Building Out Loud - Digest #1
Not fighting the wind, art as a primary job in a startup, moonshot country and AMA.
Last year, I tried a writing experiment to ‘build out loud’ my venture-building life. That was brutal with one atomic post per day but I loved it. This year will have a lower volume and when there is enough interesting stuff, I will roll it up into a digest on this substack. I hope you find it useful.
If there are questions you want me to answer, let me know.
Don’t Fight the Wind
When building a new company, we MUST “fight the wind” because the world prefers a path that is already carved rather than accepting a new direction.
But when markets change so dramatically, we need to know when to adapt and use the forces around us for our benefit rather than fighting them.
I reflected on this in my first essay for Forbes. The take out for founders in 2023 is:
Reframe time, not the mission
Become impossible to break
Delay raising money
Synchronise deliverables with runway
Work with your existing investors
Share the urgency with your team
Art as a primary job inside a startup
What does this image show? Does it make you feel anything?
When a founder works closely with an artist, they can unlock understanding and opportunity. This picture results from a collaboration between Professor Michael Biercuk (Q-CTRL Founder) and his third employee, Damien Metcalf for Fire Opal.
Look at the image and imagine what Fire Opal does and how you feel about it. Then read the product page and think about how much you already understood.
A lot of information can be shared instantly. And the information carries an emotional payload that is difficult to carry with words.
More on art
The importance of artists has been on my mind in general over the summer. I think we have all been stunned at the sheer brilliance of ChatGPT and image-producing AI systems like Stable Diffusion or Mid Journey. I’ve been using them both a lot and they have challenged ny persepctive to date that art will be a final frontier for AI.
Here is musician Nick Cave’s view. The ChatGPT song in the style of Nick Cave is actually quite good. But does it rip our guts out and allow us to see something about life differently? For example, Spinning Song written by actual Nick Cave tells the story of a the ‘king of rock and roll’.
The king in time died, the queen's heart broke like a vow
And the tree returned to the earth with the nest and the bird
But the feather spun upward, upward and upward
Spinning all the weather vanes
The next line is what ChatGPT can’t do… perhaps yet.
And you're sitting at the kitchen table, listening to the radio
Nick Cave’s son died from a cliff fall before this song was written. The person listening to the radio is the last memory of his wife before she found out. It kills me every time he sings it.
Brian Eno in A Year with Swollen Appendices says that the frame around the art matters. He talks about a sculpture made from a bent piece of wire with a note under it that says ‘This is the path of the bullet that killed President Kennedy”
In Spinning Song, the story behind the lyric brings the symbolism of the story crashing into a relevancy to our own lives and relationships.
A brilliant podcast last week that gets into the different ‘minds’ of the artist and the academic is Andrew Huberman in conversation with Rick Rubin. I found it fascinating to listen to them try to understand each other’s perspective.
Updates from Moonshot Country
In my annual reflection, I talked about my mission for Moonshot Country. The idea that some of the next high intensity innovation locations will be in the regions (not the cities) of Australia. Here’s my review if you missed it.
I spoke to the Sydney Morning Herald which declared Orange is the new Palo Alto.
The Main Sequence Twitter List
There are a few of us at Main Sequence ‘building out loud’ this year. Follow our Twitter list to share the conversation.
Uluu at DLD
I love Uluu. They are making biodegradable plastic from seaweed. It will sequester more carbon that it emits and their first solution vector is the fashion industry. Here’s Julia and Michael on stage.
AMA
Ask me anything here and I will answer in this newsletter.
I’ve had some great questions so far like:
How do I get SaaS investors to look at deep tech?
How to finance infrastructure for hardware-based startups?
How to raise venture capital if a startup does not have a 100x return profile?
I’ll get to those in the coming weeks.
🖖 Phil
PS. here is the poetic summary of all this from ChatGPT
Building out loud, My venture-building life, With one post a day, It was brutal, but right. Fighting the wind, The world prefers a path, But when markets change, We must adapt and last. Reframe time, not mission, Become impossible to break, Delay raising money, Synchronise with your runway and fate. Work with investors, Share the urgency with your team, Art as a primary job, Inside a startup, a dream. An image that's shared, Can carry an emotional payload, Words can't convey, But art can, in every shade. Artists and AI, Challenging perspectives and more, But Nick Cave says it best, It's the frame that makes it raw. Updates from Moonshot Country, Innovation in the regions, not just cities, Follow the Main Sequence Twitter list, To share in our building and victories. Uluu at DLD, Making biodegradable plastic from seaweed, A solution for fashion, And for our planet, a need.