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May Updates
Joel Hansen
May 22, 2025
Hey Friends,
Happy May 22nd. Just like that, we’re 9 days away from June.
Welcome back to Stay Curious — a newsletter I write once(ish) per month (been heavyyy slacking the last while) to riff on a few things keeping me curious. I talk about startups, tech and other random things catching my eye in day-to-day life.
Some life context: my wife Jen and I just got back from a trip to Turkey & Greece. It was a memory maker and a half. The views. The adventures. The ocean. The food.
On top of that, I’ve been heads down at LOI, side hustling the airbnb (just got our 47th 5-star), testing out gardening and trying to be better at staying on top of my morning quiet time and daily exercise.
On the note of exercise, if you’re in Vancouver for WebSummit, come join this jog & cortado event I’m hosting with my buddy Connor at Adidas. It’s gonna be a hoot and a half, and i’ve invited some tech celebs to come crash the party. RSVP here.
Some other May updates/ideas/questions I’m thinking through.
In 1 hour, our LOI team’s hosting 300+ people (virtually) for our Lab 14 pitch event. It’s where 7 of our top founders share what they’re working on. If this sounds like something you’d wanna cancel your boring 1-1 meeting, come join and RSVP
Miami Memory Maker Layover: Travelling home from Turkey is a trek and a half. So when we heard we had a 7 hour layover in Miami, we texted our buddy Daniel Chawla. We went to his spot, cleaned up, jumped in the ocean, went for taoc bowls, smoothies and cortados. Was the best layover we’d ever had. Makes me want to strategically plan out my layovers to visit inspiring friends from now one. Thanks again to Daniel for being a superhost and a half.
Heard of Dragons Den Brian Scudamore? Him and a few other inspiring folks are coming to speak at a Vancouver event I’m hosting 3-5pm May 26th. Wanted to dish out 1 lucky ticket to someone reading this newsletter. Reply if that’s you and LMK why you’d wanna join the hangout. Event page is here.
Here’s some other things keeping me curious this month:
Writing for the decades vs the days: trying to remind myself more lately, I wanna write so that I can look back on my life season, 10, 20, 30 years from now. makes me think of writing very differently.
Gardening is hella cool: got into it last week and have loved the daily rhythm of checking on it, seeing things grow and the fact you can plan half-grown things vs starting with a seed. reply to this if you’re a gardening pro and wanna jam with me
99% of events/meetings are boring: a new life framework i’m trying to use is “how can I make this thing I’m working on less boring”. life’s dripping with boring things we waste time on. and I’m sick and tired of it. so I try to build things and join things that are the 1% that are bursting with joy
Wanna build a startup this year? Apply to LOI’s Boost Founder Cohort. It’s for founders doing $100K+ in sales who wanna jump to $1m-$10m. Link here.
Shipping ideas at 80% vs waiting a week until they’re 100%: most of my ideas aren’t life or death. They’re content, events, stories etc. Something I try to live by is shipping them at 80% value day after day so that in 10 years I’m a master of my craft. I find that by over-indexing on publishing daily and under-indexing on “perfection”, I’m way more free of a creator. What do you think? (yes this means I have spelling mistakes sometimes, and no I don’t care)
Those are my hot takes of the month.
Which one did you like?
Hit reply and let me know what one of your big projects/bucket list items is this year.
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
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