Growth · · ·

March 2024, reading through Hacker News Who Is Hiring Thread, I saw a job profile that fits me. I liked it so much that I reached out to the author that same night on LinkedIn (Co-founder & CTO). My profile based on previous employment alone would signal a misfit, but everything I do day-to-day in my own time tells a different story, this is my passion and I do it non-stop. Nevertheless, it was an uphill battle to convince the CTO to get on the phone with me. I basically wrote a 3-pages cover letter about my profile and how it matches their job description. He decided I should get a chance to go through their process, but ultimately they hired someone else who’s more experience with their stack. No hard feelings.

Last month I published From the Shadows to the Feed: Why I’m Finally Playing the Game . Since then, I have been honored with ~3.5k new followers. Superlinear growth is something I’m addicted to; I crave it in anything and everything I do in my life. Once I have the fundamentals down, I obsess over growth rates, getting better at a higher-than average pace is an absolute necessity to me.

Getting a job, however, in this market, was the opposite of superlinear. It was a death-by-a-thousand-cuts. I had already been dabbling with AI/LLMs for the past year or so, and I could foresee what was coming. I told my very supportive better half that I will not be applying for jobs because it’s a waste of time, and that given all indicators, I have to pivot and fully focus on AI, and invest heavily in it right now.

That’s how I came to build my AI Cluster . I sat down by the hours learning, experimenting, and stressing out about that bet I am taking on myself. I relaunched my website , started blogging, and started putting the time into making myself seen. Tweeting, trying to say hey, I am that kinda-famous user on r/LocalLLaMA .

I am here. I am good at what I do. I just don’t know how to get you to see it. Every now and then I would shamelessly, insert my AI server into replies when it’s relevant. I got invited to livestreams and accepted right away. I started hosting audio spaces on X/Twitter. I tweeted more and more frequently, engaged with people, made friends. I blogged some more. Wrote articles on X because the algo. Started my own YouTube channel. Livestreamed some stuff. Got invited to more live streams and more spaces… Finally, some superlinear growth.

But that’s not what this article is about.

When you’re playing the same game as everybody else, you’re pouring everything you’ve got into a game that was never designed to favor you. Unless you have an unfair advantage, you’re just gambling.

What’s my unfair advantage? What makes my profile hunted for? My focus immediately shifted to that after the experience I mentioned at the beginning of the article. I decided to stop playing the game with rules that aren’t meant to make me win. I’ll become the huntee.

In December last year, 3 months from my first blogpost and any of the activity I spoke of above, I cold emailed ~3-4 dozens of AI startups that were hiring on Hacker News. I pretty much wrote a paragraph about myself, attached links to a few of the things I have posted and built, and asked if they’d be interested in chatting.