Morning Walk #4
Themes and big problems I’m interested in exploring and some other personal news
Hello to the 11 subscribers of this newsletter. Last week’s issue received 72 views, and 1 new person signed up.
Last week, I tried to promote this newsletter on Facebook using their Ad Center. As you can see by the numbers, this turned out poorly. My page was rejected by Facebook and isn’t allowed to advertise. God knows why exactly. Anyway, I’m still diving into the world of performance marketing, and it might take some time before I’d get to a more significant subscriber count.
In this issue
Themes and big problems I’m interested in exploring
In other personal news
Some interesting things I read/watched/listened to lately
Themes and big problems I’m interested in exploring
Two months into my sabbatical this summer, I finally started feeling the itch to create. Anything basically, I just wanted to experience that feeling of making stuff. I started thinking what exactly might be my next long-term project and where I wanted to put my energy.
I decided to start by making a list. A list of problems and themes I’m interested in where there might be some opportunities for building something entirely new and long-term. Before approaching this task, I was fascinated by how a couple of brilliant people share the themes they are passionate about.
Patrick Collison (CEO of Stripe) has pages on Growth, the phenomenon of quickly accomplishing ambitious things together, Pollution, and (my favorite one) Progress.
Adam Wiggins (Co-founder of Muse) explains why he’s working to improve computers in service of human creativity.
Mark McGranaghan shares his interests.
Andy Matuschak lists themes he is dedicating his research to.
Today I want to share what I put in my list of themes I’m interested in exploring. I’m hoping these questions and assumptions might get you going and inspire you to create something new as well.
1. Future of Cities
How can technology make our cities better? How cities of tomorrow could look like, and what role would technology play in it?
I’ve been working on this exact question and theme from 2012: developing Made in Murmansk initiative first, then launching MyCity, and later at Moscow City Government leading its central mobile app.
It seems like at this point, I’ve emptied my internal resources to answer those questions and kind of hit the wall. I want to explore other things.
Although I’m still intrigued by the question of “How does the city where most people work remotely should look like”? But it seems like it’s more of an urban planning question rather than a technology question.
2. Future of Work
There are two big things here.
Async work
I firmly believe that asynchronous work is the next big step once most people switch to remote or hybrid forms of work. I wonder how we can streamline the shift to async work and help companies and people get there?
Make working with computers more healthy
There is a shit ton of downsides of spending that much time in front of our screens as we do right now. It leads to obesity, back pains, blurred vision, burnout, depression, and many more. How can we make computer work more healthy?
For instance, taking walking meetings instead of fighting constant Zoom fatigue (that’s a real thing!) could lead to better performance and health benefits. Making a shift to a walking meeting would need a cultural change as well as the introduction of new tools. Both sides of this challenge are incredibly intriguing.
Is there anything else we could do in this area apart from walking meetings?
3. Health and Wellbeing
Continuous monitoring of… everything
Wearables are moving in the direction of continuous monitoring of every possible data point from your body. Heart rate, body temperature, sleep quality, blood oxygen, glucose, metabolism, you name it.
I was wondering if there is a way to make continuous monitoring of serotonin. People with depressive or bipolar disorders could benefit from it. It turns out there are some developments in this new area. That’s an exciting challenge from a science and technology point of view.
However, how many health tracking devices can you wear at the same time? I believe it should be integrated into one device that tracks everything, and I’m hoping for Apple to crack this one somewhere in the future.
Another challenge here is turning that data into actionable insights. Okay, you know how your serotonin levels change over time, but what exactly could you do with that data?
Increasing people’s potential
Once, I stumbled upon a blogger telling how his life had changed when he started hiring other people to get better at something. He hired a guitar teacher, business coach, personal assistant, investment advisor, fitness trainer, therapist, and nutritionist. All these people were working with a simple goal in mind: to improve him. It’s like a team of professionals working with elite athletes: you do what they say and focus all your energy on the more important and fun stuff.
That concept fascinates me. I was working with a business coach once, and I can tell for sure how much impact it could provide.
Technically, this already exists, but right now, it’s available only to the upper class. I believe it is possible to lower the cost of these services by leveraging technology and scaling up. It is already happening in some verticals, but I think there is room to create a bundle offer.
4. Moving from advertising business model
Bringing subscription model to other markets
I’m mesmerized by how Substack worked out. Essentially it’s just a blog platform with a paywall. But paywalls for blogs didn’t work. However, for some reason, paywalls for newsletter did. That’s an amusing psychological trick.
I wonder if there is room for the same trick in other markets or industries to introduce a subscription model.
Fighting subscription fatigue
The number of paid subscriptions is growing, and most companies are trying to switch their business models to subscription one way or another.
But there should be some limit to it in people’s minds. Would subscription fatigue happen once you reach a critical number of subscriptions you’re paying for and advertised to? How much is that number? Should we try to increase that number somehow? What other problems subscription model could cause?
There is still no universal product on the market to track these subscriptions. The closest one I know is from Revolut, and I believe it should be done by your bank or an ecosystem like Apple.
5. Crypto
That’s both the toughest one and the easiest one. Tough is because no one still understands what exactly we could do with that apart from gaming and finance implications.
Easy is because, in the gold rush, you become rich by selling shovels, not mining the gold. And crypto still lacks a lot of shovels. You need to build infrastructure and better interfaces.
For instance, there is still no (as far as I know) simple universal solution to start accepting crypto payments on your web2 store. If you want to provide an additional option for your users, you need to jump over your head to do that. Even if you do integrate it, you need to figure out how to deal with taxes, and it’s an entirely different story. I believe Stripe could fix this, and it seems like they are onto this.
There is one more. The one I left on purpose. My favorite one, the one that keeps coming back to me over and over again. The one I’m working on right now. It’s not a big secret. I just didn’t want this one to get lost in the crowd and not get the attention it deserved. I’ll tell you more in the next episodes. Stay tuned.
If you’re interested in exploring one of these questions and would love to chat – drop me a line.
In other news
Finished reading Martin Eden, the 4th fiction book I read this year. That was the ending I didn’t anticipate at all when I started the book.
Bought my first ETH this week just to experience Rainbow Wallet. What a joy to use it! Web3 products are on an entirely different level of UI for some reason, and it’s fascinating to explore.
Things I've been reading/watching/enjoying
What’s next in web3?
Seems like there won’t be any newsletters without mentioning web3 any time soon, sorry. Chris Dixon (partner at a16z vc firm) predicts what’s going to happen next in the web3 field. For me, most of it sounds like a word salad, and I feel like a grandpa. For instance, this one I reread dozens of times and still can’t understand much:
Nevertheless, a great thread that might uncover some of the promises of web3 for you.
One sentence increased high school student grades by 320%
Astounding experiment on how motivational speeches can make a massive impact on the performance of a group. It’s a summary from this episode of Lex Fridman’s podcast. And this is the original study.
How to wait well
Have you ever noticed how you wait? What exactly do you do? Waiting in line, waiting for a reply in messenger, waiting for an elevator, anything literally. This essay has got me thinking how I spend my time waiting and what benefits I could get if I’d start being in the uncomfortable moment instead of occupying my time with a phone screen.
That's it for today. Thanks for reading. Until next week 👋🏻