Oscar Holm

31

Here we are again, rounding out the not so round 31. As of a week ago, a married man. If ever I was to still look for the portal to adulthood this would be as likely a candidate as any. Still in total indisputable touch with my youth yet dawning in the realisation that there is no next level, just next tomorrow and the one that follows. Maybe that realisation is adulthood, and in that case maybe I became an adult at 31. Besides a growing affection for layman philosophy, I can also display some of the characteristics of the adult. With my week old marriage license, apartment in suburban Stockholm and Volvo, on a lease no less. Those are a lot of ticked boxes, and I have a feeling there are more coming.

I’m writing from the guest room at Dockgatan in Malmö. Anni is on the other bed leaned against the wall. We’ve had a pre-celebration of mine and my sister’s birthdays today by going out to dinner. It’s a calm evening. We returned from Elba today, arriving there on Monday and spending the week. It was necessary after the tumultuous week prior culminating in our wedding on Saturday 8th of June. It was the most beautiful day in my life and a weekend I would not change in any way. The amount of emotion I felt. From the tension waiting at the altar with Philip and Johan to the overwhelming love as the church doors opened, the genuine sweat and tears of the speakers during dinner and the relief of dancing the night away. There was so much love and gratitude and belonging. It was genuinely the peak and culmination of my life so far, with all the people I have come across and come to adore. I haven’t digested the experience yet and in some ways I hope I never will so that I don’t forget to appreciate and that I too am appreciated.

Our week in Elba gave me and Anni a chance to process this together and it might have been the best vacation I’ve been on. Despite our inherent restlessness we allowed ourselves to land. For me that meant going completely offline, despite the flood of messages following the wedding. For Anni it meant diving into the world of pictures in what she would call her ‘wedding bubble’. I love that wedding bubble for the gleaming purity of happiness that it brings to her eyes. And now here I am, in the last minutes of 31. It’s 22:16.

The European championships are on, but not for Sweden, watching the other kids play from the window with both shame and jealousy. This is my fifth birthday post and I’m realising I’ve never written them in English before, why am I writing in English? Crazy Mama by JJ Cale has been the song, although J Cole, especially Can’t get enough has made a case lately.

As I started my 32nd year I had just fully embarked on an entrepreneurial adventure. A lot of the year has been about discovering this domain, in many cycles of joy, fear and confusion. We started at the SSE Business Lab incubator, taking my largely hidden away Numbery project and bringing it public. We went at it with ambition, bringing on customers and expanding our strategic scope. We had a lot of weekly meetings. In the end I was a bit too alone for our aspirations, and my energy but mostly my enjoyment buckled under the weight. We took on a ton of paying customers to get closer to my goal of becoming a real company, but in the process I think we got further away from the company I wanted to create. I’ve tried to be honest with myself and my partners about that, and now we’re starting to scale back to move ahead.

Sometime during this year I realised that what I had was enough. That ambition can come in an unconventional shape, in shaping that life that I want, shaping every day to be good, rather than suffering for some desired days in the future. As I’m writing, that is my goal. To spend time on what is meaningful. Family, friends, great work, health and personal growth.

Over and out. Oscar 31.

June 15, 2024

birthday, life, writing
Robust forecasting

One of the soundest advice I’ve heard about startup finance is to act under the assumption that you will not be getting any more money from the outside. This is an applied example of what I will refer to as the rule of conservatism – The Roc.

The Roc(k)

Forecasting is notoriously difficult, and the outlook changes by the day. The way to remain robust in this level of uncertainty is to account for the worst, this is the rule of conservatism. It also presents itself under a more common saying:
Expect the best, prepare for the worst.

The rule can present itself as follows:
Scenario: We don’t know what our revenue will be the coming months
Optimism: Let’s assume 15% month over month growth, explain deviation after the fact
Roc: Operate under the assumption that it will be flat, adapt as it changes

Scenario: We expect to raise a new round in 9 months time
Optimism: Adjust costs to last 9 months
Roc: Assume it will not come – which combination of cost and revenue will get you to profitability under that limitation? If the financing comes, re-align according to new limitation.

Roc is a robust approach to startup finance as opposed to one that is fragile. In a fragile approach we’re taking risks that, however unlikely, spell the end of the company. In the midst of building a startup, it is easy to get caught up in the optimism that is fundamentally required for such a venture. Risks are present but not perceived, and 9 out of 10 startups fail.

This is the reality, but it’s not pre-destined. It’s a mixed result of biases and imitation which passes a flawed way of working on as admirable. Risk-taking of this sort is celebrated due to the elevation of its survivors.

Using The Roc, the downside is limited and the upside is essentially unlimited. If our optimistic scenario comes to fruition we will have made a lesser investment than what was possible and suffered suboptimal returns, but in many cases we can adapt quickly and the loss is limited. In our worst case scenario, we will gain the opportunity to try again, with the alternative of going under. With enough tries, and a maintained effort, failure becomes the exception, and success the norm. And let’s face it, we all need a Roc to lean on.

March 27, 2024

business, Entrepreneurship, Finance, startups
Distractions

It’s okay to have some distraction. Maybe it’s family, maybe it’s going out with friends, maybe it’s video games. But beyond that doing great work doesn’t combine well with distractions. Paul Graham talks about the shower thought, the thought that floats to the surface when we’re poised to think of nothing at all. The thing which is captured so well in the shower thought, isn’t really the moment in the shower itself, it’s in all of the moments when there’s a choice, where does your mind go. To solve a difficult problem, like building a great product, or just building a movement there are lots of little moments needed. And those need to be appreciated, enjoyed, revered. Because motivation won’t last through discomfort, boredom, fatigue and gut-twisting obstacles. For that you need a hobby. A hobby with a dream of turning pro.

March 5, 2024
Struggles of creating

The struggles of creating can be very hard to feel, even harder to pinpoint and close to impossible to articulate. It’s a loneliness driven by a dread of failure. It’s a search for significance with an unknown outcome. It’s the most expensive purchase of the least known product. It’s restrained elevation, ecstasy infused with a fear of falling. Dizzying opportunity and nauseating freedom. It’s hope that we have significance and a longing to belong.

November 9, 2023
The next future

When I think of the future I don’t think of a time when I’ll be thinking of the future. I’m thinking of a time where I’ve found a settled status. I’ll read and work and follow sports, but I won’t be concerned about the next future, the next section. And reading and working and following sports is basically what I do now, so here I am, in the next future. What do I want to do? I want to create. And workout. And go outside if the weather allows. I would like to be an early riser, making the most of the day. I would like to read for an hour or two. I would like to see the onset of autumn.

It’s time to be the next future. That’s the only way it will ever exist.

September 17, 2023
Anything you want

Reading Derek Sivers’ book Anything you want had the effect of deformalizing entrepreneurship for me, a feeling that I want to, need to, cling on to. I’ve read, listened to, partaken in so much material on how to ‘do entrepreneurship right’ and be successful that it became a quest on a pedestal. Something reserved for the very cream of humanity, my idols. It was difficult to believe in this quest, despite already being incorporated with a number of clients paying me for what I know.

“Well i’m basically a consultant so it’s not really a business” was the recurring excuse I’d fall back on when asked about my occupation. My main takeaway is it’s about helping people. It’s not more virtuous to do this by creating an automated software which will scale into the millions and earn a high valuation multiple. That’s just one path that I’ve happened to idolize. I don’t think I’d even enjoy running a business like that, with all that it entails, I just wanted to be a member of that club. There’s something human about that desire, but it’s convoluted, complex and unfounded. A desire maze ending in an imaginary treasure. So forget about customer centricism, scalability, discipline, valuation, growth, even the word entrepreneurship. Just help some people, make them happy, make sure you’re happy and keep profit enough to live.

August 29, 2022
Virtues of novelty

Few stories lived, few stories told. Lately I’ve been engulfed by a singular dream resulting in a cyclical lifestyle which also reduces the stories I tell to repetition. I have yet to go back through the scribblings I’ve made in the last two years in its entirety, but I’m sure repetition is boundless. One way to avoid repetition is to always look for what’s new. New things tend to be brought onboard with a certain degree of discomfort, even pain, escalated further with age. In hindsight these are the best stories. The initial discomfort of fitting in, making a new friend, learning a new language, climbing a mountain, discovering new terrain, falling in love. These are the stories we later tell. Whether or not we write a book about it, we should strive to produce the content of a life worth sharing. The bravest people I know are numb to, refuse to acknowledge or simply ignore the discomfort of novelty.

July 9, 2022
On scale

Consulting, per definition, doesn’t scale. However, almost any product could be boiled down to consulting, ie. Executing using human capital instead of technology, capital or other means of leverage. So consulting is a way of solving a problem that doesn’t scale, but it can be used to clarify what the problem is. The problem then becomes the product which can be levered through code so that human capital is no longer needed. All of a sudden, it’s a product company.

The flipside of this, is creating a product from the get-go, which requires conviction and an accurate view of the market. A common failure is blindly creating, spending time and money to realize a vision, only to find out when it drops that there’s no need for it. The more successful route is having a reasonably accurate view of the market, customers and competition, creating the so called MVP based on that view, then iterating with feedback loops from actual customers. This is actually the natural process when growing slowly, customer by customer rather than going for hyper growth.

September 5, 2021
Effort

We conclude that our talents are
common and weaknesses unique.
In truth we’re average in both
and can change neither.

All that remains is effort.

May 20, 2020
Mission above goal

“You come to understand that most people are neither for
you nor against you, they are thinking about themselves.
You learn that no matter how hard you try to please, some
people in this world are not going to love you, a lesson
that is at first troubling and then really quite relaxing.”

When thinking about wants and yearnings it’s easy to the
point of unavoidable to start thinking about things and
places rather than experiences and events. The concrete
nature of wanting a big house is easily expressed and
thought ofwhile wanting to be exposed to or experience isn’t.
Commonly, the reasoning goes: “I want a comfortable future
with freedom over my time, a house in proximity to nature,
a healthy loving family, a carbon fibre bike and regular
vacations.” Apart from a loving family, which is something
like an omnipresent biological yearning, the rest can be
achieved with enough money. Money becomes the proxy to our
desires and the focal yearning for our life.

To get money we have to work.
Because some areas are more lucrative than others the thinking
goes “I’ll work in whichever area pays me most, which will
get me to what I actually want faster”. However, because
most of our time will be spent in this arbitrary area, not
in our house and sometimes not with our family, that’s
extremely backward. What if instead, our reasoning went: “I want
to create, simplify and organize in a way that provides value
to others while still retaining freedom over my own time”. This
is a mission rather than a quantifiable goal. From there, if
we can make our work align with this mission, we will be more
engaged, the end product will be better, and people will pay
us more money for it. The physical quantifiable goals such
as a carbon bicycle may very well become a biproduct of our
mission aligned work, but once it’s fulfilled, it won’t leave
us empty and wondering what it was all for.

March 15, 2020