Jack Burlinson
@jfbrly
Grateful to be alive, for my friends, my partners, my family, and for the opportunity to pursue what I love daily.
Complexity is cope for not getting the few things that matter right.
At some point, you have to ask yourself if you're actually willing to become what's required to get the outcome you care about.
One of the worst things I've ever done for my career, relationships, and health has been to listen to really smart, convincing, and often successful people who had no idea what the hell they're talking about. A very unintuitive and frustrating understanding I've developed over…
Very cool experience to watch your friends companies take off seemingly out of nowhere. "Nothing, then all at once" is real.
Idea creation requires saying yes more and ignoring hypothetical second order effects. Idea refinement is about saying no more and being thoughtful about second order effects. Important to entirely separate the two tasks, lest you prematurely truncate great ideas from…
Been funny to see that while there are quite a few "optimization and consistency" types of successful people, there are equally as many, if not more, completely unpredictable batshit insane never-ending emotional-rollercoaster type of successful people.
If you do not have a feedback loop in real life to reinforce your beliefs, you will seek a reinforcement loop on the internet from strangers to validate your beliefs.
Hedge Funds + VCs write books so they can raise $$$ from LPs right as their fund's returns are starting to collapse from growing too fat. Ex: Dalio wrote Principles -> Quintupled Bridgewater's AUM despite massively underperforming the index (6% / year vs. QQQ's 18% / year)
Favorite recurring gym character is the guy who shows up to the gym to lay in the massage chair for 20 minutes and then leaves
All of the best marketers I know are highly empathetic -- and interestingly, they are almost all in relationships with a partner who happens to take advantage of that trait. It's almost a bit sad to see such kind people treated so poorly.
"When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it ‘creative.’ I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product. When Aeschines spoke, they said, ‘How well he speaks.’ But when Demosthenes spoke, they said, ‘Let us march against Philip.’"
Spent some time with a friend who was completely distraught after being dumped a few days ago. His ex continued to mess with his emotions -- playing it hot and cold after it ended. It just broke him. I forgot how jarring it is to watch somebody wade in the depths of sorrow.
Few things bring me as much joy as introducing two incredibly talented people to each other.
I think this advice applies to almost every single thing in life. Almost every single opportunity I've ever gotten was just because I asked a bit more incessantly than most.
My college friend had gone his whole life single. He was getting depressed and asked for my advice. I told him to ask out 20 people on a lowkey date. He asked two, the second became his girlfriend. It’s that easy
While this site has been an absolute vacuum of my time, I am grateful every day for the handful of people that this site has introduced me to who have shaped both my thinking and, subsequently, the course of my life.
CEOs, founders and leaders, as you go through 2025 annual planning, remember the following maxim: It's not prioritization until it hurts. In other words, you'll need to cut many GOOD initiatives / projects in order to have the bandwidth and resources focus…
"It doesn’t matter how many theories turned out to be wrong, it doesn’t even matter what the ratio is of how many you got right how many you got wrong. It is just a number that you get right. And maybe, how important that one is." —Andrew Strominger