This is where I share 3 things every week with my friends and anyone else interested.
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A picture from my life:
I went to Stanford for my ten-year college reunion (delayed by Covid for a year)!
A thing on my mind:
Hey, been a minute. Things are incredibly busy, but I can’t let myself go too long without writing. I had to take a day off this week to deal with my stress, but now I have more resolve to build some of my heathy habits back up. Carving out time to write to you all is a start.
Flow Club continues to grow. We got an office and we’ve been going in twice a week, which seems to be the right level of IRL for the three of us. I’m now spending more of my time hiring, but still never feels like I’m spending enough time. At this stage, hiring adds another full-time job on top of a very full-time job, and it’s hard to do well or make go faster. Still, getting to work on Flow Club is very rewarding and I’d like more people to experience that. We organized our first meetup in San Francisco a few weeks ago and the energy was palpable. What feels special about FC is how much ownership our members feel about the product, which is probably a function of having a lot of builder/maker types, how much time they’re spending, and how at the core Flow Club is about helping each other get into flow, including helping the FC team build the best product to facilitate it at scale.
Over the last few years I’ve been thinking about how our strongest relationships come from school and work because they’re the only contexts where we have frequent, regular interactions with other people. Trying to re-create that is a tall order because we all had/have to go to school/work. With Flow Club, we created a space where people have frequent, regular interactions with each other, and while the reason is about work, it’s about finding the time, space and social reinforcement to do your best work.
Speaking of school, when I went to my ten-year college reunion, I also went to visit my favorite restaurant in Palo Alto (Da Sichuan) only to learn that business is not doing so hot. That made me sad. Today my friend Sid texted to tell me that another favorite restaurant Gombei in Menlo Park is closing after 29 years. In a state of panic I looked up another nostalgic food spot Ryowa in Mountain View only to learn that it also shuttered during the pandemic. I think this is why people care so much about taking pictures and videos. You have to preserve your access to nostalgia otherwise you can easily lose it.
A piece of content I recommend:
President Barack Obama - Post-Presidential Life and Nurturing Future Leaders - The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
I love listening to Obama talk. Most people who get to that level don’t sound real to me because they’ve had to maneuver, scheme and contort themselves a million times on their way to the top, especially in politics, and Obama definitely did all that. And yet when you listen to him he just sounds so real and completely self-aware.
Another thing I want to share is this amazing shot from Episode 1 of the final season of Insecure on HBO, which just came out.
🤗
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As always, you can find out what I’m thinking in more real-time on Twitter and my essays are on my website. My primary focus (and where I focus) is on Flow Club. We are hiring and offering a $10k referral bonus + VIP tickets to SFJAZZ or Sacramento Kings game.
Love Barack! I will have to check out the full interview. BTW, when you think it's sad that things are not the same at the 10 yr reunion, try 20 :-) .