I'm taking August off. Tell me what to write in September.

This is the last thing you'll hear from me until September. I am taking a break for a month to recharge batteries, and you should too.

I don't stop because I've run out of things to say. In fact, I am having more ideas than ever, but I realised that the original intention of this site was to share tips from Founder to Founder, but I've drifted away from that enough to warrant a change of direction. I've been publishing on instinct: whatever was in my head that week was the thing I'd write about. Whatever I'd argued about at dinner or whatever crossed my mind while walking down Barcelona. I like giving these ideas some thought, transforming them and publishing them for the world to see.

The articles have been read by thousands of people by now, a couple of them going semi-viral. One ( F2F #45: Calm entrepreneurship ) ended up in a PhD thesis:

That works fine for a hobby but I didn't give it my best to build the brand. I don't think I'm doing myself a good service by trying to build multiple brands: I've got my own company, MarsBased, its own podcast, Life on Mars (which we're rebranding to the MarsBased podcast for the same reason) and my side-project Foc a Terra. Besides that, I've got a few other projects going on, but you'll learn more about them soon. Therefore, Founder to Founder has been shelved as a brand, hence the redesign of this very site to focus more on the content rather than the brand.

So August is off. No posts, no emails from me, and only occasional "quick thoughts on X" and some shitposting here and there. I'm going to spend part of August doing the unglamorous part: rebuilding this site from scratch, rethinking what it's called and what it looks like, and deciding what it's actually for.

What's changing

I don't plan to change much of how this works. I'll change everything on the surface, very little behind the curtains. I'm keeping Ghost for the blog and newsletter, but it'll look different. I will keep the weekly cadence. I might drop the subscriptions because they're not many (though they're appreciated!).

Another thing that isn't changing: I write this myself, I write what I actually think, and I don't publish things I'd be embarrassed to defend in person. I could fistfight over my written opinions if I had the courage to fistfight anyone. If you subscribed for that, you're fine. You'll keep getting value. Perhaps even more than up until now.

The part I can't do alone is the interesting part: I know what I like writing about but I have a much weaker sense of what you get out of reading it.

I've spent the last few weeks talking to some of you in person and the feedback has been extremely helpful because I got very unexpected thoughts & insights. Thank you Marc, Carlos, Ingrid, Vero, Max, Stephan, Daniel, George, Devin, Alex & more - I can't name you all off the top of my head but I'm thinking about you!

So here's the ask

Six questions.

Answer one, answer all of them, answer in three words or three paragraphs or send me random stickers on whatsapp, or a voice note. Record a podcast episode for me if you fancy it. Just hit reply, it comes straight to me and I read every single one. And it also increases the deliverability rate of this newsletter 🫶

1. What made you subscribe in the first place, and what has kept you from unsubscribing since?
2. What do you open, scan, and close?
3. What do you wish someone wrote about honestly, and nobody does?
4. What's your favourite topic that I cover?
5. How would you describe this to a friend?
6. What should I stop doing? The format you don't like, the topic I keep returning to, the tic in my writing that grates. This one is the most useful and the least likely to get answered, which is exactly why I'm asking.

Why I'm asking now instead of in September

Because if I ask after the redesign, all I can do is defend it. If I ask before, I can build the thing around what you tell me. All feedback will be factored in and slept on during this next month.

I've watched enough people rebrand into a beautiful new site that says nothing anyone wanted to hear and I don't want to enlarge that list. It's just not me.

A month away from a thing is the only reliable way I know to find out whether I still want it. I will hold off any writing (if I can do it) until september to come back with even more motivation.

See you in September

If you've been meaning to reply to one of these emails for months and never did, this is the one to reply to. It's the only one where your answer changes what happens next.

Have a good August. Go somewhere without wifi. You deserve a good break.