Dreams, Growth and Gratitude

Short note on all the progress I made in life in the past 12 months

“world is just a sandbox”

I record myself working sometimes. This snapshot was taken right after my YC launch, around 3 a.m.

Exponential growth in everything

I am not going to tell my whole life story here, there was a lot happening during the year. I met a couple of the right people, and ended up in a couple of the right places at the right time.

The last 12 months were life changing for me. I remember sitting in an empty apartment in London a week before my first lecture. Just me, a mattress, and a router plugged into the wall.

That image is stuck in my head, maybe for the next couple of years. It was my first time living alone, and moving somewhere completely new with zero connections, friends, or support. Not saying this is anything out of the ordinary, but you always remember day zero.

Below, I will list the core principles I’ve been following for the past year.

Stay hungry

Congrats - you made it. You achieved something that moved you from x → x + 1.

And from up close, +1 feels massive. You feel progress. You feel good. Maybe you earned some peer respect. But if you step back and look at the full coordinate plane… what did it really change?

\( \lim_{x\to\infty}\frac{x+1}{x}=1 \)

When x is huge, x + 1 is basically the same. The “big win” barely moves the needle once you zoom out.

That’s the balance you have to find: how much impact do you want each +1 to have in your life? What counts as a real shift, and what’s just noise that feels good in the moment?

One thing stays true though: you should always be moving forward. Not blindly sprinting into the abyss, but choosing your direction on purpose - and learning to love each step you take while you’re taking it.

Because all of this is a game, and you have to be in it for the love of the game.

Dumbest in the room

Suddenly, when you shift too far away from where you started, people in your close circle might change in your eyes. You may see them as unmotivated, maybe lazy - or maybe you just feel like you’ve outpaced them.

The problem is: if you feel like you’re the smartest in the room, you’re in the wrong room.

If you want to move faster than anyone, aim to surround yourself with people significantly smarter than you. The feeling you should get is like you’re talking to aliens who’ve reached the next level of intelligence or charisma - unimaginable to you. Of course, that’s a joke, but there’s some truth in it.

World is just a sandbox

I don’t remember where I heard this. Possibly on group office hours, but I memorized it really fucking well.

The world works the way you see it. If you think it’s big and you’re just a cog, that’s how it’s going to be.

But if there’s a chance, even a small chance, that you can see the world as something you can shape with your bare hands, you gain this unfathomable power.

“I can just do things.”

And it doesn’t matter what it is. You should always try. Always shoot your shot. Nobody else will do it for you.

Gratitude

The catalyst in my growth were the people

People who helped me learn, experiment, mentored me, and just gave me a hand when nobody else did.

This section is more for me than it is for you. Feel free to skip it

Below I simply say thank you to every person who made a noticeable impact on my worldview in the past 365 days.


Thank you to Vladimir and Danay for being great teammates and friends as I went into my first couple of hackathons.

Thank you to Matt Carey for being a judge at my first hackathon, offering me my first internship, and being a good friend.

Thank you to Louis Knight-Webb for being a great mentor and helping me understand founder–market fit.

Thank you to Henry Allen, Danila Kozlov, and Jenson Martell for being great friends and supporting me every step of the way, even when it was a failure.

Thank you to Zakhar Davydov for bringing me into Iterate and supporting me all the way up to the start of YC.

Thank you to Jonas Templestein for letting me into Iterate and giving me the chance to learn from you.

Thank you to George Jefferson and Art Freebrey for being amazing friends and inspirations in every possible way. Also, shoutout to Andrew Jefferson for being an absolutely cracked engineer.

Thank you to Ash Prabarker for being incredibly rational about every crazy idea I had, and just being a great person to talk to.

Thank you to Nurdalet Bazylbekov for offering me my first check 10 months ago, when nobody even knew who I was.

Thank you to Xavier Cochran and George Curtis for being part of what inspired me to drop out and apply to YC.

Thank you to Leo Zeligman for being a great friend. Although we definitely should talk more.

Thank you to Ayman Ali and Dominik Diak for mentoring me when I was lost about what I wanted to do in life. I am deeply grateful

Thank you to Raymond Zhao, Issy Greenslade, and Brandon Abreu Smith for being amazing friends and letting me shape the beginning of Structured.

Thank you to Jayram Palamadai for cold messaging me on Slack to become roommates.

And most importantly:

Thank you, Mom and Dad, for your support at any time of day or night, for being there when no one else was.

About half of the people listed above are also angel investors in Sparkles.dev. They came in at a very low valuation, and I gave up 0.5% to the people I want to keep close.

Not because I needed the money, but because I wanted to say thank you for giving me a hand when nobody else did.

Dreams

This is not even the beginning of my journey. I am at the origin of the exponentially growing curve that represents my life

I don’t know what is next. A lot of things will change in my life this year, but I think a couple of my dreams will stay the same.

I want to build company I would love running. My vision of this company changes every day, but I want to get joy out of what I am doing

I love cars and motorcycles, and I definitely want something if not every one from my dream list. I love fast things with engines

I want to find a soulmate.

And a place which I can call home

That’s about it
thank you for reading this.

as a reward, attaching my last picture I took in Europe.

peace.