Facing Ambiguity | January 2022

It’s been a while since my last update, sorry for the wait! I’ve been hard at work on MiruDAO and learning more about Web3.

Welcome to my January Newsletter!

It’s been a while since my last update, sorry for the wait! I’ve been hard at work on MiruDAO and learning more about Web3.

I’m using a different newsletter software to send out my newsletters, do you like it?

If you’re new to the newsletter, welcome!

I’m a 16 y/0 web2 + web3 + neurotech developer currently trying to build the future of neurotech R&D funding with MiruDAO.

As I go on a journey to try building the future, I would love to have you be a part of it!

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Facing Ambiguity

Being heads-down in something I’m passionate about, and growing was a great experience. These past two months were about focus, and facing ambiguity.

A quick rundown of my December + January:

• Began to tell a clearer vision (explained below)

• Ventured deep into the depths of Web3, and found myself being able to navigate the many unknown unknowns of MiruDAO.

• Got sponsored to go to ETHDenver! Hope to see some of you guys there!

Tell The Vision

TL;DR: Until just recently, I had no idea how to effectively dive into ambiguity as a leader, or even just manage a team (still barely do). Figuring out how to do so is a massive point of growth for me.

When I first started MiruDAO (A decentralized, community-governed, funding ecosystem for neurotech R&D), I was doing literally everything. From coding to pitching, to research, to fighting ambiguity. I had no team, nobody to bounce ideas off of. Since then, I’ve brought on a team of 4 other wonderful people who build MiruDAO with me (it’s a lot less lonely).

Since then, my role at MiruDAO has changed. I’m now in charge of telling the vision, despite being partially blind myself. Working on MiruDAO has always been filled with ambiguity, and I’ve coped with it by talking to experts and just diving headfirst into whatever problem I’m facing.

That is a horrible way to manage a team or a project. A project needs a vision, and someone needs to tell it as clearly as possible; the issue is how.

Atop the shoulders of great leaders

Thanks to some great mentors (Chris Aimone, Brandon Jennings, and Michael Raspuzzi), I’ve been getting better at telling the vision and managing people.

Brandon showed me task delegation, refining your vision so other people can see it (aka a roadmap), and the importance of great leadership.

Chris showed me how to grow a welcoming culture and what “co-founder material” really looks like (are you greater than the sum of your individual efforts?).

Finally, Michael showed me how to ensure consistency by creating co-working sessions where the team comes together to hammer out key action items + re-align on certain tasks.

Months later, I’m starting to improve week-over-week. Meetings are going faster, progress is consistent and trackable, and working is just way more fun.

Isn’t that great? I’m super happy with my progress, and I can’t wait to look back on these newsletters to see my growth documented.

Facing ambiguity in a new space

TL;DR: I went deep into the weeds of Web3 blind to fully understand how to lay MiruDAO’s foundation.

It’s no secret that I’m super new to Web3 (only started learning about it in November) and still have so much to learn. These past two months (other than telling the vision) I had to navigate a completely new ecosystem where there’s so many unknown-unknowns. As I build the infrastructure for MiruDAO, fully understanding every single cog in the system and it’s job is vital to success. This led me to dive into the ambiguous technical details of MiruDAO and flesh them out further.

In order to try to map out my unknown-unknowns I first had to map out what I knew. I started off by writing down everything that I need to do, and how I would do it. Almost instantly, I found out that ~60% of my plan was completely unknown to me at a high level.

3 Hours Later…

Now that I had a (probably incomplete) list of what I didn’t know, now came the hard part: figuring it out. This was a lot of time heads-down, where I read and talked to various experts and built sample projects to further my understanding.

As I reflect when I write this, I just realized that almost every time, talking to a expert helped several times more than just reading.

Although going super deep into a new space was hard, it was super rewarding and way more fun than I thought it would be. When I first learned about how the Ocean Protocol worked, I got so much joy from telling everyone in my vicinity how it works and why it’s super cool.

10/10 experience, will do again next month. Who knows, I might even tweet about it…

Going to ETHDenver!

I’m super grateful and excited to be sponsored by PadawanDAO to fly out to ETHDenver! I’m going there to network in the Web3 space, and market (a bit) for MiruDAO.

I’ll be arriving on the 16th and leaving on the 21st. If you’re also going to be at ETHDenver, let me know and we could meet at the event!

What's Next?

These past two months were hectic, and I really doubt that this month will slow down at any rate. Here’s what’s coming up for February:

• Starting a new challenge with TKS Activate to try to figure out how a top 10 oil company (not allowed to disclose who it is yet) can be net-zero emitters by 2050.

• Will be launching documentation and a revamped website for MiruDAO as well as a Twitter and newsletter. Check our website to stay updated

• Attending ETHDenver!

Thanks for reading my (lengthy) January newsletter, I hope to see you soon!