My personal review of the year 2023
This year started with a downward cycle, but by the end, its course changed again with the help of some new Internet frens, and I managed to travel a lot, this time also with Lele.
In 2018, I started a new tradition of sharing my personal review of the year, covering experiences, achievements, learnings and other important parts.
Read the last editions via these links: 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 & 2022.
In a word, the year 2023 has been “bananas” — being somewhat silly, decaying when left alone, and yet gathering communities & smiles.
As intended, I ended up working and travelling more this year while also being able to increase both my gym & playtime. Meanwhile, I increased the time spent with kids as Alister grew more independent and Scarlett’s curiosity about her surroundings continued to evolve. And we celebrated our fifth anniversary with Lele!
However, the start of 2023 introduced setbacks that carried with me throughout the summer. WOF Labs’ potential merger with a fellow game studio failed, our flagship event suffered financial losses, and I wrote the post-mortem for Supplain while also having to pause World of Freight. Looking back, all this completely derailed me for months.
Fortunately, I did not completely stop — instead, I continued to travel, attended various web3 conferences and initiated our new venture, BananaCorp. Thanks to all this, I crawled out from my self-made pit, and now we are more energised than before.
Overall, the year 2023 was one for a total recall — allowing me to stop doing things that did not work while introducing me to plenty of new friends with whom we can start building for a bigger and bolder future.
My highlights in 2023
I am grateful for many things, the most important of which was the increased time we spent with my wife, Lele. This year, we celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary (and 10th year together) while starting to travel more together again — visiting Paris and Hong Kong.
The last few years, with lockdowns and the kids being born while our parents live in different cities, have kept us closer to home. But with Scarlett and Alister becoming old enough to be left with the grandparents for a week, we can continue investing time in ourselves as a couple.
At the same time, witnessing Scarlett and Alister grow up has been a magnificent experience. Their curiosity towards the surroundings and their utterly upbeat outlook on life keeps me buoyant and gives me the force to continue pushing regardless of what happens. Most of all, I cherish the moments when they ask me for help with anything when they want us to learn together — or whenever they want to watch the same toons.
I really do continue to love them more and more.
In addition to family-related highlights, I am grateful to the newly founded Banana DAOquiri community we assembled at the last BananaConf (formerly known as NFT Tallinn), with whom we are now building our new venture(s), as well as all the opportunities to travel and for being accepted into a boardgame group with whom we gather 2–3x per month.
Activities 2023 — Part I, Part II & Part III
Like 2021, this year can be divided into three nearly equal parts.
Part I — Fall
After failing to raise the capital needed to continue building our vision for supply chain connectivity protocol and our gaming infrastructure, I knew we should’ve called it quits — but my pride and honour didn’t let me do so.
So when I got introduced to another struggling web3 gaming studio with great developers but less marketing power, I figured we should combine our forces. Their team agreed to give it a shot, and for the next few months, we worked together towards saving both of our projects.
Unfortunately, we both had run entirely out of funds, and unlike me, they did not have enough personal savings to give this more than three months. Eventually, this did not give us sufficient time to refuel the engines, and we had to call it quits while still at the starting line.
Fortunately, I also continued organising the 2nd Edition of NFT Tallinn with our team at the same time.
This got me travelling to Paris, New York and Helsinki for promotion, contacting hundreds of outstanding builders and recording 35 NFT Tallinn Talks. (most of which have been uploaded as podcast episodes — here)
Ultimately, we made excellent progress, growing our attendance by 1.5x (while most other web3 events saw a decrease), tripling our sponsor support (growing from €40k to €120k) and turning the event genuinely international with people from 52 countries present.
Even more, people attending called it their favourite conference of all time, promised to return with friends for future editions, and supported us by forming a global Banana DAOquiri community.
However, by the end of it, I was already burned out and incapable of acknowledging the success at that time. On the one hand, I had just worked so hard for this that I did not take much leisure time for months. But more so, even all this success was not enough as our costs nearly quadrupled — leading us to take a 50k loss, primarily financed via loans.
So, after four months of work, I was in a worse financial position than before and did not have much power left to continue…
Part II — Struggle
The following months continued with hardship as I was dealt with the financial mess while being supposed to start working towards the event in 2024, with no real strength to do so.
At that time, I wanted to give up and hide from all my responsibilities. However, my parents taught me to know better — so I knew I had to dig through this shit with whatever it took. I did not know how yet.
Thankfully, my mentor and friend, William Entriken, had made me schedule a call-to-action email to all the speakers of NFT Tallinn.
A thank you letter mixed with potential future plans and question whether any of them wanted to get involved in all this.
To my surprise, over half of the speakers wanted to do so, with some (e.g. Nizzar & Armin) wanting to step up even more. And that is how we got started with the Banana DAOquiri, BananaCorp and more.
Still, this did not fully get me back on track — giving me just enough energy not to stop (yet also not accelerate).
Over the subsequent months, I went to Lisbon, Cologne, Paris, Biarritz, Miami, Copenhagen, Lugano, Berlin, Milan & Bilbao — always bringing together our newly founded Banana community while working towards our first BananaCorp project — Web3xFashion.
Although one might ask how all this travelling and building towards new projects can be a struggle, the reality is that I did not want to do any of it. None of this was bringing in any money; I did not fully believe it was worth it; it took me away from my family, and I would have loved to just take time off after the almost two-year-long marathon. But I am so happy I did it.
In the end, all these people I kept meeting around the world with their own dreams and struggles gave me the power to stop holding myself back and get back to work. And especially the success we had with Web3xFashion gave me the belief that there is actual potential to be unlocked in everything we had built until that moment with NFT Tallinn and the Banana DAOquiri community.
Talking about numbers, we gathered 120+ people from 22 countries to the Web3xFashion event in Milan. Of those, 40% work for the fashion industry in companies such as Dolce&Gabbana, Prada, Valentino, etc, while others build various tech solutions for the brands. One of the biggest praises we got was that the event did not focus on digital fashion but on real-world use cases for web3 tech, which is what the brands actually look for.
Learn more about the event via this Decrypt article.
I feel it is also necessary to mention that if I had not previously saved and invested as much as I personally had through 2020–2022, I would not have had the opportunity to continue pushing. More so, it is primarily thanks to ApeCoin staking rewards that I could finance this period.
Part III — New Beginnings
Although we had already started working with Armin & Nizzar in the early summer, our collaboration as BananaCorp took off after the success of Web3xFashion in Milan.
By that point, we had tested our first hypothesis that the web3 technology is entering the minds of luxury brands, but they do not like most implementations out there. More so, there is not enough communication between brands & builders — aka, there is room for industry-specific events where brands go on the stage to share how they are looking to utilise new technologies so that startups could build better solutions.
On the basis of that, we had agreed to turn NFT Tallinn into BananaConf, an industry-wide event focused on bringing brands and builders together, and introduce Web3x[Industry] events concentrating on industry-specific use cases.
In addition to that, we still have two more hypotheses we need to test:
- By introducing brands with builders, we will learn which builders we should invest our time & money in as advisors and capital allocators.
- Along the way, we will also learn what the additional missing puzzle pieces are so that we can build these ourselves.
Exciting times are ahead of us, and we have already started seeing early interest from both brands and builders to work with us.
Here’s what you can expect from us in 2024!
- February 2024 — BananaDAO 90s music party at NFT Paris
- March 2024 — Web3xSupercars (TBD — Miami or NYC)
- April 2024 — BananaConf Tallinn & ETHTallinn
- May 2024 — Web3xWine&Spirits in Paris
- June 2024 — Web3xWatches&Jewellery in Zurich
- September 2024 — Web3xFashion in Milan
Learn more about these events and how to get involved — link here.
Other than BananaCorp, there have been other positive notes as well.
- Lele and I went on our first kids-free vacation in five years, visiting Hong Kong for ApeFest and Hong Kong Disneyland.
- Lele and I also achieved Gold-producer in our N21 business — one step, and we are at the Platinum level.
- A friend reached out, interested in helping to revive World of Freight, and we got it running again.
So, whereas the year started with a downward cycle, I have managed to change its course with the help of the people around me, and now our path is again upwards and onwards.
In other numbers, this year, the amount of work-related meetings & video calls stayed almost the same at 671. In addition, I attended 102 conferences and events, hosted 79 Twitter Spaces, took 41 flights and was interviewed 9 times. At the same time, I hosted/attended 43 pre-planned game nights.
Talking about board games, my favourites after this year are:
- A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (after series binging, I like it more)
- Disney Lorcana (this new game reinvigorated my love towards TCGs)
- Star Wars: Rebellion
Other than these three, I truly enjoyed the following ones: Civilization: A New Dawn, Concordia, The Castles of Burgundy and Twilight Imperium.
As for the video games, I only played Civilization 6 on my Nintendo in 2023 while being more active with web3 games such as Dookie Dash, The Forge, Legend of the Mara and Battle Town (all affiliated with Yuga Labs).
Personal fitness continues to be important for me, and this year, I had 87 gym sessions, AKA 1.67x per week. (perhaps in 2024, I get this back to +2x)
Last but not least, my portfolio kept falling this year, dropping roughly 32% from 290k to 198k. (tho it is doing much better now than a few months ago)
Overall, it has been a struggling year, but at least I got to travel a lot, take more time for board games, and the last couple of months have been on an upward trajectory. Onwards and upwards!
Defeats & setbacks
I’ve previously mentioned some defeats & setbacks, and it is only fair to look back on them and see what I learned from them.
- Merger opportunity failed — after failing to raise money for both Supplain & the pivot to some gaming infrastructure tech, we tried to merge forces with another gaming studio. However, this failed as the other side lacked the resources and willingness to see this go through.
This taught me to seek mergers only when both sides are strong enough to ensure success, either by funding it through or introducing a merger of strong equals. Other options end up being a waste of time. - The event lost money — after the minor financial success of NFT Tallinn in 2022, we decided to host it again but run everything internally. This led us to overspend and lose money, even as all other metrics grew.
Primarily, this taught me again to have a tighter grip on budgets while also looking for more affordable options and taking time to negotiate prices for high-ticket services, as this is where we lost most this year. - I burned out — throughout all this, I pushed myself too far without seeing the gains and thus lost belief along the way.
From all this, I learned the need to pay myself earlier and take more time off for leisure and thought-wandering time, as having done both enough will help me get through the bad times.
Books to read for 2024
I’m embarrassed to write this, but 2023 has again been awfully poor when it comes to reading proper books.
Throughout the year, I must have listened to over 500 hours of podcasts and spaces as well as tens of long-form articles, but when it comes to books, I mainly read Children’s books again.
There is still one I read and can recommend:
And I promise myself to really do better in 2024!
Plans for 2024
Next year, I’m looking to get back on track with growing my savings instead of living on them — by getting our business flywheel working and turning my portfolio’s path around.
At the same time, I plan to invest more time into our relationship with Lele, taking more time for dates while in Estonia and taking her along for my travels. In addition, I also want to go on a proper trip with my kids, perhaps to Super Nintendo World in Japan or at least Disneyland Paris.
Last but not least, I must start taking more alone time for thinking, reading and writing. This side has really been lacking in the last few years.
Besides that, I plan to continue travelling, going to the gym and attending/hosting board game nights.
That said, I’m super excited about 2024!
