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I started writing publicly and regularly a few years ago with the explicit goal of improving the clarity of my thinking and sharing this thinking with others. I’ve now published over 100 blog posts and through practice, I’ve made good progress in communicating more clearly but still have a long way to go to become […]
I’ve been reflecting on the FTX news this week and came away with one overwhelming feeling – sadness. I’m sad for all the millions of mostly crypto-curious people who lost their money and trust in “crypto” as a whole. I’m sad for all the smart, hard-working builders out there who will get lumped into the […]
In August, I turned 40. I have much to be thankful for; healthy and independent parents, a growing family, and interesting and intellectually fulfilling work. However, it was also bittersweet. I had a sore ankle, a sore lower back, and felt older. As a husband and father, I want to be at my best for […]
I did not get to 21 books in 2021, but ended the year on 18 books – I spent more of my time listening to podcasts (mostly about crypto). Here is a list of the books I read in chronological order along with a few notes I made while reading – a * next to […]
I’ve been learning more about the Solana Ecosystem and pulling together resources that could be helpful to folks that are starting to build on Solana. Solana uses a language called Rust which is used at companies like Dropbox, Yelp, and Mozilla. Rust is a powerful language but many teams (and engineers) particularly in emerging markets […]
The biggest opportunity over the next decade is onboarding the next 1BN people into crypto. There are currently around 4m users who interact with DeFi and 80m unique blockchain wallets (0.1% of the global population). We are still in the very early stages of mass adoption of crypto, and chain tribalism distracts from the larger […]
So, you received an offer at a technology company and you’re trying to make sense of it all (particularly equity). This post is my attempt to demystify this, particularly for folks working in the US. There are a few areas where you may be able to negotiate and different people value different things based on […]
We need a Global M-Pesa / Venmo powered by crypto rails. Both these products are closed ecosystems powered by outdated, expensive rails compatible with their chosen markets. Crypto will ultimately enable even better user experiences but powered by rails that give participants access to global finance, trade, and commerce. M-Pesa was transformative in Kenya. It […]
The internet was transformative because it democratized access to information and enabled instant, rich communication. Crypto and NFTs will power digitally native property and payment rails which will result in digitally native global trade and commerce. Cryptocurrency allows people to transact seamlessly and agree on the terms for the transfer of value instantly and trustlessly. […]
I’ve been helping a few startups with hiring, have hired large teams and have been a candidate on the other side. Labor is getting more and more competitive and the best candidates have lots of options so it’s important to have a good process. To hire the best people you need to see a lot […]
I write a short memo for every angel investment that I make and I’ve practiced this for the last 10 years. I do this because I believe that writing is refined thinking (to quote Stephen King in his book “On Writing“) and because memory can be warped over time. A memo best captures my thinking […]
One-Pagers (short product specification documents) are an important part of product development. Crystal clear thinking upfront can often save multiples of that time down the road when you don’t have to throw away expensive high fidelity design or production level code. One-Pagers also allow teams to get on the same page (particularly in distributed, async […]
I’ve been spending the last few months getting deeper in the Solana ecosystem because of the explosion of new projects, attractive yields and step function better crypto experience enabled by faster speeds (65,000 transactions per second) and lower cost (fraction of a penny). The goal of this post is to give new users a starting […]
Open source technology and infrastructure development is a very powerful way to make scalable software. Open source can also allow a more diverse community to build products that are flexible enough to solve for a broader set of use and edge cases. Contrary to popular belief, many of these open source projects are developed in […]
I’ve been an angel investor for over 10 years. I try to invest in areas where I have have some sort of asymmetric advantage; usually in specific areas where I have knowledge and experience or people who I know well. Here are some areas that I’m super excited about and actively investing. Crypto / Web3 […]
I turned 39 this month and I had three thoughts / reflections that I thought I’d write down and share: Great people, over long term: Meet lots of new people and be open, generous and curious. When you discover great people try to help them repeatedly without asking for anything in return. Relationships are built […]
As a small Angel Investor I aim to be a “friend to the founders” and an loyal supporter of the company throughout it’s growth. Here is the note that I typically send to founders after making an investment in their company to share how I like to collaborate. I’ve gotten some good feedback on it, […]
I’m experimenting with Decentralized Finance (DeF) as I’ve been thinking more about unbundling of work and cash flow. I think that DeFi, and yield farming in particular, could be a viable mechanism to generate predictable cash flow, that is not tied to active labor. I hope to be able to only commit a few hours […]
DeFi is evolving quickly and presents interesting opportunities to make money by investing in new projects. This is a summary of what I wish I’d done before starting to invest more seriously and my current diligence process before backing a project. As always, I’m writing this all up to be helpful to others, clarify my […]
Decentralized Finance could potentially change the way we interact with financial services forever and is a total rabbit hole. Here are some of the “levels of depth” that you can get into DeFi and roughly reflects my journey into the DeFi abyss (yes, I will be overusing this analogy!). I don’t think that most people […]
One of the movements I’m most excited about is decentralized finance. Here is the description is taken directly from the Investopedia article which sums it up nicely. “Decentralized finance is a system by which financial products become available on a public decentralized blockchain network, making them open to anyone to use, rather than going through […]
This month marks my 10th year of angel investing so I synthesized a few learnings as a complement to the more tactical “Angel Investing Learnings” post from last year. This post is broken up into three parts; dissecting the why behind angel investing, understanding your asymmetric advantage and how to apply this advantage in the […]
I’m starting to find more purpose in my career, and invest more time, energy and capital into activities that further this purpose (my 2021 goals here). There was a period in my life where I thought I only wanted to work on problems in emerging markets (particularly Africa) and although I still care deeply about […]
I’m learning more about products to support the evolution the way we work and collaborate. As I dig deeper into the problem space and talk to founders who are designing their own company ‘Operating System’ there are a few questions that persistently stand out for teams adopting distributed work: Sync vs. Async: There is a […]
Aligning on “Why” for product development work is always important, but it’s especially important for distributed teams. When the “Why” is consistently missing, projects end up feeling like a list of context free tasks from ‘up above’ and teams can become demotivated and resentful – no one likes being told what to do all the […]
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Aadil Mamujee 