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What I’ve been up to 🌱
I just moved out to Toronto - at the end of April, I made the difficult decision to move out after spending 21 years at home. I wanted to be available for the summer serendipity, foster new relationships, and especially be in the city for sports and poker during the best few months of the year. One month later, it’s been a blast living here (although I do definitely miss my family).
We’re bullish on AI - I’ve started publishing a series of AI blogs at Onova (beginning with this Generative AI one) that reflects our optimism and excitement on the biggest technological revolution in decades. Let’s talk if you’re interested in popcorning use cases and AI workflows!
I made a $1K bet on content creation - you’re some of the first to hear about this. I’m growing a brand new Instagram account from 0 over the next 90 days. The bet: post every single day from now until the end of August or else lose a significant amount of money. Along with AI, I’m extremely headstrong on brand development as a key factor in the upcoming decade. And I’m trying to prove a point that if you deliver some sort of value, you could cultivate a meaningful following through consistency. We’ll see how that goes.
What I’ve been thinking/learning about 💭
On finding balance - I’ve had events and meetups several times a week since moving to Toronto. It’s been super fun and have been meeting some incredible people - learning from their backgrounds, bouncing off ideas together, and just seeing real growth. I do however see a significant trade-off in time spent on myself and actually executing. Trying to find that sweet spot and rigidly adhering to the optimal equilibrium.
On investing in long-term games with long-term people - I’ve really struggled with justifying my (temporary) leave from the biotech space in the past year. My entire network before this year was all in medicine, academia, and often biotech founders and investors. Now, it’s a pretty different world - more generalist tech, founders and investors, and creators. Every time you leave a circle, you (kind of) lose what you’ve built. I say kind of because what you built will never go away, but without active nurturing, it may stale out. Naval has a great piece on this - to play compounding games. I’ve defaulted to things like event hosting, lifestyle-based content creation, and poker to do so. It’s a way to bridge industries and bring people together: the strength of weak ties at play. Still trying to figure this piece out though, so would appreciate any advice from those who dramatically pivoted. Ultimately though, hearing some fellow immigrants’ story and how this is on a much greater scale than what I am experiencing is truly very humbling, and I have an even greater respect for immigrants trying to make it in different countries.
Lmk if you are (or know someone who is) working on or thinking about the above!
Personal asks 🙏
Any intros to cool people (in the tech, healthcare, creative spaces) in Toronto? Would love to meet if you’re in the city!
What’s next for me ⚡️
Not losing my $1K bet AKA making content daily.
AI workflow experimentation with ChatGPT plugins and Copy.ai
Enjoying this really nice weather in Toronto :D
Thanks for reading this month’s update. Would love to hear how I can help you this month (maybe I can make some intros, work through some thoughts with you, or otherwise). See you next month 👋
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