Gentlemen’s Agreement 🤝🏻

I need a favor from you. Every week I spend several hours crafting this email to give you entirely for free. Banger, after banger. Except it’s not actually free.

I love doing this, but I also love seeing this grow (You might say I’m flawed. But you’re not my therapist). To keep this free it would mean the world to me, and my ego, if you shared this with just 1 person who you think would also like this.

They can subscribe using this link here 🙌🏻

Alright - onto the juicy stuff

I Left Dexcom

This might be the most important and vulnerable post I’ve ever shared in a public….

After 5.5 years, last week I left my job at Dexcom (don’t bury the lede, right?)

First order of business is to come clean that this isn’t supposed to be some woo woo rah rah mindset stuff meant to fire you up to quit your job tomorrow.

Let me remind you (and myself) why I even started this blog, newsletter, or whatever you call it in the first place:

1. I wanted to get really good at copywriting. To become a better thinker, seller, and communicator. The best way to do that was to have a reason to write publicly and share it on a regular basis. Writing online is the power of written word with infinite leverage.

2. The people I look up to in the world of business have a digital presence. I haven’t even met some of them. But they started at some point sharing their thoughts and positions publicly for anyone that was willing to listen. It’s a way to share your personal beliefs publicly. If someone wanted to understand who the hell Jared Seidel was. All they needed to do was spend an hour digging through my corner of the internet to get to know me.

3. To me blogs served as a breadcrumb trail for where others came from and signal for where they are going. My goal was to be that someone for someone else that has aspirations and goals that seem uncommon to most. To reassure someone that they’re not alone and the “traditional path” isn’t the only path for them. And most importantly, it sure as hell is worth it to bet on yourself over anything else.

For the first 26 years of my life I was working under the impression that life was structured and simple. Get good grades, go to college, get a good job out of college or become a doctor. Do your job well, start a family, buy a house, get promoted by the same company, retire by 65.

That broke when I left Ohio and moved to San Diego, California. What brought me to San Diego? Dexcom.

Dexcom was my second Job out of college. I had to find a new job because I got let go from my first role 11 months after starting at a Product Design consultancy right out of my master’s program.

If you’re new here, you should know I have Type 1 Diabetes. It’s is what forced me to be on top of my health, and built my unreasonably high passion for a healthy lifestyle.

Despite having T1D, I had no intention to work in diabetes for any part of my career. But when you push your best self out into the world, it shows, and you become a magnet… I took a job with the company (and stayed there) because I was excited about the wearable industry and had a hunch that CGMs were going to play a big part in that.

I came to Dexcom as an entry level R&D engineer, ready to learn anything and everything about the new flagship product and how to get it into the hands of even more people. At the company I met incredible people that were so passionate about the work that they did. This product saved their lives, or the lives of someone that they knew personally. We got to work on something that actually made a difference.

I came to learn that my cute little midwestern upbringing did not expose me to the opportunities you see in the state that has the largest economy in the United States and 5th largest in the world: California. I learned lives can be lived differently, how wealth is created, and (despite what my dad tells me) why people don’t want to leave.

I learned there’s more than one way to make money. Not just through the stability of a W2 job. After digesting this reality, I became obsessed with trying to make money on my own. A list of things I tried to make money since 2019:

• DJing

• Drop Shipping

• Short term rentals

• Preventative health consulting

• Photo and Video Media Business

• Cold Plunge Parties (still going baby 🕺🏼🧊)

The more and more I tried to make money, the more obsessed I became with doing it better each time. I knew I wanted to start a business on my own. I just didn’t know exactly where to start.

I saw that most CEOs at tech companies were previously in a role called “product manager.” They were coined as the mini-CEO of a business within a company. It seemed like the perfect next step. Instead of building product as an engineer, I wanted to build a business. In order to get better, I wanted to make running a business my job. So I made the switch from engineering to product.

Product Management was a crash course for learning business, strategy, financials, marketing, growth, partnerships, and how to talk to customers. It was a perfect next step. I felt like a polymath.

Unlike most people I actually love working.

I loved working on solving puzzles that seemed impossible to solve.

The heated debates with peers on complicated questions.

The anxiety of a problem and followed by the thrill of overcoming it.

Doing all this with people you enjoy being around

That is why I worked. I loved all of that.

After the honeymoon phase of the new role settled down. The itch came back. HARD.

I found my head wandering to other places. I didn’t feel like I was able to scratch the itch for building something on my own and owning the success or failure of that work. I was getting antsy.

I no longer felt like I was enjoying the work I was doing. My mind was wondering to how can I solve other problems and how to build wealth in other ways.

I found myself hating work. The love for the product I was working on turn monotonous. I felt like a slide fairy building powerpoint after powerpoint. My days were spent gaining ~alignment~. I got comfortable in a repetitive rhythm. A role that I once idolized became something I dreaded daily.

Recognizing this was like taking the red pill from the matrix.

It was unfair to myself and my peers to no longer be doing great work. To no longer be fired up to ruthlessly pursue pushing new frontiers in the health-sensing space.

That was when I knew, something had to change. This was the hardest part for me. For four years I’ve been trying small little things on the side. Taking small swings trying to see what sticks. I reached a point where I knew I needed to take my goals and myself seriously.

I realized an idea wasn’t going to just slap me in the face and I then decide “ok it’s time to start a company.” Tangible things happen when I take action and put my best self out there into the world. That’s how I got a job a Dexcom, that’s how plunge party started, and I know… that’s what is going to happen next.

Rather than do bad work…

I left.

This wasn’t an easy choice. Honestly it’s downright horrifying. It took many weeks to lay down the groundwork to be ready to take the leap.

But now it’s time. Shaan Puri put it best - the best product is just you pushed out into the world.

To me this will be a rollercoaster of emotions (and finances). But 5, 10, and 15 years from now I want to look back at this and tell myself: “I’m so fucking proud of myself for making this hard choice”

What’s next?

I know what you’re thinking: “wow I’m so stoked” Jared knows exactly what’s next and he’s just keeping it a secret.

Nope

Up next is this.

• Talk to people that are ahead of me, understand how they got there and what it takes (and costs) to get there.

• Hunt down a problem and opportunity in a space that I want to be in for the next 4-6 years.

• Do good great work

Here we go 🕺🏼

Love You,

Jared

Inspiration:

Patrick Campbell’s memo on leaving Paddle

Shaan Puri’s a kick in the pants

Paul Graham’s Do great work

P.S. - Dexcom is an incredible place to work and I am stoked for where they are headed. I could not be more proud and grateful that I was able to work there for as long as I did 💚 

I Dig So You Don’t Have To

1 Set:

2 IDs:

Our Corner of the Internet

Carving out a corner for some cool stuff I found on the internet this week…

• Jess Mah getting radically transparent on wealth.

• Tara Viswanathan’s weekly planning routine. I have been doing this weekly and just used her framework to make some small changes to mine! Tara is someone who I’ve been following for a while now. The company she co-founded, Rupa Health, got acquired recently!