Building Something That Lasts

I’ve spent a stupid amount of time over the past year studying founders, artists, creators and people who became insanely good at what they do.

Not because I want to become them.

I’m just obsessed with how people think when they are building something that actually lasts.

Why do some people keep going when everyone else quits?

Why do some people see the future before everyone else?

How do you know when to listen and when to say fuck it and trust yourself?

How do you build something that still matters 10 or 20 years later?

That thinking is what turned into Left Click Labz Principles & Code.

It started as random quotes and notes I kept saving.

Then it turned into this giant document with Steve Jobs, Rick Rubin, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Charlie Munger, Thomas Edison, James Dyson, Peter Thiel and a bunch of other people whose ideas I genuinely love.

The funny thing is... a lot of them keep coming back to the same shit.

Focus.

Taste.

Conviction.

Iteration.

Customer obsession.

Long term thinking.

Taking responsibility.

Doing the work.

And actually fucking shipping.

Steve Jobs said:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

That one hits me every time.

The internet makes it so easy to spend your entire life looking sideways.

Who is pumping.

Who raised money.

Who has more followers.

Who has the better floor price.

Who is getting all the attention.

Who gives a shit.

At some point you have to stop using somebody else’s scoreboard and build the thing you actually believe should exist.

That is a massive part of how I think about Left Click Labz.

I’ve always been obsessive about creating things.

Art.

Music.

Games.

Brands.

Websites.

Products.

Tech.

I love all of it.

I love the stupid little details that most people will never notice.

I’ll change a UI twenty times because something still feels off.

I’ll stare at a graphic for an hour because one thing is bugging me.

I’ll wake up with an idea and immediately want to start building it.

That is just how my brain works.

Rick Rubin has an idea I love:

“The best art divides the audience.”

That is such a good reminder.

If you make everything for everyone, it usually ends up being for nobody.

Great stuff has a point of view.

Some people love it.

Some people hate it.

That is fine.

At least it makes them feel something.

That is what I want Left Click Labz to be.

Not just another Web3 company.

Not just one collection.

Not just one product.

Something much bigger.

Click. Collect. Create Culture.

We want to build IP.

We want to build products.

We want to build games.

We want to make art.

We want to experiment with technology.

We want to create things people actually enjoy using.

And I want to do this for a very fucking long time.

One of the things I am most obsessed with right now is clubz.fun.

I’ve played fantasy sports for around 15 years, so this did not come from me sitting around trying to invent some random startup idea.

It came from being a user.

I know what I love.

I know what annoys me.

I know what I wish existed.

That makes building it way more fun.

We’ve built DFS, Survivor, Best Ball, pools and other formats, and we are working on new games that I genuinely think are fucking awesome.

The question I keep asking is simple.

What would make fantasy sports way more fun?

Not what can we copy.

Not what can we slightly improve.

What should exist that does not exist yet?

Peter Thiel has a line I think about a lot:

“Competition is for losers.”

I do not take that literally.

I take it as this.

If you are fighting everybody else over the exact same thing, you are already stuck in somebody else’s game.

The better move is to create your own lane.

That is what I want to do with Clubz.

We also built vibn.live.

Completely different world.

Music instead of sports.

But the same instinct.

We made a free Web3 music streaming platform because music, artists, collectors and digital ownership are obviously going to keep smashing into each other.

So why not experiment with what that could look like?

Maybe the first version is perfect.

Probably not.

Who cares.

You build.

You learn.

You make it better.

You keep going.

That is one of the biggest things I’ve learned from Edison.

People talk about invention like genius just appears out of nowhere.

It usually doesn’t.

It comes from attempts.

Lots of them.

Try something.

It fails.

Cool.

Now you know one more thing.

Try again.

That is the Edisonian principle I love.

Failure is not always failure.

Sometimes you just paid for information.

That is a huge mindset shift.

Elon Musk talks about first principles thinking all the time.

Instead of saying:

“This is how everyone does it.”

Ask:

“What is actually true?”

That is such a powerful question.

A lot of industries are full of rules that nobody even knows the reason for anymore... Especially Web3.

Sometimes the breakthrough is just being dumb enough or stubborn enough to ask why.

Another Musk quote I love:

“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favour.”

That is basically entrepreneurship.

If everyone already knew it would work, it probably would not be that interesting.

Then there is Bezos.

One of the simplest principles ever:

Obsess over the customer, not the competitor.

I love that.

Competitors change.

Markets change.

Tech changes.

But people will always want something better.

Better experience.

More value.

Less friction.

More fun.

That is how I want to think about Clubz.

Not “what did another platform launch this week?”

More like:

Would I fucking love using this?

Would our users?

If yes, keep going.

Another Jobs quote that might be one of my favourites ever:

“Focus is about saying no.”

That sounds simple.

It is not.

Every founder has too many ideas.

I definitely do.

The hard part is not finding things you could build.

The hard part is deciding what deserves your time.

You can build ten average things.

Or you can obsess over a few things until they are fucking great.

I am still learning that one.

Probably always will be.

The biggest lesson for me though is time.

The internet has completely destroyed people’s perception of how long meaningful shit actually takes.

Something launches and three months later people are asking if it failed.

A collection has a bad stretch and suddenly everyone thinks the story is over.

A product does not explode instantly and people move on.

That is not how I want to build.

I want Left Click Labz to exist for decades.

Seriously.

10 years.

20 years.

30 years.

I want the things we are building today to become stories we tell years from now.

Maybe Clubz.fun becomes huge.

Maybe Vibn.live evolves into something completely different.

Maybe one of our IPs becomes a game or a show or something we cannot even imagine yet.

Maybe the biggest thing Left Click Labz ever builds has not even been thought of yet.

That is exciting as hell to me.

You only get to find out if you stay in the game.

One of the principles in the document says:

Don’t try to be the best.

Become the only.

I fucking love that.

There will always be somebody smarter.

Richer.

Better funded.

More connected.

More experienced.

But nobody has your exact mix of interests, failures, taste, weird ideas and experiences.

That combination can become your advantage.

Another one I love:

The thing that made you weird as a kid might be the thing that makes you great as an adult.

That one feels real.

A lot of people spend half their life trying to fit in, then finally realize the thing that made them different was the whole point.

And maybe my favourite Rick Rubin idea of all:

“Make your favourite thing.”

That is it.

Not what the algorithm wants.

Not what everyone on the timeline says is cool.

Not what you think will impress people.

Make the thing you wish existed.

That is honestly how I want to spend my life.

I care about all of this probably more than is reasonable.

I love creating.

I love tech.

I love sports.

I love music.

I love art.

I love Web3.

I love seeing an idea go from nothing to something people are actually using or repping.

I love watching a weird thought become real.

I love building with great people.

I love learning.

And I still feel like we are just getting started.

That is why I made Left Click Labz Principles & Code.

Not because I wanted a book of motivational quotes.

I wanted something I could actually come back to.

When shit gets hard.

When I am distracted.

When something fails.

When something works.

When we have too many ideas.

When nobody understands something yet.

When I need to remind myself why I started building in the first place.

These are some of the principles I want to keep close:

Think in decades.

Focus means saying no.

Create, don’t copy.

Obsess over the customer.

Experiment relentlessly.

Protect your reputation.

Build what you wish existed.

Make your favourite thing.

Take responsibility.

Stay hungry. Stay foolish.

Real artists ship.

And above everything else:

Build what matters.

I believe in what we are building at Left Click Labz more than ever.

We are going to keep creating, keep experimenting, keep taking swings and keep pushing these ideas as far as we possibly can.

Clubz.fun. Vibn.live. Our IP. Our art. Our communities.

Whatever comes next. The goal is not to be around for a cycle.

The goal is to build things that matter and build them long enough that they become part of culture.

That is the standard.

Left Click Labz.

Click. Collect. Create Culture.

Build what lasts.

Mitch ( @leftclickbuynft )

Check our Discord for the full Left Click Labz Principles & Code document.