Ultraviolet Ventures — I run a small rolling venture capital fund. We're a group of tech creators and founders investing in early-stage startups.
Next Chapter — We bring together the most talented young founders and investors in the world into an invite-only community. We focus on potential, not credentials.
Something new — We asked, if we were building the health care system today, from the ground up, how would we do it?
Most importantly, building things.
Also, quite a few jobs.
And lots of books, podcasts and articles.
I believe in self-directed learning. Reading textbooks, building things, and working in the industry trumps formal education — learning isn't the primary output of the education system. MBAs will increasingly become an anti-signal.
I believe the limits of human ability are higher than we think. I taught myself to read at 1,000wpm and listen at 3.5x speed (here's how).
Food, longevity, clinical language models, metabolomics, genomics, probability in real life, skiing, health optimization (first wore a CGM at age 16, tracked sleep with EEG, ran models on my data), architecture, design, neuroscience, great speeches.
Improving is what energises me. It’s not that I have uncanny self-discipline to learn and build. It’s just doing what I enjoy.
I believe in 'learn-do-learn'. Learn a bit. Then do shit. Then learn in the process.
Luck = f(# of tries). Success comes from taking action, continuously improving, and having the courage to try.
I've always rejected social defaults. I like asking 'stupid' questions and working out new, better ways to do things.
I keep a list of irrational beliefs and contrarian predictions including that software engineers will become redundant, cyborgs are closer than we think, and non-mimetic speaking styles correlate with founder success.
I value directness and get a dopamine hit from hyper-critical feedback.
I've only once received feedback I thought was sufficiently direct + harsh ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I want empowering others to be a routine part of how I engage with the world.
Favourite books, quotes, websites, restaurants, podcasts and more at footnotes.maxmarchione.com
Writing is part of my learning process. Writing forces me to structure and develop my thoughts.
I have >20,000 pages of notes.
Writing is my way to share these.
I try to keep articles short and meaningful to provide signal in a noisy world.
I hope that my writing makes it easier for like-minded people to find me.
I open the doors to serendipity.
Clear writing leads to clear thinking. You don’t know what you know until you try to express it.