Every year I try to write a little something - a manifesto for the year. I did so in 2014, and again in 2015. I skipped last year, largely due to being busy and having too many irons in the fire.

A lot has happened in the past two years.


I wrote a book, Learning ClojureScript.

I became very active in the open source Clojure community, creating editor and build tool plugins like ultra, vim-cljfmt, yagni and more.

I found a woman to be a true partner for me, my equal or better in every way.

I lived through Standard Treasury's acquisition to Silicon Valley Bank.

I joined Airbnb, where I've been able to work as a a senior engineer on their build infrastructure team.

I learned a new language, Go.

I started a new business.


This year will be different from those that have preceded it.

It will be a year of focusing on a single thing: getting the new venture off the ground. This means fundraising (a lot), building a founding team, establishing a foreign subsidiary, moving abroad, and much, much more.

It will be the biggest and hardest thing I have ever done in my life, and it will require my complete attention. There's nothing else I want to do more, and I've spent a long time preparing for this.

To quote zefrank:

There's no need to sharpen my pencils anymore, my pencils are sharp enough.

To it, then.

~ V