“‘I remember’ is more meaningful than ‘I love you.'”
I was catching up with an college friend over the holidays who’s now in a wonderfully happy relationship now, when once upon a time, she once doubted her ability to fall in love again. And as we were talking about what makes this guy special compared to all the other ones, she said: “Because he remembers the small things.”
“I love you”, while great for Hallmark movies, often feels empty if not paired with action. And more often than not, actions speak louder than words. Remembering that whenever they order they pick the carrots out of the salad, so you order salad without the carrots. Remembering their bucket list and making it a quarterly goal to check something off that bucket list.
Separately, I caught up with a friend who runs investors relations (IR) for a large multi-stage firm. Someone I’ve heard from many—colleagues, LPs, founders, even her friends—that she is one of the most thoughtful people in the world, which seems to be “easy” for her because she has a great memory and they “don’t”. For a blogpost that will come out next year, we were talking about IR best practices and what her CRM looks like. And I can say it’s accident that she comes off with great memory. There are details she tracks in there that no sane capital formation professional would actively track. One’s go-to coffee order. Their children’s birthdays. Their anniversary. Their first day on the job. And so on. What is that James Clear line again? “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
This past year was a year where I found myself remembering. How I got here. Did I even want to be here? Why did I want to be here? Who helped me get here? What they did? What might’ve seemed like an accident, but was a subconscious habit or intention? Even to the point I’ve asked several guests on the podcast, if they always knew they wanted to be where they are today. How did they know? When did they realize it? Given how personal some of the answers got, we had to leave quite a few on the editing floor. (Sorry.)
I left Alchemist close to the beginning of this past year. 2025 was also the first year since I started where I didn’t share my birthday resolutions on this blog. Largely because I didn’t know if I needed to add more to my list of things to do, but rather subtract things.
And now I’m writing this on the last day of the year, as it felt right to recap on the year only after the year was done. (Almost done.)
2025’s Most Popular
Most of my writing this year centralized around LP/GP dynamics. More so than any previous year.
Which is funny. I started this humble blog as a public FAQ. I used to—still do—get quite a few messages often asking for the same advice. I’ve always disliked giving general advice. A piece of advice is only as great as the situation in which you use it in. But most people ask generic questions. And generic questions often get generic advice. Nevertheless, I’ve always erred on the side of sharing the circumstance in which the advice is given when I do share generic advice, except when the advice, in my experience, applies to most people I talk to. And it’s funny that of this year’s most popular blogposts, four definitely include generic advice. Two arguably more circumstantial. But proportionally, even looking back at my most popular blogposts, the furthest reaching ones often house FAQs that most people can relate to. Or know someone that can relate to it.
Without further ado, my most popular pieces of writing this year:
- Hustle as a Differentiator — I don’t know how ‘hustle’ went up in search volume this year, but it did. At least in terms of how people found this essay. But I also think people like stories and tactical examples of when and how hustle beat everything else. And this is the blogpost for that. Also, the only one of the top six not written this year.
- If 198 Pieces of Unsolicited, (Possibly) Ungooglable Advice for Founders Were Not Enough — The third installation of my 99 pieces of tactical founder advice series. Admittedly, not surprised this went far. Sometimes great content is hard to find. And every time I publish a collection, like this, I hope it becomes the Dewey Decimal Classification for good, tactical content in the innovation ecosystem.
- Dear LP — I wrote the sister blogpost of this first. But an emerging manager asked me to write that calls LPs out on their bad behavior. Not a good reason to write a piece in my opinion, until the subsequent weeks’ worth of LP conversations left me frustrated at LP behavior myself. This is also the blogpost where I had more than a handful of friends reach out to ask if I was okay. Which I was and am. This essay was the therapy I needed.
- Good Misses and Bad Hits — Most outcomes in venture aren’t clear until a decade later. And when they are, so much of our past memory atrophies that for many of us, we can’t pattern match to why we made the decisions we did. Inspired by our Golden State celebrity, we decided to write a piece on what it means to measure inputs before the outputs and how we can course correct before it’s too late.
- Dear Emerging Manager — Born out of frustration with emerging managers who seem to be living under a rock. But also a realization that not every GP has the vantage point that LPs do. In fact, most don’t. So this letter was hopefully helpful to debunk some of the myths GPs have.
- Goldilocks and the 3 Secondaries — One of my favorite pieces I co-wrote this year with Dave, as it is one of the most tactical and intellectually rigorous pieces this year, but also a great mathematical exercise of how much of your private stake in a company to sell, when, and to whom.
All-Time Most Popular
2025 was the year I took a step back from promoting any of this blog’s content online. I also took down any vestigial pages that asked for a subscription within the first 10 seconds of browsing a page on this blog. I simply wanted this blog to be my safe harbor, my personal diary on my journey week by week. I realized that every time I actively promoted my blog on social media, I felt a part of me die.
Unlike Superclusters, this blog isn’t meant for one particular audience. While this blog has grown over time and I’m thankful to each and every one of you who has joined me in this journey, and while I had many an opportunity to do a sponsored blogpost, selling any piece of this virtual real estate felt disingenuous. It felt that I was selling a part of my soul. Because every week when I write, I write about whatever I want to write about. I don’t have an agenda. I merely write to write.
And the way I felt most true to myself was to no longer pursue any marketing of this blog. The only reason any of the afore-mentioned blogposts in the last section made its way to new audiences is that I’m lucky to have readers like you share things with the world, while I’ve hermitized.
As such, any growth of this blog this year is because of you, not me. For that and more, I am deeply thankful. Nevertheless, the all-time most popular blogposts haven’t varied much compared to last year, except for our lucky number five. Interestingly enough, I didn’t even write that one this year.
- The Science of Selling – Early DPI Benchmarks — Honestly, it still surprises me that this is my most popular one to date. Not because I think it’s a bad topic—in fact, I truly believe it’s a much needed discussion as venture funds face liquidity crunches and the asset class institutionalizes—but because, I think it’s still a niche topic that is not widely searched for. But I’m glad that people are searching for answers here. This one also led me to write its sister piece here, which ranked 6th for this year’s most popular.
- The Non-Obvious Emerging LP Playbook — My first piece that felt like it went viral. And the one that taught me how much dialogue is needed in this world around investing in venture funds.
- 10 Letters of Thanks to 10 People who Changed my Life — Another surprise that this topic of gratitude is as enduring as it is. Hopefully, this will play a small part in helping create a more grateful world. We stand on the shoulders of giants. It’s always important to never forget that fact.
- 99 Pieces of Unsolicited, (Possibly) Ungooglable Startup Advice — The OG collection I put together on 99 pieces of tactical advice for founders. This is the one that led to the one I wrote for investors, and all future series under the ’99’ nomination.
- Hustle as a Differentiator — Only a matter of time that this one beat out the one I wrote about how to host fireside chats. 🙂
2025’s Most Memorable
It’s always deeply interesting to me that sometimes the blogposts I spend the most time writing and/or are the ones that resonate with me the most personally don’t always go the furthest. A constant reminder that what the world might like, what you might like, may vary from what I like. From time to time, I get small notes from you that an esoteric, but deeply personal blogpost peaks your interest. And it really makes my day. For a very brief 24 hours, if only to relish in the small joys in life, I save those notes for when I feel imposter syndrome. Trust me, it happens. Not because the readership is highest, but because it’s nice to know I’m not alone in my peculiar, sometimes really nerdy interests.
The below I will list, in no particular order, as each meant something to me at the time of writing each, as well as moving forward:
- Goldilocks and the 3 Secondaries — Same rationale as above. And if you want the actual model we used to model when and how much to sell on the secondary market, it’s in there.
- Flaws, Restrictions, and Limitations — Inspired by Brandon Sanderson’s framework for character development, I’ve found this framework quite useful when assessing how risky an investment is into an emerging manager.
- Dear LP — Pure therapy.
- Dear Emerging Manager — Same as the above. Free therapy for myself. Hopefully helpful to the world.
- The Question Off — One of my favorite drills I did this year to be a more thoughtful conversationalist, with none other than the best sparring partner out there, Kevin Kelly.
- On Re-Ups — I’m an emerging LP. I haven’t been allocating to venture funds for over a decade, and so I’m still learning. This year, for the first time, I had managers I invested in, in previous vintages, come back and ask for me to re-up. Rather than do so haphazardly, I had to build a system for when it makes sense for me to re-up. This is it.
- Gratitude and Deal Flow — One of my favorite re-framings on who I choose to invest in. And I couldn’t spell out why I liked certain managers over other great ones until a friend spelled it out for me.
- Intro Policy — Another piece for personal therapy. Since writing this, it’s been much easier for myself to decide when to make intros.
- 300 WhatsApp Messages Later: Our Risk Framework for Backing Emerging VCs — One of the beauties of collaborating with someone brilliant—I’m looking at you, Ben—is that I learn something new as I am writing this alongside my co-author. Iron sharpens iron. And it was through this piece, that I built a more robust risk framework to evaluate emerging managers.
- Scientists, Celebrities and Magicians — Kudos to my friend, Michael, for teaching me his framework for how a professional can be a triple threat, which I’ve since applied to the world of venture. And how different investors and leaders spike.
- Referencing Excellence — The more I invest as an LP, the more important I realize how important reference calls are. The more important I realize they are, the more I realize I need to refine the way I get to the truth. Unfortunately, there’s no silver bullet, but this blogpost led me down my first real personal exploration for how to do references my way.
There is but one personally memorable blogpost I will intentionally leave out of the above list. It is the only one I’ve gone back to edit not once, not twice, but four times this year. Let’s call it an easter egg. If you do find it somehow, just know that I plan to continue updating that piece next year as well.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
If you want to check out the past few years, you’ll find them encased in amber here:
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The views expressed on this blogpost are for informational purposes only. None of the views expressed herein constitute legal, investment, business, or tax advice. Any allusions or references to funds or companies are for illustrative purposes only, and should not be relied upon as investment recommendations. Consult a professional investment advisor prior to making any investment decisions.