Articles - 2026

Given I only recently write about my thoughts on fitness training and how its a good litmus for personality, it seems that the universe gave me a wonderful case study in Joanna wietrzyk (spray gun as shes now being called, which incidentally reminded me of another example in Raygun).

Its interesting because now we have a few examples I can think of - there’s also Eddie the Eagle and Eddie the Eel, I think all these examples reflect on my theory of how you can perceive ones personality from their sporting efforts.

Joanna wietrzyk - hes being hated on more than Raygun, and in a more hostile way, but interestingly of the four athletes, shes the most capable, actually having accomplished truly exceptional feats of fitness. 

Raygun - exploited and arguably supposedly rigged the system so she could perform, with a supposed doctorate in her sport of Breakdancing.

Eric the Eel - by sheer luck managed to compete in a race where the two competitors both failed out, but, was the only swimmer from his nation and had never swam in a 50m pool. He was celebrated for this.

Eddie the Eagle - a plasterer who failed to make the downhill ski team, and switched to ski jumping because with no other competitors, he was the first to represent the UK in the sport, self funding his efforts. His participation results in stricter rules to prevent ‘novice entries’ into the olympics.

So why is it that Wietrzyk and Raygun get so much flack whilst the Eric and Eddie got supposed hall passes? Is it simply gender? I don’t think so.

I think a lot of the flack comes from the interviews and information around how they got to where they are, and how they responded to their accomplishments and attention after the fact.

In the case of Wietrzyk and Raygun, there was an entitled, narcissistic smugness to their ‘wins’ this wasn’t about them overcoming odds and being grateful for their achievements, this was about showing off - in Wietrzyk she posted ‘a win is a win’ in the aftermath, as if nothing else, including consideration for the wellness of others matters, implying that shitting herself was some kind of badge in grit. In the case of raygun, she was proud and smug that she managed to work the system to her advantage to get to compete in the olympics.

I think both these cases differ from the two Eddies, where both had long ambitions of competing, and showed efforts despite big odds before they even got to the public stage, they knew they wouldn’t win, they were just happy to participate - eddie we can argue got lucky, he found a loophole, but he’d been trying to compete ‘properly’ via the downhill ski team, so him finding a loop hole was celebrated in the sense that he was overcoming an obstacle  to accomplish a dream, neither Raygun nor Wietrzyk show this. In the case of Eric, he was granted a wild card entry for developing nations and had only swam for 8 months in a 12 meter pool, having not seen a 50m pool prior to competing, in his case this was in part about representing a nation, and being able to compete, it wasn’t about winning, nor was it about gaming the system to his advantage.

So I think the difference in how people reacted has all to do with the before and after, in all cases, you can’t cheat the result, as Wietrzyk said ‘a win is a win’ and thats true, but HOW you win, is very revealing and equally as important to assess, and really this is what I take away from it all, its not about winning, its about seeing who the person is in the process. And thats why I think both Wietrzyk and Raygun were so villainised. 

You can't bluff your way to running a marathon, you can't performatively do a 160kg deadlift, one of the things i appreciate as someone who has trained for over  20 years, fitness training is one of the few areas i find to be 'pure', your effort directly correlates with the results, and no amount of bravado of talk can offset doing the hard work, even a bodybuilder using PEDs and steroids still needs to put in the hours and lift the weights.

in this way i find it quite pure, and a reflection of an individuals discipline, integrity, and grit, how someone finishes out a rep, or commit to finishing a workout distance or reps, how they perform their movements and treat others in the gym or on the competition floor, i think these are all very revealing, you can see those motivated by winning and medals, or just for their own effort, you can see those that commit to finishing or dip out, those that work through injuries when they should have stopped.

for me, if i could, i would do a workout as part of hiring interviews, though i'm sure HR would have words to say on that.

i came accross a linked in post of a founder looking for a Head of Growth Marketing to grow from 4.5 to 15M ARR. they had rejected all the candidates and was frustrated.

they complained that every candidate wanted to replicated a playbook from a previous high growth startup. they complained they were looking for a 'stratagist and a doer' but was getting VP level candidates that didn't want to get their hands dirty.

i think what we're seeing here is a founder who is used to working at a smaller scale, when things are messy and everyone piles in, thats what things are link under 4.5mil ARR, and you need the so called hustler mindset. BUT, its clear they're looking to scale up, and looking for ppl who can do that, so they're looking at candidates from companies that are where they want to be, but are they looking for candidates who got those target companies to the end result, or are they looking for candidates that where hired when the result was already there? 

what i mean to say is, the candidates that build a company up to 15m ARR, are not the same as the candidates to join when the company is already at 15m ARR.  the skills, mindset, and expecations of these two groups differ wildly, so if you're only going on a CV with a logo wall of already successful companies, and no indication the candidate played a role in moving them from zero to one, then you're hiring an administrator, not an operator/builder, i.e. someone who runs a process, rather than develops one.

Turns out the average age of a successful enterpreneur is around 40s, which i guess is a good thing for me.  "Studies from the Census Bureau and MIT show that older entrepreneurs are significantly more likely to build high-growth, successful companies than 20-somethings." - this got me thinking about why this might be.

i'm concluding that by 40 you have a ladder of experience, but also, i think theres an element of forced circumstance, i think at that age is when you're starting to experience agism, meaning that, thats the age where you might not have a choice but to start an entreprenurial venture, simply to survive, though, equally, at that age, if you're lucky you have both experience, emotional maturity and savings to help you weather the storm.

all this is to say, that we often overindex and give too much deference to younger entereprenurs, whilst ignoring the more mature and proven talent in the room.

They're supposed to pumps up the audience.

Ycombinator popularised the demoday and the onstage pitch format, that seems to commonly be the format for early stage startups in their fundraising process now. and, i get it, its fun, you get on stage, meet a whole bunch of investors, the format is efficient for everyone involved and you can stick it in a bigger event.

but i think, what ends up happening is it over indexes charisma, and encourages, not intentionally, people over promising and painting far fetched lofty aspirations and financial goals. at the extreme end, we see people who no experience talking about taking on well funded giants with armies of phDs in a field.

i think the result of this pitch competition in startups is that it paints a fun veneer of a school project, on what most founders don't realise is a very serious, very financial game. ultimately, all of this is about borrowing money, to growth the business in order to return a multiple back, potential and vision are the means of getting there. no investor is really investing becuase of vision per-se, they are investing becuase they believe you are the right person to materialize that vision and that vision is strong enough to give them a return.

at the root, theres bacially no risk, especially, if you have had previous lucky successes, to hyping based on future vision, given unlimited time horizon and imagination, anything is possible, and the worst you can be critised for is being too early, or being limited by the current sitation, no one, would criticise you for thinking big and having a vision, infact you would be rewarded for it. but thats the point, it shouldn't be like this, you should be held accountable to your predictions and vision, if you're going to make a claim, its on you to realise it, we give visionaries too much of a hallpass.

so i guess, the take away from this post is that we need to be more discerning, and les forgiving of visionairies making unsubstatiated claims, and they should be held to account on the claims they make, and be scrutinised for their lack of accuracy when their visions don't realise within the time horizons they claim. anyone can say we'll eventually colonise mars, its a totally different thing to be able to articulate that with accuracy on time, and the steps needed to acheive it. 

"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

Coined by a Britsh economist Charles Goodhart, the idea was that people will intentionally or otherwise optimise towards the metric they are measured or assessed against. In other words, what gets measured, ultimately becomes the goal.

I think this is often overlooked, but actually, its a crucial aspect of management. considering how much rests on performance and outcome - i find that often times how targets are set, or how individuals are assessed is overly simplified, dare i say done lazily. even more scary, this could be different from what is official versus what is actually happening - as an example, are employees actually measured on output and results, or on visbility? for example in asia especially japan, the culture is that employees don't leave the office till the boss leaves, why? visibility, to show they work just as hard or harder than the boss, because regardless of actual contribution, what is really being assessed is the employees physical presence that the boss notices - i think this contributes to why bosses are so averse to work from home, and many employees who want to work from home are overlooked.

considering how much is talked about in terms of adding value, and measuring performance, i think its nuts that the setting of KPIs and targets and how performance is measured is so often overlooked or not given the attention it deserves, often the 2nd and 3rd order implications are overlooked, and yet, this is one of the key controls any business has. At the most basic, aligning commissions and bonuses for employees needs to be considered deeply and in detail to ensure it aligns with the long term growth and sustainability of the business.

First, to be fair, I do a lot of CrossFit, so i'm likely to be bias. but i can't stand Hyrox, i think its dumb. and i think i know why.

lets start with the name Rockstar? why? are you a rockstar? what does sports have to do with being a rockstar, i'd feel embarrased being called a 'hybrid rockstar' it has nothing to do with fitness or sports. at least Cross(-Functional)Fit(ness) has some link.

Next, the movements, burpee broad jumps? wallballs? come on, urgh. they're not really functional, and what do they actually test? they're just movements that gas you and (in the case of wallballs) smash you in the face. i mean, don't get me wrong, i'm not saying they don't count as exercise, i just find them stupid, there are better exercises to use, but, at the same time, i can see why all the movements were selected, they are easy to judge, the standards are pretty clear what counts as a rep in all cases, and they are pretty low skill all things considered and certainly compared to movements in crossfit, however, i jsut can't get past how stupid they are.  like i said, i really want to like hyrox, but i just can't,  being the best at wallballs and burpee broad jumps looks pre-school next to cleans, clusters, rope climbs and deadlifts.

i like the fact the moments are easy to judge, easy to learn and are structured in a way (in the race) to keep the flow of athletes through the course continuous, i think that works well, and is needed in a race like this were there could be bottlenecks.

but, i think hyrox is really a 8k run with fun stuff thrown in, its not really 'hybrid', rather, basically is for runners who can't do crossfit, and it fails crossfitters who can't run (maybe thats why i don't like it but seriously though) - in this sense it misses one of the cool things about crossfit "constantly varied functional movements executed at high intensity.'  aimed at "increased work capacity across broad time and modal domains." 

for me, this is the key aspect of fitness that hyrox misses - constantly varied functional movements, broad time and modal domains. 

so whilst hyrox has some good aspects, and the structure is something i like... i'd rather see something that better blends hyrox with crossfit.

i wish i could have an integration between my calendar, a gantt chart and possibly folders in my email inbox, so that i can actually see individual events in a gantt chart format as well as use it to block out hours (time blocking) for projects that last a defined period, and finally, within a projects timeblock, allocate time based on emails into the projects folder in the inbox. 

What helps candidates pass the Navy SEAL BUD/S? resaerchers have studied this for years, with the aim of trying to understand why some people succeed where others fail. Turns out this is related to something called Identity based automaticity, basically the TL;DR is what drives them is achieving their goal IS their identity, meaning, its not discipline or willpower motivating or pushing them, but rather a connection to their identity, its argued this is more powerful a driver, since its no longer about choosing to achieve something, instead its about living in alignment with the identity, given the kind of mindset of "its just what i do, its who i am".

basically "desired behavior runs on autopilot because it matches your core self-concept, shifting action from effortful willpower to effortless identity expression. "

To this end, it can be argued that quitting becomes more of a risk or take more effort than living with the identity, arguably, failure can also result in trauma, since quitting or failure would essentially totally distrupt and bring the individuals identity, and therefore world and self view into question, a traumatic crisis of identity.

I think what can be gleaned from this in a business setting is to see how this can be identified, or even developed in team members.

I've been doing CrossFit in some form since 2012, having done my L1, L2 and a variety of specialist coaching qualifications under CrossFit, at one point i was even a partner in a Gym and CrossFit Affiliate. So the sport is very near and dear to me, it helped me believe in myself and show me that an old dog can learn new tricks and learning and growth never stop.

 But in this post, i actually want to focus on CrossFit shoes, my 3 Favourite ones in particular. Shoes are weirdly important, its not just about aesthetics, but about comfort and purpose-focused functionality, and for me, these three shoes are awesome enough that i need to talk about them.

Reebok Nano 2 - this was the shoe that started it all for me, the shape, the sole were both perfect, it was wide enough, and heightwise high enough that it was like a skateshoe, but with less padding, that made it soft and light enough for running, then the sole was also flexible and didn't wear down too fast, and the material was breathable, whilst having areas with additional abrasion resistance, the lace eyelets were also well positioned, and well fitted you didn't need to lace them up, finally, the colours were fun and iconic. I miss these shoes, they never gave me blisters and i wish they would bring them back as i'd happily buy several pairs!

Reebok Nano 4 - this was like the nano 2, the shape and colours where the same, but they had this added plastic mesh over the upper that looked so cool and helped protect with ropeclimbs, they were awesome. i would say this was the point where both Reebok and CrossFit peaked. the Nano 6 was ok, but looked like they were trying to bring back the nano2 and kind of failed. still the sole and shape of the nano4 kept the same sole and shape of the 2, and that really made a big difference. it was downhill after then.

Nobull Outwork - these were amazing, like cool, simple versions of the nano2, turns out some of the designers from Reebok actually started Nobull, which explains the consistency with the nano2 in shape, sole and overall feel, these are truely amazing, they came in all sorts of patterns without changing the shape or sole, and whilst NoBull has released new shoe models, i'm glad they've preserved the Outwork, even if the colours have less variety.  what sucks about Nobull however is how US centric they are, its almost impossible to get them outside the US, and shipping can take even months. amazing shoes, annoying international business strategy. 

My Macbook pro from 2021 finally kicked the bucket, sure, i know if i'd taken better care of it, it would well have lasted longer, but after amortising it over 5 years, i'm happy it was time to change.
But, what i'm sad about is Apple removing the touchbar, the mini-screen that replaced the function keys on the keyboard, if you've never see it, the image shows what it is.  Initially, like many, i didn't think it was all that useful, all it would do is change the buttons based on a software applications assignment of buttons, which most software pretty much neglected to do. and so, it was kind of a featureless feature. 

That is, until i discovered Pock https://pock.app/, this was free and open source, and basically allowed you to have the horizontal dock showing in the touchbar, and effectively make each apps icon a clickable button, it was awesome for working between apps without having to unhide the dock or lose screenspace having the dock permanently showing.

Having upgraded to a Macbook Air now, the touch bar is no more. i feel like i've gone back a (mac) generation, loosing a functionality that i enjoyed. and on reflection, it had so much potential - for example, it could have show each tab of a spreadsheet as a button, or all the different powerpoints you had open as buttons, or in gaming, specific action controls,  the control bar of word, excel, powerpoint could all have been in the touchbar, as could the adobe controls, sliders for mixing and volume those too. it could have show download file progress, or give various key stats. 

but, i guess i'm in the minority who found it useful, since now, we've reverted back to clicky buttons. 

There's a pre-seed / seed stage venture fund which has spent quite some time trying to launch its own ad network. An ad network comes in many forms, at the basic level, it allows advertisers to put ads on media partner sites, usually paying on a CPM (cost per thousand ad impressions), CPC (cost per ad click) or CPA (Cost per acquisition/sale), this venture funds version was on something called a revenue share, so it takes the CPA (Cost per acquisition/sale) model, and extends it to the total life time customer revenues - meaning if the media partner acquires a customer and that customer pays $10 a month for 12 months totalling $120 a year, and the revenue share is 10%, this means the media partner gets $12 for that customer (10% of the total $120 a year), not 10% of the first month ($1), so this is great for the media partner.

Ad networks fundamentally rely on concentrated volume, media partners can only really generate meaningful revenue at scale, and advertisers will only gain sufficient customers at volume.

Which is why, a venture capital firm running its own ad network is, strange, to say the least, especially at the the pre-seed and seed stage. The idea was the venture capital firm would control the ad network, and the startups it invested in would populate both the media partner and advertiser, basically maximising the customers within the network of startups and elevating the value of the entire portfolio, newer startups would benefit from the volume and maturity of older startups. 

At the heart of the issue is a simple mathematical problem a venture capital firm investing in pre-seed and seed stage have startups that may or many not have initial traction, certainly not at the numbers needed to be viable media partners, next whilst these media partner side startups, could potentially get to the scale needed, this isn't assured, and venture capital  power law suggests its not very likely. next, the media partner would also need the users to be in the right countries and right demographics for potential advertisers, again, this just shrinks the pool of compatible pairings dramatically. Lastly, and most significantly however, is the commercial structure for the advertiser, where a CAC cost becomes a lifetime margin cost, which for a startup is a big issue since startup retention math and LTV:CAC calculations generally rely on marketing costs being a one off and amortised over the lifetime of the customer, with high margins that can create strong CAC multiples, but because revenue share means this cost continues and is proportional to the revenue generated by and individual user, it makes the whole thing a margin business which works against startup math, and may even make the user more expensive than other channels.

Of course, this is on top of underlying operational issues a concept like this would have of requiring the right team to support these kind of deal between advertisers and media partners, and the right technology to address attirbution, deduplication and potential fraud issues, not to mention effective data tracking, transparency and privacy and security.

A quick note - normally, we can find journal articles on Researchgate or science direct, and through google scholar, can rank them via Q1 being the best quality, and the number of times the article has been cited, same goes for the author. but if the article is paywalled https://www.pismin.com/ (sci-hub) may have it public, if not then try anna's archive or Libgen. connectedpapers can help with finding associated journal articles, as can Jenni.ai, https://open-slum.org/ shows any online pdf libraries.

I came across this as a result of recent news where David Beckhams  IM8 supplement brand just got funded through this fund. from what i can gather instead of taking equity or venture debt, the fund provides a form of Debt that is repaid through " a capped share of the revenue/income generated by the specific customer cohorts acquired through the funded marketing spend." - in other words, my interpretation is that the investment is ONLY (Ideally) for companies with clear revenues, ideally high margins and recurring (i.e. long LTVs), formatting that there is a large upfront payment by the customer e.g. monthly subscription paid upfront as an annual lump sum. The mechanics being that this money funds marketing, which due to high margins and upfront payment means that the money can be repaid rapidly back to General Catalyst with 'interest'. in laymans terms, basically General Catalyst is providing CAC (i.e. marketing) capital, under the guise of a venture fund, really, its providing a cashflow mechaism that only really works with high margin, strong retention unit economics.

I actually think its really smart and what Venture Capital 'should' be about, injecting capital that can help buffer that window in a business where cashflow gets tight due to fronting marketing costs and actually receiving the LTR revenues. When i was in marketing this was always a constraint for the smallar clients i worked with, to compete they needed big marketing budgets upfront to get the best price on marketing adspend, and they could do this, but, they would need to cashflow to surivive the window from marketing ad spend being spent and when the the total revenues from a customer would come in. 

If General Catalyst, know what they are doing with this, they can even consolidate the buying power of their portfolio and negotatate better rebate and payment terms from the media providers, which, in simple terms was what WPP, Publicis and other media buying companies were ultimately doing.

what i'm wondering now, is, is there a varient of this that would be more suitable and offer similar structure, but for much smaller seed and pre-seed startups?

Relevant links -

Pitchbook fund performance - https://pitchbook.com/profiles/fund/23436-55F#investments

General Catalysts fund website - https://www.generalcatalyst.com/capital

Its taken me about 6 months to do my thesis, and its been a long and interesting experience. Frustrating at times. and i'm not entirely sure, how useful it will be in terms of work, but its been a challenge and pushed me, and i've grown in terms of grit and learnt more about how to manage myself as well, so its still somewhat of a win.

I found 3 parts particularly challenging -

1. developing a clear model - given i'm not from a academic background this was hard as i was learning from scratch, but it took my several interations to finally have a clear model - were  i to do it again, i'd start with someone elses inital model and build off that, instead of what i did which was to try and combine two models, had i found someone who had already done what i was planning to do, it would have been signficantly easier.

2. the literature review, this was extremely long, but not hard, i just felt lost for much of the time, until i finally realised what i was trying to do. i think the issue here is to do with how we are taught to write an essay, which follows the structure of the essay, rather than the structure of how best to approach research, more on this later.

3. the last item was both the most frustrating, least useful and took the longest, i literally pulled two all nighters to fix it. that was the formatting, i was so frustrated because its something that should be easy, the tools should help you, but instead it was like trying to build a house on a stack of jenga, fix one thing, 3 other things break, what people call templates really aren't templates, they are formatting they've done without consideration of how someone can quickly replicate the format over a 30k thesis. things like labelling figures and tables, adjusting  fonts, even numbering, at scale, without the use of a well planned stylesheet and a strong understanding of microsoft word, it was literally hair-pullingly frustrating. enough that i'd never want to repeat this experience.

How i approached my thesis 

I'm certainly no expert, and definitely not an academic. but if i were to approach this again, knowing what i know now -

• first i'd start with finding the topic and themes i'm most interested in. e.g. entrepreneurship and personality.

• I'd start with a google scholar search, sorting my recency and paper quality aiming for Q1 journals and highly cited papers as my priority

• Once i found a few papers that really interested me, i would look in the papers for a diagram of the conceptual model they used, and the questionnaire questions used.

• from here, i would either narrow down to my main source paper, or continue until i find my main source paper.

• Once i have my main source paper i would use connectedpapers.com to find all the referenced and cited papers - here's where my source of literature review papers would come from

• At this point i would also be downloading all the papers and keeping them in a folder, flagging the really important ones

• I would also be building my reference list (in APA) format) so i can go back and look for each paper later and its quick and easy for me to do citations.

• I would now read my main paper in detail, along with a few of the other papers, properly, so i can better understand the main issues and themes.

• From here, i would start with developing my own model and idea of what i want my study to focus on, i would brainstorm this with AI, i used Gamma

• Next, with my idea outline and source papers. i would put all of it into NotebookLM, i like NotebookLM as the team are made of experienced Acadmics so it works well for research.

• I would ask NotebookLM to help breakdown and identify the key themes, issues and topics, and provide me with guidance on how to strucutre my thesis, what sections to include and what things to cover in each section. this would form my outline

• from here, i would ask notebookLM to go through my sources and verbatum, with accurate citations give me specific quotes that fit into each section.

• from here, this would form the basis of my literature review section. which for me was the main area where i leaned on AI and where i found prior planning would have made a big difference. 

• TL;DR - find your idea, find a main paper with a strong conceptual model and questionnaire to use as a lynchpin, pull sources from that main paper, throw it all into notebooklm to help you organise and pull key insights.

• all this also means you're starting with part of chapter 3, before moving to chapter 2 and chapter 1, you've basically already got a clear idea of your model, your target respondents and your questionnaire before you start your literature review writing.

• beyond this, collecting survey respondents, i would focus my work on the group that is easiest to collect insight from, in my case, students was easiest, i also wouldn't hesitate to incentivise respondents, since so much time can be sucked up just trying to get responents, which it could be better spent on writing (and formatting)

So, there you have it,a brief, but hopefully useful approach to doing the thesis.

Every few months i try to pick up writing again, it almost always trails off, life takes over, i get busy and other things take priority. I'm not a natural writer, but, I'm trying again. this time - no commitments or format, i'm just going to write whenever, on whatever i want without any pressure, the goal, just to write for now.