zwendkos

The magic lies not just in the effort itself but in how it is directed. Teller’s months of work burying boxes weren’t random. Sustaining long-term effort toward an uncertain payoff requires more than discipline—it demands resilience and a reimagining of gratification. The real magic, perhaps, lies not in the final trick, but in cultivating a mindset where the process itself becomes fulfilling, where the act of burying boxes is embraced as a craft, not just a means to an end.

Spot on.

FWIW, my company, TrueFire, is one of the industry leaders in music education. We were bootstrapped, focused on a niche of the market first (intermediate to advanced video lessons for blues, jazz, etc = older men with expendable income), and have grown steadily since then. We were just acquired by a private equity firm and merged with another big competitor in the space (JamPlay) to form a new company dedicated to dominating this space. So... it is possible to not go the VC route and be (very) successful, albeit not $Bs.

your music apps are great. wondering if you'd be interested in putting them in front of hundreds of thousands of musicians from around the world via the online leader in guitar instruction (TrueFire, my company) - let me know if you want to learn more - zach at truefire dot com - great work!

This is the most important question.

Very cool! I'm the CXO of TrueFire (leading music education software company with the largest library of online guitar lessons in the world) and would love to find a way to work together to get your notebooks in the hands of our 1+ million students :-) Let's jam on some ideas!

"An Apple a day keeps the doctor away."

Skeptical a bit about "usage-based" billing and interested to hear others' thoughts. Isn't a major profit-driver for many subscription-based businesses the breakage?

Thank you for this. Absolutely great read. Bookmarked!