Natanael Silva 🎯

I'm arguably one of the fastest and most prolific builders you'll ever meet (and have been that way for 20 years). Now, I'm creating a community + resources to equip you to be the same! initialcommit.co/club Founding membership open now, with tons of content dropping soon!

@ItsThomAnt @awilkinson bro, are you even interesting? 😂

@awilkinson If your goal is to eliminate status and ego, why does the marketing for the event feature a list of famous people?

I hate conferences so I started my own. Here's the story... In 2010 I was sitting at a big circular table feeling nervous. You know the type — hotel banquet hall, cheesy gold chairs with greyhound bus pattern cushions. I was twenty-four but could've passed for seventeen, completely out of my element at my first tech conference in Vancouver. The guy sitting next to me, a prominent venture capitalist wearing a white button down shirt and a Patagonia vest turned to me. "What's your startup?" he asked. I explained that I didn't have a startup. That I had bootstrapped my business and that it was profitable. "Ah," he said with a withering look. "A lifestyle business…" Without another word, he turned his back on me to speak to the more interesting founder to his right, leaving me all alone, my cheeks flushed red, awkwardly sandwiched between two other conversations. I've never forgotten this feeling. How it felt to be dismissed and discarded based on an arbitrary status game. (Also: F that guy.) Unfortunately, my experience is likely familiar. When you go to most conferences, it's about status. What your badge says. Who you know. Whether you're a speaker. They're about sitting. Small talk. Glancing at badges. Bragging at the bar. Jerks like that VC. So, three years ago, I got fed up and decided to build the event I wish I could have attended all those years ago. I invited 150 of the most interesting people I know to my hometown, Victoria, BC, and put on a different sort of event. I called it ​Interesting People​. Most of the room was my awesome friends from all over the world, and about 30% was randoms to keep things interesting. I scrutinized every applicant, immediately crossing people off the list when I saw red flags. "Chief Innovation Officer" "Futurist" "Change Maker" "Catalyst" And the most dreaded of all: "Forbes 30 Under 30" My objective was simple: To fill the room with people who make me feel warm and gooey inside. That sounds weird, but you know what I mean right? Down to earn and low ego people who ask questions of others instead of hogging the mic. Once we had the right people, we went about flipping the usual conference format on its head: Crappy Conferences: ❌ Status to get in ❌ 80% listening ❌ Rubber chicken buffets ❌ Speakers fly in for two hours, give a talk, then jet ❌ Too many people to know anyone ❌ 50 LinkedIn contacts you'll never talk to again Interesting People: ✅ Aggressive douchebag filtering ✅ 80% of the time spent meeting people ✅ Unreal food ✅ No speakers — attendees ARE the content, and everyone stays the whole time ✅ Capped at 150 (​Dunbar's number​) ✅ You leave with 5 genuine friendships My friend ​@nickgraynews​ MCs the event with me, and he conducts like a maestro. He's the freaking master of running events. Instead of sticking to a tight schedule, he wings it. If an activity planned for an hour is only interesting for thirty minutes, he jumps ahead. He hand-picks specific groups for dinner and table conversations, putting people who have similar problems together and giving them prompts so nobody defaults to small talk. If someone is being a douche or hogging the mic, Nick's people radar instantly homes in on it and he works to neutralize the threat. His attention to detail is unbelievable. We also try to keep the content and attendees broad. Nobody wants to go to a circle jerk of tech bros talking about Openclaw (ok, maybe I do, but we don't learn much). Over the last few years, we've had scientists, comedians, writers, musicians, and even a magician. Folks like @MatthewDicks (champion storyteller), @hannibalburess (comedian), @foundmyfitness (scientist), @samreich (dropout), @jasonverners (INSANE magician), @thatbilloakley (head writer of the simpsons), @ScottDikkers (founder of the onion) and @danmanganmusic (musician), among many others. Plus some tech/business dorks like me thrown in to talk about Openclaw for good measure: @gregisenberg, @Patticus, @ShaanVP, @adamlisagor, @stephsmithio, @cyantist. So, important question: Are you interesting? Do you make people feel warm and gooey? Because we're doing it again this summer July 27-29 in Victoria. Maybe you should come. Ask some of the folks I mentioned about the event :-) I linked it in my last newsletter, you can find out how to get in there, or I'll link in a bit.

@thesamparr I believe that in this context, the creature thinks it’s not smart to get vaccines and also to dislike data centers.

Wait, wouldn't it be: "you will not protest the data centers"?

@levelsio @cursor_ai @boltdotnew @heyglif @_MaxBlade all I can say is that space shooter video really got upgraded with that guy’s poker face… 👀

🧑‍🚀 Day 8 of the @cursor_ai #vibejam! Proudly sponsored by @cursor_ai + @boltdotnew + @heyglif Prizes to win (submit your vibe coded game before May 1!) 🏆 $20,000 🥈 $10,000 🥉 $5,000 Today's games I liked most from the #vibejam timeline: 🔫 Space Shooter (?) by @_MaxBlade I keep seeing this one on my timeline so wanted to post it, a shooter that looks like it takes place on the moon, it looks weirdly non-janky and real for how early it is still 🐓 Fowl Play by @habeebslm It looks like you're a chicken on a farm and have to dodge tractors etc. Cute!! 🛸 Null Range by @taylor_sntx I posted this one before but it keeps getting better, very different visuals and cool 🌳 Adventure Game (?) by @adriancerda I wanted to post this one because it's different, akin to Monkey Island and SCRUMM, and pretty P.S. you can see participating games that already submitted now at vibej.am, also you can submit your game already to show up there (it syncs every 5 min) and you can keep working on it until the May 1 deadline! YOU HAVE 21 DAYS LEFT! Reply in this thread with updates on your current games to share your progress, and add tag #vibejam so I see and can include you in the daily tweet There's $35,000 in prizes for you to win, see threads below for more info. The Gold prize is $20,000, bronze is $10,000 and silver is $5,000! Wanna to participate? You can still start now and submit your game any time before May 1!

@lunchbag @XnapperHQ “to hear you better, my dear” 👀

Uhhhh should I be concerned @XnapperHQ? Why is a screenshotting tool accessing system audio?

@tokifyi sure, what’s happening?

one thing vancouver is missing is builder density so instead of complaining, i’m doing something about it bringing together some of the most ambitious founders and engineers in vancouver this week if you want in dm me

@Shpigford Go slower Josh, it’ll make more sense than you think.

had a lot of very mixed feelings about work lately. i've been doing all of this for decades (👴) and realizing i kinda need to throw out most of what i've learned and processes i've used over the past 25 years. but to be honest, i'm struggling. i'm throwing so much at the wall and right now nothing is sticking. presumably the answer is picking something(s) and just focusing hard on them. but that's obviously no guarantee either (had plenty of failures over the years on things where i was all-in). this is the eternal entrepreneurial struggle though, right? there's just something about the current state of tech with AI that makes it all feel...different. i don't know. hard to quantify. part of me thinks the answer is to actually *increase* my output. try *more* things. make the feedback loop *faster*. but that also increases my anxiety. maybe my issue is that i'm afraid of committing. constantly throwing different things at the wall feels like experimentation. like i'm gather data. like i'm being productive. but committing to something and going deep on making it work...that means i could be wrong on a different scale. but not committing also means i'm potentially missing out on something truly succeeding (however it is i'm defining "success"). i don't know. lots of existential stuff going on in my head. if you read all of this. thanks. /end venting

Sam Parr’s definitely expects this on his obituary: “His internationally famous saying was ‘That’s the pod’…”

@beehiiv thanks!

@njsj oops kk actually fixed now! thanks for your patience

hey @beehiiv: I paid for the Scale plan, because of a bug I'm stuck at the Launch plan. Even though it shows on billing I paid for it, it shows I am on Launch until next year. I can't use the features I already paid for, including human support to fix this issue. Frustrating!

@beehiiv unfortunately it is not. It still shows as though I am on the Launch plan

@njsj should be fixed now!!

@beehiiv can’t dm, not verified. natanaelsilva@gmail.com. I guess it’s because it is treating it as a downgrade due to the number of users in the plan. It’s ok, you guys can hire me later, just fix it first please 😁

@njsj weird...can you dm us the email on your account? will fix this asap

Dear @foofighters, I know you care about your fans. Please stop using Ticketmaster, this level of bulshit fees is unacceptable

Wow, and you thought that guy from Vercel was such a brilliant mind... #leaveVercel

@Shpigford They changed something, today it is particularly bad for me... And this: x.com/njsj/status/19…

the kind of morning i'm having with claude.

is that a new feature @AnthropicAI ?

I asked Claude to fix something yet again... it called itself an idiot 😂. That is new.

Picking a project name before you discover if the domain name is available sucks. After 38 rounds, you find one you like. I do the opposite now. Write 100 options in a file (aka ask the LLM), then run the domain search in github.com/bestafubana/do…. Pick from the available ones.

@garrytan that will depend on your hot corners config. All 4 corners might do different things. That’s like 10+ year feature (the notes added maybe just a couple years ago). Enjoy! 😊

TIL if you go to the bottom right of MacOS it'll let you write a Quick Note. Talk about something that I wish the OS explained to me before it just decided this was a new default

Can @Shpigford please stop coding for a bit. I need to use Claude is overloaded, because it is slow af... 😩