In August of last year, shortly after going full-time, I decided The Generalist needed a permanent home. Something that captured the vision for all the great things I thought would come out of this community.
I set to work.
It’s here.
After months of building, the new, revamped, reimagined Generalist is ready. I can’t wait to show you.
Here’s what it means.
https://t.co/4RaadaUjKR
In August of last year, shortly after going full-time, I decided The Generalist needed a permanent home. Something that captured the vision for all the great things I thought would come out of this community.
I set to work.
https://t.co/4RaadaCImh
Launch by the end of September. Here’s the email I sent to The Braintrust (the awesome folks that have agreed to give their advice on this little venture).
- 15K subscribers
- New site
- New membership
- New community
I failed on all four.
By the end of September, I had +11K subscribers — 15K had been a stretch, so that was good with me. But I also had no site, no membership, and no permanent community home.
Fair question. Really two reasons.
1. I can be a perfectionist in the (actually) bad way. Sometimes you just need to ship.
2. I was scared. For real.
Writing for free feels like it protects you, insulates you from criticism.
Two things.
1. We got the site into a place I’m really excited about. It’s not perfect, but it’s a start.
2. At a certain point, you realize that being Free is holding you back. You’re stopping yourself from making your work a sustainable business.
With help.
I couldn’t have done this w/o @joaopaulots + @arianavmac. @theabbaspage was a great addition on design. And @jasonwbade was insanely supportive. He was answering messages at every hour to make things work.
I’m so grateful to them all.
- The site is built on @webflow
- The membership is managed by @tryPico
- The emails are (still) managed by @ConvertKit
- The community is built on @CircleApp
We used @zapier to help the pieces synch up.
The big thing is there are now 3 tiers on The Generalist.
- Free
- Premium
- Believer
Free get 1 briefing a month, IPO reports, startup ideas + summarized interviews.
Premium gets 4 briefings a month, deeper IPO reports, extra ideas + community access.
The Believers are lunatics of goodwill. Those that see someone dancing, alone on a hill-top and want to be the first to join.
Believers get 5 yrs of membership at a steep discount, access to select channels + events, and unlock extra surprises ;)
This is the home for The Generalist’s most thoughtful, curious members. The place we jam on new startup ideas, discuss investment strategies, and riff on tech.
Premium and Believers unlock access via application.
I thought a lot about this. I take building the community, our patch of pixels, v. seriously.
Without curation + care, it could become noisy, unsuited for thoughtful discussion. I will personally review every application + add people each week.
This is the beginning. What I really hope the Generalist becomes — and I believe it is becoming already — is an invisible city.
A shared space to learn, grow, and build together.
https://t.co/gyRM7X56Tg
@cpaik said it well in @nbt's newsletter…
“The next big thing in 2021 is people realizing that serendipity happens more in our digital worlds...than in the analog one."
There are things we lose, certainly. But much connection can be captured virtually.
Thank you. That you’re spending time reading this already means a lot.
Though creator-businesses are low cost, they are not *no* cost. By becoming a member, you help me cover expenses, and allow me to keep pushing to make it better.
https://t.co/MUTLwwwbWn
Definitely.
Launches are usually good days to share the word and get new people excited about something. If this resonates with you, I’d really appreciate you RT’ing and sharing with a few friends.
I feel incredibly lucky that I get to make building The Generalist my life’s work. And I cannot wait for all the good we can do together in the days ahead.
Come say hello.
https://t.co/4RaadaUjKR
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I think about this a lot, both in IT and civil infrastructure. It looks so trivial to “fix” from the outside. In fact, it is incredibly draining to do the entirely crushing work of real policy changes internally. It’s harder than drafting a blank page of how the world should be.
I’m at a sort of career crisis point. In my job before, three people could contain the entire complexity of a nation-wide company’s IT infrastructure in their head.
Once you move above that mark, it becomes exponentially, far and away beyond anything I dreamed, more difficult.
And I look at candidates and know-everything’s who think it’s all so easy. Or, people who think we could burn it down with no losses and start over.
God I wish I lived in that world of triviality. In moments, I find myself regretting leaving that place of self-directed autonomy.
For ten years I knew I could build something and see results that same day. Now I’m adjusting to building something in my mind in one day, and it taking a year to do the due-diligence and edge cases and documentation and familiarization and roll-out.
That’s the hard work. It’s not technical. It’s not becoming a rockstar to peers.
These people look at me and just see another self-important idiot in Security who thinks they understand the system others live. Who thinks “bad” designs were made for no reason.
Who wasn’t there.
The tragedy of revolutionaries is they design a utopia by a river but discover the impure city they razed was on stilts for a reason.
— SwiftOnSecurity (@SwiftOnSecurity) June 19, 2016
I’m at a sort of career crisis point. In my job before, three people could contain the entire complexity of a nation-wide company’s IT infrastructure in their head.
Once you move above that mark, it becomes exponentially, far and away beyond anything I dreamed, more difficult.
And I look at candidates and know-everything’s who think it’s all so easy. Or, people who think we could burn it down with no losses and start over.
God I wish I lived in that world of triviality. In moments, I find myself regretting leaving that place of self-directed autonomy.
For ten years I knew I could build something and see results that same day. Now I’m adjusting to building something in my mind in one day, and it taking a year to do the due-diligence and edge cases and documentation and familiarization and roll-out.
That’s the hard work. It’s not technical. It’s not becoming a rockstar to peers.
These people look at me and just see another self-important idiot in Security who thinks they understand the system others live. Who thinks “bad” designs were made for no reason.
Who wasn’t there.
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Trump is gonna let the Mueller investigation end all on it's own. It's obvious. All the hysteria of the past 2 weeks about his supposed impending firing of Mueller was a distraction. He was never going to fire Mueller and he's not going to
Mueller's officially end his investigation all on his own and he's gonna say he found no evidence of Trump campaign/Russian collusion during the 2016 election.
Democrats & DNC Media are going to LITERALLY have nothing coherent to say in response to that.
Mueller's team was 100% partisan.
That's why it's brilliant. NOBODY will be able to claim this team of partisan Democrats didn't go the EXTRA 20 MILES looking for ANY evidence they could find of Trump campaign/Russian collusion during the 2016 election
They looked high.
They looked low.
They looked underneath every rock, behind every tree, into every bush.
And they found...NOTHING.
Those saying Mueller will file obstruction charges against Trump: laughable.
What documents did Trump tell the Mueller team it couldn't have? What witnesses were withheld and never interviewed?
THERE WEREN'T ANY.
Mueller got full 100% cooperation as the record will show.
BREAKING: President Donald Trump has submitted his answers to questions from special counsel Robert Mueller
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) November 20, 2018
Mueller's officially end his investigation all on his own and he's gonna say he found no evidence of Trump campaign/Russian collusion during the 2016 election.
Democrats & DNC Media are going to LITERALLY have nothing coherent to say in response to that.
Mueller's team was 100% partisan.
That's why it's brilliant. NOBODY will be able to claim this team of partisan Democrats didn't go the EXTRA 20 MILES looking for ANY evidence they could find of Trump campaign/Russian collusion during the 2016 election
They looked high.
They looked low.
They looked underneath every rock, behind every tree, into every bush.
And they found...NOTHING.
Those saying Mueller will file obstruction charges against Trump: laughable.
What documents did Trump tell the Mueller team it couldn't have? What witnesses were withheld and never interviewed?
THERE WEREN'T ANY.
Mueller got full 100% cooperation as the record will show.
