Here is your week’s edition of Never Enough, a few things I’ve been exploring.
- My pal Ryan Norbauer used to run one of the top web development agencies in North America, which is how we became friends. A few years ago, he shut down his agency and started a…luxury keyboard atelier? I thought he had lost his mind. I’ve always just used the Apple Magic Keyboard and not thought twice about it. Then he sent me one of his $5,000 keyboards. Yes, you read that correctly. A fucking $5,000 keyboard. It felt like unboxing a Rolex, with a certificate of authenticity and everything, and it’s made of titanium. After a few months with it, I’m a convert. It’s one of the most absurd luxuries that I’ve enjoyed lately, but it has made typing (including these very words) an absolute pleasure. If you are having a midlife crisis, I highly recommend buying one of his keyboards. Much more satisfying than a red Porsche.
- I hate burning money unnecessarily. To this day, nothing grinds me more than realizing that some SaaS software company has been billing one of my companies thousands of dollars for a product we no longer use. As we’ve grown, though, I found it tough to stay on top of this. We have 40+ companies, and ultimately we have bigger fish to fry—but this stuff matters. It adds up. Death by a thousand paper cuts. So, we launched a new company to solve this. It’s called Tech Source. They dig through your P&L for SaaS + hosting + API expenses, cut what you aren’t using, and negotiate the best possible price on the ones you are. They take a small monthly retainer then charge you a percent of the savings. Tell them I sent you.
- Jesper Kouthoofd, founder of popular Swedish clothing brand Acne, also lost his mind like my friend Ryan. He left the fashion industry to start an uber-cool design-y audio product company called Teenage Engineering. I recently bought their podcasting microphone, the CM-15, and it’s a thing of beauty. Most podcast mics look straight out of Howard Stern’s 90’s radio studio. This thing looks like it was designed by Dieter Rams.
- You may have seen the news, but we partnered with Dr. Andrew Huberman (from HubermanLab fame) and bought a majority stake in a yerba mate company called Mateina. I’ve been drinking the stuff daily for over a year now and it is by far the best caffeine delivery system around (120mg of caffeine without the jitters + mild appetite suppression). Andrew Huberman has worked with them over the past six months on a new sugar-free version, which we just launched.
- Starting at around age five, I roamed my neighborhood in a pack with my friends. I remember being essentially free range. Apparently, kids don’t do that anymore, and it’s bad for them. I read an article by Mariana Brussoni about how kids need to take risk and do semi-dangerous things in order to develop confidence. I found the following quote and chart particularly alarming:
“Between 1975 and 2015, outdoor play among UK children decreased by 29.4%, while screen-based activities increased by 22.4%. In the U.S., only 16% of children in 1997 played outdoors every day. By 2003—just six years later—that dropped even further to 10%.”
It’s Never Enough. Until next week,
Andrew
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