After all the speculation about life after death in the various literature I’ve had the opportunity to read, I finally had an extraordinary and insightful experience last week to gather my own qualitative data.
It happened when I stood up too quickly and experienced my first-ever total blackout of consciousness. First, the head started feeling numb, much like any other body part would when blood supply is restricted from it. Next, the vision began to cloud with white static Gaussian noise, reminiscent of a television screen with a malfunctioning antenna. What follows is the strength fading from the lower limbs, similar to when a car’s battery stops working and the engine stalls. Then, the body collapsed to the ground, and the head bumping the wall behind me (it remained aching for a few days after that).
The final sensation before the consciousness completely faded was the total relaxation of all the muscles in the body starting from the heart, emanating outwards. Somehow the eyes remained open during the whole process. In the minds, its observed all manner of attachments layered on top of the consciousness ceased to be when the base layer faded, leaving only darkness accompanied with total and absolute peace.
When consciousness was regained, I observed three people were standing over me who hadn’t been there before. I had no sense of time passing during the blackout.
From this qualitative experience, I derive the conclusion that consciousness enters oblivion after the body dies. Thereafter the body breaks down, and its energy returns to the environment.
With oblivion as the base case, it becomes intriguing to optimize the use of energy by adopting Boyle’s Law —weaving a rich, intricate existence while the body and mind are still functioning. Similar to creating a unique multiplication equation before introducing zero at the end.
When zero is introduced, the body disintegrates, and consciousness enters oblivion. What remains is a mathematical equation weaved across time and space that is a unique and irreplicable but somewhat useless because the only thing it ever returns is zero.
Its has been really truly amazing experience to observe the population growth rate of TrueSight DAO ever since its inception in August 2021. The catalysts for its inception was the growing problem of fake news which have finally gained enough moment to the point of destabilizing liberal democratic systems worldwide. The most recent symptom was the storming of the US Capital Building on Jan 6th 2021.
This problem resonated with a lot of folks when I first spoke to them about it. In response, many have rallied their efforts to support its purpose, mission and vision.
Our Purpose is to build a Better World based on Verifiable Truth
Our Mission is to fight Fake News by providing individuals with the clarity to make critical decisions
Our Vision is a universal credibility protocol that allows subject matter experts to publicly establish their credibility using blockchain as a solution
The vision itself was a very tall order and the solution itself unclear at the onset. An initial investigative project was launched with the goal of discovering a solution that would best bring about our desired social change. This project became the focusing point by which all community members actively channeled their efforts.
To provide public recognition and encourage continued voluntary grass-root contributions, as well as to ensure transparency and accountability, members are awarded governance tokens in exchange for time, effort and money they contributed to further our cause. These voluntary contributions are recorded on our contribution ledger.
Due to the inherent viral loop that was baked into our operating model, the population size of our contributor grew rapidly. Along with its growth were serendipitous magical moments such as when our DAO got invited to present our cause at various Conferences and Key notes
Davos 2022 – House of Balance Keynote
As the population size of active contributors in our project grew beyond the Dunbar Number of 150, we started observing symptoms of decline that closely resembled the tail end of an S-curve.
Symptoms of organic network decline come in the form of high levels of frustration/stress due to indecision, miscommunication and misalignment. The underlying root cause of it were differing world views and operating styles.
Organic Network starts exhibiting signs of decline as it scales pass the Dunbar Number
As the population size of active contributors in our project grew beyond the Dunbar Number of 150, we started observing symptoms of decline
We tried multiple different approaches to get around the network decline phenomena while still abiding with our values
Our Values are Autonomy, Integrity and Diversity
Our most recent approach that seemed to work is Project Forking.
A contributor can choose to fork a new child project off the original parent project to explore a new direction
Socially this approach was modeled after traditional Amish practices. In traditional Amish societies when the population size of a village grew past 150, a portion of the village members will self select, up and migrate to setup a new village nearby one day.
An Amish family observed traveling to a nearby village on their horse cart
We introduced two types of Forking. These are the Hard Fork and the Soft Fork. Conceptually they are similar to codebase forking activities on GitHub
The characteristics of the Soft Fork are
Contributions to a child project is still recorded on the parent project’s ledger but labelled differently
Contributions to the child project are still awarded governance tokens associated with the parent project
Eventual revenue generated by child project are held in the parent project’s vault
The parent project acts as the sponsor of the child project
The characteristics of the Hard Fork are
Contributions to a child project is recorded on its own branched off version of the paren project’s ledger
Contributions to the child project are awarded governance tokens in the child project.
Revenue generated by child project are held in its own project vault
Child project has claim independence from the parent project
Project Forking within a DAO provides additional benefits on top of solving the original set of problems, these are
ensures all prior contributors’ efforts are acknowledged and equitably accounted for in new descendent projects
creates the space to explore into new terrains for solutions discovery
creates more surface area to attract engage new and existing volunteer efforts to fight “Fake News”
spreads DAO risk over multiple projects as opposed to consolidating all eggs in one basket (a single project)
allow DAO to remain decentralized while still enjoying the benefit of a strong core leadership for each project
There are two types of forking in DAOs, the hard fork and the soft fork. They are modeled after traditional Amish society and functions to get around the Dunbar Number constrain and function quite similar to codebase management features on GItHub
With this new Forking mechanism in place we are now open to enlisting more members to join our movement to save our Liberal Democratic Societies!
Saemin Ahn – Venture Capital blockchain investment
VC challenges in cryptocurrency investing
A problem faced by traditional VCs looking to invest in cryptocurrency projects
VCs will experience problem exiting their coins when they need to pay their LPs
Developers of cryptocurrency projects might stake the liquidity provided by VCs on other currencies get the interest and then abandon their own project. EOS is a prime example
VCs are concerned about continued health of crypto project when early developers leave with out sized voting rights and tokens leaving not much motivation for newer developers
Proposed solution
A SAAS model that charges subscription fees to cryptocurrency projects that pretty much function like Monday.com. Developers are awarded tokens only upon job completion.
SAAS model will end up with a basket of cryptocurrency tokens. This can then function as a clearing house, exchange or a fund.
Additional Insights
Blockchain audits gain access to audit the protocol of blockchain projects prior to their listings. Utilizing this unfair advantage, they purchase stakes in stronger projects with their investment arm
Most cryptocurrencies have a offramp problem back to fiat. CHAI, LUNA and TERRA are good examples of how the offramp is managed.
On China
China CCP has utilized a very blunt tool to deal with the consumer software sector
Exceptions are Hardware and Electric Vehicles industry
Teck Chong Lim – Market Research
Never perform research and sales lead generation at the same. It corrupts the research data and discourages the research participant from future engagement
US seeking to expand into new Asia Pacific region will need to utilize research services
Research companies maintain a database of research participants. They keep their research database fresh by periodically giving out freebies in exchange for answering questions.
COVID has reduced the use of focus groups (one off) and brought most of the research activities online. Online research panels (ongoing) is now the prevalent form
Business developers function like lone wolf hunters. Conversion rates are low usually around 1%. Their job is to find new opportunities to extend their top line. They also work on bringing back customers that have lapsed.
Account managers function like farmers. They basically retain customers and grow their customer’s business.
Create X dollar of value for the world and capture Y% dollar of value for yourself
X and Y are independent variables
Google – relatively smaller market but profit margins are great. Accumulates so much cash year or year
Airlines – large market but profit margin are shit. Companies go bankrupt often in that market
Companies are either operating in perfect competition or in monopolies. Nowhere in between. Avoid markets where you have a lot of competition
The last mover advantage:
Proprietary technology needs to be 10X of the closest substitute
Gain monopoly and maintain monopoly in that market segment as it grows in size
ability to have durability in a sector is more important than growth rate since the bulk of the revenue is really really far in the future
As a startup it is important
you want to start in markets that are so small it has almost no value and people don’t notice.
It becomes really easy to saturate the market to establish a brand
You want to be a one of a kind company in that small market versus a company in a very large market with lots of competitors it is hard to differentiate
You want to figure out how to expand that market after you have saturated it
Monopoly characteristics
Software – Google, Facebook, Amazon
Economics of scale
Network effects
Vertically integrated complex monopolies – Tesla, SpaceX, Standard Oil
Very capital intensive to build
Very complex coordination
Not easy to convince investors to fund to build
Avoid the psychological blindspot where you think competition is a form of validation
While competition gets you better at doing something
Too much competition is not profitable
Other thoughts
Skeptical about lean startup methodology
By the time you figure everything out the competition has came. There is always a risk element to going into unknown terrain
Asperger syndrome
people who have high conviction and uneasily swayed very introverted
versus Harvard people who are super-extroverted and low level conviction
The design of all analytics dashboard beings with a fundamental problem statement about the business.
All analytics dashboard need to be actionable. Shows the user an alert and prompts the user to perform a follow up action
The dashboard should leave nothing to user’s interpretation. The action to be taken needs to be very clear
Each well defined user profile will come with his own pre-defined dashboard configuration.
A single page dashboard that users do not even need to tweak or configure
Have sales person understand what the user’s business question is and then design the dashboard exactly to support that narrowly defined need.
Sales person to train the user on how to use the dashboard, what goes where and how to interpret the signals
Show users only the shortlisted options for actionable items. However it can not be too minimal, need to give users the impression that a lot of work went on to get to the insight. User’s has nothing to triangulate against if no none-options are presented
Reduce the number of user profiles we are catering to so as to get to the 80% faster use case faster
False positives and false negatives signals are a big issue when it comes to analytics dashboards. It becomes problematic when trying to monitor an environment that is very noisy such as COVID travel bubble since the landscape changes very fast based on situation
Different profiles have different needs some profiles are not very comfortable when presented with a lot of quantitative signals. It is better to just have a IF / ELSE signal
Palantir went down a very long journey of figuring out all the corner cases in a specific industry before finally generalizing the modules. It was only then did they achieve profitability
A lot of companies in Singapore just survive on government handouts. Most just shut down the project when fail to get government grant
Looking for companies that can return 10X of investments
Looking for companies that has potential to be big versus companies that are sold off as features
Companies sold off as a feature will fetch a maximum of USD30 million
Companies with successful exists should fetch more than USD50 million
Expectations
Seed stage to pull in USD 1 million dollar revenue a year
Series A to pull in USD 10 million dollar revenue a year
Company that has been around for 7 years without remarkable growth is not exciting for VCs trying to hit their own target
VC take the pitch deck provided by Founders and translate these pitch deck into a investment memo which gets forwarded to all her partners
At the early stage, VC fund not just the idea but their assessment of founder’s ability to pivot fast to another idea that could return 10x if current idea does not work
At latter stage, VC ok funding for 3X returns but deploying larger amount of capital
Key takeaways
To make the job of a VC easier do the following:
Make it obvious how this company is going to return at least 10X the capital deployed
Paint how big the company could potentially grow by describing the size of the market it is going after
Structure the pitch deck in such a way that it could almost be just copied and paste into an investment memo
We are now a few stages before single man flying suites become commercially available for the masses. In this stage of the technology life cycle, it is common to see multiple companies coming up with their own working prototype.
In the next stage, some number of companies will figure out the business model and marketing channels while a lot more will fail. Many of the viable ideas and employees from these failed companies will get absorbed into the surviving companies.
The final stage would be when the manufacturing gets outsourced to China. During this stage, cost of production will drop by 10X. That is when adoption gains traction amongst the early majority .
The stage after would be when government steps in to define regulations for proper use in public.
