Welcome to Easy, Breezi.

Your friend who sends you a weekly update on what she's working on, reading through, and thinking about – in a list.

My top three goals for coming to NYC this week

1. Relationship Building: Meet other founders, investors and builders in the consumer space

2. Apartment/ Sublet Hunting: Figure out which area of Manhattan I want to live

3. Early Breezi Launch Planning: Identify strategies for Breezi (we'll be launching in NYC!)

I've met some awesome people here, you should know about a few of them

• Miri Buckland: cofounder of Landing, a creative playground for inspiration and connection, Stanford MBA grad and such an incredible friend in the consumer space

• Illia Strikhar: an incredible product designer, who specializes in helping early stage startups with their app MVP designed in lightning speed (who also works with me for Breezi!)

• Michael Houck: an a16z-backed founder who is writing Houck's Newsletter, a place for tactical advice on how to build, grow, and raise capital for your startup

• Brooke LeBlanc: founder of PointFive, a leading resource for those who are sober curious and truly one of my greatest friends – her newsletter is dropping soon and you should definitely subscribe

• Bailee Cooper: the Director of Design at Sharma Brands, NYC's top brand strategy and growth agency for DTC brands, and my best friend who lets me sleep on her pullout couch every time I'm here

But I've also developed 5 "coping mechanisms" to help me (and now you) survive in a city like NYC

1. A "yes" in NYC means "I'm 70% yes but also might be no, I'll decide later": I used to feel so bad about accepting invites to events and then not going. But I've realized that 1) some (read: most) networking events are not worth going to and 2) that's completely fine and normal and no one gets upset

2. Collect opinions, not keep them: meeting new people is great but it usually comes with a lot of conflicting opinions, advice and could leave you feeling more confused than you did before. I've learned to not take things to heart (good or bad) and just keep them in a box in my head that's labelled "Other People's Opinions"

3. Plan social outings around your solo time, not vice versa: if I'm in the city for a week, I'll immediately set aside 1-2 blocks of my calendar for solo time – a workout class, a night of home-cooked dinner, a Sunday morning walk by the Westside Highway. Then I'll work around that to attend events or schedule coffee meetings.

4. Coffee is not breakfast, eat fruit: and I mean a real piece of fruit and not just a green juice

5. Going to one workout class does not make up for sitting in front of your laptop for 12 hours: If you think this is a personal attack on you, it probably is

I've been working on Breezi a ton lately

• As part of an accelerator program I've been participating in, I officially did the first official pitch of Breezi (with a deck and all)

• The feedback was incredibly insightful – I included two different product mockups in the deck for the purpose of seeing which version people would get hooked on

• The Breezi Feed, curated by the algorithm: a place for exploration and discovery of lists for various areas we think you'd be interested in, a concept similar to TikTok's FYP where you don't need to do anything except scroll

• The Breezi Feed, curated by people you follow: a place where you make the decision to connect with a real person (friend or stranger) to then be able to browse their specific lists, a concept similar to what the Instagram feed used to give us - our friend's posts by chronological order

• I know a pitch presentation is supposed to be an environment where you have to convince others to want your product and they have all the hard hitting questions

• But I ended up taking 15 minutes at the end to ask my own questions (apologies to our program coordinator who got very confused at me doing this!)

Something that surprised me: people loved the deck

I'll be honest – I completely actually forgot this week was pitch week ... until 30 minutes before. Luckily when you're building a product that you've had in mind for years, the pitch comes naturally.

As for the deck, it was bare bones simple.

The power of "What Ifs" in helping you convince someone to believe what you believe

Regardless of if you're building a startup or not, I want to teach you the power of using "What If" statements to share your vision of the world with someone else

• What If our Apple Notes were public?

• What If there was a simple way to know your friends better?

• What If making the simple act of making a list leads you to meeting the love of your life?

• What If it led to reconnecting with a friend you haven't spoken to in a while?

• What If we actually started to look forward to posting on social media again?

Okay being honest now, it's current 3:11pm on Thursday as I'm trying to finish this newsletter

And I think I'm coming down with a cold because I can barely keep my eyes open so for the rest of the newsletter, I'm going to share tweets from my Bookmarks that I think you'd like

• "The internet has kind of killed the art of curation. you're supposed to spend years figuring out what you like, what's good, and what your personal taste is. now you just watch tiktoks and absorb everyone else's suggestions" – @noanonob

• "In startups, the Growth role touches nearly everything. They understand the audience, product, channels, platforms, culture, content, copy, metrics, tracking, optimization, hacks, budgeting, onboarding, adoption, referrals, retention, engagement, testing, sprint planning, etc" – @2irl4u

• "There is some strange magnetism that drives socially defective people to build social apps, instead of the people most fit to build them: the socially hyper-aware. This is why so many terrible, anxiety-provoking ideas get built—like meetup apps and video-based dating apps" – @nikitabier

• "The best things in life are simple. A thin cut of sushi. A steak without sauce. The elegance of an iPhone. Complicated things can be a cover-up for lazy craftsmanship" – @david_perell

• "Social media's positivity/toxicity is inherently about user intent. There's a huge difference between: a) posting to get a reaction and b) archiving a memory that you're comfortable sharing – b) is far healthier" – @startingfromnix

Ending this newsletter with a list of my 7 current fave NY spots

1. Lola Taverna – best Greek food

2. SohoWorks Chelsea – best coworking spot

3. Barry's – still the best workout studio

4. Matchaful – best matcha in Soho

5. Banter – best sweet potato fries

6. Cacio e Pepe Puffs – best TJ snack

7. Seven Grams Caffe – best for a coffee meeting

What to look forward to in the next newsletter

• It will be a surprise because right now I'm unwell and need medication

If you found anything in this newsletter helpful, I'd love to connect on Twitter – tweet me a screenshot of your favorite part and let's chat 👋

I'll be back next week with more lists!