About me, being focused, Sahil is building something new live on Youtube 🚀
Hey there,
This is the very first time I write a newsletter, so let’s start with a little bit of background. I’m Achraf, a French engineering student in applied math (data science) but also a freelance web developer and indie hacker.
I started engineering school in September 2020, I was broke and had zero skills. I started tutoring to survive, but 6 months later, COVID hits, so I stopped tutoring and was financially fucked! However, at the beginning of the year I also started learning how to code and over the course of 6 months I was able to learn how to build fully-functional apps, so I reckoned I could start a freelancing business. In February 2021, I let everyone know about it, but I nothing happened for the next 4 months. In June, I finally have an opportunity to get started, which lead to a number of wild stories (maybe for another time). Long story short, after a couple gigs, I’m frustrated with how rushed the projects are. I wanted to build well-thought apps but it was nothing like that. So in October 2021 I start indie hacking - I built a new app every weekend and tried to see if people were interested (through Reddit.com, Twitter.com and IndieHacker.com). At some point, I start withcurated.com to scratch my own itch, and stick to it just because I love it so much (even though I have no active users… to this day).
In parallel to all of that, I get super into machine learning and do a couple research internships, which makes me want to pursue a PhD.
These 2 years were super hectic, I was always in survival mode and I felt like I had 4 different lives: school, freelancing, indie hacking and machine learning (which I learned on my own not through school). Today, I finally took the time to reflect and connect the dots to figure out what I want to do with my life now 😅
The result: I want to pursue a PhD in machine learning, start a biotech company to help millions of people live healthier lives, exit after 3-5 years and just play for the rest of my life: write, start businesses, do things for their own sake.
🤔 What I’m thinking about?
Focus. As you can see, I haven’t been someone who focused on one single thing and went for it relentlessly. I like to spread myself across 10 different things at the same time. I’ve tried to read books, articles and more on the topic of focus, but I heard one thing and its opposite. At the end, Jack Abraham had the most convincing answer in “My first million Podcast”: smart people are in both camps. It comes down to personal preference really. What matters most is why. Why do you want to have 3 businesses. And I certainly had the wrong mentality there. Most of the time, I just said yes to everything because of FOMO (I didn’t want to miss out on a potentially successful project) and I worked on several projects hoping that at least one would succeed. But in both cases, the result was spreading myself too thin and achieving nothing substantial.
Conclusion - it’s okay to focus on several things at the same time, the key is having a valid “why” for it. FOMO and avoiding risk are not good reasons to start something new.
🔗 My favorite links this week
✍️ What I do when I feel like giving up by James Clear - it felt great knowing that the habit guru is also struggling with showing up even after 3 years.
✍️ Twist Biosciences: The DNA API - an amazing post on the state of biotech startups, more founder-lead companies and how the industry is getting disrupted.
🎙️ Joe Rogan podcast with Naval Ravikant - an amazing conversation with the Twitter tech bubble king 👑. He has well-thought answers to everything, it’s insane!
🎥 Youtube Sahil Lavigna - the founder of Gumroad.com - a role model of mine - is building a new thing, live on Youtube, this weekend to demonstrate the lessons in his new book The Minimalist Entrepreneur 🚀