Personal Board of Advisors #7: Start of 2026

January 22, 2026

It's been a while since I sent one of these.

I started my personal board of advisors in March 2020 and ran it for a few years. I eventually paused it — along with my social life, writing, and just about everything else — to focus on building Intros AI.

After selling Intros AI, it feels like the right time to re-establish my personal board. In the invitation (you should have received it over text or email), I shared some more context. In short, the reason I'm asking you to be on my personal board is that you are someone I hope to still have a relationship with 20 years from now.

My only ask: respond to these emails when there are questions I'd like your thoughts on.

Let's dive in!

Questions I'd Like Your Thoughts On:

  1. What's something you want to get better at this year?
  2. In case you're also in the tech world: Between product skills (e.g. design, coding, problem identification) and growth skills (e.g. building a brand, learning the latest marketing tools) — which are going to be more relevant in 5 years from now?
  3. (Optional): I've been writing a mini series on "purpose" these past 6 months, and I haven't published any of it yet. If you're up for reading Part 1 (6 minute read), I'd like to know if this is something you would continue reading. Bonus if there are any articles or books you think might inform my thinking on the topic.

Life Updates:

2025 was probably the most eventful year of my life.

The year kicked off with a celebratory brunch marking the end of my cancer treatment (technically that ended in September 2024, but this was when the doctor gave me sign off to start being in larger groups again).

Over the following months, Intros AI finally started to gain momentum. We brought on customers like Squarespace and made a few key hires. The uptick in growth and some meaningful partnerships led to Bevy Labs acquiring my company. Business Insider picked up on the story and wrote a mini profile.

Soon after, I proposed to Mikayla. I wrote about how Mikayla and I got engaged. Spoiler: it did not go as planned, but she did say yes.

Earlier in summer, my brother Michael and I biked from San Francisco to Los Angeles. I also started a co-ed basketball team. Mikayla said the one game she saw was the worst athletic performance she'd ever seen.

Writing Snippets:

I finally started a newsletter. I'm calling it Open Curtain, named after a secret society I never quite got off the ground.

  • My first post is on the value of journaling and writing: "Journaling became the only way I could get to internal clarity. Most of what I wrote ended up being crossed out and rewritten because once I saw the words, I realized they weren't true enough."
  • The second post is a reflection on hustle culture headlines: "thankfully this reporter is human and after raising these concerns to her, replied: 'We'll change the headline, to preserve the accuracy of your sentiment.'... Not everyone has a cancer card to pull — don't believe everything you read online!"

I'm planning to send out one of these every month or so.

Personal Metrics (Optional):

From those who've been on these updates since 2020, you may recall how I'd measure everything from my top values to how productivity varied based on sleep.

By the end of 2021, I was tracking fulfillment scores, time spent reading, and meditating. More recently, my metrics have simplified (a bit) and I've found ways to streamline the tracking.

There are two big departments I now monitor daily:

#1 Health:

  • Sleep [2019–2023 Oura ring, 2024–2026 Whoop]: Time asleep.
    • 2025: 7 hours 30 minutes average [+19% from last year — 2024 was 6 hours 18 minutes]
  • Workout: Did I workout for at least 20 minutes or not? (Yes / No)
    • 2025: Averaged ~3–4 days a week (2024 was 2–3 days a week)
  • Diet: Calories (Target 2,250) & Protein (Target 180g)
    • 2025: Average 2,309 calories // Average Protein ~170g
  • Meditation: Time meditating.
    • 2025: ~3 minutes (incomplete data)

#2 End of Day Fulfillment:

Back in 2021 I started asking myself on a scale of 1–10 how fulfilled I felt at the end of each day.

After 3 months, I noticed my daily fulfillment level correlated closely with my focus (i.e., Did I actually do what I set out to do that morning?). Since then, I've identified a few other indicators that lead to me feeling fulfilled: Connection, Personal Learning, and Writing.

This past year I decided that asking myself how fulfilled I was on a score of 1–10 felt too sloppy. So now I take a weighted average of the following metrics:

  • Work focus [1–10]: How consistently was I working on the most important thing for me and the company? (Same since 2021, but more flexible over time.)
  • Connection [1–10]: Did I meaningfully connect with someone today? (Noticed in 2022 — on days I meaningfully connected with or supported someone it would nearly always boost my feeling of fulfillment.)
  • Personal Learning [1–10]: How hard did I push myself to understand something important or interesting? (Noticed in 2023 — on days with high fulfillment, I often learned something important.)
  • Writing Time [Yes / No]: Did I write over 30 minutes? (Noticed in 2024 with my Kobro's Cancer Crew updates — if I wrote more than 30 minutes, it always boosted my feeling of fulfillment.)
  • Bonus [±1]: Did something special happen that meaningfully boosted or detracted from my End of Day Fulfillment? (Usually related to connection — even if all other scores were low, a special conversation with a friend or experience with Mikayla would still make me feel fulfilled.)

How this looks in practice (for yesterday):

  • Health: 6 hours 59 min sleep // Yes worked out // 2,294 calories, 189g protein // 3 min meditating
  • End of Day Fulfillment: Work focus 8, Connection 6, Personal Learning 8, Writing 10 (wrote for at least 30 min).
  • Evenly weighted: 8(0.25) + 6(0.25) + 8(0.25) + 10(0.25) = 8.0
  • Nothing special happened, so no bonus. Final score: 8.0

I've thought a lot about whether fulfillment is something I should try to quantify. Unsure, but my current system makes me feel more at peace.

Opportunities & Resources Worth Sharing (Optional):

Opportunities: Nothing special in this update — I'll make a point to include something in the next one.

Resources: One of my favorite quotes, which I sent to a few friends for holiday cards this year:

But do we ever look at such buildings and assume they sprung up overnight? No. We've seen the traffic congestion that attends them. The skeleton of beams and girders. The swarm of builders and the rattle of cranes… Everything grand is made from a series of ugly little moments. Everything worthwhile by hours of self-doubt and days of drudgery. All the works by people you and I admire sit atop a foundation of failures.

— Pierce Brown, Morning Star

Thank you for serving on my board.

Onwards,
David