All In How You Spin It 🪃

Short, practical drops on culture and technology. 🚀

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To the community 🙏

Good morning! ☀️

One of my deepest joys in life is being on the keys with a hot cup of coffee, trying to distill complicated ideas in to something practical and meaningful for this community.

Sometimes being a good explainer is all in how you spin it. That's because really smart people think a lot. They know what's in their brain, but they can't always say it in an accessible way. Then someone comes along and says 'Oh! They mean this..' and boom! There it is for the rest of us. It's the best thing about having ideas on the internet.

I'm reading The Minimalist Entrepreneur from @sahil, one of my all-time favourite Twitter follows. He created Gumroad and now serves the creators of the world by giving them a platform to sell their digital artefacts. I recommend everyone build something for Gumroad! For the pure joy of creation.

In Chapter 1 of the book Sahil lays out a 5-pillar framework for the minimalist entrepreneur. In the hopes of being useful, I'm going to spin each one in my own words, or words I've received from reading great minds. I'll also give at least one follow recommendation at the end of each segment (someone uniquely useful in that area).

I'm hoping, in this way, I can expand and amplify his already fantastic work. 🚀

1/ Profitability first 👀

Minimalist entrepreneurship is governed by reality. Your customers will pay you to solve their problems or they won't. Making money is a good thing. It allows you to continue serving your community and, if your income covers your burn rate, you get to serve them for as long as you want. 

 👉 Follow: @sahil

2/ Start with community 🌍

Whose problem are you solving? How do they want it solved? Kevin Kelly's concept of 1,000 True Fans means that you're starting with the community in mind. You love the community because, by definition, the community is you. Start with a small, dedicated community that loves you. Solve their problems.

 👉 Follow: @gregisenberg and @alexisohanian are obsessed with building community on the internet.

3/ Build as little as possible 📲

Keep the main thing, the main thing. Build the thing that solves the problem you're being asked to solve. Don't get distracted.

👉 Follow: @joepompliano is focused

4/ Sell to your first hundred customers 👋

Build deep relationships. Make something for them. Listen. Iterate. Your first customers will tell you everything you need to know. If you're obsessed with solving their problem, you can expect more customers in the future.

👉 Follow: @kevin2kelly

5/ Market by being you 🙌

In this iteration of the internet, you escape competition by being authentic. Build what you can uniquely build. It will likely be an intersection of multiple things because being the best at something like 'basketball' is already taken. That ain't you. But what if it's the intersection of social media x basketball x statistics? That could absolutely be you, and that means you have a business!

👉 Follow: @naval might not be human

Let's grow! 🪃

Surely there is someone in your community who should be here with us, no? That purple button below is our community portal and it unlocks a really fun journey of exploration in to how the world works. 👇

 I look forward to seeing who you bring, and I look forward to seeing what you build. 🚀

Gratitude 🙏

I feel lucky to have you on the other end of this newsletter. If you haven't yet, join the community. 👇

See you on the path. 

- MG