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24 things I learned in 2024
A few things I’ve learned this year and will try to keep in mind in 2025.
Filipe Macedo
December 31, 2024
At some point in your life, work on a startup, or at least a thing driven by a small group. Small group energy is amazing.
Doing things is energizing, wasting time is depressing. You don’t need that much ‘rest’.
Doing is contagious.
Less long-term planning, more short-term learning. Fast iterations beat detailed roadmaps.
“A plan is just a guess you wrote down.” - Jason Fried
After 3.5 years building Talent, I still enjoy Mondays. If you find yourself dreading Mondays, quit.
The more you work on something, the more boring and routine it becomes. To keep my enthusiasm and commitment to Talent Protocol, I often try to find new things to be excited about. For Q1 2025, it is rebuilding our app around the Builder Score, our most successful idea to date.
To make something good, just do it. To make something great, just redo it.
Problems never end. Building is solving problems. The more successful you are, the bigger your problems will be. A business is a problem solving machine.
I identify with the word “builder” more than “creator”. Creator sounds more like a divine ability to make something out of nothing. It also feels more individual and lonely, somehow. Building is more about putting existing pieces together in novel ways. It’s about joint effort, human collaboration and remix culture.
Marketing is about simple stories, told a thousand times. Work hard on a strong one liner, and repeat that message all the time. Here’s a new one liner for Talent Protocol: reach and reward the best builders, based on verified reputation data.
I’m good at building but terrible at sales. So, for me, the best way to sell is to build. And the best way to lead is to lead by example. Double down on my strengths instead of trying to compensate for my weaknesses.
Most things don’t actually take much time, procrastination and overthinking does.
On hiring: don’t worry about how much the candidate knows, but how much they want to know.
Assume every decision you make will be public one day.
“It’s never as good as it seems, it’s never as bad as it seems. Somewhere in between lies reality”, a quote often attributed to Lou Holtz, a legendary American football coach.
Walking is an underrated exercise.
After spending time in NYC this year, I learned that environment matters a lot. Move to where the action is. Put yourself in environments where you have to perform at your best. If you can get by being average, you probably will.
There is some wisdom in “fake it till you make it”.
Brand isn't corporate anymore. It's personal. People trust Elon more than Tesla. Mark more than Meta. And even Trump more than his companies.
Success is a lot about being patient, persistent, and optimistic. Consistency compounds over time.
With BUILD I learned to set clear expectations, but avoid making promises. Always underpromise and overdeliver.
Don’t “slow down” as you get older, speed up. Lean into changes, be curious about new things. Most people seem to go the other way.
The best way to unblock yourself is to think of literally everything as just an experiment.
[bonus lesson] I’m barely aware of my luck and privilege. Although I feel a long way from “making it”, I’m already comfortably within the top 1% globally, based on my annual income.
