Simone Giertz: Controlling your story prevents you from feeling like a victim
Simone Giertz · Simone Giertz on Her Robots and Returning to Work After Brain Surgery · Y Combinator · Jun 5, 2019 · at 21:43
Inventor Simone Giertz reflects on her decision to publicly vlog about her brain tumor diagnosis and surgery.
0:00 / 0:25exact quote · 25.9s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“It was this thing that was happening to me, and it was totally out of my control, but I could kind of feel like I could control how I could tell the story, and how I could, like, tell people what was happening, and I, there was just something that was very empowering, which is a very lofty word, but there was something that, like, really felt cathartic to be able to be, like, because it kind of, like, I got to not just be, like, a victim of this thing.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Simone Giertz
Giertz: Structuring content around personal interests prevents running out of ideas
“Like that my YouTube channel is more like a journal of personal interest than a specific topic, because then you can like, how are you going to run out of things then? Like anything that you're interested in, you can make content about.”
Giertz: Relying on a single platform makes a business brittle
“It's really brittle to kind of put all your eggs into one platform basket. Because like, who knows what's going to happen with YouTube in two years, it might not be a thing or like something changes.”
Giertz: Building 'shitty robots' was armor against being mocked in robotics
“Building shitty robots was this like way of approaching a very intimidating field, which is robotics that I was really interested in, but I haven't gone to school for. And I was like, oh, if I only try to build shitty things and nobody can like make a joke on …”
Giertz: Established audiences do not disappear when creators take time off
“In the beginning, you, when you start kind of building your platforms online, it just felt like if I didn't constantly feed this fire that I've like really worked my ass off to start, it would go out. And you realize, and now, like, because if I had some healt…”
Giertz: Peak productivity comes from fun, easy work rather than painful struggle
“If something comes easy to you, and you think it's fun then that's probably what you're best at, and, but at the same time, we have this, like, I've noticed for myself, at least, and that I've heard from a lot of other people, do you have this, like, programmi…”