Small Bets for Engineers — with Daniel Vassallo 🎙️

Hey there, welcome to the second season of the podcast, which starts today! You can find the full lineup in the announcement post.

Today’s guest is Daniel Vassallo, engineer & creator of the Small Bets community.

Daniel has had an incredible professional journey.

He has been a Software Engineer at AWS for 8+ years, and then he left to pursue all kinds of personal projects. This chat was a refreshing story about unconventional careers and how to pursue successful (side-)projects.

🎙️ Episode

You can watch the full episode on Youtube:

Or listen to it on Spotify, Apple, Overcast, or your podcast app of choice.

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🏅 Interview Summary

If you are a 🔒 paid subscriber 🔒 from now on you will find my own summary of the interviews below.

It’s the 5-minute, handcrafted takeaways of what we talked about, with timestamps to the relevant video moments, for those who don’t have time to sit through the 1-hour chat.

Here is the agenda for today:

1. 🪴 Daniel’s story — we walk through his time at AWS and his multiple projects afterwards

2. 💰 Small bets vs all-in — how Daniel refined his unique, survivalist approach.

3. 🏡 Lifestyle-first mindset — switching from seeking prestige and impact, to actually enjoying your life.

4. 🗓️ How Daniel works — (not) working on a schedule, doing many things, and setting constraints.

5. 🚀 How to get started — Daniel’s advice to start projects on the side.

Let’s dive in!