The desire to be first
My current interests are a function of ceaseless web browsing during my childhood. Growing up in a suburb that embodied homogeneity, discovering the new and novel felt like my divine calling.
Finding things first always felt special. To this day, I like identifying new waves and having independent taste.
What does it mean to find something first? Surely, what you find on the internet may have been found before by someone, somewhere.
Finding something first means to discover on your own, to exercise judgement in isolation - without outside noise or signal.
StumbleUpon was my tool of choice to surf the web and find things first. The tool mapped the internet and led me to the edges of my curiosity. At the same time, it gave me the confidence to roam the internet and endlessly surf from link to link. Age 12 onwards I found movies like City of God, obsessed over cellphones on PhoneDog, digital art on ffffound, and new music on datpiff. I'd share my discovered treasures with friends and they'd ask: "How did you find this?"
All this grew my love for discovering the unknown. I'd spend all day hunting for ideas beyond my own imagination. Finding things first is a combination of luck and skill - a practice I still put to work everyday and I suppose this curiosity and love for finding and sharing has defined my life.
What started with music, films, articles, and books - has translated into my love for discovering people working on great ideas. People with the ambition of building world changing companies. What I love most is believing in them before anyone else. I've got that desire to be first.
And today, people still ask me "How did you find this?"
- sk
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