Why subscribe?

I set up my Substack account the day before I left for an eight month sabbatical, July 2022. I didn’t publish a single post during my trip — not because I didn’t write anything, but because every angle I came up with felt forced and unoriginal for any audience beyond myself.

I’m not sure it’s possible to be entirely novel on the internet, but I still want to push myself to publish more: I’ll generally shoot for “good enough to be useful/interesting” over perfectionism and refine my thoughts based on feedback from the three of you that end up reading my posts.

What can you expect from Treadmill? I’ll aim for 2-3 posts per month. I’ll probably narrow my focus as I go along, but in the beginning I’ll discuss a range of topics:

• Thoughts as I try to start my own company, or notes from being one of the first employees at Gorillas

• Reflections from my recent travel experience, where I just felt like I needed to get off the treadmill for a minute (or 8 months)

• Observations from spending my last few years in a combination of Germany, Latin America and the US

And I also want to keep my writing in one place. Some links to past work:

• A roundup of my sabbatical, which I initially published on Medium (probably the piece I’m proudest of to date)

• Some thoughts on the structural issues facing the venture capital game, as seen by quick commerce, published on HNGRY

• An early look at the positive side of fast delivery, also on HNGRY

• A podcast as I launched the US market for Gorillas, on The Feed

That’s all for now. More to come soon :)