Never Enough - March 8th, 2024


By Andrew Wilkinson

Hi there,

Here is your week’s edition of Never Enough, a few things I’ve been exploring.

  1. My pal Ryan Norbauer used to run one of the top web development agencies in North America, which is how we became friends. A few years ago, he shut down his agency and started a…luxury keyboard atelier? I thought he had lost his mind. I’ve always just used the Apple Magic Keyboard and not thought twice about it. Then he sent me one of his $5,000 keyboards. Yes, you read that correctly. A fucking $5,000 keyboard. It felt like unboxing a Rolex, with a certificate of authenticity and everything, and it’s made of titanium. After a few months with it, I’m a convert. It’s one of the most absurd luxuries that I’ve enjoyed lately, but it has made typing (including these very words) an absolute pleasure. If you are having a midlife crisis, I highly recommend buying one of his keyboards. Much more satisfying than a red Porsche.
  2. I hate burning money unnecessarily. To this day, nothing grinds me more than realizing that some SaaS software company has been billing one of my companies thousands of dollars for a product we no longer use. As we’ve grown, though, I found it tough to stay on top of this. We have 40+ companies, and ultimately we have bigger fish to fry—but this stuff matters. It adds up. Death by a thousand paper cuts. So, we launched a new company to solve this. It’s called Tech Source. They dig through your P&L for SaaS + hosting + API expenses, cut what you aren’t using, and negotiate the best possible price on the ones you are. They take a small monthly retainer then charge you a percent of the savings. Tell them I sent you.
  3. Jesper Kouthoofd, founder of popular Swedish clothing brand Acne, also lost his mind like my friend Ryan. He left the fashion industry to start an uber-cool design-y audio product company called Teenage Engineering. I recently bought their podcasting microphone, the CM-15, and it’s a thing of beauty. Most podcast mics look straight out of Howard Stern’s 90’s radio studio. This thing looks like it was designed by Dieter Rams.
  4. You may have seen the news, but we partnered with Dr. Andrew Huberman (from HubermanLab fame) and bought a majority stake in a yerba mate company called Mateina. I’ve been drinking the stuff daily for over a year now and it is by far the best caffeine delivery system around (120mg of caffeine without the jitters + mild appetite suppression). Andrew Huberman has worked with them over the past six months on a new sugar-free version, which we just launched.
  5. Starting at around age five, I roamed my neighborhood in a pack with my friends. I remember being essentially free range. Apparently, kids don’t do that anymore, and it’s bad for them. I read an article by Mariana Brussoni about how kids need to take risk and do semi-dangerous things in order to develop confidence. I found the following quote and chart particularly alarming:

    “Between 1975 and 2015, outdoor play among UK children decreased by 29.4%, while screen-based activities increased by 22.4%. In the U.S., only 16% of children in 1997 played outdoors every day. By 2003—just six years later—that dropped even further to 10%.”

It’s Never Enough. Until next week,

Andrew


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Never Enough

"Once a week I send out a few recommendations. Things I'm thinking about. Products I love. Articles I'm reading. Twitter accounts to follow." —Andrew Wilkinson

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