I’m now looking at whether the project is genuinely doing the work—rather than obsessing over how “beautiful the roadmap” looks. I’m more inclined to check treasury spending: where the money is going, and whether it’s spent in a steady rhythm. Put simply, milestones aren’t just a few words on a PPT. It’s whether you can see that “after this budget is released, the next update will really deliver something that lands on the ground,” even if it’s a small feature or a small collaboration—it still has to match the timeline.

Recently, I’ve also been talking about expectations for interest rate cuts, the US dollar index, and risk assets that go up together and down together… In situations like this, it’s easier to get carried away and dragged around by emotions. So I treat the treasury like the project’s heartbeat monitor: spending that’s continuous but restrained makes me feel more at ease than suddenly waving a big check. Oh, and I see complexity as the enemy—projects that can clearly explain, in a single sentence, where the money is going are usually more reliable.