be fearless
beauty pageant, casey neistat, and singapore
i never thought i would ever be in a beauty pageant.
yet there i was, a tech founder with zero pageant experience, strutting across a stage in a two-piece bikini in fifteen cm heels.
why would i put myself through this? why would a tech founder join a beauty pageant?
entrepreneurship requires an almost unreasonable tolerance for discomfort
my dream is to build a billion-dollar company. it is a lifelong dream that will demand so much out of me. so much pain.
the greatest entrepreneurs share key traits: delusion-level optimism, Olympian-level work ethic, comfort with losing and being seen as a loser, plus an extraordinary tolerance for discomfort. the pageant would test all these in one-go.
while i didn’t win a title, doing the pageant affirmed what i suspected was true, that i have what it takes to achieve my dreams. confidence and self-belief must be earned, and it can only be earned by doing hard things.
my thoughts, recently
i have been watching a lot of casey neistat’s old videos recently. his videos are a work of art, and they made me realize something.
i have been struggling with youtube for the last year. my channel is dying.
i threw my analytics at chatgpt. i talked to other youtubers. i joined masterminds. i watched plenty videos on "how to grow on youtube”. all of the advice made sense but none of it seemed to help.
you can’t get the right help if you don’t know what you need help with.
casey’s videos made me feel something. his videos make me feel that no dream is too crazy and everything is within reach. i want my audience to feel that way when they watch my videos.
my unconscious blocker? i wasn’t making videos with that vision in mind. instead i was looking at what was working on youtube and copy pasting the format. i wasn’t making my best videos. i was making videos in someone else’s best version.
now i am focused on staying committed to that vision. making videos that feel real and raw, and that life is big and full of possibilities. i don’t know why it took me so long to realize that.
life, recently
i have been in singapore, living on my co-founder eunice’s couch for the last few weeks. enjoying the humidity and plethora of milk-tea options. but it also made me think about this analogy.
in startups, everyone wants to be a unicorn, but you should aim to be a cockroach instead. cockroaches survive anything. they’re resilient. they adapt. they go through so much BS. honestly, that’s been our experience as early-stage founders.
ps: you can buy us coffee here
in my feelings
as someone who grew up in indonesia before moving to the united states for college, a brother who lives in australia, and friends scattered across new york, los angeles, san francisco and southeast asia. i will always struggle with defining where i feel the most at home.
i used to look forward to the day where i could buy an expensive piece of furniture, because that would mean i wouldn’t have to move around as much. but now that i have been thinking about moving back to new york, i realize that moving around a lot while tiring causes a lot of change to happen. change forces you to get out of your comfort zone and grow. your twenties, and even early thirties, should be where you force yourself to grow the most.
i feel like i am no longer scared of anything
