Welcome, friend.

March 29, 2019

Hi, I’m Tom.

I like pull-ups, making up my own lyrics to popular songs, and talking to people with unusual worldviews.

I write, here and in other places, to make sense of the world, and to spread this sense with others.

Some things about me

I’m a British-seeming Third Culture kid.

I studied maths & physics and now work in start-ups.

I work at Turpentine.co. When I’m not working I’m usually skiing, jotting down ideas, or playing touch rugby.

I also write Between the cracks. It’s a public diary of the ideas I’m kicking around.

I’m based in Vancouver, Canada. Contact me if you are around and fancy a coffee (or a ski sesh!).

You can find me on Twitter, or LinkedIn.

Some of my favourite posts

• Life, School, and the 80:20 Rule: School compresses the ups and downs of life into nice linear sequences. It gives the illusion of progress. But real learning is nonlinear.
• The economics of OnlyFans: OnlyFans is a billion-dollar company, but most creators lose money. Why?
• Minimum Viable Novelty: In uncertain times we crave order, and in the lockdown we have to impose it upon ourselves. Our routines need minimum viable novelty so we don’t go insane.
• Why does maths work?: A summary of Hamming’s The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics
• Wait Attentively: Why waiting for groups of friends is like an infinite series.
• Benford’s Law Basics: In which I finally understand Benford’s Law.
• 2020 Review: Just over a year of writing online. It’s surprising how much I learned.

Some things I’d like to see in the world

If you want to discuss any of these, reach out!

• A scaled solution to the Two-Sigma problem
  • Something between The Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer, and Aristotle as a live-in personal tutor.
  • Seems like LLMs could be highly promising here.
• Widespread nuclear power (especially nuclear powered container ships — did you know the biggest 15 ships emit as much pollution as all the world’s cars?)
• A company that absolutely nails moving-as-a-service
  • When you have to move you should be able to push a button, and all the paperwork, finding a house, finding schools, opening a bank account, is done for you.
• Voluntary Imprisonment as a service — a solution to the “flying productivity paradox”
  • People tend to be extremely productive on airplanes. This is in part because there is a lack of stimulation: no internet, limited room to move around, only sub-mediocre entertainment which is decided by committee, not tailored to your interests. How can we simulate this in a co-working environment?
• A really good consumer subscription management app.
  • Because companies are after predictable revenue, the subscription business model will become even more prevalent. But most consumers don’t get persistent value from most of their subscriptions.
• Widespread permanent carbon removal under $50 per ton of CO2e
  • Biochar and enhanced mineral weathering seem like two promising approaches here.
• A “COO in a box” for creators.

Consulting

Richard Feynman once wrote: “Mathematicians think every problem is either impossible, or trivial”. To a mathematician, knowing you can solve a problem is equivalent to solving it. It’s not that there isn’t a lot of hard work required to get to the solution. But the path to the solution is known, and clear. And that’s mainly what mathematicians care about.

I feel the same way about business. I view business problems as either open-ended, where it’s unclear whether a satisfactory solution is possible, or closed, where it’s clear what the path to a solution is. In my consulting practice I help clients turn their open-ended business problems into closed ones.

I help clients break their problems down, figure out which elements of the problem to focus on and which can be safely ignored. Together we turn your messy, open-ended problems with fuzzy tradeoffs into a closed-form plan with tradeoffs clearly prioritised.

As my client, I typically won’t help you execute on the operational details of your problem—but by the time you’re ready to execute, the path to a solution will be so clear that you won’t need my help anymore.

I am excited by solving new problems—for me, the more unusual your problem is, the better a fit for my practice. I have expertise across growth, marketing, sales, data analytics, hiring, people management, and negotiation.

I’m currently at capacity for new clients, but to get on my waitlist, reach out at tom [at] xsrus [dot] com.

Some example engagements:

• Interim head of special projects for series-A crypto company: hiring, strategy, and org structure for data acquisition team.
• Advisor to CEO of seed-stage legaltech company: product strategy, growth strategy, and hiring.
• Advisor to CEO of seed-stage Onlyfans competitor: product strategy, growth strategy, and seed fundraising.
• Advisor to CEO of pre-seed consumer SaaS company: product strategy and growth strategy.
• Advisor to high-end Mayfair art gallery: hiring and strategy.

About this blog

I’m just trying to figure things out.

You can find out more about what I was thinking when I started it here.

I hope you find it useful!