Last updated 4th June 2019.
I’m working to build communities of thoughtful, friendly nerds.
I write for pleasure and mischief. I like to try to see things in new and different ways.
I’m most active on Twitter these days. I have lots of Twitter threads.
I’m currently working on @1000wordvomits, a project to write 1,000,000 words in 1,000 sets of 1,000. I started on this project in December 2012. As of June 2019, I’m 76.5% complete.
I maintain a list of bookmarks that are quite popular.
Here’s a list of links about building and maintaining good communities. I started putting together this set of links for my own reference, but over time I found myself sharing them a lot.
Letter to a young songwriter – I wrote this in 2014 for a younger version of myself, and I find myself referencing it quite often. The central insight is “don’t try to be good, or to have fun – strive to be prolific instead.” Your ideas about what is good and what is fun will both change once you’ve got more experience. So just get as much experience as you can.
2017
Being Smart vs Being Kind – This is another thing that I find myself sharing a lot, because so many intelligent people needlessly limit themselves by being unkind. It has some similarities with the idea of “radical candor.”
My relationship with religion – this is one of those things that I just felt like I had to write down at some point, just to make sense of it for myself.
One must imagine Sisyphus LOL-ing – this is a pretty decent representation of my personal approach to managing the widely-perceived crisis of existence.
2016
Beware the moral failing fallacy – even in our supposedly secular modern times, when you really sit down and analyze people’s mistakes and failings, eventually you tend to arrive at some variation of “I’m lazy / greedy / jealous / selfish -> I’m a horrible person”.
2015
My journey from underachieving student to moderately competent adult – I wrote this when an older friend I admire who works in education asked me about my personal experiences growing up.
2014
An Analysis of Power And Social Dynamics In ‘Mean Girls’ – somehow still one of the best things I’ve ever written.
Would modern day Singapore as a nation cease to exist if a megaton nuclear bomb was detonated over it? – This is probably the funniest and most entertaining Singapore-related content I’ve had go viral.
Here’s something I wrote when I was annoyed with some “hustle porn” type content that was very lacking in numbers: How to bullshit everybody with an inspirational success story, sans facts
2013
I’ve had a blogpost about procrastination hit the front page of Hacker News, which got me over 18,000 hits and all sorts of interesting emails and requests.
2012
My blogpost about meeting Singapore’s PM Lee Hsien Loong went viral a few years back. He’s a smart guy.
I’m a marketer by trade. I build content teams to achieve marketing goals.
I was the first marketing hire at ReferralCandy. I managed the ReferralCandy blog in particular. I’ve helped it grow from 2,000 hits per month to over 130,000 hits per month, during which time ReferralCandy users made over $100,000,000 in referral revenue.
I’m always happy to talk about content marketing, SEO, distribution, hiring writers, managing a writing team, etc. My slides on “how I edit email copy” was well-received on Twitter.
Check out my marketing blog here: visakanv.com/marketing/. I particularly recommend The Instructions I Wish I Was Given (As A Newbie Startup Marketer)
Reach out to me:
The best way to reach me is on Twitter, at @visakanv. You can also try emailing me.
I also have a Telegram channel!
I send out an occasional email via TinyLetter. I try to keep it intimate: tinyletter.com/visakanv
I also have a Patreon, where you can get private updates on my writing career.
Other things about me:
I co-founded statement.sg, which has sold over $100,000 worth of t-shirts and counting. We get quite a bit of media attention about it.
I organized a “screaming event” where I invited strangers to come and scream at Hong Lim Park with me. It also got quite a bit of media attention.
I have a very funny wife and two cats that have no respect.