Paper Cup Theory

Posted on 11/25/2012 by DANNY

The majority of top economists state that if you want to limit the use of something then you should charge for it. The reason follows that people will only pay for the exact use they require and waste will be eliminated.

An example would be if you want to stop the US dependence on oil, charge higher taxes on gas. If you want to encourage public transportation, charge higher taxes when people purchase cars.

I have always thought such thinking is Anti-American. People should be able to do whatever they want and the government should not get involved. Taxes should be only at a minimum in order to let the private sector function.

However, I work out of a building with unlimited free paper cups. Often in a day I will go through 5 paper cups without thinking. What if they charged .25 per cup? I do not know about others, but I could guarantee you that I would not take more than 1 cup per day. This would decrease my cup consumption by 400%. If a cup tax had the same effect on others than there would be a massive cost and environmental savings.

What would happen if a cup tax was used on other deleterious items that effect our economy?

Going to work on a cup tax experiment this week. If I get permission to do it, will blog the results here.

Following Through: Motivation

Posted on 11/13/2012 by DANNY

So few people follow through. Most people like to talk. Others like to talk about following through. However, from my limited experience so few people actually follow through post talking phase.

A key element of following through is setting actionable items to accomplish. Most days I create a list of items to get done. I often struggle on creating too ambitious a list and not able to follow through on key elements. Personally one strategy I need to decide on when it comes to goals is to focus on a whole list of small tasks or one or two massive tasks or a combination of them both?

A few months back I wrote how I wanted to do some SEO work for this blog on the word motivation. Through Google analytics, I was able to see that motivation related articles received high traffic. I spent 2 weeks writing motivation related articles and then dropped the ball. I moved on and forgot about my goal to become a top search result for motivation.

Now a few months later after only 2 weeks of effort I am seeing tremendous results for the keyword motivation. Over the last week about 150 people have been coming to this blog daily. Close to 80% have visited via the keyword motivation. I dropped the ball, but if I stayed steady on my goal and each day or every few days worked on motivation related articles and SEO the results could have been massive.

People often come up with great plans or ideas, but after not seeing immediate results follow through is often the first to go.

Build Shit and Talk to Users

Posted on 10/20/2012 by DANNY

If anybody who has built a successful company will tell you that meetups and conferences are a waste of time why are there so many of them. In other countries I have spent time in there would be one or two tech related events a night maximum. In Silicon Valley there are between 8-12 on a nightly basis.

Why?

Was just at startup school put on by Ycombinator where have seen top founders ranging from Mark Zuckerberg to Pinterest to other up and coming companies speak about how they started. Each of them said the same thing. Shut up and build. Then take feedback and built faster depending on both qualitative (what users say and what you think) and quantitative data (what users do).

With this in mind, I left.

On the Ropes

Posted on 10/04/2012 by DANNY

I had a plan last night of listening to the debate in the background while working. I accomplished this for close to 30 minutes when I put down work and paid full attention (as much as I could) to the debate. Wow, Romney killed it. Detailed, factual, on point, spoke great, made President Obama uncomfortable. If Romney is able to seize the momentum from this debate, he might now have a shot at the Presidency.

Over the course of the last month, Obama has obliterated Romney (Romney has also obliterated himself). Romney knew that this debate was his last shot at salvaging the campaign. He knew he could not do well, or win, he had to trounce Obama. Romney was on the ropes and on the biggest night of his political career he was able to sting like a bee and float like a butterfly.

Romney stepping up to the plate got me thinking of other great men who have stepped up to the plate. FedEx as we know it today, almost did not exist. In the early years of the company while undergoing difficult times and not able to meet payroll, FedEx founder Fred Smith took what left of the company’s savings and went to Vegas. His company was on the ropes, Smith went to Vegas and won a large amount in blackjack and promptly wired the money back to his company.

Another notable example is when Steve Jobs returned to Apple. His company was on the ropes with only a few months left before going bankrupt. Not only did he cut workforce and streamline the product, but he turned to one of his biggest competitors for a lifesaving investment. Jobs turned to Gates and Microsoft for 150 million dollar investment in order to buy him the necessary time to turn around the company.

During the financial crisis for a time it looked like the country was going to be plunged into a period of crisis worse than the Great Depression. The largest savings and loan in the country, Washington Mutual went out of business. Bear Stearns was bought for peanuts, Lehman Brothers went out of business. New Meryl Lynch CEO John Thain, saw that his company was on the ropes. Thain saw the writing on the wall. Thain made his move and sold the storied bank to Bank of America. Although not as bold as Smith or Jobs, Thain also saved his company. Both employees and customers did well. In hindsight, Thain’s move was genius: without question Meryl Lynch would have gone out of business; Meryl’s balance sheet forced BOA to go to the government for an extra 25 billion in TARP money.

Everybody goes through difficult times. The ability to persevere is essential. However, perhaps an even more important ability is to step up to the plate during uncertain times. Great men from Drew Brees as a future free agent with no contact taking his team to win the Superbowl or woman such as Meg Whitman who chose top step up to the plate in order to save HP.

However, life is not a movie. In one of the most iconic examples of stepping up to the plate Curt Schilling single handedly shut down the Yankees offense in the World Series. Under extreme pain and with a bloody ankle, Schilling was the main reason why Boston won the first World Series in franchise history. The “bloody sock” will go to the Hall of Fame. Schilling recently got into the startup game. With his company on the ropes Schilling stepped up with a 12 million dollar personal loan guarantee. The company went bankrupt, now famed pitches Curt Schilling is going bankrupt, and is forced to sell the famed “bloody sock”.

Perhaps Teddy Roosevelt puts it best:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Eliminating Distractions: A fast focus hack

Posted on 08/06/2012 by DANNY

Everybody has distractions from personal life to business life. I am going to focus on business life and a way to eliminate distractions that I will test out and report back if it works or not. I came across an article about an extremely efficient person who literally blocks out every waking hour of his calendar. Everything has a set time, even breaks and meals. The person religiously follows the schedule which has enabled him to do the work of 4 people.

A few years back Paul Graham spoke about the different between managers and makers efficiency. In the article he speaks about how creative people often need large blocks of hours in order to complete taks, while a manager or business person usually has hour long block of time for meetings/tasks.

Often in a startup you need to combine both a business schedule: speaking on the phone/meeting with people/routine tasks and a maker schedule of coming up with new ideas and building them out. It is difficult to flow between the necessary and creative spheres. Often in transition massive time gets wasted on email/business reading/hundreds of other items.

I am going to combine both the maker schedule and manager schedule while attempting to block out most waking hours. During all blocked out times, I will hide everything else from phone calls/alerts/email/articles/time. I am going to write a javascript code that will take the time and automatically either email or alert me when it is time to switch tasks and what the new task is.

Going to aim for Wednesday as the first day to try this out. Organize.Alerts . I will post all the code here and screenshot of calendar.

Startup: Ramen Noodles

Posted on 07/24/2012 by DANNY

Anybody who is founding a startup will be familiar with Ramen Noodles. Fast, cheap, and sort of tasty. Newly minted early stage startup godfather Paul Graham mentioned Ramen Noodles in an article he wrote: Ramen Profitable.

Lets go into some of the math of what makes Ramen Noodles great. Maximum 2 minutes to make with the only necessary ingredient of hot water. Comes in handy if you often do not eat until 11 at night. At a cost of around .30 cents a box it costs it means you can eat 5 meals for less than the cost of a pack of gum. Kicker is that it actually tastes good.

Last night for first time I looked at ingredients. WOW. 14grams of saturated fat per box and if you eat 2 boxes (enough for a dinner) you are looking at 28 grams of saturated fat. According to National Cholesterol Education Program a normal person is only supposed to eat 16 grams of saturated fat per day. Bottom line: in one meal alone you are eating more than double suggested saturated fat intake for the day. This includes nothing else but one single meal of Ramen. Looking at saturated fat alone one meal of Ramen is equal to:

1) 3 Big Macs

2) 2 Mcdonalds Sausage Eggs and Cheese

3) 2 Medium sized Dairy Queen Malts

4) 3 T-bone steaks

5) 1 Cheese Pie from Dominoes

Congratulations you are well on your way to becoming obese. We can extrapolate the Ramen Profitable concept to low income areas and begin to understand why America is transforming from the land of the free to the land of the obese.

Census Data: 14 billion dollar cost

Posted on 07/23/2012 by DANNY

The last census in 2010 cost the government over 13 billion dollars. Projections for the 2020 census now stands over 26 billion dollars. I am not going to mention the massive waste in costs associated with the census or ways to improve using digital technology (secure government e-mail on a dedicated government only site/server).

Under the current census system on a community by community level (even down to a property block level) one can look at a detailed breakdown of demographics,industry,race,income,job types, homeowners, and more. Everything is now digital so you can see how communities and regions have changed over the years.

With this massive data set achieved at great tax payer cost and made available to the public, what startups could be created or how can this data be used to assist existing small medium enterprises?

Here is website where you can type in search terms and what you are looking for: http://factfinder2.census.gov/.

Self Motivation-3

Posted on 07/17/2012 by DANNY

Have not been hitting goals lately. Last three weeks, I am already down $100 for not hitting goals. Have not created any ridiculous goals, all doable. What to do? I have been experimenting with negative consequences for missing targets.

However, I am not in high school reporting to a principle so I am going to switch it up to positive reinforcement. Also have been creating goals on a weekly basis, but sometimes it takes time to achieve them, so I will give myself until August 5th.

If I can accomplish these goals, I will spring for Las Vegas Labor Day weekend. If I can accomplish 3 out of 4 it will be gametime decision. If less than I am shit out of luck.

1) Completely competent front end engineering

2) Launch a company with paying customers

3) Redesign this website

4) Again focus on 1 good deed a week for anybody.

Startup? Move to Silicon Valley

Posted on 07/09/2012 by DANNY

If you want to kill it in Hollywood become you move to LA (to become a struggling waiter).

If you want to kill it in finance you move to NYC the Investment Banking Capital of the World.

For tech make the move to Silicon Valley. Just do it!

Here is an email I got from somebody I met at an event who was visiting for a few days:

Hi Danny,

It was great meeting you last week at the startupweekend event at Google’s SF office. After talking with you and other folks at the event, I think I have to move up to nor cal. Being down here in the LA area just doesn’t have the network and startup culture like it does up there. So I’m trying to look for any jr. development jobs up there and I was looking into angellist.co. If you could recommend anything else, that would be great.

I took a look at your web blog. Very interesting and inspirational stuff. I especially liked the goals you set out for yourself of networking and meeting new folks.

Oh, and while I was walking back to the hotel, I saw this. I like the color scheme you used to highlight the classiness of the place:

Keep in touch,

______________

Rainmaker

Posted on 06/15/2012 by DANNY

Previously at Nuqudy we have used the word Rainmaker to foster both competition and as a joke. It started something like this “Danny you might be a Rainmaker, but I am the father of the Rainmakers”. Naturally my response was “I am the grandfather of the Rainmakers”.

This conversation got me thinking of what a Rainmaker is. Anybody can be a CEO. There are tens of millions of CEO’s on every street corner. Over the last 2 years, I have met hundreds of CEOs. However, I could count on one hand the amount of rainmakers I have met.

In addition a Rainmaker does not have to be in charge and can be anybody from a janitor to engineer. After searching here is a definition that I came across that I like:

“In everyday usage, the term “rainmaker” can apply to anyone – from the salesperson who always finishes first in sales to the engineer who consistently finds innovative ways to present a company’s products. In the purest sense, a rainmaker is a difference maker”

Recently a former investor at a top venture capital firm who saw my profile on LinkedIn wrote:

“danny, do you really have rainmaker in your profile? obviously you’re new to the area. word of advice.”

Although my definition of a Rainmaker is different than the commonly thought of definition, this guy had a solid point. Over the years I have done some cool startups in a few different countries but now that I am in Silicon Valley it is sort of like being in the Major Leagues. So far I have done nothing compared to some of the people before me. (Only a month ago a 19 year old raised 7 million Series A for his startup)

So now at 23 years young, I am changing the title on my LinkedIn to Rit.