Why I’m moving my diary off Linkedin

Well, well, well… look who finally got off his ass and made a newsletter.

If you’ve been following me on LinkedIn for the past few years, you’ve witnessed something that was never supposed to happen. You’ve watched a robotics engineer turned AI builder turn your professional networking feed into his personal diary. Raw fundraising updates at midnight. Impostor syndrome confessions after rubbing shoulders with Silicon Valley legends. Victory posts written at 3 AM after finally squashing a bug that had been haunting me for weeks. The whole messy, unfiltered journey of trying to build impossible things.

LinkedIn was never designed for this. I know that. You know that. The algorithm definitely knows that, and it’s been punishing me for it with increasingly creative ways to hide my posts from the people who actually want to read them.

But here’s my confession: I kept doing it because I was too lazy to set up a proper blog.

There. I said it.

Every time someone suggested I start a newsletter, I’d nod thoughtfully and say something like “yeah, I’ve been thinking about that” while internally calculating how many mass produced coffee cups it would take to fuel the effort of setting up Yet Another Platform. The answer was always “too many”, so I’d go back to LinkedIn and write another 3000-character post about whatever was keeping me up at night.

And honestly? For a while, it worked beautifully.

The community I found on LinkedIn has been nothing short of incredible. Through those messy, too-long posts, I’ve connected with investors who actually get what we’re building. I’ve found collaborators who’ve become friends. I’ve met fellow founders who message me at weird hours because they know I’ll be awake, probably debugging something, definitely willing to talk through whatever crisis they’re facing. I’ve received DMs that made me tear up - people telling me that my raw posts about impostor syndrome helped them feel less alone in their own struggles.

I’m grateful for every single comment, every DM, every “holy shit, I needed to read this today”. Those interactions have meant more to me than I’ve probably ever properly expressed.

But here’s the kicker, and it’s taken me too long to admit this: some stories simply don’t fit in a LinkedIn post.

Let me tell you about the moment I realized this.

A few months ago, I was trying to write about the Skunk Works methodology - this philosophy that’s basically become my entire approach to building companies. For those who don’t know, Skunk Works was Lockheed’s legendary secret R&D division. These were the crazy bastards who created the U-2, the SR-71 Blackbird, the F-117 stealth plane. They did impossible things with tiny teams, ridiculous timelines, and bureaucracy-allergic management. They changed aerospace forever by basically telling conventional wisdom to go fuck itself.

I’ve been living and breathing this methodology for years. It’s how we built Beyond Humanity, the board game that shouldn’t have worked. It’s how we’re building Omea, the AI storytelling platform that everyone said was impossible. It’s how Migam is teaching machines sign language to help 70 million Deaf people communicate with the hearing world.

So I sat down to write about it for LinkedIn. I had so much to say - the history, the principles, how I’ve adapted them for AI startups, the failures that taught me the real lessons, the wins that validated the approach. I started typing.

Three hours later, I had 8000 words and I wasn’t even close to done.

LinkedIn’s limit is around 3000 characters. Not words. Characters.

I tried to cut it down. I really did. But every time I removed something, it felt like I was lying by omission. The Skunk Works philosophy isn’t a list. It’s not “10 tips for building like Lockheed secret team”. It’s a way of thinking, a set of hard-won principles that only make sense when you understand the context, the failures, the stories behind them.

So I gave up. I posted something shorter, something that felt incomplete. And I told myself I’d figure out a better way to share the full version… eventually.

That “eventually” kept getting pushed back. Because building companies is consuming. Because there’s always another fire to put out, another investor call to prepare for, another bug that’s somehow breaking production at the worst possible moment. Because writing properly, writing deeply, writing in a way that does justice to the ideas bouncing around my skull - that requires time and energy that felt like luxuries I couldn’t afford.

But something shifted recently.

Maybe it’s the approaching new year making me reflective. Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve been on this journey long enough now to have actually learned some things worth sharing. Maybe it’s watching founders I respect - people like Grzesiek Kossakowski, whose writing is so consistently excellent that it makes me genuinely jealous - building audiences through long-form content that actually has room to breathe.

Or maybe it’s simpler than that. Maybe it’s just Karol Stryja, who keeps pushing me to write more, to be more accessible, to share what I’ve learned with people who are earlier in their journeys. Every conversation with him ends the same way: “Max, you have things to say. Stop hiding them in LinkedIn posts that disappear after 48 hours.”

He’s annoyingly right. He usually is.

So here we are. New year, new home base.

And yes, I’m fully aware that “New Years resolution to write more” is practically a cliche. I know the statistics. Most resolutions fail by February. The road to abandoned blogs is paved with good intentions and optimistic first posts.

But this one feels different, and I’ll tell you why: this isn’t really a resolution. It’s a promise to myself.

I need a place to think out loud. I need somewhere to process the absolute chaos of building multiple companies across two continents. I need to document this journey while it’s happening, before the details blur and the lessons get lost in the fog of whatever crisis comes next.

Omea is teaching AI to tell stories that actually respond to human choices. Migam is breaking communication barriers for Deaf people worldwide. QUIN-C, my personal robot project, is still sitting on my workbench reminding me that weekends are for tinkering. I’m navigating fundraising, building teams across the Atlantic, figuring out the O-1 visa maze, and somehow trying to maintain sanity through it all.

That’s a lot of material. That’s a lot of stories that deserve more than 3000 characters.

So what is this place going to be?

First and foremost, it’s my diary. A place to write my thoughts and share them with whoever cares to read. If that sounds self-indulgent, well, yeah, it kind of is. But I’ve learned that the most valuable content often comes from people processing their own experiences honestly, not from people trying to package wisdom they don’t actually have.

I’m going to unpack the Skunk Works philosophy properly. Not the elevator pitch version, but the real version - with all the historical context, the principles that actually matter, the ways I’ve adapted them for AI startups, and the painful lessons about what happens when you deviate from them.

I’m going to take you behind the scenes of building Omea. The technical decisions, the narrative architecture we’ve developed, the AI models we’re training. But also the human side - the fundraising struggles, the moments of doubt, the victories that feel surreal because part of me still can’t believe we’re actually pulling this off.

I’ll share what I’m learning as an advisor at Migam, working alongside Przemek Kuśmierek on technology that could genuinely change millions of lives. The intersection of AI and accessibility is fascinating and underexplored, and I have thoughts.

And I’m going to write playbooks. Real, practical, hard-won knowledge about things I’ve actually done. The tools I use every day - from my Mac and iPad setup to Claude Code and how it’s changed how I work. Building teams when you’re straddling the Atlantic. Fundraising when you’re not from Silicon Valley. How to tell stories that make people care about what you’re building.

Here’s what this place will NOT be:

It won’t be polished corporate content. I don’t have a content team. I don’t have an editor. It’s just me, probably writing at some ungodly hour, trying to capture whatever’s on my mind before I forget it. There will be typos. There will be tangents. There will be posts that probably should have been shorter but weren’t because I got excited and couldn’t stop.

It won’t be monetized. I’m not doing this for money. I don’t need your credit card number. I need a place to process my thoughts, and if those thoughts happen to be useful to you, that’s a bonus. Subscribe for free. That’s the whole deal.

And it won’t be a pivot away from building. I’ve always believed in “less talking, more building”. That philosophy isn’t changing. Writing is thinking, and thinking is part of building. But the building always comes first. If I ever have to choose between shipping a feature and writing a newsletter post, the newsletter loses. Every time.

The commitment I’m making to myself is simple: one post per week.

That’s it. Every week, something new here. Some weeks it’ll be a deep dive into technical architecture. Some weeks it’ll be a raw diary entry about whatever challenge I’m facing. Some weeks it might be shorter, some weeks it might be the 8000-word Skunk Works piece I couldn’t fit on LinkedIn.

One post per week. That’s the promise.

I’m not abandoning LinkedIn entirely. I’ll still post there - probably teasing what’s happening here, probably still writing shorter updates when something exciting happens. But Skunk Works Playbook is home base now. This is where the real stuff lives.

Next week, I’m finally going to publish the piece I’ve been wanting to write for years: the Skunk Works Manifesto. What this philosophy actually means, where it comes from, why it’s the only way I know how to build anything worth building. If you’ve ever wondered what the hell I’m talking about when I reference Skunk Works, that post will explain everything.

Buckle up. It’s going to be a ride.

And if you’ve made it this far - thank you. Seriously. The fact that you care enough to read my rambling thoughts means more than I can properly express.

Subscribe if you want to come along for the journey. Or don’t. Either way, I’ll be here, writing into the void, trying to make sense of the beautiful chaos of building impossible things.

Less talking, more building. But also, apparently, a bit more writing.

Max

Me, trying to make self-explanatory argument, a week ago in La Jolla, San Diego. Yes, I love hamburgers.

PS. Some thank-yous are in order, because I didn’t get here alone.

To Przemek Kuśmierek - my partner in crime at Migam, who’s been on this journey with me longer than almost anyone. You’ve watched me ramble on LinkedIn for years and somehow still believe in my ability to form coherent thoughts. Your faith in me has always exceeded my faith in myself, and I’m trying to live up to it.

To Grzesiek Kossakowski - whose publications are always so damn well-written that I’m genuinely jealous. Every time I read something you’ve written, I think “why can’t I write like that?” and then I remember that the only way to get better is to actually write. So this is partly your fault. Your excellence pushed me to finally try.

To Karol Stryja - who never stops pushing me to write more, to be more accessible, to share what I know instead of hoarding it. You’ve told me a hundred times that people want to hear what I have to say. I never fully believed you, but I’m done making excuses. This one’s for you. If it fails, I’m blaming you. If it succeeds, I’ll probably also find a way to blame you. That’s what friends are for.

And to all the kind-hearted people who’ve been rooting for me through this journey - the ones who comment on my posts, who send encouraging DMs, who show up to my talks, who somehow believe in the crazy things I’m trying to build. You know who you are. I don’t know what I did to deserve your support, but I promise I’ll try not to waste it.

PS2. Yeah, I’m already doing the double PS. thing. Some habits from LinkedIn are going to be hard to break. Deal with it.