stand on the shoulders of giants
Commuting between Los Angeles and San Francisco for the last six months has been a much more cathartic experience than I thought it was going to be.
Alarm goes off 4:00 sharp, by 4:15 I’m calling my ride to LAX while getting ready (it takes up to 20’ to get a car in Venice this early). I’m at the airport anytime between 5:00 and 5:30 for a 6:30 takeoff.
By 8:30 I’m dropping my carry on at level 6 on Market St. It’s a very efficient journey and leaves ample time for breakfast.
This is not the first long distance commute of my professional career. Last year I spent three months living between London and Paris - two thirds of the distance, twice as cumbersome of a journey. Bottom line, despite its age California infrastructure unlocks another level of business.
Old news, I know. However, living and working here really opens your eyes to how simple the most basic infrastructure layers truly are (city blocks, building codes, air travel, etc.).
Ask any engineer, simple infrastructure it’s easy to maintain and scale. This has allowed for an extremely efficient development. I can argue that it takes Switzerland more units of collective effort than it does to California to organize into a functional society, come over I’ll show you.
Infrastructure matters. In life (ie. a loving family) or business (ie. processes) whether you are building or using them these protocols allow for different systems to thrive.
My fascination started early, and I don’t expect anyone to be as excited as me about the topic yet the way that I use it as a framework to break down the world around me may be interesting to some of you.
Start small. Don’t reinvent the wheel.
Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Take full advantage of the infrastructure that’s already been built. Do you need to code your own blog? What’s the opportunity cost relative to the expected output? Why isn’t Squarespace good enough?
Go big or go home.
If you understand the problem so well, code the blogging platform not the blog.
Don’t build an insurance offering, build a system that could allow anyone to sell their own offering through you.
Don’t build a payroll product, build a tax engine that solves the problem for anyone like you.
Build the grid not the application.
👋🏼hello, I’m fabri. founder, investor, employee and advisor
working with startups, helping them grow
