I’m particular about matcha. I’ve tried it at dozens of cafes across multiple cities and the quality variance is staggering. Some places use ceremonial-grade matcha whisked properly. Others dump commodity powder into steamed milk and charge $7. The problem is you can’t tell which is which before you order. Google Maps rates businesses, not matcha. A five-star review that says “great vibes, love the ambiance” tells you nothing about what’s in the cup.

I cycled seriously for about two years. Got into structured training, bought a $2K bike, did a 100-mile race. It was great. But every ride required a production: bib shorts, sunglasses, helmet, checking weather, dealing with traffic. The activation energy kept going up. Eventually I stopped riding and the bike sat in the garage.

In 2022, I watched a real estate deal fall apart in the worst way possible. An operator had raised capital from over thirty investors for what looked like a legitimate syndication. It wasn’t. The money was mismanaged, promises were fabricated, and investors were left with nothing. The FBI got involved.

In March 2019, I had a simple problem. I’d received stock option grants from a couple of companies and wanted to see what they’d be worth under different vesting schedules and stock price scenarios. The spreadsheet I was using was getting unwieldy. So I spent a weekend building a small web app to replace it.

My Garmin watch, Eight Sleep mattress, MacroFactor nutrition logs, and Concept2 PM5 rowing data all lived in separate apps that had no idea the others existed. The Garmin knew my resting heart rate was elevated but didn’t know about last night’s four hours of sleep. MacroFactor knew about the caloric deficit but not the brutal VO2max (a measure of aerobic capacity) session that morning. Each app had a piece of the picture. None had the whole thing.