New beginnings
Living in public: Getting back on Substack, exploring the healthcare space, and, being a founder dad
When we first started blogging in the late 1990s, we mostly shared about our lives. If you are old enough, like I am, you might remember the colourful blogger websites and glittery, animated cursors. Then two things happened.
Social media platforms, such as Twitter and Instagram, gave people an easier way to share and to share more frequently. Now we share what we think, eat, and see in real time.
Content marketing became a thing. Now we have to write articles with a purpose. To educate or to entertain. To be seen as smart or funny. While businesses started this trend (and I was a part of it, writing content at Buffer), individuals also became publishers.
I miss the times when blogging was more casual. When people were writing to themselves—their future selves—in their online diary. Yes, I want to read smart analyses and entertaining stories. But I also want to know the person behind the words.
There was “build in public” (again something I was a part of while at Buffer), then “learn in public” (popularized by swyx). How about “live in public”? Where we share not only our highs and lows, but also the mundane. Not in the cringey-LinkedIn-posts way but the aesthetic-YouTube-vlog way. It’s less about a polished narrative and more about honest storytelling. Less about looking smart, more about being candid. Less about short tweets and Instagram stories, more about long essays and vlogs.1
Some people might ask, “What’s the value of this?” If I can inspire even a single person who is feeling like an imposter and out of their depth, to be bolder and bet more on themselves (maybe my son in 30 years), because someone as ordinary as me can try and so can they, that would be, to me, valuable enough.
With that, here are three “live in public” updates from me:
Back on Substack
Good news!
I’m going to write more—again. I have made this a goal for probably every year for the last decade. But for various reasons, I failed most of the time. Hopefully, this time, with Substack, will be different.
After several back-and-forths between posting on my personal site and publishing on my Substack, I came back to Substack because I want to focus on just writing. To publish on my personal site, I have to write in markdown, add code for images and videos, and deploy the new files. And to email my subscribers, I have to copy all the content into ConvertKit, re-upload the images and videos, and format them. With Substack, I just write and publish.
There are some downsides, though. I’m building on someone else’s platform; I have less control over the branding and style; I cannot transfer the SEO juice to my own site. No marketers, including myself, would let me do this. But ultimately, my goal is to publish and Substack will make it easier. Everything else doesn’t matter if I don’t publish anything. I can also export my subscriber list from Substack if I eventually want to move away. I think it’ll be alright.
What will I be writing about? Here’s a snippet from my updated About page:
What to expect here?
Chaos! But hopefully beautiful chaos.
Since I became a founder dad, I have been surviving day to day. But I want to do better. Writing helps me think, so I want to use this platform to help me figure things out one by one.
I will be writing about my experiences and challenges as a founder dad and sharing my thoughts and lessons in technology, AI, startups, behavioral science, and design. These will be letters to myself but you are welcome to read them.
If this no longer matches what you are looking for, feel free to unsubscribe. No hard feelings. I have also unsubscribed from many newsletters to improve my information diet.
If you are going to stay around, awesome! Let’s try to make this interactive. Feel free to reply to my emails or comment on my posts. It will be interesting to try Substack’s chat feature too.
Exploring the healthcare space
Maybe because we were getting old. Or maybe because I have a kid now. My cofounder Swee Kiat and I have been reflecting on what we want to do in life and what impact we want to make.
While building Pebblely has been great, we want to work on something more meaningful to us. Healthcare is a fundamental need for our society but it is burdened with many challenges. As technologists, we cannot help but wonder what optimistic, futuristic healthcare looks like. We wrote more about it here:
For me, healthcare touches several parts of my life.
I’m big on managing my own health so that I (hopefully) don’t need healthcare. Selfishly, I just want to live an active and free life, not weighed down by illnesses. I have been a triathlete for 15 years and used to be a sprint canoeist (on the same team as Swee Kiat!) I optimise various parts of my life, such as sleeping at least eight hours every night (before I had my son), eating vegetables and fruits daily, meditating, and journaling. I believe if everyone takes charge of their own health, we can reduce the burden on the healthcare system.
Also, my wife is a doctor, which gives me a glimpse into the healthcare system and its challenges. She rarely eats on her shift, even when she was pregnant with our son. But as hard as she works, there are neverending patients. Despite the hospital staff being overworked, some patients still have to wait hours to see the doctor.
And, like many others, I have several family members with a wide range of health conditions, from high blood pressure to cancer. The strain is not only on those with health conditions but also on their caregivers.
Right now, Swee Kiat’s and my top priority is to understand the space and find problems that we can help solve. We don’t want to come in as arrogant (read: ignorant) engineers thinking we have the perfect technology without understanding what healthcare professionals really need. And, to be honest, there is a possibility that we conclude there is nothing we can do at the moment, given our experience and resources.
We have been talking to doctors, nurses, administrators, professors, and other healthcare professionals. If you are in the healthcare space, especially in the private sector, we would love to chat and understand your work. Here are the areas we have been looking into and people we would love to learn from:
Clinic administrations and operations: Private GPs, especially solo practitioners, clinic assistants, and locums
Remote patient monitoring: Patients with monitoring at home, private nurses who work with remote monitoring, and people working in nursing homes
Data integration and analytics: Administrators, project managers, and engineers building data pipelines and integrations, nurses and doctors who rely on such analytics
Radiology imaging software: Radiologists, radiographers, and anyone who works with medical imaging
AI in healthcare: Anyone involve in exploring, developing, and introducing AI and automation to healthcare institutions
Founder Dads Dot Club
As all tech people do, I irresponsibly buy domains for ideas that I dream of, even if they might never become a reality. A recent purchase is founderdads.club.
The idea is to create a community for founders who are also a dad because I have been struggling to balance these two most important roles in my life. I’m certain there are many like me and we all want to do better. There seem to be many forums for mums but not for dads, let alone founder dads.
This community could start with a group chat on Slack or Discord, then layer on a blog with common Q&As, and then add events. Maybe even merchandises? Founder Dad Dot Club cap, anybody? A dad can dream!
Based on my experiences running communities and meetups, I’d prefer to be selective to keep the quality of the community high. I might even require a subscription fee so that we know one another is serious about our role as a founder dad and are committed to the community. Members will also be more active when they are invested.
Honestly, I don’t have time to work on yet another thing. One of my anti-goals for 2024 is to start a side project. But if you are really keen on such a community or are struggling as a founder dad, please let me know. If there is enough interest, I might actually do it.
Enough about me, what are some mundane updates you would like to share?
Here’s to new beginnings!
If you enjoyed reading this letter, please help me share it with a friend who might enjoy it too. Just a single friend, the one who comes to mind immediately, will do. Thank you!
That said, I do prefer to have some privacy and don’t want to be sharing about my family unless they want it. It is a delicate balance.
I’ve been reading this book called Outlive by Peter Attia recently and it’s been quite insightful on healthcare of the future!