notes, learnings and reflections for future self reference
Three critical conditions for any projects to work
Once these three conditions are met, it then makes sense to double down on investment and scale the projects rapidly.
The market is a representation of leveraged corporate earnings around the world.
Leverage occurs in two forms. Firstly, through corporate debts take on by companies in expectation of increased future corporate returns. Secondly, through borrows taken on by potential shareholders in expectation of appreciation in equity value due to expectation of future corporate returns.
Corporate returns are driven mainly by productivity. Productivity is a function of technology. Technology advancement is a function of innovation. The market will inevitably increase in size in the long run so long as technology advancement and innovation continues to persist.
Cyclical Boomz and Busts are the results of interplays between market participants and central banks (via fiscal policies and regulations) in reaction to prevailing leverage levels in the market.
Market capitalization in 2008 dropped by a total of 50%. Using this as a proxy, we can assume the effect of leverage is approximately 50% of the market capitalization.
Beware that the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay liquid.
Having ample resources and financing at the onset of a project promotes wastefulness financial habits which quickly becomes part of the culture if not managed properly. Being under-resourced during the initial onset of a project forces project leaders to be scrappy and judicious in the use of resources that are made available to them. This promotes thriftiness which quickly becomes part of the culture. Such a culture has the by-product of maximizing return on capital when more becomes available.
Being capital efficient is the most critical bar for running a business
Three examples of how capital efficiency leads to major growth
In addition to the above it is important not to overkill the problem with too complex a solution as engineers have a tendency to do so.
Moderators
next sources of financial risks
Pivotal was able to grow by setting up a process that allows them to build out simple CRUD app using second tier software developers.
Their pair programming practice allowed them the ability to use relatively cheaper software developers to build out these simple projects while buffering them against the relatively high churn rate.
Their partnership with Code camps like hacker reactor has allowed access to a constantly supply of relatively cheaper labor.
Their standardization of the technology stack to just Rails and Java has further facilitated the interchangeability of developers across projects.
To ensure no wenches gets thrown into the process pipeline, they primarily target companies with legacy systems that need migration away from.
They choose to avoid startups solving technical problems that require deep domain expertise. Supporting Twilio requirements was a real challenge to their process.
Most of the progress by Twitter recently has been stuff that they have talked about before Jack Dorsey’s return as CEO.
The main road block to was management’s inability to make a decision to execute driven mainly about insecurity over potential impact to users.
Was highly stressful. Put on a lot of weight during tenure. Work life balance was a challenge
Reid Hoffman mentioned when you have a long run rate and are able to stay in the game, it’s lije playing baseball without the fear of ever striking out. You just have to wait for the home run.
Employees have lock in period after a company goes IPI before they can sell off their shares. It’s important to define clearly your exit and not get too greedy
Crazy Rich Asian has really help set the trend and this demand for Asian Actors for the next few years. If you are tall, Asian and good looking you have basically cornered the market at this point. Why not give it a shot and go do some casting in the Bay Area?
By the way do something about that domain you own called ThingsToDoSingapore.com
Most health issues can be attributed to bad habits like smoking, drinking and fast food. So long as you have a habit of working out and eating healthy it is possible to stave off 90% of health issues.
The trip with Health is to capitalize on the reciprocal bias that humans have. Humans have an inability to differentiate at an emotional level between other humans and things that does favor for them. A robot that pretends to be human that nags them to perform behavior beneficial for their health falls into that category
Hospitals get fined when heart patients return to the hospital within a specific period of time after being released. As such they utilize call centers to help remind recently discharged patients to perform healthy behaviors that will reduce the likelihood of their return.