Q4 2022
Startup updates, cool links, tv recommendations, and pics from the last 3 months. A little late, but that's ok.
Reflection 🎡
The last 3 months of 2022, the most impactful year of my life, have gone by in a flash. They ended with a bang too.
9 months ago, I created this newsletter and decided I wanted to expand my horizons. I realized that it was time to go beyond the Discord meta ecosystem I started in, so I could break into the startup world I dreamed of working in. To put this plan into motion, I shut down my Discord community agency and started a fresh project with two people from across the globe that to this day, I have yet to meet offline. I didn’t know it at the time, but this project would completely change my life. One year later and I have a robust network, social circle, and understanding of the industry I so wanted to be a part of. Read my highlights of 2022 here.
Updates 🗞️
Q4 was mostly about keeping my head down and building. Since being accepted into TKS in Q3 on a scholarship, I’ve enjoyed the chance to meet people in the program, learn about topics in STEM ranging from stem cells to brain-computer interfaces, and work on awesome projects.
Here’s a rundown of my team’s hackathon project:
“As global warming rapidly approaches, the world is rushing to replace CO2-emitting transportation with EVs (electric vehicles). EVs, unfortnately, nearly offput their benefits during their production process due to the fact that when their lithium ion battery’s lifetime ends, they’re non-recylable and wasteful for the environment… Read the rest here.
For our TKS challenge project in December, we were tasked with improving Walmart’s in-store tech experience. The winner of this challenge has their solution implemented in 200+ Walmart locations across the country. Unfortunately, we did not win, but you can check out our slide deck for that project here.
In between school, TKS, Buildergroop, and some contracting work here and there, I whipped up some fun side projects like this one where I gamified my closet using a tool made by the Browser Company:
From November to December, I built an idea into a new launch for Buildergroop called BuilderBook.
What started out as a couple articles written by myself about college research and cold emailing, turned into a full-fledged collection of educational content made by venture capitalists, founders, designers, and developers, all coming together to support the next generation of workers in tech. People including Danielle, founding Program Director at the Thiel Fellowship and current Founder and GP of 1517 Fund, Simon, a Senior Product Manager at Vercel, Liz, Head of People and Community at Landing, and so many others who contributed their time and words to BuilderBook.
Big thank you to Neesh for working with me to code BuilderBook, essentially creating a reskin of Notion that automatically updates on the live website whenever I make changes in the app.
The reason why this newsletter is launching on January 20th and not December 30th, is because I was so focused on BuilderBook’s launch that I wasn’t able to write this newsletter to you all. I’m glad I didn’t though, because now I’m able to share the impact made and social validation received post-launch! Upon launching on Twitter and Product Hunt, we hit the following landmarks 🥁🥁
#1 Education Product Of The Week on Product Hunt 🏆
75k+ impressions on Twitter 🚀
11k+ Page Visits 👀
Numbers 📊
Buildergroop 🔨
4k+ members (13% increase)
1M+ messages (12% increase)
1 major new launch
$0 in revenue since Q3…
2 new perks added to our perks program
Photography Lounge 📸
9.3k+ members (17% increase)
4.3M+ messages (17% increase)
269k images sent
Links 👀
Must-watch shows and movies 🎞️
Causeway, Apple TV
The Sunlit Night, Hulu
White Noise, Netflix
How Generalists Win In The Digital Age, YouTube
The single biggest reason why start-ups succeed, YouTube
Top-notch links and resources 🔥
BuilderBook, Buildergroop
Careering Fairgrounds, Teal Process & Company
Venture Capital 101, BuilderBook
Letter To A Younger Self - Age 18, BuilderBook
Skip The Arc Browser Waitlist, Courtesy of Buildergroop
Scrapbook 🤳🏼
I was supposed to fly back to Como, Italy at the start of November, but our stay in the U.S. has been extended. After spending 4 months in a census-declared village in rural Connecticut, I’m now on the seaside along the Connecticut-Rhode Island border. I love it here.
Thank you jack, elena, and landon for reading drafts of this
No article this quarter, read my last article here if you haven’t already :) see you next quarter 👋🏼