The Distill | Updates & Opportunities

Greetings, Pioneers 👋

Check your spam folder for last week’s newsletter — a minor DMARC/DKIM snafu (now fixed) kept it from landing safely.

Anyway — lots to catch up on this week. Let’s dive in. 🏊‍♂️

Otavio Logs in From Forest City

Let’s catch up with our good friend Otavio — a.k.a. High Agency’s golden boy — who left Louisville in March on a journey to Singapore. More specifically: Network School in Forest City, a startup utopia rising from the jungle.

We should all take notes 📝

Follow along with a recent post from Otavio’s Blog.

Prelude to Summer

I’ve scrapped and restarted this edition countless countless times. Alas, this is just resistance getting in the way. It’s been a while since I sat down and wrote a stream of conscience. So here we go. It’s been too long.

The past 6 months have been quite eventful to say the least.

In January, I hosted a sauna and cold plunge event in my hometown. This was killer. It felt great to provide something that people clearly craved. The feedback was incredible. People said they wanted more social wellness activities. They were tired of getting drinks every week. This was clear product market fit. It felt great. I also learned that I much rather enjoyed being an event host than an attendee. I feel much more in alignment when trying to provide a great experience to others than trying to enjoy someone else’s vision for a good time. Socially, I think it’s much easier to talk to people as a host as well. It’s like a built in icebreaker. Hey how are you liking the event? This was an enriching little side quest. Social wellness. Onto the next.

In February, I helped host HackKentucky. The first non-university hackathon in the state of Kentucky in ~15 years. It was a smashing success. I fully expected like 10 people to show up. But the sign-ups kept flowing in. We had over 250 people attend the hackathon and the energy was flowing. It was a glimmer of hope to see young, hungry builders in a city I’m otherwise very bearish on. The talent is here. They just need a medium to grow. I’d say this economic development chapter was quite fulfilling. Hope to have inspired a few others during this time. Good luck Dan & the folks at KYX (f.k.a. KYCombinator). There’s a lot left to be done.

In March, I moved to Singapore. Well… Just outside Singapore to a ghost-town island in Malaysia. Why tf did you do that Otavio? I will say, it was not on the original roadmap. Far from it. I was in the middle of planning a move to NYC. I had a pending apartment application and was coordinating the behemoth that is the NYC housing market. One February morning, I got an email that Network School v2 was here. I had applied to v1 in 2024. The vision was grand. A prototype city of the future for techno-optimists. Housing. Food. Gym. Coworking. All included for a flat $1.5k/mo. Crazy value. I jumped on it. But didn’t get in. When I saw that v2 was starting, I had to make a decision. NYC or NS. I went to the gym to clear my head. But the decision was pretty easy. NYC would always be there. NS may not exist in a year. Do what makes for a better story. Dropping NYC to move to this mysterious startup society is definitely the cooler story for my grandchildren. I recorded the application video in the parking lot and submitted. Got in. Withdrew from the NYC plan. And moved across the world to see what the future of humanity holds. Choose to be in the arena.

For now, NS is home. I find joy in the mundane. And NS does the mundane really well. The friction for living the way I want to live has been abstracted away so I can focus on value-creation™️. But let me be clear. This is still a startup society. And having worked in the physical living spaces industry before, things will not be perfect. Frontier not fancy. This is not the West. There will be problems. Despite that, I don’t think there’s anywhere in the world that beats this. And I haven’t even mentioned the community. Sure, the facilities are great. But that’s not what will keep me coming back. I had originally wanted to move to NYC to be around a more regular group of people. Build roots in a community. Do long term things with long term people. And NYC is still great for that. But NS is up there. And it may be even more potent. The type of person who self-selects to come to a place like NS is someone who wants to build the life they want. They have a certain operating system to their daily life. Common themes among these unique systems are sovereignty, freedom, ambition, future. And man, have I made some great friends along the way. Long-journey comrades. Param. Ben. Lucas. Sahil. Sofian. Mivin. Edrick. Alborz. Darshan. Vivaan. Damian. Waris. Violeta. Debby. Bjorn. And countless countless others that would make this list far too long.

Anyway, NS has been a joy. While here, I made a somewhat abrupt decision to wind down some client work to focus on other projects. I had to remind myself why I started the AI consulting thing in the first place. It was to incubate ideas for something larger. The scaling vector for Azuli Studios is labor. And with the data and experiences I have today, I don’t think I want to play the game of scaling labor. Thinking back to Naval, the most permissionless forms of leverage are media and code. Which means I should just spam those 2 forms of leverage. I trust my abilities to vibe code anything now. I’d say I’m still weak in the media space. I have to remind myself that I have not taken nearly enough shots on target. I just need to ship + post more and see what happens.

Network effects have also been on my mind lately. There are 16 of them you can read about here, courtesy of NfX. Networks are one of the many things in this world that compound. As we get older, we meet more and more people. You can’t take away interactions. Everyone you have met is a node in your network. Some connections stronger than others. We build trust with some of them. Provide value to others. And share time in the trenches with a select few. Either way, as time goes on, your network grows and grows (unless you stagnate). And the main things in your control that affect your network are where you live and where you work. When you consider a job opportunity or a city to live in, don’t think about the job or city itself. Ask yourself, which network am I joining? I have now joined the Network School network. Which has the potential to be one of the most potent networks in the world.

So yeah, this is great. But what am I getting at? When you are working as a soloprenuer, your network effects are limited to your customers and business relationships. I keep wondering if this is optimal. I look at people from the PayPal Mafia. Or any other founding team of a large unicorn. More likely than not, the cofounders had built a relationship at a place of employment (or university) before. I’ve only really worked in one place (it was a great place) but I think my network power is still very small. I keep wondering if it’s time to get a job again. Not necessarily for cashflow but rather for network and mission. For future founder leverage. I got to ~20k MRR with Azuli Studios. But man, it wasn’t that fulfilling. The whole thesis of the business was to make other people more money, and capture a piece of that for myself. That’s a brittle foundation. There’s no truth seeking component. There’s no contrarian component. Sure, it’s cash-flowing. But it’s not doing anything other than that. I want to devote my time toward something grand. That’s why I quit my job at Landing in the first place. Action breeds information. I only got here because I kept moving forward. I climbed a mountain and may be ready for the next. Just something on my mind. Need to sit with this some more.

So whats next? I’ll be in NYC for a few weeks. Stoked to meet up with some old friends while there. It will be great to get a breathe of that fresh vibrant NYC hustle as well. Until next time.

Onward.

-Otavio Menezes

Vibe Code Night x Poker Night Recap

Code Meets Cards ♠️💻

Two events. One night. Endless energy.

On Thursday night, we brought Vibe Coding and Poker Night under one roof — where high-agency builders pushed code by day and read tells by night. From debugging sessions to bold bluffs, the room was alive with ideas, laughter, and just the right amount of competition.

👑 Attendance crown goes to Rachel & Susan — 30 strong for Vibe Code. A smaller (but scrappy) crew for Poker.

But I think you all know where the night ended 👿
Rachel crossed the floor — and went from “what’s the big blind?” to full-blown degen.
Don’t believe it? By Friday morning, she had a full casino night planned.

From location scouting to permit planning & table rentals. No stone left unturned. Sounds like KYX has it’s first fundraiser.

🗓️ Save the date: August 8, 2025. More to come.

What started as an accident, blossomed into a competition and ended as another a dub for KYX and everyone who joined.

This is what happens when Kentucky talent shows up and jams together.

Big thanks to everyone who came out — you made it electric ⚡

Bigger thanks to Natalia, Janna & Story for your support + an amazing venue to host events.

Opportunities

Blueberry Pediatrics

Our very own, Kieran Gill, and Blueberry Pediatrics are hiring.

Full-stack Software Engineer

About Blueberry:

Our mission is to turn every family's living room into a pediatric urgent care by combining at-home diagnostic kits with concierge-like access to pediatricians. With Blueberry, every family has affordable and immediate 24/7 access to the same (or better!) care they’d receive at an urgent care or ER. We believe every child deserves access to top-quality healthcare. Blueberry Pediatrics is growing fast. We've proven that we can drive better health outcomes for children and families, and dramatically reduce medical costs for parents and companies. Delivering affordable, high-quality healthcare requires engineering ingenuity, leadership committed to prioritizing patient outcomes over short-term profits, and an exceptional product team.

Who they’re looking for:

We’re seeking product engineers who are strong full-stack generalists. From writing HTML to optimizing SQL queries and managing deployment infrastructure, you enjoy mastering every layer of the stack. You have lots of experience in MVC frameworks, like Django or Ruby on Rails. You deeply understand the products you work on. You start with business objectives, then work backward to technical solutions. You use data to validate assumptions and measure impact. You're pragmatic and know when to optimize for speed versus scalability. We reward impact over complexity. You seek simple, maintainable solutions. You embrace the chance to solve a problem with a non-technical alternative. Engineers at Blueberry are given agency to own projects, from conception to production. You are energized by autonomy and have a track record of being a Manager of One. You implement high-quality software, have experience leading people and projects, and own the rollout and maintenance of your work. You proactively find and fix bugs, document systems, and evangelize fixing tech debt.

If you're the kind of engineer who craves ownership, moves fast, and wants to work on something that actually matters — this is it. Blueberry isn't just building software, they're redesigning how pediatric care works from the ground up. You’ll ship real product, solve real problems, and help real families — all while working alongside sharp, mission-driven teammates like Kieran.

This one checks all the boxes:

✅ High-impact work
✅ Full-stack autonomy
✅ A rocketship company with a 💜

Apply Here - https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/blueberrypediatrics/dc8108f3-34ed-4701-aa5d-6bfa160a643d?utm_source=lik

My Food My Choice - Social Gig

Terry Lykins, Dietitian founder of My Food My Choice:

An app that helps people with autism and Down syndrome make healthy food choices through gamified learning, is seeking help creating a social media presence, from a student or a passionate advocate for this population.

My Food My Choice is pre-revenue, with a very small budget, but a big heart. Terry needs someone to design a FB page and a YouTube channel, for starters. This could develop into more marketing in the future.

Want to get in at the ground level, cut your teeth and drive real measurable impact? This one’s for you.

Contact Terri Lykins at [email protected] if you’re interested.

That’s a wrap 🎬
Keep showing up 💪
Keep shipping 🚢
Peace, pioneers ✌️