# Greetings from Silicon Valley — and What a Small Eyewear Shop Has in Common with Startups

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/yesterday-i-went-to-mars-7106663/greetings-from-silicon-valley-and-what-a-small-eyewear-shop-has-in-common-with-startups
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/yesterday-i-went-to-mars-7106663/greetings-from-silicon-valley-and-what-a-small-eyewear-shop-has-in-common-with-startups.md
Podcast: [*“Yesterday, I Went to Mars ♡”*](https://stenobird.com/podcast/yesterday-i-went-to-mars-7106663)
Published: 2026-07-14T13:41:15+00:00
Episode link: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/makotowillolympusmons/episodes/Greetings-from-Silicon-Valley--and-What-a-Small-Eyewear-Shop-Has-in-Common-with-Startups-e3m2quq
Audio file: https://anchor.fm/s/fcce555c/podcast/play/122825114/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2026-6-14%2Fb29d0e2e-245f-a01a-46bd-311c5006f1e4.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/yesterday-i-went-to-mars-7106663/episodes/greetings-from-silicon-valley-and-what-a-small-eyewear-shop-has-in-common-with-startups
Duration seconds: 234

## Resource

This episode looks at a book by a young Bay Area entrepreneur, and the way reading it surfaced something that felt less like startup advice and more like a quiet set of operating principles. It touches on Paul Graham's often-quoted line — "do things that don't scale" — and how one team, after losing half their revenue during the pandemic, put that idea to work by simply talking to customers until they found the gap: remote workers who needed long-term accommodation built around how engineers actually work, with the right desk, the right monitor, the right chair. There's also a reflection on what entrepreneurship might really mean — not solving problems you were asked to solve, but finding the ones no one has noticed yet, and making a small dent there, then deepening it. What lingers most is an observation about muscle: that entrepreneurial ability isn't built by waiting until you're ready, but by jumping in, failing, adjusting, and repeating — and that this applies at 47, 50, or 60 just as much as it does at 25. A quiet look at what a small eyewear shop in rural Japan and a Silicon Valley startup might share — not scale, not speed, but the same underlying habit of showing up for the single customer right in front of you.

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