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25 years together
This photo is 25 years old 🤯
Someone accidentally took it on a film camera during the first days of my relationship with Lera.
It honestly looks like evidence in a criminal case, but I love this photo.
To be fair, back then, this relationship didn’t have much of a chance.
On the left is 18-year-old me. My head was filled with a set of beliefs that I am now ashamed of. A strange cocktail of street codes, rave culture, and the smell of internet cafes.
On the right is a 17-year-old straight-A student, a beauty, and absolute sincerity.
Aladdin and Princess Jasmine. 😄
I still don’t understand how she agreed to a picnic on Trukhaniv Island back then instead of just calling the police.
But we have been together for a quarter of a century now.Lately, we have been reflecting on why we, being so different, built a lasting union (and grew to look alike).
We believe it comes down to simple things. And I want to share them.
We never asked others how to build a family.
We just did what felt right for us. No templates, no someone else’s scripts.Walks.
Our Lucky is no longer with us, but that little guy taught us an important habit that we kept:
Walking twice a day. In any weather.
These walks became the place where closeness and depth are built through conversations (or silence).Humor.
From dumb jokes (which are my responsibility) to subtle inside jokes that only we understand. Humor is one of the simplest threads holding people together.We trust each other.
And we value this trust.
It makes life much simpler when you are responsible for maintaining trust, rather than maintaining control.We are different, and that is okay.
We gave each other the right to stay ourselves. With our own views, reactions… quirks. Without trying to “fix” each other.
And, as it turned out, if you don’t try to change a person, they are very interesting to watch.We never competed in arguments.
Even when they happen, we remember one simple thing: our relationship is more important than winning. We don’t fight for the “I was right” medal.
We always talk things through to the end. We always hug afterward.And in 25 years, we have still never yelled at each other.
Thanks for not calling the police back then.
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Unconditional Solidarity
Czech ultimate players have once again supported Ukraine by donating money to our athletes who are currently defending us in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
However, the most valuable part isn’t even the money, but the story behind this fundraiser.
Last time, I personally asked friends from the Czech community for help, but this time they took everything into their own hands.
On February 24, the anniversary of the full scale invasion, one guy wrote a letter to all teams in the Czech Ultimate Association calling for support.
The first contribution arrived just five minutes later.
Honestly, for me, this collection (done without my direct involvement) is even more precious than the previous one. Most of the donations came from people I do not even know. This is unconditional solidarity. It is when help is based not on personal acquaintance, but on supporting a cause you consider worthy and important.
Thank you so much, friends, from the Ukrainians.
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Why vibe-coding isn’t working (yet)
vibecoder asks claude code to build a chat app, gets a working prototype in 20 minutes, immediately tweets “just killed slack and discord”…
brother you don’t even know what a distributed system is. you don’t know what database replication means. you have no idea how websocket connections behave at scale or what happens when 50k people are online at once and someone’s message needs to show up in 200ms across 3 continents
slack has engineers making $300k+ who have spent a decade solving problems you don’t even know exist yet. race conditions, eventual consistency, message ordering, presence systems, file storage at scale, search indexing across billions of messages
your app works on localhost with 2 connections. that’s not the same thing as “killing slack” that’s a college homework assignment
the prototype is maybe 0.5% of what makes these products actually work in production. the remaining 99.5% is infrastructure, reliability, edge cases, and years of iteration on problems that only surface when real humans use your thing at scale
and the worst part is the confidence. “yeah its not perfect but ai one-shotted it, just need to adjust a few things and deploy” – the few things you need to adjust IS the entire product. thats like pouring a foundation and saying you basically built a skyscraper, just need to adjust a few things
ai is genuinely incredible for building tools and prototypes. i use it every day. but there’s this weird thing happening where people who have never shipped anything to real users at scale now think the hard part of software is writing the first 200 lines of code
it never was bro
@paoloanzn
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Stand-up Lessons for Startups
Stand-up comedians can educate startup founders on how to run a business.
Good comedians are experts at writing dozens of bad jokes, testing all of them on a live audience.
They are more like data scientists than entertainers.
They don’t walk onto a big stage hoping to be funny.
Instead, they spend months in tiny, dark clubs telling bad jokes to small crowds.
They aren’t performing; they’re stress-testing their MVP jokes.
Every silent room is a data point.
Every laugh is a signal.By the time comedians hit the big stage, they aren’t guessing anymore.
They’re delivering an hour of proven hits that the audience already told them worked.That’s not genius. That’s a testing loop with a very honest feedback mechanism.
The part founders miss: comedians will throw away a joke they love if the room stays silent. Not because they have no ego (comedians have enormous egos), but because they’ve learned the room has more authority than their own taste. The audience’s silence beats their conviction, every time.
Founders rarely operate this way.
We fall in love with our ideas and then go looking for evidence they’re good. Comedians do the opposite.
They assume nothing works until the room proves it does.As a founder, your responsibility is to kill your favorite ideas if nobody wants to buy them.
These two videos break down how elite comedians build their MVP systems:
1. Chris Rock’s Secret Sauce:
2. Inspiration is for Amateurs – Jimmy Carr about testing jokes
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A small bridge 🇨🇿🌉🇺🇦
This is a story about how the Czech ultimate frisbee community came together for Ukrainian athletes who are now defending their country.
When Lera and I first discussed this initiative, we were full of doubt. Would it work? Would people care? Was it the right time? But when you aren’t sure, the best thing to do is just try.
I went to a small chat group of Czech beach ultimate players and decided to be fully open. I shared stories of athletes who had traded their team jerseys for body armor and now at war. I asked for support, prepared the post, and then stared at the “send” button for few more hours. Finally, I clicked it and went for a walk to clear my head.
When I returned, the first donations were already there. Then more. And more.
It is hard to explain how much this means. Ordinary people, 1,000 kilometers away, chose to help strangers simply because they believed it was the right thing to do.
My favorite part wasn’t the total sum. It was the messages of solidarity with Ukraine that came with the transfers:
“…It is thanks to you that we can live normally; that cannot even be repaid with money.”
“I consider it my duty.”
“It is a great opportunity to help specific people directly.”
“It’s a good reminder that we regular people can do something on our own.”
“We greatly appreciate your dedication and heroism. I actually perceive your defense as our own—the defense of freedom, democracy, and justice against evil.”
Last week, I sent the money to Anton. He collects donations for our friends—the same people we used to play frisbee with.
I didn’t ask Anton to direct the funds to anyone specific, so I think it was by chance that the donation went toward the needs of my former teammate, Andrii Antoniuk, aka “Android.”
He earned the name for his mechanical stamina; he could run for points on end without a sub, his legs never seeming to tire.
Beyond the sport, he is a super genuine and kind person and a loving father.
Today, Andrii’s stamina is being tested in ways we never imagined. He is fighting on the “zero line” in the infantry. His last mission was brutal: 43 consecutive days on the front, 32 of which his unit spent surrounded, under constant shelling, repelling several infantry assaults. He eventually endured a 3.5-kilometer evacuation while suffering from a broken rib and concussions. He is in the hospital now, recovering.
In the photo, Andrii just before this hellish mission. One last thought: many Ukrainians living abroad feel the same way I do. It feels like we are never helping enough. No matter what we do, it seems small.
But what if this is our small opportunity to help more: to be a bridge. A tiny but vital line connecting the peaceful societies where we live to the front lines in Ukraine. What if we are the link between those who enjoy freedom and those currently fighting to defend it?
Thank you, Czech ultimate community, for standing on that bridge with me. 🇨🇿🇺🇦
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Enjoy your fucking coffee
If I worked at Starbucks, instead of writing people’s names on their coffee cup, I’d write the following:
One day, you and everyone you love will die. And beyond a small group of people for an extremely brief period of time, little of what you say or do will ever matter. This is the Uncomfortable Truth of life. And everything you think or do is but an elaborate avoidance of it. We are inconsequential cosmic dust, bumping and milling about on a tiny blue speck. We imagine our own importance. We invent our purpose—we are nothing.
Enjoy your fucking coffee.
from #1 New York Times Bestseller:
Everything Is F*cked: A Book About HopePS I’m okay and in a good mood. Taking moments to ground myself helps me live a happier life.
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There are no really hard tasks
A lot of people realise this a bit late in life.
There are no really hard tasks.
When something feels big and complicated, it’s usually just a bunch of small, manageable steps hiding inside.
Break the big task into small, clear steps. Put them in the right order. Do them one by one.
And if you stay patient and keep your motivation, you can handle any project.
Just keep going.
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Love data, question everything it tells you
I’m obsessed with data, but I don’t trust it blindly.
Especially when the interpretation comes from a corporation or the media.Take this chart, for example:
You can truthfully say that China and India have either the least educated or the most educated populations.It all depends on which part of the graph you’re looking at. Left or right.
People crave confirmation.
They seek data that supports their worldview and ignore the rest.
They also tend to oversimplify both the data and the world.Just because it’s a fact doesn’t mean it’s not part of a bigger lie.
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My first fiction book since school
Even though I read a lot, this is officially my first fiction book since I was a teenager.
For a long time, I didn’t see the point of fiction. I preferred learning from non-fiction, something useful I could apply right away.Then I realized I was missing something important:
– a deeper understanding of how storytelling works,
– and the chance to see life through the eyes of someone who observes it professionally, like Backman, with his clear and gentle view of everyday people.
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Two Kobe’s quotes about focus and commitment
I played competitive basketball throughout my childhood years.
Like many kids, I looked up to the greats for inspiration, one of whom was Kobe Bryant.
I don’t fully share his mindset or the famous Mamba mentality (and maybe that’s for the best), but I deeply admire his focus and work ethic. Few could match him in those areas.
Once a month, I revisit these two quotes from Kobe:
“I had a purpose: I wanted to be one of the best basketball players who ever played. Anything else was outside of that lane. I didn’t have time for it.”
“I want to see if I can. I don’t know if I can. I want to find out. I’m going to do what I always do: break it down to its smallest form, smallest detail, and go after it. Day by day, one day at a time.”
From these quotes, two key ingredients of Kobe’s success stand out: laser focus and unbreakable commitment.
Once a year, I rewatch the full interview. It always hits differently.
Here I am next to the iconic Kobe Bryant mural in Los Angeles
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B.R.I.D.G.E. 🌉 How to say the hard truths and keep trust
Some things aren’t taught in an MBA.
Like how to say something tough, but necessary.Being brutally honest, while staying respectful and constructive, is a skill every great leader must master.
Here’s a simple framework that helps: BRIDGE.
💬 Background – What happened?
💬 Reason – Why now?
💬 Impact – What’s the effect?
💬 Decision – What needs to happen?
💬 Go – What’s next?
💬 Energise – End with optimism and shared commitmentExample:
Background: Our New Marketing channels are not performing well
Reason: I’m bringing it now because we’ve added only 20 new users this month.
Impact: It’s slowing our momentum and costing us leads.
Decision: We need to review the data and pivot or stop investing.
Go: Let’s align on a plan by Friday and set 30-day goals with weekly check-ins.
Energise: I’m confident we’ll figure it out — and get this rocket off the ground.It’s not tough conversations that damage trust… It’s the ones we avoid.
I am sitting on the oldest Dandalo Bridge in Georgia, built in the 12th century
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Good Day today
Today is an important day, as I’m starting to work on a project that, in my opinion, aligns deeply with my values, beliefs, and passions.
Let’s see where this journey takes me.
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MY 18 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE ARE OUTDATED
MY 18 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE ARE OUTDATED
A year ago, this disturbing thought came to me.
It’s a strange and completely new feeling. Over the last 18 years in tech, e-commerce, and digital, I always thought I was at the leading edge.
After 12 months of learning, applying new tools, and rethinking old patterns, I can now confirm:
MY 18 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE ARE OUTDATEDNo conclusions here. Just sharing my thoughts.
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The environmental cost of being polite to AI
Sam Altman recently tweeted that OpenAI might be spending tens of millions of dollars on electricity… just to process polite messages like please and thank you in ChatGPT.
That got me thinking.
What’s the environmental cost of kindness in the age of AI?I dug a little deeper to get some rough numbers.
As of May 2025, major AI platforms—ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Perplexity and Claude serve around 250 million users daily.
Let’s say every third user throws in five polite words a day.That’s over 600 billion polite tokens per month.
Now for the CO₂ side of things…
Here’s how it adds up:- Total polite words per day
83.3M users × 5 words = 416.7 million words/day - Convert to bytes
416.7M × 5 bytes = 2.08 billion bytes = ~2.08 GB/day - Energy used
2.08 GB × 5 kWh/GB = 10.4 kWh/day - CO₂ emissions
10.4 kWh × 0.4 kg CO₂ = ~4.16 kg CO₂/day
Annual Impact:
4.16 kg/day × 365 = ~1,518 kg CO₂/year
= ~1.5 metric tons CO₂/year🌳 Tree Planting Equivalent ≈ 68 trees/year
That’s not huge. But it’s real.
Kindness costs carbon 🤔
- Total polite words per day
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Biggest threat of software business
For decades, business software was the dream of entrepreneurs.
You find a niche. You build a SaaS product.
You get an average 70% margin.
You take a portion of your profits, hire smart engineers, and turn those investments into a barrier for competitors.
Now you’re protected and life is good…Well, until AI rewrites the rules.
Today, SaaS is more vulnerable than ever.
Last August, I saved this tweet because I was already seeing the same signs in the market:
Now, I no longer agree with that tweet.
SaaS won’t be disrupted in five years.
It’ll be disrupted in just a year or two.The tweets below are from people who have already replaced paid software subscriptions with their own tools that they built surprisingly fast with AI.
To protect your business, build these new entry barriers:
A lovable product
with a loyal community,
a strong network effect,
and leveraging AI to build, test, analyze, and pivot or scale at lightning speed.
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Earned exhaustion: when you tired but proud
It’s a feeling I’ve had a thousand times, but I didn’t know it had a name:
Earned exhaustion.
It’s when you enjoy your tiredness.What is earned exhaustion?
It’s when you feel tired because you did something meaningful.
You worked hard, gave your best, and now your body says, “Okay, time to rest.”
It’s about doing something that mattered.Why does it feel good?
Because you chose it.
Because you finished something.
Because your brain knows: this wasn’t wasted energy.
Earned exhaustion feels like pride, not stress.
It’s your body saying, “Nice job.”Examples of earned exhaustion
- After finishing a big meaningful project
- After a long hike with friends
- After training for and running a marathon
- After helping someone who needed you
It’s the kind of tired that makes sleep feel amazing.
Like you really deserve that rest.I think that kind of tired makes life feel more meaningful and joyful… so I want to collect more of it.
I want to believe my dog knows that feeling too, after a good, tiring adventure.
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You choose how to use technology
Reminder to myself:
Post Topics:
Reminder -
It feels like playing Doom
Sometimes I feel like I’m inside the game Doom —
wandering through a maze of rooms.The more I work and deliver projects, the more doors start to open.
Some rooms lead nowhere.
Some hold tools you’ll need for the journey.
Some are full of monsters who fight you and drain your energy.
Others are just empty rooms — a waste of time.When you have a goal, you get a sense of which doors are worth opening.
Without direction, you enter every room, hoping for progress but finding confusion.That’s why having a compass — a clear goal — matters. It helps you choose the right doors.
And if one’s locked, don’t waste hours trying to force it open.
Just move on. Find the door that’s already open — the one that leads you closer to your target destination.I suppose I’m feeling a bit poetic today… 😆
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Reflections after finishing the book Sapiens
In four simple words: dot-connecting, eye-opening.
This was the first long book where I fully applied the principles of slow reading, which I described here. One of the core principles of Slow Reading is to invest time in choosing what to read and why. I’m glad I did. It was worth it.
Reading Sapiens at 43 felt like putting on glasses for the first time… and suddenly realizing how blurry the world had been. This book didn’t just teach me history. It reshaped how I understand humanity, progress, happiness, and myself.
Harari doesn’t just guide you through the timeline of Homo sapiens; he challenges the stories we usually believe.
Take the Cognitive Revolution.
It wasn’t just about brain size as I thought about it. It was about shared myths. Religions, nations, money aren’t real in any physical sense. They’re powerful stories we all agreed to believe.
The Agricultural Revolution, often seen as a huge win for humanity, turns out to be the opposite. Harari argues that wheat domesticated us, not the other way around. More food came with more work, more disease, and more inequality. Progress, it turns out, often comes with a hidden cost.
Also, a fascinating part of the book explores the modern spiral of progress driven by a combination of science, politics, and economics.
I also found myself questioning the very idea of happiness. Technological advances, capitalism and empires have shaped our world, but have they made us happier? Harari asks: if we’re not more content than ancient foragers, what’s the point of all this complexity? That’s a solid question.
I marked the last pages of the book with pink and yellow highlights. The idea that happiness is constrained by biochemistry and that meaning is often just a shared narrative. Not truth, not reality, just a story we choose to believe. And a pure biochemical process in our brains.
Harari shows how humans are shifting from products of evolution to products of intelligent design: bioengineering, AI, cybernetics. We sapiens are gaining godlike powers, yet we have no idea what we actually want.
We conquered the world but built no world worth celebrating, not for ourselves, not for the animals we dominate.
And I often find myself repeating the book’s final line:
“Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?”I like how the book made me feel uncomfortable.
And somehow, it brought me back to the oldest wisdom: I know that I know nothing.P.S. Fun fact: my highlights and notes from the book turned into a 33-page document:
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A wake-up call from a $1B CEO
I absolutely loved this email from Fiverr’s CEO (a $1B company).
It’s a brilliant message — brutally honest, and written with real care.
(Those are the two qualities I admire most in leaders)And every word resonates with my current mission — applying AI and new principles across every area of business.
The advice is sharp and spot on.A solid wake-up call.
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Most impactful training in my life
You never know which training might change your life.
This is the story of one that changed my mindset and the choices I made after.It was September 2023.
I sat in a sunny room in Lille, thinking it was just another corporate session.
Next to me, a group of colleagues from all over the world.
Total strangers, we had never met before.Honestly, I wasn’t ready for how that training began.
Within 15 minutes, the trainer had created a surprisingly safe space. People started sharing personal life stories.
Some were funny. Some were deep. A few were heartbreaking.
I noticed tears in some eyes.I thought, “What’s going on here? Come on, people! We barely know each other.”
That was the start of a training on Personal Values and Purpose.
It is designed to help people look inward, understand personal values, and reflect on what truly matters.The next three days were intense.
We worked a lot in pairs.
I found myself telling stories I’d never shared before, not even with my family. With a complete stranger.
And he opened up to me too.
The trainer pushed us to go deeper. To speak, to feel, to really listen.
And from time to time, something clicked in the process.
Then we took that new clarity and turned it into an action plan.It’s a well-known training at Decathlon, and I’d heard all kinds of feedback — from “It’s total nonsense” to “This might change your life.”
But no one felt neutral.And what struck me most was this: some people decide to leave the company after this training, and the company is aware of it.
I mean, seriously!?! My company is paying for flights, hotel, food, and professional coaches… so I can explore my inner world? And then I might quit the company? Is this actually happening? That sounded wild to me.
But later, I realised — it’s not just good for people. It’s also smart for businesses to invest in people’s clarity of values. If they stay — great. Their values align.
But if not, and they leave — better for both sides.As for me, it didn’t make me want to quit the company right after the training.
But I connected a lot of dots about myself. And it was the moment I realized: corporate life isn’t my final stop…Most importantly, it left me with one uncomfortable thought — I don’t know myself well enough. And I need to keep digging.
What if the best thing a company can give you… is that uncomfortable thought? And the courage to follow it.
Thanks, Decathlon
All photos from that training:
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My Top 3 challenges in building a business (after corporate life)
As someone who left the corporate world to build a business, I can honestly share my top 3 downsides of being an entrepreneur.
1. Financial uncertainty
In corporate life, every month you get that lovely SMS: DING – salary’s in.
As an entrepreneur, you get… invoices.
And no idea when (or if) you’ll break even.
Many people quit not because the business idea is bad, but because the stress of not knowing what’s next is just too much.2. Lack of human energy
Now you’re on your own.
No quick chats. No shared coffee breaks. No energy to borrow from a teammate’s smile.
In big companies, even on tough days, you’d come to the office and soak up some optimism from others.
But now, you’re the only one in the room and sometimes, your problems feel louder in the silence.3. No quick exchange of knowledge
Back then, I had smart and experienced people around me. If I didn’t know something, I’d ping someone or ask in a meeting.
Now? It’s either Google, books, AI, or paid consultants.
You spend more time searching and second-guessing.
You don’t even realize the luxury of shared learning until you’re on your own.But hey! I’m not here to complain.
Yes, it’s harder. Yes, it’s lonelier.
But you also grow faster, work on what actually matters to you, and define your own income limits.And it’s a lot of fun too.
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Slow Reading — A way to learn deeper and enjoy it more
Last year, I started using the Slow Reading method. To my surprise, it worked better than I expected.
Compared to my usual fast-paced reading, it gave me some real benefits:
– I could focus on the book better.
– I remembered more.
– I enjoyed reading more.Here’s how Slow Reading works:
- First rule: enjoy it.
Reading should feel like a treat, not a to-do list.
📖 Pick a book you’re curious about.
🛋️ Sit in a cozy spot.
🎧 Play music you love.
☕ Make your favorite drink. - Read actively.
🖍️Mark important ideas with a highlighter.
⏯️Take breaks to reflect, process, and remember the key things. - Engage your brain on 3 levels.
👀 Visual – Reading and highlighting help the brain save the images.
🗣️ Verbal – Talk about the book with someone to make your thoughts clearer.
✍️ Kinesthetic – Write or type notes to remember through movement.
These three together = memory magic ✨ - Make it a habit.
Add reading to your day. And keep going for 21 days straight.
That’s how habits stick. And this one might be your favorite.
So… got a book that’s waited long enough?
Time to enjoy it!
- First rule: enjoy it.
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How generations speak Emoji differently
Surprise: Gen Z isn’t the intern anymore.
They’re running meetings, pitching products, and maybe even managing you. They’re already in your office and your inbox.
You probably want to communicate with them without drama.
But here’s the problem: what feels friendly to you might feel passive-aggressive to them.
Your “Thanks :)” could accidentally start a digital war because you thought a smiley was just… a smiley.
Here’s how different emojis can be read by different age groups
(sometimes with completely different meanings):
Now enter the old-school keyboard smiles: :) ;) =)
Millennials see them as normal, polite, even professional. A nice way to soften a message.
But Gen Z might read it as cold. Sometimes even passive-aggressive.
Say “good job :)” and suddenly they’re texting their therapist.Emojis were made to help us feel closer. Now they sometimes push us away.
So next time you drop a 🙂, ask yourself — am I saying ‘thanks’ or starting a cold war?
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