Essays · Founder & CEO, ICODOS

Field notes on building a company — and a life.

I'm David — founder & CEO of ICODOS, where we turn CO₂ into clean shipping fuel. Ex-strategy consultant, naive optimist. I write down what building things teaches me about goal achievement, communication, and well-being.

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How it Feels like Being an Early-Stage Startup Founder

The honest baseline — what building a company actually feels like from inside.

Role Modeling

Why a firm purpose matters more than any success.

I categorize decisions into three types: shirts, hiring, and tattoos.

The decision framework I still use every day.

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Years of essays, one question away.

Ask anything about goals, communication, relationships, or well-being — the answer is drawn only from what I actually wrote, with links to the essays it came from.

Recent essays

Goal Achievement Communication Well-Being Relationships

Jun 23, 2024Role ModelingAvicii's death reminds me why purpose beats success — I try to be the person my younger self would look up to.Goal Achievement→Feb 18, 2024I categorize decisions into three types: shirts, hiring, and tattoos.Optimize for speed when it's reversible, diligence when it's costly, and deliberation when it's permanent.Goal Achievement→Oct 14, 2023Creating vs. consuming: two ways to spend your lifetimeI worked through my own vacation and realized creating brings me more joy than consuming.Communication→Aug 20, 2023How I deal with difficult conversationsCrucial conversations fail when people feel unsafe — restore safety and almost anything can be said.Communication→Jul 29, 2023More Than Just ‘Hola’: My Plan to Learn Spanish for a Greener FutureWhy my e-methanol startup made me commit to fluent Spanish, starting from zero words.Goal Achievement→Jul 22, 2023Changing your behavior won’t solve the climate crisis — why & what actually solves itMost emissions sit far beyond individual choices; only scaled climate technologies can remove them.Goal Achievement→

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Why I write

“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.”

Albert Einstein

I record what I learn through struggles, failures, and successes — so someone a few steps behind can skip a few of my mistakes. Long-term thinking, perpetual improvement, gratitude, and fun: those are the values these essays keep coming back to.