Dear Everybody,
Daniel Vassallo is the creator of Userbase and several successful Gumroad products, including The Good Parts of AWS and Everyone Can Build a Twitter Audience. In 2019, he left a $500,000 job at Amazon to work for himself.
I organized and distilled his last 3,000 tweets into a summary of his big ideas on self-employment, information products, and lifestyle design.
Beware, not every itch is worth scratching…
Not every opportunity is worth taking
Not every dangled carrot is worth chasing
(You might be caught in a rat race)
To break free, recognize you’re in a race…
Consider your obligations
Imagine an alternative universe
And ask yourself, “Why not?”
It’s hard, but it doesn’t take much (and almost anyone can do it)…
140 views at 5 percent conversion = seven sales
Seven sales a day of a $39 product = $275 per day
Seven sales a day of a $39 product = $100,000 per year
Here’s the formula: start with the hardest part…
Be willing to jump off the wrong train
Be willing to write off past ambitions
Be willing to detach your identity from your accomplishments
Otherwise you might get stuck enduring an existence full of wrong stops
Take stock of your means…
Time
Skills
Location
Interests
Strengths
Resources
Experience
Perspective
Connections
Cash at hand
Work backwards from your constraints…
Start with your reality
Fit ideas to that reality
(This is more effective than trying to “make your idea a reality”)
Curb your ambitions…
Keep reducing scope
Keep moving the finish line closer
Keep giving yourself free energy
Keep the complexity of what you do within your means
Figure out what you don’t like…
Procrastinate on purpose to find what demotivates you
(What you’re putting off is what you don’t like)
Learn from your internal resistance to find your true preferences
Slowly evolve your lifestyle to better match your true preferences…
Do things for their own sake
Do what no one’s forcing you to do
Do what you’re intrinsically motivated to do
Gradually do fewer things you’d rather not do
(Only intrinsic motivation lasts)
Set a direction instead of a goal…
You can’t predict what will work
You can’t predict what will last
You won’t know if a great idea is really great until it survives the impact with reality
(Goals tend to get in the way of letting you do what you should be doing, and directions are easier to correct)
You don’t need a big vision to succeed…
There’s no need to change the world
There’s no need to conquer the competition
There’s no need to dominate the market
There’s no need to disrupt anything
Just throw yourself into random tasks until inspiration meets opportunity
Make time your friend…
Cut costs
Make do with less
Reconsider your needs
Don’t spend more than you earn
Make your worst-case scenario a slow success
To thrive, survive…
Sit on cash
Avoid risk of ruin
Never risk more than you’re willing to lose
Make sure you always get a second chance
Persist long enough to stumble on good luck
(Time has a way to make unpredictable setbacks happen eventually)
Work hard to earn credibility…
Do something interesting in real life
Prove yourself by making something interesting
Without credibility, nobody will listen to what you have to say
Avoid low probability bets…
Stack odds in your favor
Choose your projects carefully
Study your opportunities carefully
Business is a conjecture that an idea will work out
Avoid spending time on things with low chance of success
Don’t ignore uncertainty in a randomness-laden venture
Make many small bets (and keep them small)…
Don’t be greedy
Control the amount wagered
Go for the low hanging fruit first
Keep investments tiny and bounded
Try many things in parallel or almost in parallel
You’ll learn more this way than any other way
(If you start killing it with low hanging fruit, it becomes easier to go after harder to reach fruit)
Build something imperfect that works…
Start with a very small product
Pick something you can finish in two weeks
Charge ten dollars for it
(Perfecting something that won't work will never make it work)
(Perfectionism is fine, as long as you realize you're doing it only for your own amusement)
Don’t optimize or polish your products…
Focus on substance, not optimizations
Let the scrappiness be part of the charm
The returns on polishing and optimizing are small
A book can be your life's work, presented as a beautiful masterpiece.
Or it can be a scrappy brain dump in a Word doc, saved as PDF.
Doing a brain dump on video is a lot easier than writing an ebook
Keep idle time in your system…
Idle time is slack
Slack lets you immediately explore and pounce on opportunities
By not optimizing to the limit, you can deal with randomness without breaking down
Stop forcing yourself to build good habits…
Just start building something
If the habits don't follow automatically, you don't really want it
And if you don't really want it, it won't last anyway
Just focus on behavior…
Study what’s repeatable
Study what’s working for you
Study what’s going okay but can be improved
Remember, growth is not linear…
Progress comes from random, high impact lucky events
Realize a fraction of the effort gets most of the results
Recognize which fraction to focus on
Use the time you bought back to do whatever you want
Skip theory…
Study successful practitioners
Become a practitioner yourself
(Unsuccessful practitioners don’t practice for very long)
Do a lot when inspiration strikes…
Take long breaks in between
Most things require intensity over consistency
Consistency works, but it's unpleasant (you're constantly fighting yourself)
What can be done with consistency is often more enjoyable when done with intensity instead
If there’s no one around, go where people already hang out…
Make yourself useful
Share what you’ve done
Share what you’re learning
Let yourself be opinionated
Go behind the scenes and share how your product is doing
Teach what you already know (it took you a lifetime to acquire!)
If others show interest in something you know, chances are thousands of other people will too
When you promote yourself…
You promote your product
You have automatic authority
You find people who want to learn from you specifically
You create an uncontested market space (competition becomes irrelevant because nobody can copy you)
Strive to be an artisan…
Be creative
Don’t follow others
Make your work a business
Don’t cut corners for efficiency
Say no to things you’d rather not do
Do the best work you can, for its own sake
Never sell something you know is defective
Protect your independent lifestyle…
Be risk averse
Don’t try to maximize profits
Avoid having your lifestyle taken away from you
A good life is a story you're proud of…
Pride comes from the story we tell ourselves about how we created something in the circumstances we were in
Thank you for reading!
If you'd like more Big Idea Summaries like this, please do join the email list.
And follow me on Twitter! 
Sincerely,
Justin
My new favourite substack. Thanks, Justin!