Happy December

Author

Joel Hansen
December 11, 2024

Hey Friends,

Happy December 11th to all who you celebrate. This morning the candles are lit, the fireplace is on and some cozy jazz music is playing in the background. We’re well into winter and I couldn’t be happier.

Welcome back to Stay Curious — a newsletter I write once(ish) per month to riff on a few things keeping me curious. I talk about startups, tech and other random things catching my eye.

Here’s some things keeping me curious this month:

  • Copenhagen should be at the top of your travel list

  • If you’re free tomorrow at 3pm PST, come watch some LOI founders pitch

  • I’m going to Nepal in Janurary. Reply if you have any tips

  • Vancouver readers, I’m hosting a founder/VC holiday party Dec 17th if you wanna come by. Cartems Donuts is sponsoring if you need an incentive.

  • Voice notes can be 10x valuable than video calls

  • how to stay healthy over the holidays

  • Doer vs dreamers

  • Quarterly friend hangouts

  • I’m 100x more likely to crush goals when I build a social component around them

  • If you wanna join LOI’s 2025 spring founder cohort apply here

  • Uber’s pre-seed investors: then vs now…

Here’s some double clicks if you wanna dive deeper:

1) Copenhagen should be at the top of your travel list:

1) Copenhagen should be at the top of your travel list:

Picture the coziest cafe you’ve been to, times it by 10 and turn it into a city with 1 million super kind and happy people. That’s Copenhagen.

It was my on my bucket list to go, as I’m half Danish, and my wife and I finally made it happen. Top reasons to go:

  • The food and coffee scene is off the charts. I believe it’s b/c Noma, one named the world’s best restaurant, has spun out a mafia of other restauranteurs, pastry chefs and baristas.

  • It’s extremely safe, clean and right by the ocean. The canals are so clean you can swim in them

  • Biking and walking is the main mode of transportation so it’s insanely easy to get around

  • You can train to Sweden in 45 minutes and drive to Germany in 3 hours

  • Lego is based in Denmark and does $60B/year in revenue. If you message the right people you can get a tour at their HQ

  • Also home to so much cool Viking history

2) Come watch some LOI founder pitches tomorrow (event link)

If you like dragons den or shark tank, you’ll love this LOI pitch off.

We’ll have 9 of our top founders from LOI’s 2024 founder cohort pitch their ventures to a panel of judges and ~200 people in the audience. If this is your cup of tea, start the kettle and RSVP here.

If you’re in Vancouver and wanna meet some of the founders in person, come by our holiday social next Tuesday. Request to join that in-person event here, and I’ll let you in the back door.

3) Voice notes > video calls

The other day I attended an event where I knew a few of the speakers. They were big deals with busy calendars, but we had a small connection. Instead of requesting to catch up on a video call or a coffee after seeing the talk, I just voice noted them a 1 min voice note thanking them for their time and 1-2 fun things I noticed about their presentation.

The funniest part? Each of them replied within minutes and it sparked a whole text thread of catch-ups.

I’m realizing that impromptu voice notes or texts are 10x stronger than 3-week later video calls or boring email requests to catch up

4) Staying healthy over the holidays

December often means holiday cocktails, purdy’s chocolate boxes and egg nog lattes. A few things I’m trying to do to be smart over the holidays:

  • 1 x 45 min high heart rate activity per day (lift, run, etc)

  • 10,000 + steps per day (phone calls over video calls)

  • 7-9 hour sleeps

  • strong breakfast (2 eggs/toast/oatmeal protein mix and fruit) and hydration game (water/tea)

  • Signed up for a fun run challenge in March so I’ll be training a few days / week for that

What do you do to stay healthy in December? Hit reply. I’d love to hear it.

5) Quarterly friend hangouts

This last weekend my wife and I had a dozen friends come over for an early Christmas party and it was a blast. We had 15 candles lit, a chocolate fondue setup, tons of snacks, a few fun games, a sauna/cold tub setup and we all slept over and had breakfast a walk together the next day.

It brought me so much joy.

So much so that I think I wanna make something like that happen once a quarter. And there’s something about having friends meet other friends that makes me so happy.

6) Uber’s investors then vs now

If you don’t have any care for investing in startups that’s okay. But if you have the slightest curiosity, this graph may blow your mind

7) Doers vs dreamers

I’ve been thinking about this quote by Benjamin Franklin about decisions lately. You may like it:

The quote —- "some people are so worried about never wasting seconds that they end up wasting years"

Something to chew on this December. Something

Those are my hot takes of the month. Which one did you like the most?

Hit reply and let me know.

Liked today’s deep dive? Forward it to a friend.

Joel

p.s. If you wanna join LOI’s 2025 spring founder cohort apply here

You can hit me up on Twitter or LinkedIn 

But the true newsletter besties hit me up on Strava and IG

Forwarded this email? Sign up here