Serendipity Net
Deep Why
One of the reasons I write this all - is the weird role of serendipity in my life.
Most of my breakthroughs and productive pivots have been serendipity based (even before it became the word of the year).
Not less - the whole success of business I’ve been running back in 2020-2022, being money hungry after underpaid science researcher times - is rooted in serendipity. It’s been proper “Backend and Sales” back then. But the sales part had never been explicitly proactive from my side. It’s been rather me enthusiastically talking here and there about the things I’ve been building - and clients just flew in. Though not small clients I would say. Somehow it has been converging to a proper B2B sales to federal-wide companies, with a sale time 3-5 times shorter than usual.
Trigger
The precise trigger that created an itch to write about serendipity became the following note:
“According to Stanford CS329A - something like TensorRT style optimization will work for the agentic pipelines as well! This is the precise moment where my multifaceted interests map has led to useful cross pollination.”
Being chaotic enough in my ventures leads to idea generation, that sometimes leads to strategic pivots that are life-changing.
Reframe
So the concept of a “serendipity net” has emerged in my mind. Something like a big array of neutrino detectors - waiting for a proper particle to come. In case of this blog - it’s just me writing about stuff I am genuinely curious and fascinated about. Being honest about the failures (previous write up). Being transparent about how the things work in my mind.
The reasonably bigger the “net” - the more probabilities that the right particle will be detected. Though realistically it’s rather “the reasonable diverse and orthogonal”.
It’s also similar to the concept of “passive income” - where you build a network of assets that works for you even when you are sipping carrot juice on some remote beach. But “serendipity net” is rather some intellectual, empathetical or any other network that passively works towards building some inbound stream for you.
Leads and clients stream in case of “sales” net. Insights and ideas stream in case of “chaotic interests & knowledge OS” net. And probably something good in case of “these random writeups” net.
Convergence
Pivot to corporate life followed by the “mouths shut” quant trading venture has shifted me away from the serendipity nets I had in the past. But a final clean pivot back to AI & engineering seems to be healing enough in order to start building it again. Not only building though - but finally being able to understand the meta first principles behind it.
P.S. Late but adjacent thought has emerged from the cellars of my mind as I have written this all. Previously I have been heavy on personal journaling. Private one. Though putting your raw thoughts out there in a public (well, darkness now, but who knows what particles will cross here) - leads to much better formalisation of ideas, concepts and mind maps around things. Some sort of “forced responsibility” feeling makes mind to properly scrutinize things before they are emitted. Something like a reasonable friction of “if it is out there in a public it has to comply to a higher bar” - that makes it slightly harder to write, but results in much better mental clarity.