once ASI is here and living somewhere because of "work" becomes pointless, people with money will just move to the nicest places on earth Mediterranean climate, ocean, mountains, good food, beautiful isolated towns places like this are going to become insanely valuable probably worth buying real estate there now

Technology like this makes me even more bullish on tier 1 global city real estate. The internet is about to be ABSOLUTELY NUKED by all this AI garbage on the internet, including realistic rendered AI companions that sadly a lot of lonely and isolated people will become addicted too. There's going to be a huge counterelite movement against being terminally online, against spending all this time around this fake bot world, so the demand to live in the best and most central neighborhoods in the biggest and best cities on the planet? They're going to SOAR. Places like Central Tokyo, Bangkok, Manhattan + Brooklyn, Zone 1/2 London, Paris's best Arrondissements, they're all going to feel like charged up fun and hot college campuses. The premium to be there will be even HIGHER. The 2030s will probably be the most fun decade to ever be in a city.

interesting perspective but there’s nothing high-agency about choosing hard mode for its own sake you move to nyc/london cuz you understand your environment is leverage you don’t prove agency by refusing leverage

Marc basically pivoted from indie hacking to being a “high agency influencer”, right in time for AGI. His moat is not being the best coder / most technical guy in the room, but rather jumping from "coups" to "coups", leveraging his deeply attaching personality. You always want to see what he is up to next. Not only as an influencer doing stupid things for attention, but as a high agency guy who would research some random thing deeply and build sth around it, pursue a weird obsession for 2 months, move to a new city and explain all the pros & cons, get into HYROX and turn that into a $100k sponsorship stunt etc. His personality is also perfectly suited for that game. He's successful enough / good looking enough / fit enough / makes enough money that the life is clearly aspirational, but never so polished or impressive that you stop relating to him. He's still filming random stuff on his phone, making stupid jokes, talking openly about the 30 things that failed, willing to embarrass himself a bit, doesn't act like he's above anyone. That's a much more powerful balance than it looks, cause you want someone doing things slightly ahead of you, not someone living in a completely different universe. If you're some ambitious / high agency 20-sth, Marc is a much more compelling guy to follow than a world class athlete, billionaire or hyper-specialised expert you can admire but never really imagine becoming, or some brainrot lifestyle influencer whose life is entertaining but gives you basically nothing to copy. With Marc most of the entertainment is watching someone do things you could theoretically do yourself, just with more agency, more speed and less concern for looking stupid. And I increasingly think that's the bundle that will win post AGI. Being the most technically competent person in the room matters less when coding / writing / research / design etc. keeps getting cheaper and commoditised. The scarce bundle shifts more toward agency + taste + personality + distribution: knowing what is worth doing, actually doing it, making people care, then carrying that attention into whatever game you decide to play next.

🎒After a decade, I have made free for everyone now! Well almost free, it's $1 to sign up to avoid getting lots of spam The reason is 1) I have made enough money (from it) 2) charging for a community artificially limits the size, if you put the price at $299 you get 50 new members per month, at $99 you get 200 people, at $29 you get 400 people, etc. And this always annoyed me, I don't want to put a limit but I had to, to be able to make money from it, so it's free now I want it to be it the biggest community for digital nomads, world travelers, sovereign thinkers and network state type people For years it has has a great sponsor with @SafetyWing and I think that's maybe a better model for the future, get much more people in and then just add more sponsors Right now for the record it has 43,252 paid members (so about 300/mo for 12 years!), so it will be interesting to see what it can grow too I think now that AGI is on the horizon (or some say already here), online and offline (IRL) communities will become really important. People are talking more to AI now than to humans, and there was already a loneliness epidemic before AI Making new friends and dating is not so easy for people now. And with remote work and entrepreneurship, people lack a space like an office where people would usually make friends or meet partners I made most of the friends I have now through traveling and living around the world for the last 10+ years (and many via my site too), and I also met my girlfriend through those friends! So I think communities can have a real role in that post-AGI Post-AGI business wise, communities also have a moat where many of my SaaS apps do not. So there is some urgency I feel to make Nomads in to the best community there is for those people. But that's why I have to remove any limitations to its growth now So in a way after 12 years I am switching to the subsidized VC model a bit, but still 100% bootstrapped, kinda like "You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain" Having enough money now I can afford to do these things and figure out the business model later, which I think will be more sponsors Enjoy and please sign up and tell me what to improve!!! 😊

my rule of thumb for buying anything is simple. if i use it at least twice a day, i buy the best version i can reasonably afford. e.g. the best toothbrush, the best sheets, the best shoes, the best chair, the best headphones, the best phone, etc. maybe more specifically the formula is something like frequency x duration x intimacy with your body/attention. if it touches you, supports you, or mediates reality for hours every day, buy the best version you can afford. this also applies to product development, you should build products that touch ppl’s lives at least twice a day (when i was at g larry page would often say this rule a lot at tgif).

I think the hate for Dubai is mostly a Eurocope that can't deal with how dirty and unsafe Europe's cities have become in the last 10 years "Dubai doesn't have culture!!!!!!" True but at least it's safe and clean

one of the strangest things about moving from new york to sf was realizing how often extremely important things happen here in settings that don't feel important at all i lived in new york for four years. i sometimes spent entire days moving icons around in powerpoint, but i was doing it in a skyscraper with great views, surrounded by attractive people in patagonia vests. afterward i'd walk onto a packed street and go to a beautiful restaurant even when the work itself was mundane, everything around it told you it mattered sf is almost the opposite the blue bottle in south park feels like a normal coffee shop. it is also a place where an absurd amount of capital gets allocated sand hill road is one of the most powerful financial centers in the world and looks like a collection of dentist offices you'll meet someone dressed like they just rolled out of bed who can't make eye contact and discover later that they control billions of dollars or have built a product you use every day i've been to parties where almost everyone had raised millions of dollars or built products used by millions of people. in another city, each person would have seemed like a big deal. in sf, they were just standing around a cramped apartment at a "party" that honestly wasn't even that good i used to live in a closet in a slightly dilapidated hacker house with creaky floors and old furniture. people who lived there went on to create companies worth tens of billions of dollars new york puts a lot of effort into making importance visible. sf often seems actively uninterested in doing that some of this is probably because sf is more focused on creation than consumption. some of it is the personality of builders, who often care much more about the thing they're making than the room they're making it in but i think the lack of polish also lowers the barrier to entry. you don't need to look important before doing something important here new york makes ordinary work feel important sf makes important work feel ordinary