December 2020: A New Beginning 🚀
This isn't the year-end I imagined. But this is a year-end I'm excited about.
Hello internet!
Before I dive into my newsletter, a quick disclosure: this isn’t going to be a viral monthly newsletter with 10 jaw-dropping insights about how tech will revolutionize the world.
Instead, this newsletter is going to be a revival of my honesty on Facebook from 2010, for better or worse. Hopefully, with a bit more character and better emoji usage. Before you regret subscribing or close this tab, let me share what kind of content you can expect.
Major life updates. Spoiler alert: I left Uber. More to come later.
Reflections on personal experiments. Similar to that time I logged data on myself for 38 days during my grad trip.
Deep dives. For example, things I learned from a life experience.
Anything, really. Like I said, I’m trying to bring back 2010 Facbook honesty.
Questions or asks. I want to talk to y’all!
TLDRs. For the people with a Tik Tok attention span.
Let’s begin the first issue.
TL;DR; 🚀
I left Uber and joined a startup called Jemi
Writing on the internet is scary, but let’s do it anyways
I’m sitting tight in San Francisco for the holidays
The end of my Uber ride 🚗
So… I quit Uber. I probably lived 50 years of learnings and wisdom in the last 2.5 years so feel free to start calling me a quasi-grandpa.
In all seriousness, the journey was wild. I tried my best to summarize my learnings here. Some of my biggest takeaways revolve around:
Understanding the cost of time
Stakeholder management
The role of a product manager
Give my post a read if you want to play spectator mode on my Uber ride!
A new challenger awaits… 💎
I’m joining two of my close friends, Annie and Jason, at their startup called Jemi! Jemi provides an all-in-one store for creators for them to sell anything to their fans! I’m joining the team as their founding engineer and couldn’t be more excited!
There’s a lot of movement in the creator space and I hope that long term, being a creator is a viable career for younger generations. Personally, I feel deeply connected to this kind of future. It would be great if anyone could confidently pursue their dreams of being a content creator or influencer. People shouldn’t have to be a once-a-generation talent to make it. Anyone should just have to work hard, just like other popular career choices.
Writing on the interwebs 📝
I’m pretty scared of putting my writing out there on the internet. Maybe it’s because I failed multiple high school essays, maybe it’s because I’m a perfectionist. It’s even more likely that I’m just really good at excuses. The biggest culprit however is fear. Fear of having my writing judged, fear of being boring, fear of saying the wrong thing.
Oh well, f*** it. Adulthood taught me that fear shouldn’t be an input to making decisions. Fear is my growth detector. If I’m scared of doing something, I can probably grow from doing it. Maybe build some character along the way, or just walk away with an embarrassing story. And that’s totally cool.
Life in December 2020 🎄
I’m comfortably living in San Francisco these days. My days mostly consist of music, basketball, cooking, and coding. My guilty pleasure consists of watching k-dramas on Netflix after a long day of work. Seeing friends is a luxury and I don’t plan to take it for granted once the pandemic’s over. The following weeks will be a bit more isolating because of the holidays but it’s also going to be a nice way to press the reset button.
Over the past few months, I’ve experimented with different experiments and may do a new one over the holidays just for fun. Maybe I’ll finally wake up before 8AM three days in a row. Maybe I’ll go on a calculated diet. Maybe I’ll do all of the above and then wake up from my ambitious dream at 11:30AM. We’ll see!
Question of the month ❓
Instagram vs Tik Tok: Which one do you prefer and why? Let me know!
Phew, and there goes my first newsletter ✨! Thanks for reading, it means a billion. If you have any feedback or suggestions, I’d love to hear them ✊!
Woohoo! Let's go Andy! Happy holidays bro, wishing you the best ♥️
bro the world is in great need of that facebook 2010 energy don't delete it pls
excited to read about your journey as it unfolds!