Hi. I’m Stepa Mitaki. I’m a product person and an entrepreneur. I’ve been working in 🏙 govtech for eight years and currently work at a UK-based 🏦 fintech startup Silverbird while building a new company in 👩🏼⚕️ healthtech on the side.
Morning Walk is a personal weekly newsletter where I share some musings on tech, digital healthcare, working on startups, productivity, some nerdy stuff and an occasional share of reflections on the Ukraine war and how it feels being Russian at this moment in history.
This issue was sent out to 231 subscriber (+1 from the previous week). Last week’s issue received 357 views.
🪖 Escaping Putin's mobilisation
A couple of months ago, I started keeping a weekly journal of my startup journey. I wanted to document the progress I've been making, hold myself accountable and keep track of how ideas about the product we build are evolving from week to week as we learn along.
I wanted something similar to Fibery's monthly Startup Diary posts but allowed myself not to share it with a broader audience as there is so little to tell about at the idea stage.
A typical weekly report looked like this:
Goals for the week
✅ Run at least four user interviews.
❌ Talk to at least two concierge practices in the US
✅ Compose draft application for YCombinator
✅ Spend at least 2 hours writing down the opportunity tree list and decomposing use cases.
What else happened this week
Met with [name], some good insights
Call with [name], VC in healthtech.
Learned about Summer Health.
Learned about Jay Parkinson and his new idea, building EMR for async work, got me thinking a lot.
Found an insight from one interview about [X], something we could build upon.
You get the idea.
But this past week, my report looked quite different.
What else happened this week
Haven't done anything. Had to pause to flee my country forever and take care of it in three days. Top priority right now – keeping my freedom.
Just this Wednesday morning, Putin announced mobilisation in Russia. He won't stop at anything to win this war, and I, as practically every male friend I have, have been executing my own plan of emergency espace from Russia. The incredible spectrum of feelings I experience now is a story for another post, and I won't be able to put it into words for now. Still, the idea that I'll have that kind of weekly report in my startup diary is fascinating, and it gives me even more energy to keep working on it. Because now I know for sure, nothing will stop me now.
That’s it for today. Thanks for reading. Until next week 👋🏻