On spikes and ranges
This is a re-post of an article I published on my website back in 11 June 2025. I’ve reposted this since I’m migrating all my writing to this Substack. Please cite the original date of publication (11 June 2025), when referring to this article.
This is an 8-minute read.
I’m writing this because I’m 24 and only now just graduating college. I’ve spent years of my life building things and not posting about them, leading teams and not putting it on my resume, and solving hard problems and somehow still having no experience. Currently, at 24, I have no spike, which is something like a one-liner. Like how Mark Zuckerberg is the Facebook guy or how Chapell Roan is the sapphic drag queen (I’m so sorry, I couldn’t think of anything).
Exactly 10 days ago, I pitched Slate Notes to some people at Entrepreneur’s First. It was a product that I’ve thought about for months, but it took me finishing my undergrad degree and free access to Cursor to figure out how to turn it into reality. Most days, I’m drowned out by abstractions. I would start the week wanting to build something, then overthink and over-optimize along the way. Somehow, by the end of the week, I’m often left with a home page or two components, or some unfinished scaffold of the thing that I wanted to build.
That week, I had a vision. I was going to build a thinking OS, an AI assistant that can go through your notes (your knowledge) and figure out what’s next. Of course, given that it was a high-level vision, I was prone to overthinking and (yet again) over-optimizing. In fact, I did. Proudly to say, only for a day. I got sick of it the next day and decided I’ll just use Cursor instead of coding it on my own since it would be good to learn vibe coding anyway just in case I need to code anything quick.
I was able to do it in 3 days (thanks, Cursor). But now, I have to pitch it.
It was a 30-minute call and I was nervous. It was also 12am and I was not in a place where I could speak well (i.e., in the same room as my brother while he was quite loudly playing Valorant; also there was no other room so I didn’t really have a choice).
I had a product, and I was able to test it with 4 people, but that’s about it. Basically, I pitched then I fumbled. I ended up yapping about AI safety for a good part of that pitch, which is absolutely NOT what Slate was about. When they asked me what my revenue model was, I talked about what it was not. I knew by the end of the call that I was not going to get in, but it was their feedback that stuck to me. They said:
“While we really liked your curiosity and deep interest in AI safety, we’ve decided to prioritise candidates who already show stronger founder signals - whether through having taken significant risks, built strong followership, or demonstrated top 0.001% technical ability in a specific niche.”
They enumerated 3 things they would’ve wanted to see: technical depth and ability to execute, founder potential in terms of vision, leadership, and the ability to rally others, and a clear, standout spike in a specific domain. I’ve also been thinking of these things for quite some time. I realized these were things that I was generally lacking when I talk about myself, or perhaps even in the things I do.
Technical depth and ability to execute
While I took many units of physics, engineering, and computer science, I don’t quite consider myself as technical. I don’t think I understand that much about physics or engineering or computer science, to be perfectly candid. I generally don’t feel like I can follow discussions on these topic without Google or ChatGPT. I also don’t think I’ve done a lot of impressive things. I felt aggressively mid in terms of technical depth and ability to execute. Yet, all these are both right and wrong at the same time.
Why I’m wrong
I often underestimate myself. Many times at work (in a lot of my many workplaces), I’ve been dubbed as ‘too technical,’ which I reckon only happens when you actually do things that are technical.
But here’s the thing: it turns out my brain only works when I’m in my natural habitat. That means, I can only do these things conditional to when I’m not under stress, an urgent deadline, or having to pitch it to someone.
I’ve actually built and launched things, albeit lame, and refused to publicize it over and over again. For one, I built Slate. I’ve also built a 2-player Pacman-like game in Java, a card game similar to Card-Jitsu in Club Penguin (also in Java), probably around 20 websites since I was 9, and around 3 mobile apps for hackathons that I joined in college. I weirdly have high standards for myself and nothing even seems to pass. This is why I’m always nervous when I need to deliver. I always need to at least get through my own standards, which is just impossible to do (almost).
Why I’m right
I am aggressively mid. All those “built X” and “launched Y” anecdotes give people spikes. What I actually have is range. All the tinkering led me to learn how to build websites, web apps, desktop apps, mobile apps, and even Arduino robots. Do you know the range you need to have in order to successfully finish a project in all those? I did AWS DeepRacer for 2 weeks a year ago and became the second highest-ranked player in the Philippines that month’s end.
My fault is that I did all these things which improved my range, but not once gave me a spike. I easily got bored and moved on to the next thing. I was never an expert at anything. I just knew a lot of stuff and that’s what people came to me for.
Vision, leadership, and the ability to rally others
I know I always have a vision for what I do. However, I’m not particularly skilled at making people see my vision. This is a prerequisite for leadership and followership. People need to know what I mean to know if they should trust me.
There are times I’m able to do this, but usually that happens when I have enough time to sit through this vision. And it comes in batches!
In Slate, I first had to sit through my product’s vision, and I was able to make an output out of it. But still needed to sit through my vision with the revenue model or the go-to-market strategy. That’s something I couldn’t do on a whim.
I genuinely think I’m a good leader, when I have the opportunity to lead. I had a funny guy-era back in the pandemic when people knew me because of the jokes and memes that I would post. I’d get hundreds and thousands of likes and retweets. But that’s a reputation I built over time. It took me maybe 2 years of shitposting on Twitter to go viral 3x for just being funny (before I deleted my Twitter). So I guess, that’s proof I can rally others (sort of). I just haven’t done it on the things I put on my resume. I think that’s something I’m learning now with my work.
The spike
I am tempted to say that I’ve never had a spike. But I have. It started at 15 when I did a stint as a DJ at an evening radio show with a few thousand followers. I started as a graphic artist intern to force myself to learn Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, and ended as a scriptwriter and DJ as well.
Actually no, I started at 12 when I decided to publish my own webzine which had 460 reads, 165 votes, 11 comments just on the first 24 hours with zero marketing. Apparently, it even hit 1k reads by the end of the week. I continued to publish 3 more issues.
If anything, I had too much spikes. So much that it turned into range.
I’m also my own worst enemy. Even when I knew I had talent, I rarely combine it with hard work. I got accepted to all the unis I applied to and still did really bad in college. I had weird years where I would get into the Dean’s List in the first term, then fail half my subjects the next term.
It was so aggressively mid and I was so frustrated at myself for it. Though, at least now I see it.
I don’t think it took fumbling at the EF pitch to get me here. But they described it in such a phrase that frustrated me even more: that I know because of this, I am not part of their 0.001%.
I used to laugh at my friend for wanting to become part of Forbes 30 Under 30. I thought it was a shallow goal. Honestly, I think it still is. I don’t think any human should subject themself to that standard. The recognition should be because you genuinely did something cool for yourself, not to be part of some list. But at the same time, I’ve repeatedly failed at challenging myself to be better than my current. I’ve lived knowing that I’m talented and called it a day. But talent is useless without practice. So I guess, I’m saying if by the time you meet me, I’m still this person, then please, tell me to get off my ass.