I spent 40+ hours working on this essay

Read time: 2 minutes

After 40+ hours of research and writing I'm excited my first deep dive profile was published today!

Back in December a buddy Silas sent me a podcast episode he thought I would enjoy....It was Patrick O'Shaughnessy getting interviewed by David Senra.

It was the best podcast I had listened to all year and sent me down a rabbit hole finding a new type of writing I was excited to explore:

Human centered deep dive profiles.

I started reading as many profiles as I could from Colossus, the New Yorker, ESPN, and Paulina Pompliano's The Profile.

I loved learning from peoples' stories. Their mistakes and their accomplishments. But the part I found most interesting was when I got to understand how that person thinks. How they make decisions. And how those models led them to where they are today.

After a few months of reading, I was ready to write my own. Silas runs a climate tech podcast called CleanTechies, so I reached out to see if any of his guests might be good to highlight and if he'd be willing co-publish my first piece.

Shaun Abrahamson was the first name that came to mind.

So I listened to a few of his podcast episodes and was instantly intrigued with Shaun's easy going personality, thoughtful responses to questions, and unique way of thinking.

I quickly got to know Shaun well after listening to 15+ hours of him on podcasts and reading 40+ of his Medium/Substack articles he wrote dating back to 2013.

Warning this is not a quick read.

But if you're interested in learning how a guy consistently ignored the consensus around him and built one of the top climate tech VC firms in the country, would love for you to check it out!

My goal with these pieces are to distill how top performers think, make decisions, and pursue excellence. I plan to highlight business leaders, coaches, scientists, musicians, and teachers. I think we can learn from anyone who has achieved excellence in their craft regardless of how “relevant” it is to our day to day jobs or interests.

Thank you for reading! As always please reply and let me know what resonated, what didn’t, or what you question. I love chatting about this stuff!

Cheers,

Andrew

P.S. You can follow along for future profiles on my Substack The Pursuit. Profiles 2 & 3 are already in the works.