Curious. Restless. Obsessive. Experimental. Reflective.

Hey friends,

Another week, another round of experiments, rabbit holes, and the occasional existential crisis. If you’re new here, I’m Jawad, each week I share what I’m learning while building a $100 million revenue company in public. I have a lot of wild conversations, see a lot, read a lot, and learn a lot. I compress it all into a 2-minute read for you..

Today’s word count: 620

Read time: 2 mins 15 sec.

Extracts

Runnin’ Down a Dream

I spent an hour this week with Bill Gurley’s “Runnin’ Down a Dream,” for the 10th time, probably. It’s the kind of talk that makes you want to burn your resume and start chasing something that actually matters. He talks about the stories of legends like Bobby Knight, Bob Dylan, Danny Meyer, Sam Hinkie, Katrina Lake and he explains the measures they took for building a career they love.

Obsession beats talent. Every one of these people started with a weird, personal passion. Something that made them study, practice, and chase mentors with a kind of reckless, almost embarrassing, intensity.

Dylan hitchhiked 1,200 miles to meet his hero. Danny Meyer took a 10x pay cut to work in a kitchen. Hinkie sent a hundred letters to break into sports analytics.

You see this over and over with “Talented people” they always end up doing legendary work because they go all in.

I send it to friends all the time, and I always get this type of response:

It’s a reminder that greatness isn’t random. It’s the byproduct of unreasonable effort, curiosity, and the willingness to look a little crazy in pursuit of something you can’t not do.

Buildlog

We’re still running on “vibe planning”, pure momentum and a willingness to break things.

The more I let go of rigid plans, the more the team surprises me. This week, we kept the streak alive, and I realized: the best sprints are the ones where you’re a little bit scared you might break everything. That’s where the learning happens.

As for the structure I promised to talk about last week, here’s what it came down to:

Step 1

Step 2

Discoveries

Tool of the week

Mymind is the app I’ve been using this week

I’ve been following them for a year but never pulled the trigger until this week.

I bookmark a lot of tools, products, designs, things I wanna buy but but tracking them all started to feel like a second job. Enter mymind: zero organization, AI tags everything, and suddenly my digital chaos feels… peaceful.

What I love most? It’s gentle. No dopamine traps, no notifications, no doom scrolling. Just a beautifully designed space that quietly keeps my ideas safe until I need them.

Brand of the week:

This week, I fell down the Variant rabbit hole

Variant’s manifesto reads like a love letter to creative chaos: “Great software never comes from one shot in the dark. It comes from exploration, from wandering, remixing, and stumbling into brilliance.”

I love that. Creativity isn’t a straight line, and neither is building a company. The best breakthroughs come from wandering off the path.

I am excited to get access.

Article of the week:

• UX copy sells

  I read this piece that reminded me: every word in your product is a chance to sell, reassure, or delight.

Quote of the Week

“Genius has the fewest moving parts.”

I keep coming back to this line. The older I get, the more allergic I am to complexity for its own sake. The best ideas, the best products, the best teams, they’re simple.

Almost obvious in hindsight. Genius isn’t about stacking features or flexing vocabulary. It’s about stripping away everything that doesn’t matter, until what’s left feels inevitable.

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Until next time,

Jawad