Ero

@Nemra Please share trip reports once you have them. Safe travels

LSD for me by far.

If one only knew the degree to which Russian imperialism has been the cause of turmoil in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, there wouldn't even be base for comparison.

Nothing like a roach/bed bug or flea infestation to change your mind.

“An alien amongst the sheep, this is who I am.”

I don’t eat McDonalds, but I do occasionally eat fast food like chipotle, Bosnian grill or Popeyes/fried chicken sandwiches. I don’t have a chef, I cook myself mostly. I didn’t use to eat at restaurants that often, but now I am trying different cuisines.

I came on this forum in 2018 as a 16 year old. I was broke, sleeping on a mattress on the floor with my siblings (family of 7) in Bulgaria. I am now a millionaire in NYC, helping my parents and paying my sister's education. And this ain't even the fucking start. I have been on and off the forum over the years, but I always circle back to Leo's work. All of it is real. Take this shit serious. Drop the bullshit.

@LoneWonderer Thank you man. I never had a silver spoon, I’ve starved many times in my life, as recently as this June when I was trying to make this happen. Forget the money for now and figure out what have you been put on earth to do that no one else can.

@Lucasxp64 0) There are two approaches: the first is finding a market inefficiency and iterating directly with customers to solve it. This is “Y Combinator” style. They have a lot of recourses you can go through. The downside is that there will be a lot of other people who try get there before you so it’s all about speed and execution. A dog fight. The second is what I am doing, which is going after a strong belief of where technology should be going far in the future. Here, you are trying to crystallize a murky and sometimes illegible vision. Those bets are “deep tech” and require a lot of technical execution, because you are essentially creating the foundations from scratch. Approach 1 never interested me, approach 2 is what I have always been drawn to. I thought my first company with the cryptography was approach 2, but it was actually approach 1, which is why it didn’t blow up. What I am working on right now is as approach two as it gets. 1) You try and give it to customers as early as you can. Working in isolation is a risk, but if you know the field well enough, you will know the biggest pain points already. 1.1) I saw the problem first and then I built the algorithm. It was very much I saw a gap and went after it. 1.2) The first company was fully bootstrapped, the second also was for quite a while. I recently took on an investment from Sequoia. 1.3) No longer working on cybersecurity, but when I did, it was mostly cold outreach to CISOs through email and LinkedIn. 2) No one at Harvard is holding your hand for anything, but I did meet a lot of people who are building businesses on their own, some of which are now billionaires. 2.1) Harvard was absolutely instrumental. In more way than one. I could totally have done it without it, but it most definitely accelerated my path significantly. 3) I do not. I prefer the technical work, because that one is the crux and the most rewarding, but I can do a lot. Of course, as we scale, I will be delegating more and more of the operations. 4) Steve Jobs and Elon Musk’s biographies were very influential. Study Khosla, Thiel, Alex Karp, Zuckerberg, Gates, etc.

@ivankiss Thank you man

That’s not how money works. There was a question meant to check a person’s understanding of economics. Would you have 50k when everyone else has 30k or would you have 80k when everyone else has a 100k? If everyone had a million dollars, then a million dollars wouldn’t be that much. Capitalist outcomes are necessary following a power law.

I don’t know what you are expecting. I’m not there yet, but there is a level of money at which you can start bending reality, so whatever problem you think you are having, there is a way around it.

I do

Accounting and taxes, but that shouldn’t be surprising. I don’t regret anything.

You should spend some time on your own to filter through the noise. Build your understanding of the space, it will be hard for me to break that down in the span of forum posts. In general, my work is more rewarding than 9-5 but it’s still a lot suffering for that intensity.

Going through a name change and we are still in stealth. Could share at some point in the future.

There are a lot of sacrifices I had to make. Dating and social life took the hardest hit. Meditation as well. Slowly getting back into it. I still have a hardcore schedule but I am trying to balance it out at least a bit.

@Joshe Most definitely. That’s why taking risk matters. By putting yourself in situations with no escape plan/alternative, you bring out the strongest driving life force - survival.

Discipline and timed breaks. Treat this like an exercise - do a set, take a break. Do a set, take an break.

@EternalForest I think the YC approach of iterating daily on software applications is this day and age’s get-rich method. With AI, this is easier than ever.

Cryptography is the field which uses hard math problems to encrypt your information as to prevent hackers and bad actors from stealing it. That’s how credit cards, passwords, https and a lot of other stuff works.

Depends on which department you are in, but in general, there’s lectures twice a week, section once a week and office hours. Section is where people discuss in groups. Math didn’t have the latter.

As psychotic as it may sound, I would lock myself in a room for 12-13h a day and would bang my head until I figure it out. I met kids at Harvard who would do it in half the time or one fourth. They were definitely gifted. I am just stubborn.

Thanks brother, I very much agree. That’s what most people started personal development for. Nothing like a bowl of rice a day to make you fiend for success.