thomas0.5

Usually I have kept the blog pretty separated from my personal life, but wanted to update my public goals list to create some weird type of accountability for myself (if anyone ever reads this).

Reflecting on 2015 and 2016 I think the main takeaways were that I need to continue to improve my patience, refocus on what has led to success thus far in my life, surround myself with the people I truly admire, and find ways to get back to my live or die competitive mindset. 

The separation from competitive sports is an ongoing trial for me, and fulfillment has not come easily, so that is something I can search for and learn. Having a true passion and abandoning it has left me partially unsatisfied at times. I hope to, but don’t expect to completely solve that in the coming year.

Here’s the list of targets for ‘17:

Read 24 Books

Journal 300+ Days

Create $5-10k in passive income outside of my day job salary and/or start a new, business I love (with full time potential) on the side

Run a sub 17 minute 5k

Play as much as I can of everything

Beat my brother on the track in the stick shift

Save 33% of my income

Had some time off for the holiday and spent most of it studying Javascript, dreaming up products and business models, and cruising through this compilation by Tim Ferris.

Four Hour Work Week is an awesome look into a reprioritization of life and what is possible to achieve on a personal level when you apply a lens of pure optimization and focus on organizing your life around ‘non-work’ goals and experiences.

It’s hard not to get a case of wanderlust and even a feeling of core inspiration from reading the book. Anyone would want to put in their two weeks, set up a drop shipping site, and buy a one way to Thailand after a few chapters of Ferriss’ manifesto. 

Setting up automated income streams and roaming the globe sound like a fantastic time, but it is definitely a different (and I would argue smaller) vision than building life around relationships and hard value creation at scale. The minimal work load and ‘world is your playground’ requires a concession to view work as an enabler of lifestyle rather than something like a dedicated masterpiece. There are many different ways to look at work in the context of life, and I think that the style outlined by Ferriss is very intriguing. However, personally I hope to design a fulfilling life in a slightly different vein.

Just finished these two focused on the outlook for our American economy and nation.

I enjoyed both, although the Kurtzman book had a fair amount of fluff and certainly took a couple shortcuts with arguments from time to time.

The summaries are as follows in two sentences each.

Street Smarts: Jim Rogers argues that America is being disrupted in the Clayton Christensen sense (told you I’m obsessed). A knowledge revolution is occurring in developing nations, and they are beating America on price with a keen eye and newfound potential to move up market in the (flattened) world.

Unleashing the Second American Century: Joel Kurtzman believes that America is uniquely and supremely situated to usher in another century of global economic dominance. He argues that our research and education institutions, national attitude, energy resources, unique workforce, and unique work product dictate a competitive advantage (and moat) versus emerging global powers.

Bottom line: I would love to see these guys duke it out. There are perpendicular arguments between these two hardcovers, and I’d like to see who could support the story best.

Personally I believe in a vision splitting characteristics of the two. I agree that traditional industry will be disrupted by emerging economies, we will experience high exposure to competition in service based business as well as product design and manufacture. On the flip side, Kurtzman convinced me America is uniquely structured to promote the inception, scaling, and profit of innovation(s).

I have no idea what the resulting United States will look like, but I strongly believe in the continued emergence of nations like China alongside the US. As markets grow closer in purchasing power, consumer behavior, and media channels globalize, I think there will be increasing compatibility and competition between international markets at the service/information level. It seems that even emerging economies will angle towards parity in the form of general work/knowledge product. The American economy will have to maintain an edge by working towards energy independence and incubating novel breakthroughs in bio, computing, manufacturing, and financial technologies.

I suppose we have been an incumbent for some time now, but in this case it seems like there is still some runway, fresh potential, and room for optimization at the top of the market.  

Yesterday my friend, Alex Gatewood, shared the above article with myself and another friend.

In synopsis, it addresses ineffectiveness of digital advertising for marketers today. 

The piece was a great read and offered perspective on the origin of consumer brand marketing over mass market distribution channels. From the origins of TV advertising, brands have come to life and conversed with their audiences in a relatively fixed format. Traditional marketing defined a brand’s identity and had the goal of keeping a brand in a consumer’s headspace at point of purchase.

What the article fails to address is the wonderful world of brands that has been enabled by digital enablement of content and commerce distribution. Currently obsessed with Clayton Christensen’s disruption theory I can’t help but draw a comparison:

By Christensen's definition of disruption, digital advertising and mediums have drastically increased the number of brands that can exist, thrive, and have relationships with consumers. Where there was no channel to connect before, now there is effective distribution for thousands of brands - the quantification of the long tail of brands enabled by digital advertising is significant enough to make a strong case for the other side.  

Mass media and TV ads are suitable for a limited and semi-elite number of the brands today - and those with the means are struggling to compete on new digital channels while fleeing (or staying) up stream. The article’s contrasting study of traditional media vs. digital advertising communications/distribution is not representative of what many marketers will face (it would seem). Good content can build a brand and sales with internet savvy. Money and access to mass-scaled wholesale distribution are things that need to be in place before traditional media becomes effective, but these aren’t prerequisites to building a successful brand today!

Off the heels of my last post there are too many sources to keep up with. My last ‘Daily Internet’ post outlined some high level sites to start a daily search for tech/startup news.

Some other interesting sources to keep up with are blogs from the VC community, analysts, and operators. This list a bit light on operators - I’ll follow up - but many great posts and operator stories surface daily or on-demand via Medium, HN, and Quora.

Good reading below:

YC Blog

a16z

Stratechery

Occam’s Razor

Saastr

Media consumption is not a zero sum game (The BrandBuilder Blog). While this graph is slightly misleading in that it accounts for a global population that is gaining access to the internet over time, the net outcome is still apparent: people are consuming more media as time goes on. For content producers, there is more media to compete with as a result. And as a consumer of media, it is becoming overwhelming. Depending on who you are you may feel like it is hard to keep up. Twitter can only provide so much depth, and there are only so many hours in a day to take in an increasing sea of high quality content.

Just finished: Hackers and Painters - Paul Graham

Next up... I will find some momentum and cruise through the rest of Code.

For me, it is unequivocally fulfilling to do things myself. Not everything in the world obviously. I don’t hand prepare every meal, let alone grow my own crops, or build my own house (although I’d like to), but within the scope of my personal and working life I can’t help but find unique satisfaction when I’ve conquered a task myself. Especially a new one. 

As the proprietor, you are accountable for any errors, but you are also accountable for any success. There is opportunity to apply a personal touch to anything, even if it is in the technique of preparation rather than actually reflected in an end product. And with proper attention it is hard not to learn when you do something yourself. There is a lesson baked into every activity. Maybe you learn new skills, improve old ones, gain insight into a new process, cross-pollinate other areas of your life, and on and on. In the worst case you refine a skill and look closely to reveal a new insight. In the best case you form new neural pathways and expand the breadth (or depth) of your mind.

And that’s when it gets exciting. New activities are naturally stimulating because they require you to think. The first time you do anything is not going to be perfect, and that in itself is a great phenomena. Certain skills can in fact be perfected over time, and others can be practiced an entire lifetime without full progression.

The improvement and accomplishment that comes with building, creating, forming new skills, learning new items, and doing uncomfortable things is what keeps life interesting. And with each skill learned the number of skills I’d like to master multiplies... This is the only frustrating part.

Hunger Games? Brave New World? 

It’s a scary thought that a sizable portion of today’s jobs are subject to disruption and replacement by robots and automation technologies.

--All Hypothetical--

Historically as technology has advanced it has increased human productivity and output, but it hasn't necessarily decreased the amount that humans need to/or do work. Talking primarily about first world developed nations/economies (the U.S.). But as technology shifts from amplifying human productivity to replacing and automating human productivity, we will functionally need less work. This particularly impacts any repeatable job with non-unique, critical thinking. For sake of argument all low wage jobs will be replaced by automation and robots. 

Everything from food service, to manufacturing, to hotels, to transportation. This is probably many years away. But mid wage jobs may be automated as well, to a muted degree. There will be a squeeze as non-technical/specialized or non-knowledge job workers have no value to add and their incomes are gone.

The lower class will be out of work and expand. There will be little to no middle class, and the upper class will further separate as they drive business and develop further automated solutions. This will be propagated by capitalism (businesses need to grow and increase margins). Certain industries will be insulated (probably content production, but not content distribution). Entrepreneurialism will remain highly valuable, but more difficult as it will require an elevated level of expertise, competition, and value produced.

There will be drastic stratification of US society, with a massive lower class that has no real means to income (if current conditions persist). And at a core level, without work, there will be no sense of fulfillment for half or more of the US citizens.

Democracy will no longer function properly. Wealth redistribution will progress even farther than it already has, but it will still not solve the issues. Will there be a revolution? Will government need to wholly change? What will be the living conditions if we make it to the wealthy portion of society? What will cities and society become when a significant fraction of people lose their meaningful income?

Loving the addition of video capture to the Narrative Clip 2.

The product captures and logs your daily life in photos and videos...

I love the product. Automated recording of memories would seem to give your time some added dimension. What if you retained just an extra 10% of your long term experiential memories? Could have dramatic impact on rolling perspective development, beyond biological design! 

Syndicated from my Old Blog

The title to this post is a sort of trick question because (in my mind at least) there is a spectrum of entrepreneurial interest, ability, and ambition.

Entrepreneurial | adjective | - Characterized by the taking of financial risks in the hope of profit; enterprising

That is the dictionary definition. Does that describe you? If not then keep reading because entrepreneurs aren’t out and out gamblers. Risk taking is a primary attribute of entrepreneurs, but that is hardly the sole characteristic of entrepreneurship. Leadership, vision, and passion are much more definitive of entrepreneurs at any level in an organization. Creating something new, and more importantly succeeding at something new, depend on grit, work ethic, and critical thinking. And most importantly, no one (at least hardly anyone) does it alone.

What that means is that you don’t have to embody all of these noble traits to qualify as an entrepreneur. When considering entrepreneurship and new ventures one of the most vital pieces is the team. Rightly so, because just like in sports, a championship team doesn’t make it to the post season without talent (and usuallyexperience) across the lineup. And teams don’t win trophies without a sufficientlydefensive as well as offensive roster. Often the coach is a visionary and innovator, but ultimately down the stretch it comes down to the ability, talent, and longevityof the players to win a title.

What I’m getting at is that entrepreneurship isn’t an exclusive club governed by a checklist of desirable traits and skills. Being a founder takes some oomph and often a vivid drive or vision, but there is room beyond the founders corner for entrepreneurs of all shapes, sizes, and skill sets.

That doesn’t mean you are an entrepreneur just for breathing the same air as Mark Zuckerberg either. Entrepreneurs are change agents and embrace uncertainty to an extent that allows them to operate in flux, limbo, ambiguity, and even defeat.

Whatever your background, there is room for you to be entrepreneurial in any arena. But here’s the second round of cuts. Entrepreneurship is an active choice that is not discriminatory based on the size of your organization, but is discriminatory on your orientation towards breaking tradition. There are plenty of ways within tradition to succeed, earn status, money, and merit. Success is a universal achievement, but entrepreneurship is a unique brand.

My current non-fat diet of Internet:

Product Hunt

Hacker News 

Tech Crunch

Recode

The unique apps per capita ratio is getting more lopsided as time goes on, but the hours in a day to use a mobile phone is constant. Launching an app means that you need to target a portion of a user’s existing mobile time spend and strategize to replace it. Perhaps this happens by disrupting an existing (consumer->) model by introducing a core (<-business) innovation.

A new app has to be more than incrementally better to define a new user behavior!

So to get a loyal user base you’re not only looking at the marketing to gain first impressions, convert impressions to downloads, onboard users, and build virality hooks... There needs to be a fundamental reason a user will use your app versus one of the 24 on their home screen currently. Realistically, what is the ideal usage pattern for your app? What app(s) fill that current time slot and how/why will you replace them? Or in the increasingly rare case, what non-app, ‘real world’, physical time spend does your app replace?