Exploring Twitter

Vol. 6 of Growing With a Startup

Hey everyone,

I’ve only just discovered - really - that remote work lets you work from anywhere. The past couple of weeks from an idyllic barn in Denmark, working outdoors 30+ hours per week with a zoom background of a garden and chirping birds. I’m considering spending a month or two exploring places like Marrakesh this fall.

In the last couple of weeks I also got to canoe with my family: 

This week, there’s no essay, just an update:

Experiment: moving to Twitter

I will experiment with writing on Twitter rather than this newsletter the next month or two. Same ideas, different format.

Twitter captures the essence of how writing online is different from writing full stop:

First, Twitter enables serendipity.

“Every tweet is a lottery ticket”, Packy McCormick wrote in the Great Online Game. It’s more like hanging out online with the most interesting people you can think of than solitary confinement with your ideas. (Okay, more like awkwardly sipping your drink in the corner at a party with interesting people). Fun things happen when you hang out with smart people.

Second, Twitter offers feedback on which ideas are worth expanding on.

Tweets are high-frequency, low-fidelity ideas. Essays are low-frequency, high-fidelity ideas. Essays take many hours to write, and judging which ideas will resonate is hard. Start with tweets, turn the best ones into essays.