Startup

Last year was the first time I published a “Top X Recommendations” blog post to close out the year. I heard from about half a dozen people who found at least one recommendation interesting or useful—which means there were probably even more who never mentioned it but still got something out of the list. So, I figured I’d do it again! In the very likely scenario that you either don’t have the time, interest, or attention span to read this whole thing, just scroll to the very bottom because the last one is by far my favorite. ...

Earlier this week I asked myself: “Why do I listen to so many podcasts?” This led me down a mental rabbit hole of reflection while I sought an answer to: “What is the source of my intrinsic motivation?” I came to the conclusion that if I were to listen to a podcast (or read a blog) of myself five years in the future, I want to be inspired by it today. Today, at 32, I’m hoping my 27-year-old self would be inspired by this blog, just as I currently seek inspiration from him. It’s how I know I’m achieving my full potential at every step along the way. ...

tl;dr Next time you read, see, hear, give, get, ideate or invent a mantra, just remember that “every mantra has a counter-mantra, including this one.” Tweet Sized Advice The Startup Seesaw Tools vs Solutions For every Mantra, there is an equal and opposite Counter-Mantra Concluding Thoughts Appendix Tweet Sized Advice For the better part of a decade now, I feel like at least once a week I’m either on the giving or receiving end of “tweet-sized *advice” *that’s intended to solve large, complex problems. ...

I’m going to share a small secret: a perfect solution to software documentation does not exist. It’s hard to generalize what “good documentation” entails. It depends on the team, the product, the timing, and a million other things. Have you found PMF or are you iterating? Are you a small tight-knit team or are you scaling? Is your team remote, in-office or hybrid? Is open source and external collaboration a key component of your value proposition? I’ll stop here before it gets boring… ...

tl;dr People come for the long-term vision but stay for the short-term gains. Success is measured only by how good your NGU algorithm is: Number Go Up. A vaporware product with good marketing can go the distance until it memes into existence. There is a lot of cynicism and politics behind open doors. Intelligent and authentic leaders are critical in upkeeping community optimism. It’s still early. Table of Contents The Vent The Ugly The Fuel The Bad The Analogy The Liquidity The Good The Reasons I’m Still Around ...

Inspired by Simon Willison’s How I make annotated Presentations, I figured I’d annotate a presentation I did at ethcc.io in July 2024. He says it best: Even with that quality of presentation, I don’t think a video on its own is enough. My most recent talk was 40 minutes long—I’d love people to watch it, but I myself watch very few 40m long YouTube videos each year I might also create a Twitter thread similar to what @_tessr did for her talk on optimism if anyone requests it. ...

tl;dr Artificial Intelligence (AI) computing requires substantial energy, increasing the urgency for sustainable, scalable, and modular energy solutions. Major tech companies are actively adopting and investing in new ways to tap into nuclear power sources. The spot price for Uranium doubled over the past year due to a supply-demand imbalance, as current uranium supplies struggle to meet the demand from nuclear reactors. I argue that the current market presents a good entry point for diversifying into the uranium sector. Macroeconomic tailwinds could suggest a strong outperformance over the next decade at the cost of short-term volatility. I outline my thought process for choosing as a vehicle to do so. ...

This is a post in a series of articles I’m writing called “5 points & 1 resource” (think tl;dr but 5p;1r), where I summarize a list of 5 concepts that would have helped me start learning or re-learning a certain topic. It is intentionally far from a complete source of data. Edit: Thank you to Kautuk (founder of Stackr ) for reviewing this post. Micro-rollups (MRUs) are the answer to “a blockchain is too slow and expensive” for my use case, but “I still want some eventual Web3 security guarantees” in progressively porting a Web2 app to Web3. ...

Special thanks to Gabi, Mike, Art, Adz & ChatGPT for the discussion and feedback. tl;dr Self-hosting is not a long-term solution since users just want to pay for whatever is cheaper, faster and easier to use. Infrastructure companies in both AI and Web3 are in a race to the bottom in a commodity market. Excelling as both a hardware operator and gateway company is increasingly untenable in open-core ecosystems. Table of Contents Introduction Web3 vs AI Gateway ...

Whenever I get really excited about something, I tend to tell all my friends about it. This could range from a book or movie to an activity or something I bought. I can find a good handful of people who can attest that sometimes it gets excessive. Over the past couple of years, I’ve been slowly turning olshansky.info into the one place to find and search through my resources, but there is still a lot of work ahead, and I expect it to be a lifelong endeavour. ...

If you’ve visited X in the last 24 hours, seen OpenAI’s Blog, or simply opened up Google, you’ve probably heard that the board of OpenAI has fired its CEO, Sam Altman. There are already dozens of articles online covering the topic, including Ars Technica, The Information, Wired, The Verge, CNN and many others. I got a flurry of messages yesterday afternoon simply letting me know of this fact (my favourite one below). After a day of more information coming in, I figured I’d share my thoughts because I believe it may be a signal that AGI is closer than we think. I’m simultaneously excited and don’t know what to expect. ...

This is a cross-post of the original article posted here and announced here a couple of weeks ago. Some of the tables and diagrams that are presented as screenshots can be viewed in more detail in the markdown GitHub gist here. tl;dr The Pocket Network core protocol team has decided to implement the first version of the next iteration of the protocol (Shannon Upgrade) as a “micro-rollup” using Rollkit with Celestia as a Data Availability (DA) layer. ...

I recently had the fortune of stumbling upon a transcript from a 1986 seminar by Richard Hamming at the Bell Communications Research Colloquium titled “You and Your Research.” If you’re ever looking for inspiration, this is it. A key point Hamming emphasizes is that when reading, it’s not the quantity but the quality that matters: “you read, it is not the amount, it is the way you read that counts.” To showcase active reading, you can find my Proof of Active Reading here or at ipfs://bafybeifoz5tkbdd2v5bzxfuyvokuchnpoqthl63gwcuoadmmz3c7t5kfve. ...

Special thanks to Arthur Sabintsev for the feedback and review of this post. Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years. - Bill Gates You have to live it to understand it, and this statement can only come from experience. The one thing Bill forgot to mention is how much will change in the span of 12 months within each of those 10 years. ...

It has barely been a day since ChatGPT launched, and I woke up to a timeline of different use cases that made it clear what the rest of this decade is going to look like: Daniel Olshansky | olshansky.eth 🐙 @olshansky🔑 to being a software engineer in the 2010s: knowing how to Google. 🔑 to being a software engineer in the 2020s: knowing how to GPT.3:32 PM ∙ Dec 1, 2022Until auto-tagging #ChatGPT is an option, or someone writes a script that scrapes Twitter’s firehose for GPT screenshots, here are just a few use cases I found today that blew my mind. ...

Tl;dr I’m incredibly excited to announce that I’m now leading Pocket’s V1 Protocol R&D team! This post gives a glimpse into the exhilarating 🎢 during my first six months at Pocket and the community behind this 🚀 shaping the future of Web3. A bit of background A little over six months ago, I published about my life-changing trip to Mexico on the Day of the Dead, which is basically half a decade in crypto years. Since then, the only constant in my life has been change, and I’m fortunate enough that almost all of it, though not always easy, still gets me excited and motivated to get out of bed every morning. ...

Tl;dr I am incredibly excited to announce that I’m joining pokt.network today as a full-time Protocol Specialist! This post documents my realization of how I want to devote my time to shape and build out the future of Web3. A bit of background Without diving into my life-long story, I spent most of my adolescence growing up in Toronto. I love the city and where it’s headed, but I’ll save that discussion for another post. ...