One month at Network School
September 18, 2025
The bus we took across the border from Singapore was almost empty. The air hummed with a low, hypnotic, sound or maybe it was just the fatigue of thirty sleepless hours since leaving Doha. A road stretched out ahead of us, strangely calm but too new to be abandoned. On each side, the jungle seemed ready to reclaim what had once been taken from it.
And then, suddenly, the city appeared on the horizon: immense towers, identical and rivaling each other like a row of dominos. As we got closer, we began to notice plants, not just flowers on balconies, but entire gardens suspended from the façades, like a futuristic Babylon.
We eventually pulls in front of a massive, bright new hotel. At the entrance stood a five-meter-wide block proudly bearing the flag of Network School. I turned to my friend and told him that I didn’t know exactly why, but for the first time in years, I was craving coconut water. A man named Kash welcomed us. I remember he was very caring and felt a bit nervous. Probably another proof we live in a simulation, he handed us two fresh coconuts while explaining a bit more about where we had just arrived.
The first days felt like a dream: pleasant, absolutely implausible, but only in retrospect. When you live something you can hardly grasp the full picture. Over the first week, I fell into a rhythm enjoying the benefits of this place: I would swim in the spacious pool each morning (almost always empty), eat healthy food, walk to a brand new office and work fueled by unlimited coffee.
Wtf are we here?
Benjamin and I had come here to answer a simple question: What do we actually want to do with the next few years?
Having the time to ask this question felt like the ultimate luxury to me. A few years ago, I think it was a goal in itself and I guess I was too focused on making it real to even imagine what I would do if it were.
But now, I had to decide between two urges:
- Enjoying the most of the incredible luck of being young and free
- Building useful things while I still can
Which could be explained simply in these terms: Most billionaires are old and would give up on their billions to be young again. They experienced both so they are probably right. At the same time, “working”, is one of my favorite things in life. Why bothering looking for enjoyment somewhere else? Especially when I feel like I will be forced to retirement by ai in a few years anyway.
So for a month, we spent each day playing at building a startup. Like kids we would tell ourselves a story and try to act like it were true. While doing so, we would learn. The only real difference with kindergarten is that adults didn’t seem to understand much more than us.
The game turned out to be surprisingly simple:
- Find people who have your problem
- Improve your solution
- Repeat
It was fun, stimulating. But playing only that game didn’t seem optimal. It’s easier than I thought when there’s nothing else competing for your attention though there are moments when persistence seemed to hurt more than it helps. Quite often I found myself bruteforcing a solution to a problem when I didn’t feel like it, only to replace it by something more elegant after a good rest.
After a lot of reflection, we each answered that question in our own way. For me, a simple heuristic helped: “What would I regret the most?”
In this case, I’d regret chasing wealth at the cost of my youth, regardless of the outcome. But I’d also regret not giving our idea a real chance. Both are true. The solution is to set a deadline. It solves the problem because it makes it cheap to change our mind.
If by the end of the year there’s no clear sign that persevering would take us to the next level, then it will be time to cut my losses and go discover what else life has to offer.