Notion), outline, then write.

  2. Getting feedback early and often is key. <10% of your ideas will actually be interesting. The earlier you get feedback, the more you can focus your writing on the small part that is actually important.

  3. First scan, then read. Scanning information on the internet is a key skill, but once you find something good… you actually need to read it, take notes on it, and digest it.

Highly recommend hanging out with David if you ever get the chance. Now I just need to find some time to write…

A song I’m starting on the piano 😍

What is a tech company?


This article is so important for understanding what’s happening with all of these “new” tech companies. The days of near-zero marginal cost to scale tech companies are mostly gone. Especially at >$1 billion dollars in revenue.

The new “tech” companies being built today are messy, real-world companies. And with them come unique challenges, different unique economics, and different mental models.

Read the article here.


I went to an event called hoodslam on Friday. It is probably one of the most absurd events of pure debauchery that I have ever been to.

If you live in the bay area (or ever come to visit me) - you have to check it out. Definitely a night I will remember for a while 😅.


I read some study that in order for you to feel rich, you have to make 3X as much as you currently make, no matter what you make. So if you’re making $50,000 a year, $150,000 a year in income will make you feel like making it rain at the clubs. But if you’re making $150,000 a year in income, you won’t feel rich until you make $450,000 a year. In other words, human beings don’t ever seem to be satisfied with what they have.
What we like to do is project our emotions onto other people. So for all those people making less than $52,000 a year, it’s easy to say any household making $200,000 a year should feel rich and should shut the hell up about paying a progressive tax rate.

Some of you will undoubtedly find this narrative hard to relate to. But, unfortunately, living in the bay area and spending time among some very wealthy people I can weirdly relate to this.

The lessons here:

Tea Time @ Social Haus

I was initially *very* skeptical, but I went to a “tea with strangers” event in San Francisco with a friend this weekend.

Generally, I tend to believe that these type of events can’t and won’t work. The hard truth is that the best people will find away too meet people and make friends. And so they don’t show up to these type of events. In my personal (and very bias) experience, I’ve mostly seen these types of events turn into a common ground for a group of people that are not all that interesting.

Maybe it’s because people in San Francisco are very open to new experiences and experiments - but I had a lot of fun and met some interesting strangers over tea at the event.

I would absolutely never bet on a startup like social haus.. but what they’re doing is pretty interesting. It reminds me of a lot of all of the co-living startups but unbundled from the housing component. I’m excited to see if they can pull it off 🤷‍♂️

Thanks for reading! It’s bedtime for me 🛌.

- 😘 Tay