Greetings Everyone :)  

For those new to this newsletter, welcome! Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or learn more about me at my new bio page. I’ve decided to merge a few lists from over the years into this general newsletter, so feel free to duck out at any time via the unsubscribe link in your email. Or - if you’d like to follow specific topics as I post them - check out my new subscribe page on Satchel, a new publishing platform that I’m excited to introduce today.  

First of all, thank you for following my work. Most of you have opted-in within the last ~5 years via a subscribe link buried at the bottom of one of my articles, but a handful of you have been engaging for much longer. Thank you!  

Today, I have some fun news to share. Over the past decade, I’ve wrestled with how to post to a newsletter with subscribers interested in one or two of the topics I mainly write about (i.e. health science, blockchains, startups, and software development). 

I’ve also never enjoyed dealing with the ensemble of newsletter services and publishing platforms out there. Having to copy/paste content everywhere, dealing with formatting issues, syncing multiple copies when editing, etc. is less than ideal.

So, putting on my venture-building and software-developer hat, I decided to co-found a new service:  

Introducing Satchel: a simplified newsletter and publishing platform for creators and their communities

^^ Visit the link above to read the fuller story and motivation for why my partners and I believe Satchel is both needed and good for the world (especially now).

On the personal front, I wanted the ability to write emails/articles in Google Docs, send/publish with one click without doing the copy/paste thing, and allow subscribers to follow and engage in the topics they cared about most.

For example, those of you interested in insulin/glucagon sensitivities aren’t necessarily staying up at night thinking about Redux patterns or decentralized governance.

Therefore, I’m only planning to write this general newsletter occasionally when I have something to say on all my main topics (or something notable comes up), and those interested in following specific topics I write about more regularly can subscribe directly.

For now, here’s what I’m planning to work on within each main subject:

• Health Science - during the COVID-19 era I spent another 30 days wearing a continuous glucose monitor (my first 30 days was last summer). I wanted to test out both the Whoop and Oura Ring in comparison to Apple Watch when it came to monitoring and optimizing sleep and workout performance. My key “N=1” experiment during this time was eating only one meal a day, which I’ve been doing since last Halloween about six times per week. I’ll be writing up the results in a series of posts this summer, so jump over to my subscribe page and click “health science” to follow along as I write them. 

• Blockchains - all eyes are on the various “Ethereum Killers” out there, and whether Ethereum itself will be functionally more than a DeFi platform. I’m going to be posting some notes/write-ups on the various groups I’m following, and - as a side note - I’m going to be sharing the indicator system I’ve been using since 2017 for deciding how to make short-to-mid-term trades in crypto markets. While not perfect, it’s proved reasonably helpful.  

• Startups - many of you may remember Startup Rocket, the SaaS platform I co-founded a few years ago that helps entrepreneurs build better companies. I finished the 34th and final article in a deep-dive series on pre-seed startup operations last fall. I’ve been preparing “the book”; updating articles, working on a new framework model based on feedback from founders, etc… I enjoy helping founders think through an idea and take the first steps toward validating, building, and scaling their product/company. For those not familiar, this is what I do at my day-job as a General Partner at Prota Ventures. My job allows me to co-found projects like Satchel and Startup Rocket, and invest in founders building ventures independently or as part of an innovation department of a larger organization.

• Software Development - I am teaching my 14-yr old son to be a software development apprentice with Prota this fall, and I’m planning to share the curriculum I’m writing for him more broadly. I’m planning to create two tracks, one geared toward those new to code, and one geared toward rapidly getting developers up to speed on Rails/Redux/React. See this post for why I have historically - and still do enthusiastically - recommend this software stack for startups.

That’s it for now. I have some other exciting announcements to share this summer, so stay tuned.

Thanks for reading!

~Will