Hi,
Not a very long note today. Something Profound? is now a year old. I thought I’ll look back on this milestone and share some thoughts.
I started writing this series of essays a year ago. Covid was on, my Solo GP fundraise1 wasn’t going very well and there are only so many books, movies and music one can consume.
The name was a joke. I was pretty sure that I would be writing into the great void. Turns out, people actually read it. So that happened.
As I write this today, this community has about 5k members and we are adding about 50-60 new subscribers every week right now. I had no idea so many of you would be interested in reading anything that I write. Thank you.
Perhaps the biggest value add for me personally has been interacting with you. Every post now brings 50-60 emails with some deep insights in them2.
Over the last year, we have meandered over fairly wide ground - from crypto to benchmarking studies for D2C and subscription businesses. I would love to hear from you on what you would like to see covered or changes in style. I will not back away from Lex Luthor jokes but I will be happy to add or delete if something is missing or superfluous.
One criticism has been that I have not written more about my fountain pens except for a single post early on. Well, mostly because I have trimmed my hoard down to about 14 pens now. So most of the expensive stuff has been sold off - I have only retained the nibs that I really like. One of the stars of that list is my Pelikan M1000 - but we like to overpay for our MontBlancs so there’s that. My ink collection is now 27 bottles of all shades. I don’t think i’ll be able to finish it in my lifetime.
Others who have known me personally have asked me why I haven’t put my photography here. I almost did. But then it seemed out of place. This isn’t a travel blog. Discussing f-stops will be enjoyable for the 3 people who are rabidly into the hobby but everyone else will be bored.
Alright then, I’ll sign off now. If you haven’t yet written to me - please do, even if it is to just shoot the shit. It’s purely personal - Your emails have given me so many new points of views - it has been absolutely mindblowing.
Next post will be on intercity food deliveries. The P/NP one is still pending. At this point I hope I finish it before Winds of Winter comes out. .
Stay safe.
Vatsal.
There will be an essay on it someday, just not in the near future.
There was also this one person who just wrote an email to me containing “Fuck You” 300 times. You know who you are. I have questions for you, most important one of which is - Why 300 times? Why not 301, or 299? 600 words could have said a lot. What did I do that deserved 300 FUs, nothing more and nothing less.? Because after that you have been perfectly gentlemanly. bewildering.