From a throwaway because of the potential backlash...This paper is pure bull. They did a survey of 30k people and asked them about their experience and then said that the vaccine didn't cause anything and that we should trust our institutions. They didn't even have a control (unvaccinated) group! Just 30k vaccinated folks who responded to a survey about whether they perceived more/less bleeding, and such.
I'm actually working (as a computational mathematician) with an OBGYN and a few other doctors on a paper on this topic right now. We're using real data and a control and doing real Bayesian stats and all of that. But the tragic thing is, we don't need to get fancy. There's so much signal that the vaccine is bad for women's reproductive health that it really is obvious. I hope we can find an uncaptured journal to get it published in.
This paper is pure propaganda that's toeing the line about vaccine safety. It's idea laundering so they can later point to an article in "Science" showing that it's safe.
I'm so sad that Science (the journal) as fallen so far and is so captured.
I am doing this right now, Stripe Atlas Delaware C-corp but operating in Germany. I could have incorporated a GmbH for €25,000 (goes into an account to act as collateral against future liability) - which uses all my savings basically, or a UG for €1 - but then I can't add other shareholders until I pay an additional €25k to convert it to a GmbH. For my startup, which is capital intensive, I have no choice but to use the US system.
Just another data point, but my journey through digestive issues and recovery was kicked off by the worst depression and burnout I ever experienced, which started in 2019 and lasted 3 years.
My best guess for what happened is that work stress, excessive celebration and coping with the cognitive dissonance of the pre-COVID era and subsequent pandemic, combined with overtraining and the misuse of protein shakes in place of food, left me in a chronically dehydrated state. The body tries to collect moisture from the gut, which opens an opportunity for bacteria to get into the body cavity and blood, which is colloquially called leaky gut. This sets off food sensitivities and eventually an autoimmune condition/response to lectins, gluten, etc, which have proteins similar to linings in the body, joints and thyroid. Then a cascade happens where everything goes out of whack quickly. In my case, I went from being in the best shape of my life, the strongest I had ever been in the gym, to barely able to get out of bed in the morning. In other people, it might present as chronic fatigue, arthritis, etc.
I didn't really believe any of this in 2018, and my meal plan then consisted entirely of everything that I can't eat today. So I consider what people say politely, but for the most part, they have absolutely no idea what they're talking about. This experience has made stuff like GMO foods sound absolutely insane to me. Like, why would we ever taint our food supply to make food 5 cents cheaper or "feed the world" when we've been operating under artificial scarcity since the end of the second world war? It's all a crock.
Every time you eat inflammatory food, the risk is similar to smoking a cigarette. Probably nothing will happen, but if it sets off your immune system, you may wake up one morning chronically depressed and/or unable to eat something that you rely upon. It got me after I turned 40, YMMV.
I took a gig at a hospital. They got an MBA Karen with 3 years of experience. She learned the very basics of IT, then started micromanaging. As in, she'd tell you what switches to put on CLI commands. If you said that's wrong, or would cause data corruption - you're not a team player. The entire team of 18 people were not team players - the team consisted of her alone.
One time, she told me to do something very dangerous during a data migration. Not a best practice, and a big no-no. I'm seeing open files randomly spread across about 50 NAS shares which should according to her be offline - retired apps. It would take time to identify those, notify people, etc. She has deadlines to meet. You see, this migration that's been put off time and again for 2 years, needs to be finished in about a month, because when she was hired, she made that promise to her boss - without knowing anything about the apps, how much data, what users, etc.
I talked to her over chat, saved the chat, warned her about all the dangers and was told to proceed. It brought down a clinic, resulted in some data loss, and affected patients.
Next migration batch, she asks me to do it again. With a phone call. I ask for it in writing, she refuses. I added the phone call notes to the servicenow change control ticket, put risk as high, and said I need a note in the ticket from her telling me to proceed despite risk.
A week later I'm on suspension for disobeying my manager. HR tells me they will be getting in touch with me to get the details of what happened. I enjoy my paid week off while HR investigates the complaint - they need a full week because they review so much. at 4pm, the day before the week is over, the HR rep calls me and asks be about what happened. At 9am the next day I'm fired.
I file for unemployment and get a corp to corp contract to a company I'm part owner in (contract to the company, not to me). They dispute it, saying I was fired for my attitude, and was written up many times. Both false - I turn over the details - saved chats, emails, a phone call I recorded, etc to the UI officer. The next day my unemployment is approved, and I'm collecting unemployment weekly, while collecting dividends from the company I own for its c2c contract. I do however reply to one email per day from an indian recruiter - I pick ones with names I can't pronounce. They do the needful and submit me to one position per day with "their client." Why only indian recruiters? Because they are a minority and I don't discriminate.
This is a Boeing engineer being thrown under the bus by management. Here's what needs to happen: the engineer is guilty. I was guilty too when the first time I ran the destructive script, despite being told to do that in writing. The engineer is like a nazi soldier. Both the soldier, and his boss, and anyone up the chain who approved or pushed for this, need to be on the receiving side of that courtroom.
This. I also wished we learned more about this in my CS degree college classes. Luckily, there is pretty good podcast series that helped me structure team leadership, management and other non technical skills. It is called: Manager tools.
Here is the list of all topics on politics [1] with intro to 101 series saying this:
"Your organization is MUCH more political than most of us realize. For those who know it's political, some say, I'm not going to play that game. Either state of being - not seeing the politics, or ignoring them, is unfortunate. Professional Life is HUMAN life, and that means it's emotional, and therefore political. Engineers, software designers, technical people take note: hate those marketing and sales people all you want, but they're gonna end up being your boss unless you recognize the value of political, or put differently, non-rational, decision making."
Off the top of my head (and with no endorsement of related politics/ideology):
Paul Graham:
- That web-based apps were the future of software; the product that made him rich the first time around was Viaweb, the first ever web application, built in about 1995 when everyone else was selling thick-client Windows desktop apps in shrink-wrap boxes (http://www.paulgraham.com/road.html)
- That startups using niche languages like (in 2004) Python and Ruby would do better than those using mainstream platforms like Java and MS .Net (http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html)
- That startups were becoming dramatically cheaper/easier to start, and therefore could be started by fewer, younger people, didn't need "business people" early on, could get much further without needing to sell controlling stakes to VCs, and could effectively be mass-produced (http://www.paulgraham.com/webstartups.html)
- That a team of founders who funded themselves by selling novelty breakfast cereal would build an amazing company, even if their idea seemed to suck (http://www.paulgraham.com/airbnb.html)
- That a new, tech-focused news discussion forum, in a world that already had Slashdot and Reddit, could become popular and could remain popular for many years by employing specific mechanisms to raise the standards of content and discussion (http://paulgraham.com/hackernews.html)
Nassim Taleb:
- He explained the fundamental weaknesses in the economic system that would lead to crashes like 2007-08, and the present turmoil.
- Was predicting that a pandemic was the world's greatest risk at least 7 years ago (don't have time to sift through all the material but plenty is out there if you care to search for it)
Peter Thiel:
- Identified in 1993 that Silicon Valley offered more compelling career opportunities than NYC legal/securities work
- With Max Levchin, predicted that a money transfer platform would be one of the most important pieces of infrastructure, so launched PayPal, and built the team that enabled them to win the market
- Made first investment in Facebook, predicting that it would be a key piece of internet infrastructure due to its focus on identity, and that Zuckerberg - then aged 20 - would be able to execute
- Identified that big data analytics could be useful/attractive for government intelligence agencies, founded Palantir
- Was one of the first to suggest, in 2011, that the U.S. higher education market was in a bubble (https://techcrunch.com/2011/04/10/peter-thiel-were-in-a-bubb...). (Granted this hasn't been proven yet but there are signs the current crisis may be the needle that brings on the burst).
- Understood that a well-executed operation could take down Gawker
- Saw that Trump could win in 2016, and would be worth his while to endorse/support
===
No doubt they've all made predictions that have turned out to be wrong or mistimed. I follow Graham and Taleb on Twitter and often see them make comments I disagree with or doubt.
But it's not really; he was posing a question, which helped him to make further decisions about how to proceed as he built YC.
YC itself has funded many more companies that failed than succeeded, but that's fundamental to the business model - http://www.paulgraham.com/swan.html
What matters is that they're able to identify investment opportunities with a very big upside potential relative to the downside risk, and back them even if almost everyone else believes they're insignificant/wrong/stupid.
Thiel's investment fund Clarium Capital has famously lost plenty of money, but other investments of his have performed spectacularly well; that's how investing works.
Bottom line: all three of them have become vastly wealthy by repeatedly making bets that others didn't notice or thought were stupid.
Yes, there are tons of resources but I'll try to offer some simple tips.
1. Sales is a lot like golf. You can make it so complicated as to be impossible or you can simply walk up and hit the ball. I've been leading and building sales orgs for almost 20 years and my advice is to walk up and hit the ball.
2. Sales is about people and it's about problem solving. It is not about solutions or technology or chemicals or lines of code or artichokes. It's about people and it's about solving problems.
3. People buy 4 things and 4 things only. Ever. Those 4 things are time, money, sex, and approval/peace of mind. If you try selling something other than those 4 things you will fail.
4. People buy aspirin always. They buy vitamins only occassionally and at unpredictable times. Sell aspirin.
5. I say in every talk I give: "all things being equal people buy from their friends. So make everything else equal then go make a lot of friends."
6. Being valuable and useful is all you ever need to do to sell things. Help people out. Send interesting posts. Write birthday cards. Record videos sharing your ideas for growing their business. Introduce people who would benefit from knowing each other then get out of the way, expecting nothing in return. Do this consistently and authentically and people will find ways to give you money. I promise.
7. No one cares about your quota, your payroll, your opex, your burn rate, etc. No one. They care about the problem you are solving for them.
There is more than 100 trillion dollars in the global economy just waiting for you to breathe it in. Good luck.
No, people just use monero and convert to bitcoin last minute through xmr.to . Bitcoin is used because it's the most popular cryptocurrency. What's a better alternative, credit cards?
These comments from "How to come up with monetizable side projects ideas" post.
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1. Find a popular SaaS product. Like Intercom, Algolia, Segment. Make sure it doesn't have a free plan. This guarantees there's a market for the tool. Check out GetLatka for ideas. https://getlatka.com
2. Build your own take on the product. Find the minimum set of features that make it valuable. 10% of the work for 80% of the value.
3. Sell it at a 50-90% discount. There will be price sensitive customers that want the popular product, but don't want to or can't afford it.
4. Target bottom of funnel marketing channels: Targeted quora questions. Paid/organic search queries. Set up retargeting ads on Facebook. Product hunt launch it. That should get you a steady stream of customers.
I don't think this is a great way to build a million dollar business, but is a very easy way to make a few hundred. Shoot me an email if I can be helpful.
Don't exactly copy another product. It's damn important to reinvent defensible products that either, and hopefully do all of:
a) solve a slightly different problem
b) target different users
c) solve the problem in a 10x better, compelling way
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TIME. Time is the MOST precious commodity. Help users SAVE TIME. Save time finding something of value to the USER. You can't "presume" how much to charge. You have to "TEST" pricing then keep jacking it up until your customers don't pay. How can you pay for something what does not offer value. Stay small. Stay NICHE. Grab a slice from a BIG market. Forget millions. slap-yo-self with fury with delusions of becoming a millionaire, and make a goal of making enough to avoid being trapped in a 9-5 lifer situation. It take a LOT of luck + skill + market segment expertise. Like you have to KNOW the market you are going to be competing in. Assisted living , senior care , retirement calculator is VERY hot now. You'll be at it after your day gig 6pm-2am testing / building / iterating. Good LUCKY. launch a free beta version learn what customers value and how much they will pay ( ask them) THEN when you have enough people crack addict addicted to your service / app start charging. Be merciless. But offer excellent customer service. Always be honest.
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While I agree with some of the tactics here (make a twist on similar ideas, contact businesses, buy a business, brush up an existing product you built)
I'm going to suggest an alternative method that has worked for me.
Start with the money.
If you want monetization to be guaranteed you need to prioritize that first.
Take this method and rinse/repeat for you and your skills.
1) How much do you really want to make from this a month, what would make you happy?
Let's say you decide $1k a month would make it worth it after time, expenses and payment processing fees.
2) You then decide how many customers you really want to have to find and how much support email you want to answer.
Usually developers pick prices like $6 and wonder why no-one buys. This low price screams a lack of confidence in the product. That you aren't taking it seriously. That you may not be around in 8 weeks.
Starting without monetization in mind or equally, pricing low is the death of a product because for someone who dislikes marketing you just set yourself a huge marketing mountain to climb.
At $6 each, finding and selling to 150+ customers - when you don't even have one yet is a huge trek to your $1k happy place.
Let's say you feel more confident about finding and serving 10 customers really well. That seems achievable, right?
So with just 10 customers we're looking at a $100 a month product, right?
Whoa, you're thinking you could never build something that's worth that much.
Maybe you're worried it's enterprise level costs now and that's not the type of product you want to build.
Don't worry, a $100 product can be really simple.
Often developers think that a big cost means solving a big problem and that a big problem needs a big solution. Not true at all.
A big problem can be solved with a small elegant solution.
3) Now we know how much we want to make and how many customers we need and how much we are going to sell it for.
We now need to find the problem we are going to solve.
So how big of a problem needs a $100 per month solution?
Not very big at all really.
Let's say a business owners time is super-conservatively worth $50-$100 an hour.
So to add value, we are looking at saving someone between 2-4 hours a month on a task they normally have to do manually. That's not too bad!
Or maybe you want to help them reduce their business costs by $200-$400. Also, very possible. Now we have the value proposition.
We know what kind of problem we are looking for, so value will be clear for the customer.
4) Now we decide _who_ this is going to be for.
Don't pick people the same as you. They have the same skills and can solve the same kinds of problems that you can.
Pick a group of people :-
- That are easily identifiable by what they call themselves on social media (blogger, podcaster, videographer, designer, public speaker etc)
- Make sure they are a group you like interacting with, that you have some experience of working with already in some way (please pick a group you like and care about)
- Make sure they are the decision maker in their own business (don't pick employees of big corps)
- What tech skills have you worked with that overlaps with this customer group?
Let's say you've worked on a few video platforms in the past so you know that space well, so you choose to help YouTubers.
5) What is the issue that we are solving?
Ok, so now we're helping YouTubers to either save 2-4+ hours a month or reduce costs by $200+ - for your $100 MRR product.
This is where we breakdown what it takes to run their business.
What stops them being more profitable?
What tasks do they do everyday?
What can be automated?
What do they hate doing in their business?
If you know this space even a little, you will have answers here.
Maybe video storage is a huge expense.
Perhaps running their community takes up too much time so they can't scale.
Is just publishing a video end to end super time consuming? Look at why.
If you don't know what matters to them, ask. Make a hypothesis and see if it's true.
In just a couple of DM's you might find that they spend a whole day a week on something repetitive. Or are spending money on something that you can optimize. Write a few possibilities down.
6) Make an offer
In just a day or two you can go from no idea, to identifying a significant pain point for a group of people that's easy to reach.
Now you consider a couple of small technical solutions for the problems you've found.
You go back to a couple of your ideal customers and make them a proposition.
Something like - "You said you spent X hours on this particular problem. If I built something to solve that, this week, would that be worth $100 to you?"
If it's a huge pain point they will bite your hand off. If you get weak responses - no worry, you've not built any code yet. You can use the conversation to get to a deal.
They might say it's worth less so you find out what features would be needed to make it worth the $100.
Maybe they suggest a different problem that is more urgent for them.
After a few conversations you should have at least a couple of paying customers and a clear solution.
8) Building
Now you know exactly what you need to build and have customers waiting. There is no excuse but to launch. This will help you focus on the truly essential code.
As you build, reach out to a few more potential customers. (we made sure they were easy to find earlier) Ask them if they have the same problem. Show them what you have.
Go through a few cycles of building and feedback. Make sure people are paying you what you set out in the beginning - or close to it.
Ask your starting customers for referrals. You'll reach your 10 customers with zero marketing spend.
You then have all of the elements needed to scale further if you wish!
Remember that code comes last in this method for a reason. Only build when you have paying customers.
My personal recommendations, mostly stuff I've got:
Soldering iron: I like the Hakko FX-888D. $90-110 or so. They have better if you can afford it, but that one's very good. The FX-951 is the next step up, and can take micro-soldering handpieces and has the quick-change tips. It's about $240.
Get a chisel tip, eg Hakko T18-S3, a bevel tip (T18-S6), and a bent-conical tip (T18-BR02). The conical tip is perfect for lots of general purpose work, you can use the fine point or the sides of the bend. The back of the bend can be used for drag soldering, the inside of the bend makes soldering wires together easy. The chisel tip is good for soldering things with more thermal mass (PCB-mount heatsinks) and the bevel tip is pretty necessary for drag soldering on QFP and similar surface mount packages.
Hot air station: Probably something cheap from china, there aren't any particularly affordable name-brand ones that I know of. Weller has the WHA900 for around $600.
Magnification: Get at least one of the magnifying headsets ($8-10 on Amazon) and a desk magnifier with LED ring light. Better option is an AmScope stereo microscope, such as the SM-4NTP and a ring light for it like the LED-144W-ZK. $480 total.
PCB vise: I have an Aven 17010, it works pretty well. MUCH better than trying to hold a board in the helping hands.
Flux: Get liquid flux with a syringe. Amtech is the best, but there is a lot of counterfeit stuff out there, and Amtech doesn't sell it directly (bulk orders only). https://mailin.repair/amtech-nc-559-v2-30-cc-16160.html sells the real flux.
Tweezers. Any ESD safe set.
Fume extractor: VERY important for health. You do NOT want to be breathing in flux fumes. A high-volume HIPAA air purifier on the desk works, ($150 or so) or a dedicated device like the Hakko FA430 is even better ($625).
Oscilloscope: Rigol DS1054-Z. 50MHz, hackable to 100MHz bandwidth easily. $400. There's no better cheap scope at the moment (IMO).
Function generator: Siglent SDG805. $270. Needed to give you analog signal inputs. Part of the big-3 of 'scope, power supply, and function gen.
Power supply: Get a linear supply. The Tekpower TP3005D-3 is $200, and is an actual linear power supply. The knobs are coarse adjust only (it's analog), I replaced the control potentiometers with 10-turn versions which substantially improved the accuracy of the output. There's also the Siglent SPD3303X-E ($340) if you want a digital panel version. You definitely need arbitrary +- voltages for lots of very basic circuits, PC power supplies are very limiting and too noisy if you do any sensitive analog design.
Multimeter: Get a safe one (HRC fuses, proper transient voltage suppression, etc.) Can't go wrong with Fluke, of course, but Extech, Brymen, and some others have cheap and capable handheld meters. $100-300, depending on brand. Be sure it has a micro-amp range! The really cheap ones don't, and you WILL need it if designing embedded stuff.
Logic Analyzer: Get a LogicPort. pctestinstruments.com. They're $390, for a 34-channel 500MHz device, very nice for the money. Needed if doing much digital work. (Keysight's 34-channel standalone analyzer is $12165 base price. 5GHz, but still, twelve grand...)
Spectrum Analyzer: If you're doing RF work (radio design), you'll need one. Otherwise skip it. The Siglent SSA3021X with tracking generator add-on is $1764 (pretty cheap) and quite capable (9kHz to 2GHz). It's also hackable / software upgradeable into the 3.5GHz model. The Rigol DSA815-TG is $1550, but significantly worse (smaller display, worse resolution bandwidth, max 1.5GHz, etc).
Be sure to get a GFCI outlet and a GFCI adapter or two. The oscilloscope, function gen, spectrum analyzer, etc, all are mains earth referenced, and should each have their own GFCI plug. If you accidentally connect the ground lead of any of them to something other than ground the GFCI will trip and prevent the ground traces from being blown up inside the device. They're about $20 each, well worth it IMO.
You might want an anti-static mat and wrist-strap.
Get a bunch of small drawers, eg https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000LDH3JC. Print labels for them, use them to store resistors, capacitors, and other types. You can fit two values of component in each drawer (though they don't come with enough dividers :/). You want at least 96 drawers for resistors and 32 for capacitors assuming you're buying 1% or 5% resistors and 10-20% capacitors (pretty normal). I bought a kit of resistors (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B017L9GKGK) and (https://www.amazon.com/Joe-Knows-Electronics-Value-Capacitor...) for capacitors (Joe Knows Electronics kits are good for stocking up, they have more of the most common components in their kits.)
Get some desoldering wick and a solder sucker too. Also some tip tinner, and/or a sal ammoniac block. Make sure you have a roll of kapton tape to hold parts down while you solder them (it survives high temperatures). If you'll be doing a lot of surface mount you'll want a reflow oven and solder paste.
EDIT: One tip I forgot, very important: When you buy parts (on DigiKey/Mouser or similar) make sure you buy extras. At least the number needed for the first volume discount or 10, whichever you can afford. 3x the number needed for the project at the minimum. You WILL drop parts, burn them out, and otherwise damage them. It's much easier if you already have spares, don't have to wait for shipping, and don't have to pay for shipping. This will also help you develop a parts library, as you do more projects you'll be likely to re-use common parts and already have many left over from past work.
I'm actually working (as a computational mathematician) with an OBGYN and a few other doctors on a paper on this topic right now. We're using real data and a control and doing real Bayesian stats and all of that. But the tragic thing is, we don't need to get fancy. There's so much signal that the vaccine is bad for women's reproductive health that it really is obvious. I hope we can find an uncaptured journal to get it published in.
This paper is pure propaganda that's toeing the line about vaccine safety. It's idea laundering so they can later point to an article in "Science" showing that it's safe.
I'm so sad that Science (the journal) as fallen so far and is so captured.