Back when Gucci was the shit to rock

Back when Slick Rick got the shit to pop

I'd do anything to say I got it

Damn, them new loafers hurt my pocket

Before anybody wanted K. West beats

Me and my girl split the buffet at KFC

Dog, I was havin' nervous breakdowns

Like "Man, these niggas that much better than me?"

Baby, I'm goin' on an aeroplane

And I don't know if I'll be back again

Sure enough, I sent the plane tickets

But when she came to kick it, things became different

Any girl I cheated on, sheets I skeeted on

Couldn't keep it at home, thought I needed a Nia Long

I'm tryin' to right my wrongs

But it's funny them same wrongs helped me write this song

Yea I know Touch The Sky isn’t from Graduation, but I feel like it belongs.

I haven’t been writing publicly very much, or even privately for that matter. The little I do write ends up being half baked thoughts that I throw away. I wonder why that is because I really do enjoy writing and I love the responses I get from people, but for some reason I still struggle to make a habit out of it. I’m hoping it’s simply a byproduct of the natural chaos that has been going on in my life, and now is probably going on in everyone’s life.

Over the past few months I’ve been launching new products, one publicly, one not so. I started a social service called Zest which I was quite public about on Facebook and Product hunt, and we were able to get a few meetups going which was an awesome experience. I hoped the few that experienced them enjoyed it and it's technically the first revenue I’ve been able to generate from a startup (besides the OG tutoring company Aaron, Alex, and I started in highschool). I linked up with a technical cofounder and we got to work on it but quite quickly through iterating discovered why the model is a massive uphill battle.

For starters, being able to match 5 people up on their personal or professional interests required a significant sign up density. One solution you could do to work around is to really narrow down the scope of the match making you’re doing, like only match making people interested in crypto, such that anybody who signs up is a good fit for everybody else. We launched three side campaigns for that: meditation, dance, and fitness with some cheap Instagram ads. Cool traction! The second layer problem was trying to find meeting spaces that would be affordable and comfortable to the people signing up. That was actually pretty hard but we boot strapped by using our friend’s places and public spots. The real straw that broke the camel’s back was that through user interviews, we discovered most people see themselves using a service like Zest once a month max. That's pretty killer for a social tech company. Also since there’s no barrier to entry, literally every entrepreneur and their mother was trying to build something like Zest. We moved on and if we hadn’t corona would have probably killed us lol. 

The second product which we did not publicly announce was an online fitness trainer marketplace called Cusp. This is probably the closest I’ve gotten to an actual business. My cofounder realized that a lot of online personal trainers advertise and get clients on Instagram, and have no way to manage their backend. We reached out to online trainers by DM’ing hundreds on Instagram and got 40 coaches to join. Of course there was a lot of competition from other online-native gyms, but we figured there would be a good enough niche for coaches who wanted to preserve their own brand and for people who wanted to discover their coaches by exploring their content. 

At this point though I was getting pretty burnt out. I’d spent 6 months grinding with no pay, social sacrifice, and dwindling passion for the things I was working on after Heroic. The road ahead for Cusp was long and we didn’t really want to fundraise until we were sure this is something that had traction and that we were willing to work on it for the foreseeable future. 

So about three weeks ago I stepped off the founder journey to find a job at a startup, have some stability, and work on projects like Cusp on the side. Of course about two weeks ago shit really hit the fan when it came to the economy and everything went tumbling down so my timing was comically poor. Luckily I’d saved a decent amount of money from college and my time at Draper so I’m in no real financial risk, but I find it genuinely funny how unexpected life can be. 

Recruiting has been pretty brutal. I thought graduating from a good school and getting a rare job out of college at a top VC fund under a legendary investor would make it a cake walk, but my background seems to be too weird for big companies and not specific enough for startups in this market. It’s alright though, just means it's going to take more work and time then I thought. If anybody has any leads, do shoot them over!

After the chaotic journey of the past 7 months or so, I’ve had a lot of varied experiences and time to reflect. I don’t think I would function as a traditional business in the sense that I don’t naturally enjoy the sport of business. I would be a bad founder of a business that I didn’t think was important or innovative - in such a case I would much rather be an early employee. What I do romanticize a lot is innovation and nothing has really gripped me much since Heroic. I’m going to take a shot at that business again - I just wasn’t ready this time. 

The other thing that's been tough, and that not many people seem to be writing about on these newsletters, is relationships.

I’m 23 now and it’s this anxiously weird state where most of my friends being in committed relationships, a few single, and some even being married! For the first time in my life, I feel super strange about being single. 

I’ve never really had anything close to a serious relationship in my life. I don’t even think I really get how that whole thing works. Like you just go on a few dates with someone and then a flip switches and you’re monogamously boyfriend/girlfriend? That sounds weird man. How do you know? How do you choose? How long do you date? What changes after? 

It's something everyone else seems to intuitively grasp and figure out, but I haven’t yet. I don’t think it’s something I internally feel a drive for, but externally it's hard not to feel left out and want to explore this other aspect of living as a human. Dating apps suck, my friends are useless, and none of my hookups have really amounted to any level of intimate follow up. In my whole life, there’s probably been only one girl I’ve ever really seriously liked  who I met at a party I hosted. I tried to make something happen there, but nothing did and now it's in the past. I do hope to experience it again someday.

Even the whole act of one night stands have lost their excitement and honestly aren’t that fun anymore. Not super stoked about sharing a bed with a stranger. Followed up by awkward small talk after trying to gauge if the other person is even awake. Spooning is nice though.

Relationships as a whole are changing. Not just romantic ones, but the ones that we have with our friends and parents. The boyz are now getting older, have their own interests, their own significant others, and as a unit seem to be getting less...boyz. Not that it's a bad thing, it's likely profoundly good and imparting a lot of meaning to their lives, but it is a structural relationship change. Where do we fit now in each other's lives? What are the new boundaries? What is reasonable to expect from each other? How do we deal with and navigate each others’ flaws?

Relationship types like coworkers, bosses, and mentors are totally new, at least for me, and interesting to explore. I was lucky to find a mentor in my old boss at the VC firm and it's cool to have someone with experience provide you advice. But I don’t quite understand the boundaries there either.

This is a lot and maybe I’ll spend more blog posts in the future delving into some of the specific questions posed above. 

The final note that I want to end this post with is an understanding of the type of life I want to live. I’ve realized that I crave a romantic life. This might seem paradoxical as I just said above I don’t understand relationships, but it is something I hope to! Eventually I guess. I don’t want power or influence, what I crave is love, passion, art, and freedom. An almost bohemian-esque lifestyle filled with those things and people with whom I can share it with. I’ve been reading Philip Glass’ biography recently and am struck by the level of clarity he had and things he’s been able to do - it makes me feel a little less naive.

Even though the past 7 months have straight been chock full of Ls, I haven’t quite lost my romantic idealism yet. I want to explore the ideas of romance in people, in work, in life, and in art in future blog posts.

Inspired by Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar, a fantastic book on hope, I want to open up my blog for other people’s stories as well. If something I’ve written resonates with you and you have something to say, please use this form to let me know what it is and, if appropriate, I will share in my next blog post. I want to interact with people that read this and see how they feel. 

You may have noticed the tone of this blog is a lot more casual than the other ones. I’m probably going to vacillate between more formal, analytical pieces on economics and startups, along with more emotional, casual pieces. 

Thank you for reading! As always, if you’d like to reach out, feel free to email me at punia101@gmail.com or hit me up on twitter @puniaviison. 

Have a beautiful day!