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But I learned this over time, as I was living my life, and I think what I did right is I acted on it, instead of just saying "That's suboptimal." Eventually, I took the plunge and I changed things. And I keep changing them. There's still some things that aren't perfect, and I keep adjusting with it. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** So I was thinking more long along the lines of the embracing change philosophy, and change being constant, and randomness, where people - they want to have that safety, they want to have that structure... But structure more in terms of "This is where I work. I've been working here for nine years. I se... |
**Daniel Vassallo:** Yeah. And I think one technique that I really like is the idea of negative visualization, that I think applies to everyone, no matter on what end of the spectrum you lie, whether you prefer the structure, stability, whatever, or more chaotic sort of arrangements... You should be thinking of what wo... |
\[45:53\] But if you realize that you're in a bad spot, that you're unlikely to get hired maybe because your skills are now -- you know, something I realized for example when I was working at Amazon, in these senior positions, at big companies... There's probably only maybe ten companies in the world that would want th... |
So it's not a pleasant thing to think about the bad things that could happen, but I think it's a technique to, paradoxically, improve your peace of mind. In my course I like to use the example of the preppers, the survivalists, who worry about a volcano erupting... What do they do? They don't just worry about it and sa... |
So I would recommend everyone to do this... To think about the worst-case scenarios and how you would react to them. Sometimes you realize all you need is a little bit of planning; maybe you can buy some insurance, maybe if you have some emergency fund savings, you're in a much better spot... Maybe you realize you need... |
Some of the people in our community like having some side hustles for this season, to know that if I were to get disrupted, I have something independent that's going on. Yes, it might only be 10% of my income, not something significant, but if I were to get disrupted or affected significantly, there's something I could... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Yeah. I think that what you do is really important; what you do in your job is really important. I think you have the same mentality, because I've seen you quoting Leonardo da Vinci... It was just a screenshot, where Leonardo - he talks about what he does, not who he is, or what he is. |
**Daniel Vassallo:** Yeah, the labels thing. I really like that. So do not describe yourself with -- I'm not a programmer. I can do this. Like, once you automize your assets, your skills, I think, again, you start seeing opportunities. Leonardo da Vinci - he could have called himself a sculpturer, or a painter. But the... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Yeah. So to continue on that thought, I've read somewhere - I can't remember where - that you also happen to be head of product at Gumroad. Is that true? |
**Daniel Vassallo:** I used to. So I did this for a couple of years. And this was another thing, actually, related to what I've been talking about. So long story short, I was using Gumroad to sell my own products for a while. I got to know the CEO of Gumroad, Sahil, over Twitter, just because - you know, business relat... |
\[50:04\] One fine day, random day, it was August 2020, pandemic period, I remember I was just scrolling Twitter... And I saw Sahil posted a "We're hiring" tweet. And it was mostly programming jobs in areas that I had no knowledge in; sort of Android development, and some other things... But I clicked out of curiosity,... |
At the very, very bottom of the page - it was a long page, with lots of technical job openings - there was an asterisk, and Sahil said, "Eventually, I'm looking for somebody to help me with product management at Gumroad." And I thought - again, I never had a product management role in my life, specifically it was never... |
We jumped on the phone the next day< and I started doing it. So I did it for a couple of years, until May of last year, I think. I was doing this on a very -- it was a freelancing gig, essentially. It was a contract type job, helping the Gumroad engineering teams sort of prioritize things, prioritize features, scope... |
One thing in my portfolio - again, in the meantime I was doing several, four or five other things... But this was a nice income stream; eventually Gumroad grew so much that it sort of became almost impossible to keep up with everything happening. That's why primarily I stopped, because it was quite a nice arrangement, ... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** That's very nice. Thank you for sharing. Okay. So you were a software engineer, now you're a jack of all trades: whatever takes your fancy. No labels. We already cover that part. I'm wondering, how do you take your ideas and put them out in the world. I would call it "ship it", just to go with the sho... |
**Daniel Vassallo:** \[53:50\] To be completely honest, I think it's probably one of the least important things to me. Whatever it's easiest. I like Gumroad, because it was less friction. The fact that Gumroad had a well-defined style, I didn't have to think about what fonts to choose, what color to use, whether the ti... |
To me personally, the most important thing when you launch something isn't your tech stack, or whatever, it's how you're going to get attention to your product, and how you build credibility with what you're offering... Which are obviously not engineering or technical topics. Because to me, if you put something online ... |
And by the way, actually, related to Gumroad, I think putting something on Gumroad helps a little bit; not a lot. But by placing something on Gumroad - many people use Gumroad every day. It has - I think Sahil shared some numbers recently - millions of buyers per month, or per year, I forgot. Many people already have t... |
But what's most importantly is "How can I bring attention to this page? What am I going to use? Is it my Twitter audience? Is it my email list? Is it search engine results? Is it paid ads? Is it word of mouth? Is it talking on public forums, communities on Reddit, Hacker News?", whatever. And once I get people, how can... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Yeah, that's very wise advice, again. Do the simplest thing for you, without wasting too much time. If simple means wasting a lot of time, then reconsider that. |
**Daniel Vassallo:** And remember, you always have the option of improving later, right? Rarely you paint yourself in a corner with these things. There are some cases where you could, but I think most of the time you can always optimize, and improve, migrate, or whatever. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** So this year, to me, it feels like it started yesterday. Obviously, it's been almost a month now. So we're still in January, but by the time you're listening to this it'll be February. So even though one month out of 12 are gone, I'm wondering how do you think of 2023? Do you have something in mind th... |
**Daniel Vassallo:** Honestly, nothing very specific. I got to approach it like I've approach 2022, 2021 and 2020, with just an open mind, taking care of my downside. My main concern, my only goal, I would say, is to sustain my current lifestyle and to not go back to a nine to five job. I know it's not the end of the w... |
\[58:10\] So the attitude of doing whatever it takes to maintain this, I think it's a helpful attitude for me. As I mentioned before, I almost feel incapable of being highly creative, highly productive, unless I feel the need to. So right now things are going well, I have sort of this routine, I'm doing these regular c... |
But again, I recognize that this thing might not last. No idea whether by the end of 2023 it's still going to be working as it is today. It could be much worse, it could be even better, or anything in between. But I'm fine with that. I'm still with my eyes open, and if I run into some idea, some opportunity, I have lot... |
So I think I would be foolish to try to predict where 2023 will end, and again, for the type of personality that I have, I think I like it this way. Some people might say, "Oh my God, it would be a nightmare for me to not know what I would be doing, how much I would be making", but I realized actually I think I need th... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Yeah. |
**Daniel Vassallo:** So a vague answer, unfortunately, but -- |
**Gerhard Lazu:** No, no, no. That was spot on. Honestly, if people know you, and they've been following you for a while, this matches everything else you've been putting out there. This is you. |
**Daniel Vassallo:** And I would add, I think this is a common theme that I've been hearing with many other creators and entrepreneurs, that what they're doing right now is something that a year ago, two years ago they would have never imagined to be doing. I think there's an important takeaway about that, because agai... |
I'd like to say - you know, New Year's was relatively recently, and many people put new year's resolutions, some that are professionally related, "I want to finish/publish a book before the end of the year", or something like that. And I dislike these very specific things, because again - yes, it might be a noble goal ... |
\[01:02:26.29\] So it's okay to have goals that are broad, for example "I want to be able to cover my expenses with my self-employment income this year", because there's a million ways to do that. "I want to continue to live my current lifestyle" or "I want to make $100,000 before this year" - that's a decent goal, bec... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Yeah. You mentioned $100,000 per year, which reminded me of something that you wrote not that long ago... "Y'all need to make six sales per day of $45 each to make $100,000 per year." I think that puts things a little bit in perspective for people that think it's a huge thing. It's not. With the right... |
Okay, so as we were preparing to wrap up, for the people that stuck with us all the way to the end, is there a takeaway that you'd like them to have from our conversation? |
**Daniel Vassallo:** Yeah, I think what I'd like to recommend people is to recognize that life and business are much more random than they seem. A mistake that I think we tend to all make, and even I make sometimes, is just believing that things are much more linear... And I think, especially in business, the things th... |
\[01:05:22.12\] So what's critical is just to avoid a game overstate. And then lots of small, different techniques that I think become obvious and more much more clear once you realize that you're operating in a completely different domain. That what works isn't predictable, the payoffs are not very predictable... Wher... |
So I think the antidote to this is, again, very prudent risk-taking, reducing the efforts we put, tinkering, small experiments, taking care of the downside, negative visualization, "What would happen if this project that I'm working on doesn't work out? Will I become depressed? Will it put me in a bad financial situati... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Yeah. |
**Daniel Vassallo:** So I hope that helps people, or at least give them some food for thought... Not necessarily to embrace everything, but at least to reconsider how to approach highly uncertain activities that are different than a project that your boss might give you. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** The predictable world versus the stochastic world. That was one term that - even though I have heard it before, small bets, it really stuck with me the way you presented it; the way you made people think what type of game are they playing. Because it's all a game at the end of the day. We are Homo Lud... |
**Daniel Vassallo:** Or you happen to be playing. Sometimes I think we don't recognize - are we operating in this world, or the other world? So recognizing it is important. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Alright. Daniel, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you very much. |
**Daniel Vassallo:** Thank you, Gerhard. This was great. Good conversation. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Have a great day, everyone. |
**Daniel Vassallo:** Thank you. |
• The guest speaker Florian Forster and host Gerhard Lazu discuss a talk on switching from Kubernetes to serverless containers |
• Reasons for switching include scalability limitations in Kubernetes and better cost profiles with serverless containers |
• Serverless containers refer to running OCI images without managing underlying infrastructure, similar to AWS Fargate or Google Cloud Run |
• Florian has been working with Kubernetes since its early days, around 2014-2015, and has a deep understanding of its complexities |
• He compares Kubernetes to an "operating system" that requires too much management and abstraction for his company's needs |
• The discussion touches on the concept of "serverless" and alternative terms such as container-as-a-service |
• Florian is currently the CEO/CTO of Citadel, where he focuses on overall vision, business side, and easing operational stress |
• Citadel's purpose and functionality |
• Citadel's architecture and components (key cloaks, zero trust model) |
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