There are 5 days left in Q1, and it’s time to face the music: I have utterly failed to reach my Q1 goals.

On one hand, there is not much to say. We set the bar quite high and I fell well short. This is nothing to celebrate.

On another hand, however, what transpired is beautiful, informative and inspiring. In theory, with a second growth cycle from Pinto, it should be relatively easy to reach these goals. Given that Beanstalk went through its second major growth cycle within 4 months of deployment, it seemed perfectly reasonable to achieve the same for Pinto in a similar timeframe, particularly given that Pinto was performing so much better than the OG Beanstalk.

However, we learned this quarter that getting Pinto to succeed is an uphill battle, much more so than Beanstalk. With Beanstalk, there was so much serendipity, from the benevolent anonymous founding, to the organic community that spawned from scratch, to the ability to iterate quickly on the model without the fear of what could go wrong with a single misstep, to the raging bull market. Our optimism and naiveté led us to believe that by following the same gameplan, despite all the different circumstances, we would get the same results.

However, reality has its own tune. Those unwilling or unable to listen will never manifest their reality.

This quarter, reality has told us quite clearly that a new playbook is in order. One that optimizes around Pinto’s eponymous founding, jaded community inherited from Beanstalk, short leash on secure protocol development, and significantly worse market conditions. One optimized for growing properly, even if it means growing slowly, instead of just growing. One firmly grounded on the mountain I am climbing with my closest friends.

Nonetheless, I feel proud of having aimed so high and tried so hard. I believe it is much better to set the bar high and fail while giving things your all, than to set the bar low and get over it without having to apply yourself completely. Ideally, one sets the bar just too high, and then stretches to hit it. Until I have that skill on lock, I intend to continue to err on the too high side. With it will surely come many failures, but then again, as long as i get back up again and don’t lose myself in the process, I think this is still part of the meta.

Now, with Q2 before me, it is time to establish new quarterly goals for Pinto. A new meta has dropped, and my new goals should reflect so. More on both the new Pinto meta and quarterly goals coming soon.

–Ben